Remember the recent short story contest hosted by the Starbound crew? No, never mind your feelings about the results, I'm sure there are better places to express them. This thread is for collecting the various stories and poems people have written for the contest. So, if you wrote a story or anything else for the contest and wanted people to see it, feel free to post it here! Story List: 1: Alone by @OmegaMan 2: Legend of the Flyer by yours truly 3: An untitled horror story by @BlastYoBoots 4: Rivets the Glitch Samurai by @GenoMech 5: Empty Machines by @MoonGeek 6: The Samurai by @Captain Karo 7: Apex Expeditioner's Audio Log by @DoctorShaggy 8: An unnamed, short scene by @Warget 9: Floran Creation Lesson by @Reyavan 10: Master of the Hunt by @camerox 11: The Reunion by @L3W 12: Negotiation: A Resistance Tale by @Zebe 13: An Intercepted Transmission by @M_Sipher 14: The Stargazer by @manofbedrock 15: The Beast of Seven Toes by @SpiderDave 16: The Last Bloom Before Winter by @Poldon 17: An Eventful Day in Dusk Town by @Burnalot 18: Genesis of the Void by @Biirdy 19: The Tale of Bustow Gurrilla by @The Squid 20: Pandora's Box by @Aerexes
]Congratulations to the winners, but I'm also very excited to see the other entries as well. Thank you so much for setting up this thread. Seems as though it would be in good taste to share mine first. Please be kind. =) Alone The ship was dying. The comforting hum of the engines had faded away days ago, and now the lights had gone out. The emergency lighting was eerie, and played tricks with his eyes. With the rest of the crew long dead, shadows rose up and disappeared, playing hide and seek. Noises clanged about, taunting his senses as they grew mad in his isolation. He held out little hope of rescue, and his thoughts turned to his impending doom. He made little bets with himself; wondering if his death would come with the loss of life support, or when his dwindling food rations finally ran out. Roger walked the empty halls of the ship, trying to keep moving as if that would fend off his growing insanity. The whooshes of steam and clanging of pistons were familiar, if maddening. Though he thought he heard another noise, a new noise. More like a long hissing sound. He froze in the near darkness. “Sssstab.” A floran? His body trembled with fear. How did it get here? Where had it been hiding this whole time? Those questions were irrelevant. If it found him, he would most certainly be killed and eaten, and he couldn’t be sure it would happen in that order. Roger slipped though the hallways of the ship with silent speed, making his way towards the kitchen. With all the weapons lockers locked down from power loss, a steak knife was his best defense. “Ssssstab, sssstab, sssssssstab.” The floran was almost incessant in its mumblings now. Roger wondered if it too was going mad, though with florans that was always hard to tell. He tracked it easily, and snuck up behind the creature as it slowly made its way down a long hall. It was limping, as though hurt, and weaving back and forth from one wall to the next, bouncing softly and changing direction as needed. Roger crept up on the floran quickly and quietly, and without hesitation, plunged his knife into its back. “Ssssstab?” He felt the life force drain from the floran’s body, and let the corpse slowly fall to the floor. He sighed with relief now that he was safe. He looked down at the floor, and saw nothing but the smooth metal tiles of the ships hallways. The pistons groaned, and the steam from the pipes hissed. Alone in the ship once again, Roger sunk to the floor, pulled his knees up to his chest, and wept.
