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(So I've managed to accidentally spark off a canon debate... I usually can't manage that deliberately! Anyway, I love this. ^^)

I kind of disagree with your disagreement, in a fair number of places:

Shields

These go together, because you've pinned your discussion of shields on the strength of the weapons (entirely fair). First off, the rules of canon have changed since the Disney takeover - everything is now officially at the same level of canon, so it doesn't matter if you cite The Empire Strikes Back, Star Wars: Rebels, Aftermath, or Doctor Aphra. That said... I don't know many details from the new canon, so I'll work from the movies anyway. ^^

You talk about shields holding up to 'continuous bombardment', but that's not really what we see. R2 gets knocked out in ANH by about six shots; in RotJ, two A-Wings fire for about a second to take out Executor's bridge shields and destroy the shield sensor big dome. The key seems to be that (unlike Star Trek, where shields are a bubble that stands or falls as a whole) it's possible to 'burn through' a point on the shields, and to do so very quickly. Presumably that then regenerates, as otherwise they wouldn't be much good, but if you can put two capital ship blasts on the same spot, you're probably getting through.

Shields can also be taken out and damaged through in a single hit. Just before the death of the Executor, we see an X-Wing blasted to smithereens by a single turbolaser shot. So a power discrepancy removes even the dubious benefit of energy shields.

Interestingly, both types of shields can be 'focussed' on a specific area - Han Solo keeps wanting to 'angle the deflector shields' - though the Executor shows that there are also separate generators for different areas of the ship. So you can knock out the forward shields without having to worry that they'll shift the rear shields to compensate.

Ultimately, I think both shields are broadly equivalent. Pinpoint targetting can take out Star Wars ships with ease, but in a long battle, they might last longer if they can keep from being critically hit.

Weapons

I'm... dubious about using the asteroids in ESB as a yardstick here. Looking first at fighter weapons, a direct hit to Artoo's dome left him in a recoverable condition, and most fighter deaths we see in RotJ occur by going out of control and hitting something; lasers are clearly designed to hit explosive components, not to destroy outright.

Turbolasers? As mentioned, one can take out a fighter in a single hit, but we don't see any turbolaser-damage to capital ships in RotJ. Both the Empire and the Rebellion use fighters to cause damage, and there must be a reason for that.

One possible reason is targetting. We know that the Falcon has no auto-targetting - just swivel chairs - and I don't think we ever see anything that does. The only way to hit something is to point your gun manually at it and hit the trigger. That's... not gonna get you very far at any range (and explains why all the guns seem to come in pairs - they need two simultaneous hits to get through the shields, and they can't do that with multiple shots!).

Maneuvering

This is where Star Wars takes the advantage, not just over 40K but over practically everything. Very few canons have a jump drive as fast as hyperdrive. Star Trek? Battlestar? Dead in the water compared even to an X-Wing. There is (somewhere - can't find it) a list of 'Star Wars v Star Trek' scenarios showing how each side would approach them, and virtually every time, the Empire just uses hyperdrive to bypass the problem.

This has actually gotten worse in the new canon. In The Force Awakens, the Falcon is shown to both jump to hyperspace from a ship's docking bay, and jump to inside a planetary shield, only a few hundred meters above the surface. No 'mass shadows' any more - they can jump anywhere, anywhen.

So, in the Empire v. Imperium war, the Imperium can probably decimate the Imperial fleet - until the Empire loads a Star Destroyer full of proton torpedos and jumps it directly from the outer rim of the galaxy, through (or past) Terra's shields, to crash directly onto the Golden Throne. Goodbye, God-Emperor of Mankind. Goodbye, Astronomican. Goodbye, warp travel. Goodbye, any hope the Imperium has of survival.

Yeah. Hyperdrive is basically the cheat code for these games.

But! Luckily we're not talking about an Imp-v-Imp war. We're talking about a couple of ships at most. So if we assume that the Imperium can't replicate the hyperdrive (which seems fair, given their technological state), you'd have to sacrifice a valuable piece of tech to pull something like that off. And it wouldn't be much good against Chaos, since they don't have a single point of failure to target. Might explain why they want to get their hands on it, though.

And that's the thing: we're not talking about bringing a fleet across, but a single ship. Turbolasers wouldn't do much good on an Imperium ship, because they'd be tied to the same operating system as the normal guns. If the hyperdrive can be scaled up (big if), you can outfit a single ship to be able to go anywhere fast, and probably give it energy shields - but once it runs into more than token opposition, it's space debris.

The Force

I agree with you that this is a big win for Star Wars, but that scale difference is going to be a killer. Remember that 200 Jedi basically lost the Battle of Geonosis, and that was against droids! A Force user would almost certainly survive in combat against the Imperium (unless they got shot in the back), but they wouldn't turn the tide of a pitched battle. They need the smaller scale, where they can take a pivotal action. (Unless you delve into the old canon and battle meditation, but we're not doing that. Sadly.)

