-
Battuta's second BP short story "Morrigan in Shadow" has just been released on Clarkesworld (http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/dickinson_12_15/).
This story has elements which constitute a massive spoiler for Acts 4 and 5 of WiH. I am not going to tell you which ones, though. The overall arc is similar, but details will differ (radically, in some cases).
-
A flash of annihilation light blows through its hull down astern and suddenly it’s geysering jets of molten metal, crumpling on itself, jump missiles darting out of the interior and curving back to re-attack with their submunitions scattering out behind them like fairy dust.
Battuta you magnificent son of a *****, you found a way to canonise it after all.
-
HUMANITY STANDS
Holy ****.
-
Spoiler tags gentlemen.
-
Can we just put a general warning in the thread title? I don't really see why anyone would read this thread if they didn't want to read the story.
-
That should suffice.
-
No Vishnans in this version of the Terminal Protocol, and Shambhala's totally glossed over. So that's still fertile ground for speculation. The Shivan/Great Darkness/Nagari situation is exactly what I thought it would be and now I wish I'd written it up more clearly so I could be smug.
The plot fits perfectly with the known names for acts 4 and 5.
-
Well, that was awesome...
Can't wait to play it!
-
I'm gonna be explicit about some of the places this differs from what will happen in BP.
—There are no Vishnans in Morrigan, there are in BP
—Laporte's purpose is different in BP
—BP2 is not really going to be resolved by a happy team up or end with the same status quo as this story
—I'll post more if I remember them, it's really early!
-
I don't know if you got my msg in IRC battuta, but I loved what you did with Ken near the end. He sounds so conflicted at what his "daughter" just did, not just to him but for humanity.
Random thoughts:
- I did not like how the 3 timeline structure starts off but I sure as hell liked how it converged.
- I dont know if this would've been easier or harder to read should I not be aware of the BP storyline. I had to re-read many sentences cause my mind kept wondering off trying to connect the dots with BP events. But I feel the beginning of the story might have been a little too much for a reader not familiar with the BP storyline.
- Your notes on how the story is structured throughout the book were very helful, maybe even necessary. I did not mind them after a while, but at first reading them I thought the author was speaking a bit too directly to me.
- Nagari 2/10 favorite chapter.
- Laporte feels much darker than in BP. She sounds more like a psychopath with a very clear purpose, more in touch with what she is, less robotic than in tenebra where at times she seems still stuck thinking that circumstances around her are forcing her to do this, instead of embracing her nature.
- Simms is still simms, and I love her! World class one liners left and right.
- I need to re-read before casting an opinion on al-dawa. My overall feel for him is positive though.
- My (EXTREMELY) limited knowledge of black holes kept getting in the way of enjoying the Capella section at times as I was trying to figure out how anything could be that close to it and not suddenly turn to dust from the insane temperatures near the disk. Fortunately, it flowed well and the nuisance was very short lived, quickly focusing on the characters.
- Steele is a robot and I couldn't care less. STEELE #1
- The analogy for the simmses and laportes of the universe and the purpose of the shivans seemed contradictory. If anything it seems the UEF was the one that needed culling not the GTVA. I need to re-read this section before I do another full read in the future.
- I enjoy your writing style, but find it a bit hard to read at times. (I fully admit this could just be my English getting in the way)
- I really enjoyed your story. Thanks for making it.
-
- The analogy for the simmses and laportes of the universe and the purpose of the shivans seemed contradictory. If anything it seems the UEF was the one that needed culling not the GTVA.
I personally took this as an implication that if Laporte were to actually follow through with Ken's bargain, the UEF would be destroyed for the sake of the galaxy, in spite of Ken's assurances that she would be saving her home.
-
Should a new thread be made for discussion on the possible implications of this story to the BP universe? I think this one should probably stay focused on morrigan's universe no?
-
I caved into my most spoilery and darkest self and read that.
I smiled the whole way through; how did you become so good Battuta? You inspire me to write and draw again...
And the big smile on my face is starting to hurt. :D
PS: Humanity stands should be the BP hashtag
WAIT! If this ending only spoils WIH... THEN WHAT IS BP3!?
-
BP3 is what happens after this because the ending of BP2 differs in a couple really important respects.
-
Presumably critical ones dealing with the Vasudans, Vishnans and Shambhala?
Damn it Battuta, now you got my hyped for WiH 4/5 and BP3. Monster.