Wow... That's really good! It was interesting that the Floran might not actually have been threatening Roger, but he reacted on instinct regardless. Better safe than sorry, I suppose! Here's my story: a Grounded Avian fairytale about a boy who built wings. In a certain Avian village there lived a king who had a daughter with beautiful feathers the color of the sea. He named her Batari, and he wanted the best for her - the best education, the best clothing, and the best mate. There were many young Avians who thought they would make a good mate for her, but the king refused each one. But one of the young Avians just would not give up. Arkos was his name, and he believed that he was good enough for Batari, if he could just prove it to the king. He came to see the king and his daughter almost every day, showing them drawings of inventions he'd thought up. Batari loved his ideas, but the king would not change his mind. One day, Arkos showed the king something new: a pair of wings he had constructed out of wood and cloth. He showed the king and Batari how he could fly, with the help of those wings, and how he could control the flight. Batari thought the king would surely say Arkos was good enough now! But the king still refused to change his mind. Arkos did not visit the king the next day... or the next day... or the day after that. Batari began to wonder if he had given up trying. But one night, after everyone else was asleep, she heard a tapping at her bedroom window. It was Arkos! He had built a second pair of wings - worked on them, perfected them, during the days he hadn't gone to see her. He had brought them to her so that they could fly away together. So Arkos and Batari left in the middle of the night, flying away on wings of wood and cloth. It did not take long, the next morning, for the king to discover what had happened. When Arkos' house was searched, they found the plans for the wings he had made. Rather than only sending people out to look for the runaways on foot, the king had more pairs of wings made, so that the searchers could search farther and more easily. They never found Arkos and Batari. It seemed they had flown too far or too fast for the searchers to catch up, or they had hidden too well to be found. But the people of the village still fly today with gliders like the wings that Arkos made.
Nice. Shades of Aladdin and Romeo and Juliet in there. That's a fun myth for where those Avian's got their wings. Is it true? Does it matter? Very nice.
Thank you! Yeah, I tried to give it a very fairytale/folktale kinda style, like a story that'd been handed down through word-of-beak.
Yes, I was waiting for the story sharing thread!! It was really fun participating, especially imagining I could contribute something that might add to the atmosphere of the game. I knew my story's tone gave it a slim chance of winning, but when they said it "largely came down to which entries would best fit in a library setting" I knew instantly that I wasn't one of the lucky few, heheh. Here's mine! No title. Trigger warnings for gore, death, horror. -- BEGIN STORY -- Nosediving freefall into a planet's surface is pretty much the same with or without the spaceship. The ground approaches a whole lot faster than you'd like, and you know for at least half that distance that you're going to die. The ship just means you have company to die with. The resonant bass and screeching rattle of re-entry friction tearing the ship apart finally drowned out the half-dozen varieties of caterwauling alarm noises. I couldn't hear him anymore. Couldn't look at him, either... not when I'd doomed us both by blowing the engines. So I just held his hand. He held mine back. What else could we do? Our tiny cruiser burrowed into its lush round target like a rifle bullet into dirt. We were crushed in a fraction of a second. But only half to death. Part of the console's jutting through my intestines. I'm skewered, leaking. Every half-lung breath felt shorter than the last. Through my remaining eye, the ship's a scrap-metal junkyard on fire. A lonely alarm, a few valiant lights. The AI preaching through a tinny speaker. My eye turned, froze... on him. No, no no. He's mangled worse than me, struggling to breathe. I'm crying. He's trying to say something, I strained to listen... "--MODULE MALFUNCTION! WARNING! CLONING MODULE MALFUNCTION--" ...is all I hear, fading vision lying to me that "love" leaves his lips. Then I died. That's when Hell began. I felt my cloned body reforming, my awareness childlike at first as it was reconstructed. I've respawned before, but... this time something was wrong. Claustrophobic. Soon my regrowing body was squeezing through the wreckage like toothpaste, flesh tearing, bones growing and snapping, nerves seared in the flames only to regenerate elsewhere. I screamed as a rib pierced my heart, only for the throbbing pump to reform and get pierced by another rib, then another. Large fragments of my skull shifted around as my brain was forcibly brought closer to resurrection, able to comprehend more and more of the soul-wrenching agony of being extruded from the cloner through a labyrinth of metal and plastic and slag. Pulsing outward inch by inch, as the mess of meat and cartilage approached my original weight... ...and then I saw an eye. HIS eye, lit by the flames, being shoved toward me by an equally grotesque accretion of skin and muscle and wreckage. His terror matching my own. Our not-faces pulsed nearer, eyes squashed together until they burst, our broken skulls and brains crushed into one, killing us both again, triggering our cloning modules to cycle up AGAIN and repeat the process OVER AND OVER WITH THE IMMENSE RESERVES OF FUEL OUR ENGINES HADN'T HAD THE CHANCE TO USE!!! --- Weeks later, a miner's drill hits an acre-wide mass of bone, sinew, and pulsing flesh. What is this, she wonders? How'd it get this deep underground? She mines out a sample of the undying meat. It has no lungs to scream. -- END STORY -- (Flesh biomes are creepy, but I wanted to contribute something to the Starboundverse that makes them creepier. Even if it was obviously a little grotesque for Starbound's mood.) Optional stinger I couldn't fit within the word limit: THIS STORY BROUGHT TO YOU BY SAFESTAR CLONING MODULES. SAFESTAR MODULES: "THERE ARE FATES WORSE THAN DEATH! DON'T LET YOUR CLONING MODULE BE ONE OF THEM." I'll get to work reading the ones you guys wrote right away!