Conclusion/Scenario

Out of nowhere, a Galaxy Far Far Away appears, intersecting the Milky Way at right angles. It's a little before the Thirteenth Black Crusade - and also just before the Battle of Yavin (ie, the Empire at its height, with the Death Star at its disposal to make things interesting). Since the GFFA is stuffed with aliens, and Palpatine is a Force user, the Imperium wants to blow it up/take it over. So how does the war go?

Assume for some reason that the 'blow up the Emperor' plan is impossible. Maybe hyperdrive can't jump past void shielding, that'll work. The Imperium probably sends the biggest fleet it can on the most direct route it can find towards Coruscant, but finds that the Empire can get everywhere before it. Every system they stop off in is fortified against them, and there's ambushes everywhere. They stall out, as so many Imperial crusades do.

Palpatine, meanwhile, has bigger problems: Chaos. The founder of the New Order finds the whole concept terrifying, and directs the full might of the Empire to take it out. But... it doesn't work. 40K ships are just too big, and Palpy's Force users keep going crazy and turning into demons (they have an open link to the minds of Chaos-infected soldiers, after all). The Death Star is all well and good, but it can't blow up the Eye of Terror.

From the 40K side, this turns into a stalemate. The Empire becomes something like the Tau: able to hold their own, but unable to make any real advances. They can strike at any system, but can't do enough damage for it to matter.

From the SW side, though... Palpatine likes superweapons. He loves them. And given that the First Order was able to build a hyperspace-firing planet-killer, it's safe to say that with a bit of research, he can build something to turn the tide...

Wait a decade or so. Then tell me how the Eye of Terror will hold up to a constant barrage of world-destroying shots, each powered by the death of a sun...

hS

Yeas, that was meant to imply Tomash misremembered. You're not overthinking that.

(and yeah, Tomash isn't seeing every message you are)

I'm glad you liked the details I tried to put in there.

And clearly, that type was the effect of the scary stuff getting to the monitoring systems That was a typo, thanks for catching it.

And their whole problem about facing extinction... Then I remembered many Dark Eldars soldiers are actually clones or vat-grown, so if Craftworld Eldars are not using that, they wouldn't go for clones either.

Although to see how Force-Users would interact with Eldar and their Ways, or Sith confronted to Dark Eldars make for an interesting idea too.

Tau.

Hear me out.

The Tau are, by the standards of the setting, unbelievably small-scale. They don't have that many systems and (because of their inability to travel through the Warp) they can't expand all that fast, and yet they're a major galactic player because of their insanely high-tech troops and units. However, their actual standing army? Pretty damned small. Hence all the drones and stuff.

Cloning tech and Wars-style hyperdrive makes both of those problems go away in a friggin' heartbeat. The Earth Caste already has a boatload of cool stuff, and being able to outfit clones and train them to the same standard as Fire Warriors? That makes them an extremely dangerous prospect. Tau ships and drones are already extremely agile when in realspace, and adding hyperdrives and similar Wars-style engines to them puts them on the level of Eldar ships.

However, what really interests me is how the Jedi would interact with the Ethereal Caste. We know that the Jedi Mind Trick is a thing - perhaps the Ethereals maintain the rigid caste structure of Tau society through latent Force powers? On top of that, actual Jedi philosophy is highly compatible with the Tau'va, and I'm certain that the Jedi exiled to the 40Kverse would consider it a beacon of serenity and peace amidst a nightmarish hellscape.

We also know that Ethereals can duel with their honour blades at such pace that their weapons move faster than the speed of bloody sound, so chuck 'em a lightsabre and crack open the old So Your Padawan Is A Weird Blue Alien holocron. =]

In many cases, Star Wars actually beats Warhammer technology wise. Especially in space combat. Breaking it up into four categories for space, and four for ground, it doesn't look too favorable for the Imperium of Man.

Shields:
Star Wars ships rely on the ever-popular deflector shields. They simply absorb the impact and prevent the energy or damage from reaching the ship. Against the continuous bombardments that SW ships favor in space combat, this is efficient as it provides protection for as long as your generators can hold out, and will recharge whenever the bombardment stops.

40K, on the other hand, relies on Void Shields. These are hundreds of layers of weak shields that simply transport whatever hits them to the warp. Against the broadsides favored by 40K ships, this is quite effective. The layers of shields will allow them to remove most of the incoming fire from existance. However, the flaw with this method is that any large hit will collapse the layer. Useful in 40K, where most hits qualify as large, but not as much against SW's continuous volleys.

Victory here goes to Star Wars, as their shields would have time to restore between volleys, while 40K shields would crumble under the continuous assault and be overcome quickly.

Size/Armor:
Now, in size, the Warhammer universe wins easily. Star Destroyers are one of the largest Imperial ships, and they only are 1.6 Kilometers long. Warhammer ships tend to average at six, with the capitol ships (the same role the Star Destroyers play) averaging somewhere around ten. This means more gun batteries, and more armor to burn through to reach something valuable.