-
Very good read yo
I'm sort of amazed at myself that the mental image of having someone's teeth, be ant heads instead, isn't freaking me out more . :p
I'm no writer, I can't provide you with the deep, constructive comments and praise that you'd love to see, but I'd like say words anyway.
—BP2 is not really going to be resolved by a happy team up or end with the same status quo as this story
I gotta admit, that I was slightly disappointed that the ending of this story kind of turned into a hollywood movie end, with our heroes blasting off to escape the explosion behind them, **** yeah humanity.
Not that this ending was bad, it's just that with all the incredibly interesting thought processes going on earlier in the story, I'd rather have seen the actual atrocity of calling the shivans nemesis to plunge the GTVA into a third incursion, go through. Monsters win, right? Except, now love and friendship prevailed, again.
- The analogy for the simmses and laportes of the universe and the purpose of the shivans seemed contradictory. If anything it seems the UEF was the one that needed culling not the GTVA. I need to re-read this section before I do another full read in the future.
- I enjoy your writing style, but find it a bit hard to read at times. (I fully admit this could just be my English getting in the way)
- I really enjoyed your story. Thanks for making it.
The first point of this occured to me too.
I have to echo the second point there too; In general, I find your writing style often kind of hard to get into, needing to have dictionary.com open just to look up what this word means is sort of a barrier. Making me feel like it was written for people who are just that much smarter than me. I like to think I have a decent grasp on the english language, but then I read a Battuta story. :p
But in this case, I didn't had to do that even once, so I really got dragged into the story, and raced through it.
Third point; echo echo
-
I didn't really mind the ending, with the way Battuta presented Morrigan's purpose for the
shivans NEMESIS here, it actually made a lot of sense for Steele to become an ally for this mission. The war is over.
-
That was a great read. No problems with the writing whatsoever.
Time for some speculation:
- Considering the Eris is used here, it seems like Calder and the Toutatis bite the dust (Perhaps during the Mars Gambit? Whatever that is) as he would almost certainly join Laporte in going rogue.
- I actually disagree with what was said earlier. Maybe it's just the choices I made in Act 3, but Laporte seems more mentally damaged in this than in the game. (Though that makes sense in a way, given that the Federation apparently gets their asses handed to them by Steele.)
- Speaking of which, it warmed my heart to see that the GTVA crushed the UEF. Go Steele!
- The Mars Gambit sounds interesting. Given that the word gambit gets used, I wonder who or what is sacrificed. Also, considering that we see the Eris fighting the Imperieuse, and that the Eris shows up in the story, I wonder if the Imperieuse is going to go down in flames. Especially because there is a music file called Imperieuse in the VP files, just like there is one for the Carthage. And the Carthage's one plays when you pound that her into oblivion.
- Desperate defense of SHAMBHALA, huh? Now that sounds like something I'd love to see in the game.
- While I don't have a particular problem with the ending, I don't feel that it fits the WiH theme very much, so I'm not surprised we'll see a different one. Although the team up makes sense, I just can't see people like Simms and Laporte especially be like "ok, we're friends now"
Thoroughly enjoyable read though, great job. I absolutely cannot wait to see Act 4 and 5. ;)
-
I didn't read the whole thing carefully, but how the hell they managed to get into Capella? uncharted node?
I also share the opinion that via Ken narration it looks like the UEF is the bad guys and GTA is actually more tolerable to Shivan viewpoint.
The Ken itself is somehow a weak point altogether - both he and GTVA analyst underline thaat second Shivan invasion had no weak points while now (third attack) the Ken itself is a weakness. From Shivan point of view they don't need him they just need 80, 800 or 8000 Juggernauts to burn GTVA to a crisp. That's all.
Ken has no point in Morrigan universe - he's only valid if Shivans are something more than mindless force of nature that brings ballance to the universe(s). He's only valid if Vinashaans and Brahmans exist and that there is a bigger plan for Humanity.
Additionally in Morrigan Shivans are mentioned to be artifical creation while in Blue Planet they are mentioned to be ethernal and far older than even Brahmans and Vinashaans. Somehow Morrigan Shivans seems to be more dumped down (to the point where they are not intelligent by design) while in Blue Planet they are enigmatic, alien but inteligent (and they are acting chaotic/unpredictable, because it's optimal strategy against their targets). Again exstence of Brahmans and Vinaashans make Shivans more interesting and hard to define because they make you wonder what makes them to tolerate these "younger races" while other are senteced to extermination.