Holy crap. You had me at "gore, death, horror," but I wasn't ready for what you were going to do with it. Well played. Also, I will never step foot in a flesh biome ever again. They were creepy before; now they're going to be just a big ol' "NOPE!" zone for me from now on. Really well done.
Same. Very, very much the same. Congratulations on instilling a new fear of Flesh biomes into everyone who reads this page.
Aw, thanks to both of you. @OmegaMan -- Quick spoilery question about your story... At the end of your story, it said he saw nothing on the floor when he looked down. Was the Floran he'd just murdered possibly illusory, or was that a "he saw nothing on the floor" besides the corpse?
might as well Rivets the Glitch Samurai This is the tale of Rivets, A glitch who escaped the prejudice of own kind and ventured out into the wilderness. Worn out and rusty, stumbled into the homestead of Hylotl swordsman named Ryo, who was crafting at the time. Feeling humble, Ryo helped and shelter Rivets from his pursuers and in return, Rivets worked with as a blacksmithing assistant. Overtime, Ryo’s influence over Rivets began to inspire interest in Hylotl culture and fascinated him. Ryo, with pride, told Rivets stories of his people, their history, and their way of the sword. Ryo taught Rivets hylotl swordsmanship and how hylotl swords were crafted and used, versus the blunt heaviness of the Glitch Methodology. Rivets became overjoyed, in hoping that he could craft his own sword, but his thick heavy hands seemed inefficient to hylotl agile features and could not craft such a sword. Ryo understood the Glitch may be ham-fisted in their heavy frame, but that doesn’t mean they are not of grace. He recommended that Rivets craft a sword of his own design, by his own hands. Rivets took this as a challenge and took the metals that he found to craft a sword influence by both Hylotl and Glitch Methodology. The result was a huge, long katana that with one swipe could cut down trees and break rocks with every swing. Ryo, in awe of Rivet’s design, was disgusted by the lumbering blade, claiming there was no Hylotl idealism in its design at all. Rivets, in shame left with his lumbering katana, leaving Ryo in disappointment. Rivets in the wilderness attempted to use his katana the way the hylotl swordsmen would, only to find because of its size, was slow and lacked the lighting speed he was told about. This however did not stop him from trying, and for days Rivets kept swinging harder and faster, into the trees and rocks as hard as he could. He kept trying till eventually his swing became so fast it cut huge gash along a hillside. Amazed at his accomplishment, he rushed back to the homestead of Ryo, but Ryo was nowhere to be found, until Rivets heard loud screams from the village further down the hill. Rivets rushed into the village to see Ryo and other Hylotl swordsmen against Floran hunters and slavers. The fighters fought back but where outnumbered by the florans who swarmed in. Ryo and a few were left at the mercy of the florans, but were intercepted Rivets wielding his huge katana. The florans laughed at the glitch warrior, but were soon sent flying from the sheer speed and power of Rivets thundering strike. In horror, the rest of the florans flee and the village was saved. Ryo apologized to Rivets, claiming it may not be Hylotl style, but his own, and should be proud. Rivets, a village hero, soon left with hoping to find a new way in life, wandering the land as the Glitch Samurai.