On the matter of armor, Warhammer wins again. IoM ships are built to withstand massive punishment while their shields are recovering, and their armor is often stronger than their shields. Star Wars ships tend to be doomed if their enemy is still alive after their shields drop, as their armor can be pierced by a single fighter firing blasters, not to mention ship to ship weapons.

Victory to Warhammer.

Maneuvering:
Star Wars has the Hyperdrive. This device allows a ship to accelerate to FTL speeds, during which they are safe from all harm barring miscalculation. They know, often to the hour, when they will arrive, and the only limiting factor is that they have to get out of the way of obstacles, which is a mundane part of a jump.

Warhammer ships, on the other hand, jump through the warp. Not only is your arrival time dictated by the whims of fate, but whether you arrive at all is a gamble. Ships can be lost in the warp very easily. Even those that aren't can arrive at their destination months or years out of place. Ships can even arrive before they leave, or spend a few months traveling only to find that it has been centuries on the outside.

For usefulness and efficiency, Star Wars wins.

Weapons:
Weaponry is a difficult case. Star Wars has an advantage due to the rules of canon, as what is shown in the movies takes presedence over everything else. And the movies don't bother to explain much of anything about how their technology works. Warhammer has the disadvantage that everything is equally canon for it, so the convenient RPGs like Rogue Trader explain quite a bit.

Warhammer weapon ranges are measured in thousands of kilometers, with the longer ranged weapons getting into tens and hundreds of thousands. As for Star Wars, we don't know. There's never really been a mention of getting out of range of turbolasers, so their ranges are hard to confirm outside of estimates that are quickly contradicted. The Space battles in Star Wars take place much closer together than in Warhammer, so it could be assumed that their ranges are shorter, or that the fleets were fighting closer so the audience could tell what's going on.

Firepower is another issue. The Effective Firepower of a turbolaser is never stated, and has been shown to fluxuate wildly depending on how much power is transfered to the battery. They also rarely explain how much of the power the batteries are using, so consistancy is impossible. I personally would assume that Turbolasers are on par with the Macrocannon, the primary Imperial ship-to-ship weapon, as they have been shown to vaporize asteroids. Imperial Lance batteries would be more powerful, as they are designed to burn holes through ships in one shot.

Possible victory to Warhammer, but can't actually say for sure due to vagueness of Star Wars' source material.

Space Summary:
Star Wars ships win in shields and maneuvering, and that's without mentioning that in sublight speeds, Star Wars ships tend to be more maneuverable. The advantage of shields could be negated by Warhammer ships having superior armor, which leaves it a toss up on which has better weaponry. Overall, Victory goes to Star Wars in Space.

Now for Land.

Weapons:
Star Wars is definitely at a disadvantage here. The primary weapon of warhammer, the lasgun, is compared in damage to a 50cal rifle, and goes for the realistic depiction of heat damage. Bolters, the other main weapon, fire 75cal explosive slugs that hit with the force of a small grenade. These two factors mean that any firefight on the ground will end poorly for the Star Wars fighters.

On the Star Wars side, the blasters are weak, inaccurate, and rather useless. Their only advantage is that they don't require reloading. The lightsaber, while effective, cannot deflect the weapons being used against it and the user would be at a disadvantage in a melee, as Imperial weapons are crafted of heat resistant Ceramite, which is designed to resist plasma weapons.

Victory to Warhammer.

Armor:
Guardsmen armor is designed to withstand the damage of a 50cal rifle, though doesn't offer any insulation from the impact. Space Marine armor is made of ceramite, and is described as being able to withstand tank shells. Their armor could also withstand a lightsaber, at least for a limited time.

Stormtrooper armor couldn't protect them from Ewoks.

Warhammer wins on armor.

Units:
Warhammer has diverse military units, both in infantry and vehicles. As an accurate list would take all day to compile and examine, I'm just gonna compare the ones that most effectively compare to the AT-AT, and the AT-ST. The God-machines of the Adeptus Mechanicus: The Titans. Oh, and the Sentinel.

Well, easy one out of the way first. The Sentinel is a fast moving, light-recon vehicle. The AT-ST is a slower heavy-recon and support vehicle. AT-STs are equipped with a rotary cannon for anti-infanty, a twin blaster cannon for heavier armor, and a grenade launcher for everything. The Sentinel, depending on varient, can be equipped with flamethrowers, heavy lascannons for anti-vehicles, or basically any heavy weapon in the Imperial Armory. As a result, they can be specialized to handle their role much more than the AT-ST, but are much less flexible in battle. In base comparion, AT-ST wins.

Now, onto Titans and AT-ATs. Both the Warlord titan and AT-AT stand at about 22 meters, so we'll compare them. In battle, they have the same role: cracking open the enemy line and breaking everything inside. For this purpose, an ATAT is equipped with two medium and two heavy cannons. At long ranges, it can utterly wreck a defensive position. However, it is not very maneuverable, and lacks any secondary firing angles, meaning it can't defend against being outflanked. Warlords are built in the shape of a person, somewhat, and are equipped with incredibly powerful ranged weapons, often Volcano Cannons and Mega-bolters. They also possess point defense autocannon and Lascannon turrets to protect from infantry. If outflanked, the top portion can swivel at the waist at a moment's notice, allowing it to respond easily.