In Morrigan they are like "meh, we kill everyone, because intelligence is bad to universe and we were created so that universe will not get cancer".
What is The Cancer? Is it the same as "Great Darkness"? Or maybe the Shivans themselves are the first cancer? Or maybe descendand of the first race that created the Cancer and then decided to sacrifice/turn to become Shivans so that the universe would never again had to go through the doom?
-
carthage.ogg and imperieuse.ogg were going to be the replacement soundtrack for Delenda Est (imperieuse.ogg even times itself nicely with the imperieuse beams! try it out yourself).
Carthage.ogg eventually got used in HFH.
-
So I took the plunge (decided I could live with some spoilers; sounds like it wasn't a hideous amount in the end anyhow).
I like how you construct scenes and all the images you use (like the ants in many of the scenes; was a nice touch every time and felt you integrated the ant-hill war thing from her childhood well so you could refer to it). The scenes between Simms and Laporte felt quite emotive, and I particularly liked the take on Al-Dawa in this and how she looked and spoke to people.
Do agree with others that sometimes the use of big words can make it difficult to follow (usually I'm okay with science terms but have felt that now and again in all your works; I recall that story of the two Egyptian gods meeting (sorry my memory fails me name-wise) was the worst for that), but got to say this was a smoother reading than previous and I didn't struggle with many descriptions :yes:.
Massive congrats on a good read! It's genuinely hard to get writing onto paper when your story writing proper (have tried so many times, writer-blocked every time so far :lol:), so pat-on-the-back for completing it! :yes:
So yeah, if anyone needs me I'll be being all pathetic and dejected in the corner for a while :lol:; The Federation surrendered to Steele's (depraved psychotic) genius and will likely get culture-cleansed in the name of MORPHEUS (which I had kind of come to accept as an inevitable future canon-wise but still). Enjoy ya revelry Tev/Steele-sycophants :P...
—BP2 is not really going to...end with the same status quo as this story
...*quietly crosses fingers* ;)
-
The Vishnans, and hence MORPHEUS, don't exist in this story.
-
I thought the vishnans were the simmses? :D
-
Good ****.
Re: differences
So if the Vishnans don't exist, then AoA didn't happen? What are the implications of that, doesn't that mean the UEF was even MORE screwed to begin with?
Also something nagged me about the Lucifer and Sathanii being the same ship class (type?), and the difference in methods of stopping the "Lucifer" being a bomb to collapse the node while it was inside rather than a more conventional arms strike, but now that I think about it more perhaps the difference between the two isn't significant at all in the big picture...
-
Battuta's second BP short story "Morrigan in Shadow" has just been released on Clarkesworld (http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/dickinson_12_15/).
This story has elements which constitute a massive spoiler for Acts 4 and 5 of WiH. I am not going to tell you which ones, though. The overall arc is similar, but details will differ (radically, in some cases).
Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant writing!
Hope that you seriously win the Pulitzer someday
-
Good ****.
Re: differences
So if the Vishnans don't exist, then AoA didn't happen? What are the implications of that, doesn't that mean the UEF was even MORE screwed to begin with?
Also something nagged me about the Lucifer and Sathanii being the same ship class (type?), and the difference in methods of stopping the "Lucifer" being a bomb to collapse the node while it was inside rather than a more conventional arms strike, but now that I think about it more perhaps the difference between the two isn't significant at all in the big picture...
The UEF lost the war in SOL, makes no difference if the 14th BG arrived at full strength or not. The only need for vishnans would be to justify the ideology of ubuntu a bit more, but the fear of the shivans plus the knowledge of ancients from the pilots stranded in SOL after the lucifer cut off the system would be enough to justify it. (Either way it makes no difference)
You had to kill the lucifer in subspace because the GTA had no weapons capable of piercing the shields at the time + AoA self repair BP canon. The 14th BG would steam roll a Lucifer in under 30-45 seconds.
-
The idea being though, according to the GTVA's initial plans, if AoA didn't happen, there shouldn't have even been a war with the UEF - the 14th should have taken up orbital bombardment positions immediately and demanded surrender (which is exactly what caused the UEF surrender as stated in Morrigan).
The UEF should have been so screwed that there would be no war to begin with (and thus Laporte would never have met Simms, and all...) but yet it all happened anyway, makes me wonder what happened.
Important Bits:
GTVA High Command's intention had been to position the 14th Battlegroup throughout Sol and only then demand surrender as additional GTVA forces from the Fourth Fleet poured in through the node.