Potentially spoilery answer below: That was intentionally ambiguous. Perhaps he did murder the only other living being on the ship. Perhaps it was a figment of his imagination, a result of his ever growing madness. I never did have a particular one in mind, and thought that the lack of specificity there gave the reader a sense of the same uncertainty that Roger was feeling about his situation in general. Plus, I like when the reader gets to make up their mind about a scenario and spark debate with other readers about what the "truth" is. Whether or not that worked, or indeed whether or not that is a valid literary convention, I leave to you. =)
meh, that figures, story-telling is my strong suit, grammar.....needs some work sometimes. I blame the internet.........no seriously i blame my time on the internet
All of the entries weren't very serious, which is unfortunate because I wrote something that was far from that. Hope you guys like it: Fire. A loving pyre that gave the first journeyer’s a bit of hope in this lonely universe. It was a staple of every home, every campsite ever created. It provided hot meals, a light to read or write by, the comfort to continue living. It was the hot soothing embrace after a hard day’s work. But these machines, these cold machines, do not understand the symbiotic relationship that man has with fire. The warmth and wholesome comfort that comes from something so naturally raw yet so undeniably alive, they do not have the capability to feel. To feel the sparks crack against skin, to feel the tendrils of flame lick cold feet in the coldest of winters. All they understand is the generation of numbers in their mechanical being. As the fire grows that number increases, and as it dies that number decreases. A life lived through numbers; through lifeless calculations. Man does not calculate; Man feels with his heart first and thinks when all else fails. These machines have no hearts. There is no beating warmth causing rivers to flow inside their hard metal bodies. Instead they have clocks, computers, and mechanical gears. Things thought out, things calculated. Not for a moment considered for their beauty, but instead for their use. Whoever created these mechanical men never understood the need for beauty. This cold universe doesn’t need more empty machines. It doesn’t need more planets that are held together by a forever oppressing force. Gravity is just a part of the universe, a giant machine. Man is part of something else, something warm, wholesome and caring. Man is the fire that has burnt through the cold winter of the universe. I suppose that’s why these machines, these terrible machines, who charade around like they are living some medieval joke, never stopped to wonder what my family mattered to me. I sit in their dark dungeon, watching the glowing eyes of something dead guarding my cell. It doesn’t move, it doesn’t breathe. It stands, it stares, and it waits. Living is not waiting; living is not enjoying the dark or the cold. These machines claim to be living men, they claim to have feelings and understand emotion. But it is so painfully obvious that they are no men, they are fabricated monsters who have stripped me of my humanity because of their ignorance to such a concept. This moon does not have any days, only cold dark nights. Finding a castle tucked into a giant crater on a dead moon was unexpected, but the inhabitants waiting inside were even more unbelievable. Machines that masquerade as though they are primitive knights and kings, mocking humanity’s history. How is the air breathable inside this castle? How do they sustain themselves in such a horrible place? They will never know the comfort of warmth and light, always staying in the darkness, the chilled emptiness. But I suppose that’s how they like it; it’s a reflection of themselves and all that they’ve ever known.
Here's mine! And congrats to the winners! The Samurai Hundreds of years ago, there was a great Hylotl samurai whose name was Akako Yin. Now, Akako had a sword made of meteorite. It could cut through even the densest of armors. The base of the blade was adorned with his family crest. This blade was a gift from the wise king of his home kingdom. The king told Akako, "If you shall drop this blade in battle, you will perish." After years of use, the sword remained sharp, but one day during battle, Akako dropped the sword to save a dear friend. The next day he grew ill, and passed away. His only true friend dropped the sword in the deepest ocean so that no one else may wield such a dangerous weapon. Today, the only thing that remains is the family's crest. It depicts an ocean scene,with three strands of kelp and a single crab in the center. Many have searched for the sword, but none have found it. Its location is rumored to hide in the Yin family crest...
Okay, wow. First of all, I can really empathize with the narrator. Plenty of expressive words, really create an atmosphere. Secondly, you used the words well. Great writing, spelling, everything. The one thing that bothered me was that, in the last part, you wrote "mascaraed" when I assume you meant "masquerade". Spelling is hard, isn't it? Especially in English!
No problem! Actually, you gave me an idea for the way I portray some of my Glitch characters. Your story had an interesting perspective I hadn't really considered before...