On a more minor note, the Imperium favors letting numbers and powerful weapons carry the day, often drowning enemy armies in a sea of bodies and bullets. Star Wars tends to favor more minor battles, with even the clone army being few in number. Victory goes to Warhammer.

Powers:
And now we compare the special abilities wielded by each side. Warhammer has the Psykers with their warp powers, while Star Wars has the Force.

Psykers are capable of ravaging battlefields with their abilities, warping machines and slaughtering enemies with rather horrifying powers. The most common method is through bio-lightning, though more gruesome methods are common. the downside is that Psykers have a tenuous grip on reality, and every use of their powers risks something more powerful taking notice and snuffing them out. If they're lucky. The risk of a psyker exploding and summoning a daemon into his own lines is a very real one.

The Force, on the other hand, is less powerful overall, but has no real risks when used. While what can be done with it is incredibly variable, it is a safe power to use, and can much more effectively turn the tide of a battle.

Victory to Star Wars.

Ground Summary:
Warhammer wins due to sheer firepower and intelligent construction. When Jedi or Sith enter the fray, the tide can shift against them, but their overall quality should carry the day.

Thanks so much. It's really helping me refine things. Keep in mind that my sister and I have come up with a lot more specific vignettes in between; what I'd written was more a broad overview. Yeah, we had a funny dynamic in the relationship between Mariel and Kiska's worldviews for a while--one being a pretty optimistic foot soldier, the other being...well...a Battle Sister. They nearly came to blows about things when they first met. (Remind me to tell you about the holy bone...) Anyway, I'll add more later, because it's time for me to head to class. Again, thanks so much.

Those messages look familiar, although I don’t get to see this stuff often; I’m in software development, not in network administration.

I don’t get how Tomash knows that the first thing that showed as down is in aa03 or so. Having Tomash explicitly reading the beginning of the logs in the new version, rather than just reading the logs may have drawn my attention to this, because to me it implies that the messages at the beginning of the story, before the break between 06:16 and 06:20, are the beginning of the logs and something indicating "aa03" should be up there. (Below the break is apparently the end, but not all of the last few entries, which had come in around 6:19.) In the previous version, it was easier to assume that I can’t find "aa03" just because I don’t see everything Tomash reads.

Is aa03 or so meant to imply that Tomash actually misremembers what he read and the problems started in qa01aa04 (fourth line of the messages)? Am I overthinking this?

I like that the Makes-Things Memorial Blast Doors are still a thing, and that bugs get into the computational potatoes. Strange technology, very PPC.

Weirdly, the bugged potatoes or whoever got the "[insert number] similar messages elided" right four times, but then made a spelling mistake.

HG

Androia may have ditched her uniform. So, take two (now grammar checked by my old friend, Microsoft Word):

Best Day Ever?

"Grumpyyy! Breakfast!"

Grmph. Really? I thought. Is it morning already? With some effort, I managed to open one eye, to glance at the calendar on the wall. Friday, October 13^th, 2017, it said in glaring letters. So, it was one of those days when you best just stay in bed. "Lemme alone, I’m sleep-deprived!" Besides, we never have breakfast in our RC, because we lack the supplies and kitchenware, and I didn’t feel like walking to the cafeteria. I closed my eye and turned around. But I wasn’t allowed to fall asleep again.

"Grumpy? I found you some coffee. And toast and butter."

You see, I have a reputation to hold up. But then, disappointing Androia, when she tries to be nice, would be a bad thing. I jumped out of the bed, my head barely missing the upper frame, and bumped into my girl, who had just entered the bedroom, carrying a mug of deliciously smelling coffee and a dish. Brought to such a sudden halt, the toast promptly slipped off the dish.

Well, you know what always happens when a buttered toast is dropped. The thing is, it didn’t happen. In one swift movement, like it had been choreographed, Androia shoved the mug in my hand, dived for the toast and caught it on the dish, just before it could hit the floor. Also, the toast had performed a perfect somersault; the buttered side was up again.

"That was amazing", I said, lending Androia a hand to help her get up. Apparently, she had ditched her ugly black uniform in favour of the blue novice gown I liked so much. And from the corner of my eye, I noticed that something was off with the bunk bed. There had been no blankets on the upper bed since I-don’t-remember-when. Had she decided to move in again while I was asleep?

"You are amazing", I said. "Where did you find this coffee?"

"In the locker we never bothered to open. And did you know that there is a small fridge under our console? There I found the butter."

I took a sip from the mug. "Ah, it tastes as delicious as it smells."

"I guess you have to let go of my hand if you want to eat your toast." Androia presented the dish to me, smiling.

"Actually, I’m not that hungry right now." Not for toast, anyway. Your lips, on the other hand...

Of course, the console decided that this was the right moment to interrupt, and we had to run to cut the annoying beep off. Well, maybe I should be glad about that; playing it too fast might have gone terribly wrong. While Androia checked the Intel report, I quickly looked to the far corner, where she had set up camp. There were definitely no blankets on the floor anymore.