...
the plan to disperse throughout Sol, assume bombardment positions above major capitals, and only then request surrender.
...
The Elders had greeted the sighting of GTVA probes with open arms, and in spite of a Fedayeen report suggesting that the probes were stuffed with sophisticated ELINT gear, prepared no military contingencies for the GTVA's arrival.
When the Alliance captured Earth orbit, Admiral Steele threatened to bomb a city every hour until the Federation issued an unconditional surrender.
My understanding is that the whole of AoA was a Vishnan setup. Thus, no Vishnans, no AoA, the 14th would arrive in full strength, everything goes according to GTVA plan (since the UEF made no preparations to affect the contrary), no UEF-GTVA war whatsoever (UEF immediately surrenders), no Wargods, no Delenda Est...etc...
Am I missing something about the Vishnan-AoA relationship or am I going too far down the "no vishnans" rabbit hole? How far do the "no vishnans" implications go?
-
I think you are trying to too hard to see the effects of something that was removed from the story because it wasn't necesary for the medium and audience its targeted to. A relatively short science fiction story aimed at general science fiction fans, to add too much more to it, would be to distract the non BP reader even further from what Battuta seemed to want us to focus the most, which is Laporte's relationship with Simms.
I'll play along for fun thought!
This way to interpret what could happen relies on the UEF not be willing to gamble on the lives of its citizens. If they were willing to accept the loss of several cities and millions of people, the 14th BG would eventually be annihilated by the combined forces of SoL. No matter how good their ships are.
- 14BG goes through, al-dawa who no doubt had people watching the node 24/7 immediately initiates his antimatter bomb beta aquilae contingency and sends a wing of ainsarii through the node, while waiting for authorization from the "elders" but the 14th BG takes positions over earth too quickly, elders find themselves out of options, command is given to the al-dawa to do whatever is necesary to ensure status quo continues.
Al-dawa uses 0-day exploits to hack a GTVA news relay and infects the system based on data recovered from the probes the GTVA sent before the 14th transversed the node. Soon every GTVA citizen is aware that the node was finally repaired (while everyone knows this is being done, the actual time and progress of the node would be a very closely guarded secret).
Al-dawa sends a message reading "is this how the gift, payed in blood by millions is to be used? laying siege to our home, ready to kill your own family members?"
The revelation is a nightmare scenario for the GTVA, it needs more time to turn ubuntu into the evil cult it needs his citizens to believe in. Someone in delta serpents picks up a phone and calls the 14BG to withdraw to the node and await further orders. Everything is blamed on an enemy psyop on the citizens of the GTVA and everything goes back to the way it is in BP.
-
Frankly I think it's simplest to just remove the 14th BG and the initial strike entirely: the wormhole was repaired, the Tevs invaded, and they had to fight a long war from the start.
-
I feel like I should not read this until the team has released Blue Planet to the end and I have played it. Shelved :-)
-
Holy sh*t. Battuta delivers again, and very magnificently.
I personally didn't mind the ending. I didn't get a Hollywood vibe from it; there's a lot more uncertainty to it than it first seems to suggest. Sure, Laporte and Simms were able to Do The Thing, but they've still got to help fight a big screw-off Nemesis fleet, which is the prelude to another incursion. And Nemesis learns slowly, but it learns well, so victory this time will be even more costly...to the point where the next incursion could well finish humanity off for good even if Our Heroes manage to pull off a win.
-
I think you are trying to too hard to see the effects of something that was removed from the story because it wasn't necesary for the medium and audience its targeted to. A relatively short science fiction story aimed at general science fiction fans, to add too much more to it, would be to distract the non BP reader even further from what Battuta seemed to want us to focus the most, which is Laporte's relationship with Simms.
I'll play along for fun thought!
This way to interpret what could happen relies on the UEF not be willing to gamble on the lives of its citizens. If they were willing to accept the loss of several cities and millions of people, the 14th BG would eventually be annihilated by the combined forces of SoL. No matter how good their ships are.
- 14BG goes through, al-dawa who no doubt had people watching the node 24/7 immediately initiates his antimatter bomb beta aquilae contingency and sends a wing of ainsarii through the node, while waiting for authorization from the "elders" but the 14th BG takes positions over earth too quickly, elders find themselves out of options, command is given to the al-dawa to do whatever is necesary to ensure status quo continues.
