ctwelve

Syrlla’s Song, the Southern Seas
Eastern shore
Tarrskyn Eiddersbor

"How did you manage to lose them? You’ve chased them all across the sea, and lost them the moment they get to land? Unacceptable!” Shulft was not happy. Not happy at all. And the idiot was going to get himself gutted if he didn’t get smarter very soon indeed.

“It’s quite simple,” Tarrskyn explained patiently, for the third time. “Their ship is smaller than we are. She rides lighter in the water. She can turn quicker and hides in the fog better than we do. And the young lord she belongs to is a damn canny sailor. I can see why your master wants him so much; he’ll fetch a handsome ransom.”

Shulft spat o

Amber Houston

Roy groaned. “Really?” he whispered.

Amber could feel herself about to burst into flames from embarrassment. “I couldn’t think of anything else!” she hissed back. To her delight, however, the shorter, better-dressed alien in the nicer clothing stepped forward a pace and spread his fingers wide to reciprocate her Vulcan salute.

He even did a passable, though mangled, imitation of the words.

“Lee…leevlahng. Anprasper.”

Amber heard Nikki snort through her earpiece. “Well, holy shit! I guess if it’s dumb but it works, it ain’t dumb…”

Roy somehow managed to keep a straight face. He must have retreated into whatever corner of his mind gave him his infinite reserves of s

Wavebird, the Southern Seas
Sjívull Wylderrjorssían

Land! Land ahead!”

Sjívull woke with a start and rolled to his feet, springing upright only a moment before Drynllaf. Dawn was setting the ocean fog on fire, and in front of them was an impenetrable wall of mist. It would burn away at the height of the day, but as the air warmed in the morning and cooled in the evening, the sea steamed, and it took clever eyes to see anything between the shifting coils and billows.

Their lookout, Jorfydd, was unequaled. Sjívull couldn’t see anything at all through the mist, but he didn’t doubt Jorfydd’s word one bit.

“Heave to!” If they were close to shore, that maybe meant rocks, sandba

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Amber Houston

Now that is a river!”

Amber had to agree with Roy there. What they’d found made even Dandelion’s mightiest waterway, the River Archimedes, look like a trickle. Its choppy waters were a rich emerald green, fluffed up into white here and there as the wind toyed across it, and it absolutely leadened the air with the heavy scent of humidity. There was even a haze of steam drifting across the waves.

That humidity really wasn’t helping with the heat. Out on the riverbank, without the shade of those silvery tre

It has come to the attention of the r/HFY mod staff that a Reddit admin in charge of policing against content which sexually exploits children, has been credibly accused (along with immediate family, including spouse) of enabling precisely that, both on reddit and in real life. The admin's father has also been convicted of 20 counts of rape and torture of a ten-year-old child, for which the admin is credibly accused of complicity. You can find more details on reddit's reaction here.

As moderators and as human beings, we find these alleg

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Not gonna lie, I've been waiting for a while to share this chapter…

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Dandelion master control center
D.A.N.I.

Congratulations, Captain. I’m pleased to report your husband’s launch has landed safely, and they have disembarked onto Newhome’s surface.”

Amida Torres looked up from the statement she was carefully preparing for the ship’s press and expelled a huge, relieved sigh. “That’s good news. Are they okay?”

“Bruised, tired, and shaken, but performing well. I am already receiving data on the local flora and

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Well...January, huh? Yeah...

Anyway, have a chapter 6!

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August 6th, MY284
Dandelion master control center
D.A.N.I.

The main engines stopped firing after a precisely timed gentle burn that had lasted most of the afternoon, and DANI relaxed. One thing he hadn’t felt the need to share with the council, though he had divulged it to Captain Torres, was that Course Charlie was also calculated to afford him the most room to maneuver. If Dandelion was endangered a second time, the idea was that hopefully DANI

I'm not in for much, but:

Massive portfolio!

Well, here I am! It's all I can afford at the moment but at this point, it's been a fun learning experience, and I don't regret any lesson I may learn from this. Gonna hold these stonks FOREVER.

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Hello, everyone! It's been a while, huh? Well, firstly: Happy Holidays and a very Merry Christmas to all! It's been a rough year for everyone, but do try to find some cheer where you can get it, okay? Life is meant to be lived, so please, as much as you can…live it!

Anyway, without further ado, here is chapter 5! It's a short one, but hey, if you're impatient, there are options…

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D.A.N.I.

DANI might have been entrusted to make important decisions in life-or-death emergencies, but ultimately he answered to the crew via th

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D.A.N.I.

Something was going to hit them, and DANI wasn’t sure if he could dodge. It was tiny, it was dark, it was dense, and it was fast. All those things combined meant his usual margins for error had been completely used up. If it had been larger, brighter, or slower…

As it was, they had twenty minutes. Which sounded like plenty, except Dandelion’s titanic volume and abysmal thrust-to-mass ratio were working against them. DANI stressed the power grid and cranked his frame speed to the fastest it could possibl

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Getting her big confession off her chest left her feeling…lighter, somehow. It helped that the twins, once they’d accepted it, were throwing themselves into helping her with their usual limitless enthusiasm. It was a slow and easy walk down Mount Messier, and Walker was setting a gentle pace so the Rangers could talk among themselves.

“So are you gonna go for doctor or nurse?” Nikki asked. “I mean, I know folks are probably gonna ship back up here if they need a surgeon or whatever, but—”

“I guess I’ll see whic

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D.A.N.I.

DANI had landed a shuttle car at Mount Messier’s summit for today’s activity, and it was helpfully projecting an avatar for him as the Ranger troops arrived. The children had eaten breakfast, warmed up with camp chores and little games, and by late morning they were ready to make the final push from their camp to the top of the mountain. Even though the gravity was a third lighter at the peak than at the bottom, that last stretch was still a hard ascent by anybody’s standards, meaning most of them had burned of

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Dandelion master control center
D.A.N.I.

DANI’s life was an endless stream of small tasks handled diligently and carefully, and that was how he liked it. His job was to look after a million people, after all; the last thing he wanted was to field a major crisis. Handling their messages, their grocery lists, their schedules, keeping an eye on their kids, and keeping the proper chemical balance in the ship’s huge algae-based air processors was hardly exciting, but it was satisfying. It fulfilled his purpose.

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Generation Ship Dandelion
Turnover Day, July 28th, Mission year 284
Time to Newhome: 1 year

Climbing Mount Messier could be challenging. It was tall, of course, and its gravelly flanks were filled with opportunities to lose one’s footing. Probably the hardest part about it, though, was the way the gravity got gentler toward the top.

Not many spaceships had mountains in them.

Dandelion wasn’t most spaceships. It was a proportionally narrow cigar-shaped thing, fifty kilometers long, with twenty of that being taken up entirely by engines, reactors, manufacturing systems, a colossal s