"Somebody must have made a mistake", Androia said, looking up. "We are in the Harry Potter division; this is My Little Pony."

"What! Are they kidding me? Will this be Neverfree all over again? I’m not made to walk on four limps! I even kept the brace and the crutch for evidence!"

"There is no sense in fretting, and complaining to Upstairs would not be worth the paper work. We should just roll with it." Androia had already started to fiddle with the console.

"Wait, I’m still in my pyjamas."

"So what? Earth Ponies again?"

"At least let me be a unicorn. I need some replacement for my hands."

Well, the adventures of the pyjamas-striped unicorn are for the mission report. Suffice to say that Equestria is beautiful, I didn’t sprain my ankle again, we flawlessly mastered unicorn magic, and the OC was actually a decent character who could just be left alone.

We didn’t even stumble when we stepped back into our RC and became bipedal again.

"This is weird", Androia said, pointing to the console’s calendar widget. Usually, we skip months whenever we go on a mission, but this time, we had returned on Friday, October 13^th, 2017, and it was not even noon.

"BEEP!"

"This is weird, too. What did we ever have to do with RWBY?"

"Uh, I watched it, and I’m looking forward to Volume five premiering tomorrow?"

Beacon Academy is gorgeous, Sun Wukong dropped banana peels on us, but we never slipped, and we didn’t even bother to take notes, because the evil wraith fled on seeing us although we aren’t even exorcists.

"BEEP!"

"Doctor who?"

He’s hilarious, by the way, and the TARDIS is just indescribable. So that’s what it came down to: On Friday the thirteenth, we kept getting short, easy missions to worlds I like, and nothing ever hurt. Eventually, the penny dropped.

"Uhm, Androia. There’s something I must tell you. That guy who created you while playing World of Warcraft, that – uh, that’s me."

"Finally opening up, Hieronymus? I figured this out ages ago, and I forgave you. After all, I would not even be here if it were not for you."

Because apparently, unlike a common believe elsewhere, in PPC HQ Friday the thirteenth is the day when nothing can go wrong.

But now I’m wondering why we never bothered to open that locker, and how we didn’t notice the fridge earlier. And why would we have a tear-off calendar on the wall of our bedroom? If the timeline didn’t go haywire again, today should be Saturday, October 14^th, 2017. I may have been woken by a noise from the upper bed; I guess I should just check whether she’s there. But I don’t even dare to open my eyes. What if there is no calendar on that wall?

---

DISCLAIMER: The PPC was created by Jay and Acacia, and is used with permission. World of Warcraft, Androia’s home continuum, is property of Blizzard Entertainment. As far as a Player’s Character can be owned, Androia Avatar belongs to Hieronymus Graubart, who belongs to himself. The Harry Potter series of books was created by the magnificent Joanne K. Rowling. My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic belongs to Hasbro, RWBY belongs to Rooster Teeth, and Doctor Who belongs to the BBC. "Neverfree of Work" belongs to Iximaz; Hieronymus spraining his ankle while participating in the mass exorcism happened off-page there, but it is or will be made canon.

HG

My biggest comment here is: what does Star Wars bring to the crossover? Clone troopers are pretty much the genericist thing you could use - other than not having a headache all the time (;)), there's nothing to distinguish them from soldiers in 40K. Your description (down to the return to the GFFA) looks like you could substitute 'soldiers from a previously-unconsolidated human world' and not lose anything.

And I guess partly that's because Star Wars tech doesn't offer any advantages over 40K stuff. 40K weapons and defences are just straight-up more powerful. There might be an advantage to be had from the hyperdrive and navicomputers - non-warp-based fast travel could be a good tool - but the rest of it isn't worth much.

Thinking about it, the biggest difference is in outlook. Your clone trooper is going to be a lot more willing to use things that the Inquisition would come down on like a lead battleship - alien tech, psyker/Force powers... they represent a different way of looking at the galaxy, one where 'different' doesn't necessarily mean 'evil' (and that despite the fact that they're literally clones).

(Cloning tech could also be useful, I guess, but it's not like 40K has a shortage of foot soldiers. And they still need training, so there's no real advantage in terms of time.)

Once you cross back over, you run into the opposite problem: 40K tech could win the Galactic Civil War in a day. A single Space Marine could probably take out an AT-AT, and I'm pretty sure 40K spaceships and their guns are Just Bigger. On the other hand, it doesn't sound like they've brought any of that stuff, and the handheld tech is less overpowered.

At which point we flip back into 'so what?'. You visit Mandalore, Yoda, etc etc, but does it serve any purpose other than to look at them and go 'yup, I got to write Yoda'? Again, I feel like the best way to play with it might be to explore the 40K characters' reactions (Yoda is a xeno mutant psyker who hangs out next to a Chaos-afflicted cave, he is literally their worst nightmare made flesh ^^), but you don't mention anything like that?