Al-dawa uses 0-day exploits to hack a GTVA news relay and infects the system based on data recovered from the probes the GTVA sent before the 14th transversed the node. Soon every GTVA citizen is aware that the node was finally repaired (while everyone knows this is being done, the actual time and progress of the node would be a very closely guarded secret).
Al-dawa sends a message reading "is this how the gift, payed in blood by millions is to be used? laying siege to our home, ready to kill your own family members?"
The revelation is a nightmare scenario for the GTVA, it needs more time to turn ubuntu into the evil cult it needs his citizens to believe in. Someone in delta serpents picks up a phone and calls the 14BG to withdraw to the node and await further orders. Everything is blamed on an enemy psyop on the citizens of the GTVA and everything goes back to the way it is in BP.
And like before, al'dawa wouldn't have been allowed to antimatterbomb BA.
Besides, the third fleet was battleready I think, but they wouldn't have been able to delay the 14th at full strength I guess.
-
Wait so, are these new Sinadhuja ships distinct from both the Lucifer, the Sathanas, and the Dante?
-
Wait so, are these new Sinadhuja ships distinct from both the Lucifer, the Sathanas, and the Dante?
Does it matter? It sounds like you are asking if the pear you are holding is a red apple or a green one, when the important thing is that they are both fruit.
-
Well, I suppose I'm sort of hoping for a drawing or artwork of it (or a model)
-
The Sinadhuja is a Nemesis ship, not Shivan. It was first sighted by Admiral Metrarch's ship the Maquitaine and destroyed by the Molasses.
-
The Sinadhuja is a Nemesis ship, not Shivan. It was first sighted by Admiral Metrarch's ship the Maquitaine and destroyed by the Molasses.
...Umm, this is a joke right?
-
The Sinadhuja is a Nemesis ship, not Shivan. It was first sighted by Admiral Metrarch's ship the Maquitaine and destroyed by the Molasses.
...Umm, this is a joke right?
The second sentence is; the first is not. While the Morrigan stories are heavily inspired by Blue Planet, it's important to note that they're not in the same universe and that the Nemesis are not Shivans.
-
to be fair, molasses is a fabulous alternate name for the colossus
-
I didn't read the whole thing carefully, but how the hell they managed to get into Capella? uncharted node?
I also share the opinion that via Ken narration it looks like the UEF is the bad guys and GTA is actually more tolerable to Shivan viewpoint.
The Ken itself is somehow a weak point altogether - both he and GTVA analyst underline thaat second Shivan invasion had no weak points while now (third attack) the Ken itself is a weakness. From Shivan point of view they don't need him they just need 80, 800 or 8000 Juggernauts to burn GTVA to a crisp. That's all.
Ken has no point in Morrigan universe - he's only valid if Shivans are something more than mindless force of nature that brings ballance to the universe(s). He's only valid if Vinashaans and Brahmans exist and that there is a bigger plan for Humanity.
Additionally in Morrigan Shivans are mentioned to be artifical creation while in Blue Planet they are mentioned to be ethernal and far older than even Brahmans and Vinashaans. Somehow Morrigan Shivans seems to be more dumped down (to the point where they are not intelligent by design) while in Blue Planet they are enigmatic, alien but inteligent (and they are acting chaotic/unpredictable, because it's optimal strategy against their targets). Again exstence of Brahmans and Vinaashans make Shivans more interesting and hard to define because they make you wonder what makes them to tolerate these "younger races" while other are senteced to extermination.
In Morrigan they are like "meh, we kill everyone, because intelligence is bad to universe and we were created so that universe will not get cancer".
What is The Cancer? Is it the same as "Great Darkness"? Or maybe the Shivans themselves are the first cancer? Or maybe descendand of the first race that created the Cancer and then decided to sacrifice/turn to become Shivans so that the universe would never again had to go through the doom?
These things are what I kept wondering about, but then again factors in "Morrigan" are supposed to kinda be different stories to ours in BP. I'm assuming that this storyline is based on WiH not playing out with any GTVA defectors/ no trip to alternate universe.
-
Question for Darius:
I feel like Battuta has steered the story in a different direction from what was originally intended (not that that's a bad thing, Battuta is a fabulous writer)
So I'm curious:
Did you have this story planned out from the get go when you released AOA? Or has it changed substantially since then, particularly after Battuta got involved?
-
The general story arc (initial retreat of third fleet, deployment of the fedayeen, end of the war) is pretty much unchanged from 2007.
-
So that idle throw off I mentioned about the Shivans being a response by the universe to intelligence was actually on the money.
