[The E]

Battuta's second BP short story "Morrigan in Shadow" has just been released on Clarkesworld.

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).

[Phantom Hoover]

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.

[EuclidianGeometry]

HUMANITY STANDS

Holy ****.

[Darius]

Spoiler tags gentlemen.

[Phantom Hoover]

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.

[Darius]

That should suffice.

[Phantom Hoover]

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.

[LapsedPacifist]

Well, that was awesome...
Can't wait to play it!

[General Battuta]

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!

[Doko]

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.

[AdmiralRalwood]

- 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

Spoiler:

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.

[Doko]

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?

[An4ximandros]

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.

PS: Humanity stands should be the BP hashtag

WAIT! If this ending only spoils WIH... THEN WHAT IS BP3!?

[General Battuta]

BP3 is what happens after this because the ending of BP2 differs in a couple really important respects.

[An4ximandros]

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.

[Spoon]

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 .
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. 
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

[Doko]

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.

[Lowane]

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. 

[mr.WHO]

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?

[Darius]

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.