So yeah... you wanted comments. ^~ 'Grand tour of the [other] universe'-style crossovers can be fun, but for best effect they need to delve into the differences between the two 'verses, and how they affect each other - both the characters and the setting as a whole.

hS

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If anyone's interested, my contact information is here. I've moved to Nextcloud for hosting documents now and it includes a PDF viewer.

https://tripledes.ocloud.de/index.php/s/Ji7c8qGhIgNLJQD
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(( 1.1.0: Expended on a few elements and tweaked vocabulary per some reviews. Further comments are welcome and appreciated. ))

2017-10-13 06:16:00 [ecosystems3.rack5.qq45ld09β-tl1.routing] tty1: NO CARRIER
2017-10-13 06:16:00 [cisco2.rack2.rr12zh34ε-tl1.routing] eth3: link down
[55385 similar messages elided]
2017-10-13 06:16:15 [ecosystems3.rack5.qq45ld09α-tl1.routing] no route to host vault-tec1.rack1.qa01aa04ξ-tl1.routing
2017-10-13 06:16:19 [cisco2.rack2.rr12zh34ε-tl1.routing] no route to host console04ab9e221e44b490ff.rc112358.dms
[103287 similar messages elided]
2017-10-13 06:16:59 [monitoring13.dosat] Region qa01 probably down - sev2 ticket #23499101 logged

[BEEEEEEEEEEEEP]
Technician Tomash was startled awake by the console. He groped around for his glasses, put them on, and then took a look at the time.

"It's 6 in the morning, dammit." he grumbled. "What'm I getting woken up for?"

Tomash walked over to his console

2017-10-13 06:20:51 [ingress1.rack6.ra01aa07ν-tl1.routing] nlan1: link down (warp fluctuations)
2017-10-13 06:20:52 [tuberosum55.box2b.בc23ln43λ-tl1.routing] prot1: link down
[298232 similar messages elided]
2017-10-13 06:20:55 [console050102ky332761.rc007.dosat] no route to host monitoring.dosat
2017-10-13 06:21:01 [ingress1.rack6.ra01aa07ν-tl1.routing] no route to host console02.dosat
[408214 similar messages elided]

and started reading the beginning of the logs after glancing at the last few entries, which had come in around 6:19. "OK, zone outage, this'll be annoying. Let's see where that is..."

tomash@rc2718282 ~ 06:23 $ network-map qa01
Fatal error: Cannot look up room layout: no route to host

"The heck?"

2017-10-13 06:23:23 [aperture4.control.dosat] External corruption on link fib3, preemptive halt
2017-10-13 06:23:24 [monitoring08.dosat] Kernel panic: Core nyph14tnyd,eucrkaogutns1\2443h4prs^X@
[10 similar messaged elided]

Tomash leaned down to make sure his console's network cable was still plugged in. This was a fortunate decision, as, about 30 seconds after that lookup command had failed, the console's screen and keyboard started glowing green.

Bits bits bits said the thing in the console.

Tomash wasn't quite sure what was going on, but whatever was in his console sounded like an infovore, and he'd gotten the talk on what to do about an actively spreading one a few weeks after he'd transferred in to DoSAT. Namely, kill the affected network and hope it leaves through the plothole it used to get in, and get the Weeds if it didn't. Therefore, he ran outside without bothering to put on shoes first and started heading for the main computing facilities. Headquarters, fortunately, was being cooperative, and he made it there rather quickly.

And so, about a minute later, a heavily breathing technician charged into a room full of routers, servers, and even more unusual equipment. Some of this equipment was glowing, and the fraction of eerily-green equipment was slowly growing. Tomash grabbed a nearby hammer, smashed some glass, pulled open a protective plastic cover, and slammed the big red button by the door.

2017-10-13 06:24:32 [panel.th02ln44μ.routing.dosat] Emergency shutdown logged

The blinking lights on the machines turned off.

The box of potatoes half a mile down the hall to the left stopped vibrating.

Everything was quiet.

Too quiet.

But that might have just been the fact that piles of technical stuff are always at least somewhat noisy.

Fortunately, the glowing started receding out of the servers. Hungry hungry hungry it said.

Tomash looked at the diagram on a nearby wall and found out where qa01 should be. He started walking his way down the now emergency-lit hall, using a phone flashlight to check the door signs. Unfortunately, that was a rather theoretical diagram since HQ was back to its usual self. Now that the immediate threat was past, looking for a large bay full of equipment was a terrible strategy for finding it.

After a few increasingly frustrating minutes, Tomash made it to area qa01, where he started listening for eldritch muttering and glowing. He paced around the room, looking around every few steps, and didn't find anything. That was a bit concerning.

"OK, wait, the first thing that showed as down is in aa03 or so, hm let's see..." Tomash started walking over there, and then he looked around more carefully. "OK, so none of this stuff is glowy. Where the heck could that have been coming from?"

During all the staring, a faint blue shimmering from a cable run caught Tomash's eye. He went over to where the room's backup CAD was, and pointed it at the plothole in the cable run.