Huh. Interesting :)
-
Well, it was on the money for the Morrigan stories.....
-
....wait a minute.
Battuta is Seth Dickinson.
Man, this explains a lot about BPs writing quality. I really enjoyed the short, excellent writing and I like how it brought everything together and made full use of its non-linear structure.
Chiwetel Steele remains the greatest.
I am curious as to how the end of War in Heaven and BP3 are going to diverge, and if the divergence is keyed into the nature of the Vishnans as Simmses.
-
I was just thinking how nice it would be if BP ended with such an open ending.
From a modding perspective, morrigan in shadow is almost perfect. The big threat(s) are still there, both superpowers (three if you add vasudans) have just ended hostilities and with no node road blocks in place. These conditions are really good for making campaigns and BP already has a huge amount of assets ready to be put in missions for those people that have a good story to tell but not a lot of time to tweak every single little thing in the freespace engine.
-
That gave me all sorts of feels, holy crap. A real glimpse of the place WiH has been going after all these years.
-
First of all, this is a damn good bit of writing.
Secondly, it does allay some personal fears I had towards the story direction of WiH. Namely, that an intelligence as vast and ancient as the Shivans would even be willing to overlook the UEF as collaborators. If they are willing to exterminate humanity on a whim, then attempting to use them as pawns, or for the UEF to attempt the wholesale slaughter of the GTVA is equally as short sighed as Bosch's attempts to open a dialogue with them.
Wars are often foolish, but humans haven't wiped ourselves out yet at any rate. I think there's some small hope to be found in that.
That last bit of GTVA security dialogue is what I was looking for. Extinction or not, we stand together against the horrors.
-
Well, I got around to reading these short stories. I guess I could say that Blue Planet has had some profound effects on me, stretching ten years back at least. The ants were something I was thinking about back in 2012 already, while in the military service. Sitting on the sand in the middle of the summer, away from home, thinking about BP.
My thoughts on "Morrigan in Shadow":
I'm not much of a reviewer, so it's hard to point out all the good stuff. The writing was superb, the characters as engaging as ever. I liked the chapter/time division. All of this applies to "Sunglare" as well.
So I will go to my subjective point of critique. I don't like the ending :) It's imaginative, fantastically described, moment by moment, yet feels utterly out of place.
The way I see Laporte's story, is as follows. She needs to let go of her emotional attachments, even her humanity, to discover greater truths about existence, the universe and her role in it. Just as Aken did before her. Laporte abandoned Simms to join the Nagari (Fedayeen). She had to commit atrocities in the process, however distasteful and horrible they may be to her, to get "to the other side". To question everything Ubuntu had taught her. All the things her own society valued over all else. Also to let go of the human ego, the pathologic source of all the mindless killing, to find her purpose as part of the whole. Observing that even Ubuntu, for all its promise, was a failure, since it cannot survive war. She needs to let go off Simms, instead of clinging to her. Are the Nemesis, by their design, bound to end all petty warfare?
The plot was somewhat going this way (for me anyway), and all of a sudden, boom, turnaround :wtf: And we get a traditional ending. A Nemesis ship exploding. Our two heroines flying into the proverbial sunset. Oh well. Just like the Death Star. Just like Captain Sheridan nuking the Thirdspace alien ship. Just like quite a lot of other endings. Oh well. A tad disappointing. That's my humble opinion. Technically it was such an awesome read though. But when Simms wakes up on that back seat, well, that's a great metaphor of how her inclusion in the end felt. And the whole ending as well. Simms so mad. "What the **** am I still doing here?".
Battuta's writing is an excellent way to learn new words (if bothered), since English is not my native language. I don't know who made all the tech room entries in BP, but those are really good for expanding one's vocabulary, while keeping the content extremely interesting. Very valuable. Thank you.
I love the ending of Tenebra in WiH, that is quite something.
Back to Morrigan... Thanks for the creative use of ants, this really makes me happy. Much praise. 10/10 just for the ants. Maybe it is Nagari, but the ants have been crawling around in my head ever since WiH came out all those years ago. Life-affecting stories.
-
I liked the ending because at the end of the day, despite all the highbrow philosophizing and hard scifi concepts, Freespace is a setting about space dogfighting. Having it end with some existential navel gazing wouldn't have sat right with me.
Instead, humanity united once more against a nearly limitless enemy. An uncertain future, but facing it fighting. Same as it ever was.