Natural portal to Laundryverse. Close? Y/n

Tomash hit the button to close the plothole, ending the shimmering. He then left and started heading for the main DoSAT labs.

Once he'd gotten there, he went through the Makes-Things Memorial Blast Doors (which were still named that even though Makes-Things had always been very alive) and called out. "Anyone know how to restart main routing? I got the scary green stuff out, but I can't find the startup docs."

"They're on the wiki!" said a nearby tech. A moment later, she'd remembered what was going on and added "Which is under that desk over there.", pointing towards said desk.

Tomash went over to the wiki server, turned it on, looked up the directions, and started the process of getting a good chunk of the network back up.

After the initial steps were dealt with, the procedure sped up significantly since it turned into something that could easily be split up among many people, and there were a lot of techs waiting around twiddling their thumbs (or other manipulatory appendages, if any) while waiting for the outage to clear up. Most of the work involved going to each part of the shut-down infrastructure, disengaging the emergency stop mechanisms, and turning certain supervisory computers on by hand, as they would restore the rest of the system automatically.

Even with all the help, getting everyone back online took a few hours, as there was a lot of infrastructure to restart. There were also the inevitable issues with bugs, such as the ones that got into the boxes of computational potatoes.

Once everything was mostly back up and running, Tomash went back to bed, yawning frequently along the way, since he really hadn't gotten enough sleep the night before.

He'd just about managed to settle into a nap when

2017-10-13 13:13:13 [aperture4.control.dosat] Emergency stop. In-progress canon integration detected.
2017-10-13 13:13:16 [monitoring01.dosat] Control AI unresponsive - sev3 ticket #23499666 logged

[BEEEEEEEEEEEEP]

The glance at the mantle gets explained a few lines down, so the topic change makes sense if you just read on a little longer from the moment it happens.

- Tooooooomh

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Hello everyone,

I've been getting ready for a permission request but have been looking for a Beta Reader. I will need a bit of help, would anyone be willing?

Please note that because I can only access the worldwide web through Tor, I cannot use the Discord chatroom anymore. I have (Federated) XMPP and both Protonmail and Tutanota.

Thank you very much
~3DES.
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Good to see that you managed to make it past the roadblocks--and that you managed to get the upper hand in the end.

And I finally attach a face to the famous Lily Winterwood. (I vaguely remember that she mentioned in a previous World of PPC thread that she wasn't British. Speaking of which, I haven't started a World of PPC thread yet this year, have I? Better rectify that soon.)

One of these days, we should have a New York gathering. Memory serving, most of the Gatherings so far have been in Europe--and England in particular!

Faolan flicked her wand, and yards of red sequined silk flew out of the bag and laid itself neatly on the floor. Another wave and the pattern laid itself on top, held in place with magic.

"So, after you're done with the Jessica Rabbit costume, we've got a Sixth Doctor order," Charlotte said, "Can't believe how hard it was to find all those different fabrics."

"That lining had to be specially made," Faolan said, nodding. Several quick Diffindos and the sequined fabric was neatly cut into pieces. "Glad we got these when we did, though. I was worried we'd have to start looking at letting the gas bill go." She glanced at the mantle and bit her lip.

Charlotte sighed and set her folder aside. "Hon, do you often think about maybe going back to the PPC?"

Faolan paused, lowering her wand. "All the time," she said quietly. "Why?"

"Just, you don't seem very happy here," Charlotte said. "I know you were thrilled at the idea of retiring, but ever since it actually happened you keep eyeballing the beacon, waiting for it to go off."

Faolan glanced at the metal disc on the mantle again and sighed. "I'll be fine," she said. "Once I get used to the full moon again. It's been ten years since I've had to deal with them, save for the odd accident on a mission."

Charlotte nodded slowly. "And the rough startup with the shop's not helping, either," she said. It wasn't a question.

Faolan shrugged. "I mean, we're making ends meet, and that's all I can ask for," she said, but Charlotte shook her head.

"We've already had to cut electricity," she said, gesturing around at the candles flickering from the tables and mantle. "Ix—Fwai, you're scared things will go back to the way they were before."

Faolan turned to face Charlotte. "As long as we've got a roof over our heads and food on the table, I'm not going to complain," she said, "but when I married you, I promised I'd give you a good life, one that you deserved. I thought... I was foolish enough to think someone like me could do that."

Charlotte opened her mouth to protest, but what came out was a shrill, "POLLY, NO!"

There was a loud clunking noise and Faolan whirled around to see one of the candlesticks on the coffee table had been knocked over by the cat, landing on the stack of Sixth Doctor fabrics and setting it ablaze. A jet of water from Faolan's wand extinguished it, but the damage was already done.

"Oh no," Faolan whispered, staring at the mess.

"Hey. Fwai, don't worry, it'll be okay," Charlotte said, going over and wrapping an arm around her waist."You can just repair the cloth, right?"

Faolan shook her head. "If it was just torn, then yes, but it's not," she said. "And I can't conjure more, either, it would just vanish after a while."

Charlotte bit her lip. "How much would it cost to get more made?"

"Too much." Faolan slowly sat down on the floor, and Charlotte moved with her. "I—we're going to have to cut the gas now, too. Lottie, I..." She buried her face in her hands.

Charlotte rubbed her back, unsure of what else to say.

She was saved from having to say anything when the beacon on the mantle went off with a shrill [BEEEEEP!] She got up, silently cursing. If they were being called in, things were going to get ugly, and fast. Not exactly what they needed to be dealing with at that moment.

Faolan summoned her knee brace and slowly strapped it on, cursing under her breath at their rotten luck.

The PPC is the brainchild of Jay and Acacia; Ix and Charlotte belong to me. Harry Potter belongs to J.K. Rowling, and Twilight to Stephenie Meyer.

Looks like I'm having to close the PTU campaign because of a lack of interest.

Novastorme

https://docs.google.com/document/d/15LUQJJ6c54vmzBUsfqSgajRdURooz3pvD5yzUmlXU0/edit?usp=sharing

So, this is copied from #recsand_plugs on the Discord, after I proceeded to go into WAYYY too much spammy detail for the channel regarding an awesome (at least I hope) crossover concept my sister and I have been working on. Compiled to a doc and presented for any who want to check it out. Feel free to leave comments here since they're disabled on the doc itself.

… and the hearth or percolator or whatever Androia may have used, are glaring plot holes and every reader would immediately ask the questions Hieronymus eventually asks. But that's obviously only me, knowing a lot I didn't actually write yet.

Your advice would be quite good if this were meant to be a stand-alone story.

But if you could read it in context of the spin-off I still have to write, even the line about never having breakfast in the RC might be unnecessary exposition (and I was actually afraid of being called out for that). You would already know that Androia and Hieronymus always try to eat on missions at Hogwarts, because they don't like to go to the cafeteria and their RC didn't come with a kitchenette and they both don't know how to cook anyway. The sudden change would probably be more obvious then.

Unfortunately, you can't read it in context, because my spin-off currently only consists of writing exercises for workshops and of other small pieces like this here, spread all over the board archives, self-consistent (I hope) but not quite canonical, because most of it was written before I got permission.

So, I will not change this right now, but I will keep in mind that, when the missions and interludes that go first are available and I make this a canonical dream, it may need some revision to adapt to what's actually published then. (Note to self: On return from their second or third mission, the agents bring some extra food back to the RC, but then they don't know how to keep it fresh – there is no fridge.)

Thank you.

HG

After speaking to SeaTurtle (excitedly and at length), I can reveal that the mysterious woman skulking around the background of this story is none other than Naya (Naya'Keegan vas Headquarters), of the DIA in the present. You may know her as Terabyte and the Guardsman's partner, or as the person the Reader was married to in a Ten Years Hence from a couple years ago. Now, however, I'm making it officially canon: Naya and the Reader will get married in the future, and will eventually retire together. Fluff all around :)

Apart from that: I'm glad the descriptions worked well! They were fun to come up with.

I have also spotted a missing word towards the beginning--the Reader was *wearing* the blinding outfit when she met a real Silurian. Whoops.

And...that's it. Pending other reviews, I think I'll probably just rework the story slightly so that Naya is present in name and description as well, at the very least.

Thanks for reviewing! :)

(I shall get to reviewing as well at some point too, just...not quite yet. I need to go find dinner and then sleep is a thing I will need more of...)

~Z

You guys are going to have to stop me from making a Gathering every month once I move to London, I swear. One of these days I'll drag everyone to Stratford-upon-Avon and we'll quote sonnets at each other or something...

(What? You posted the Globe, it seemed like the logical conclusion.)

So does this mean we can expect your London 2017 report this time next year? :P

No, not the 2017 one Iximaz did such a wonderful job of covering (though I will do that one someday...). This is the one last year, where Lily Winterwood came to London for a day, and Kaitlyn and I went out to see her.

The Report

(As for why Gathering Reports exist in the first place, that's probably my fault. Their purpose is to let you put faces to names, and to show that Gatherings Are Fun, and you should probably come along to the next one. ^_^ Also I like writing - I know, right?!? - and have all these photos that need using...)

hS

I really liked the concept of this fic. It's a pretty cool idea. And generally speaking, you executed it pretty well. The whole Inception/Groundhog Day ending was neat, and you gave us some very nice initial clues in the lead up.

The only issue I had - and this might be just me - is the precise way the ending is written. I don't know if I'm the only one, but I got to that last paragraph, and my first thought was "wait... what locker? What fridge?" They were such minor details in the early story that I didn't even remember them. I would suggest - if I may be so bold as to do so - making them more prominent or somehow unusual so that they stick in our minds better.

Well, there is not really much relating to "Friday 13th October", other than "bad day – new demon arrived" (but then we don’t know when Tom checked last, and how long the demon may already have been there). But using every opportunity to write your agents before you ask for permission is a smart move, so congrats on that. And you write them well. I don’t know the Laundryverse, or which continuum Tom’s Space Marine partner may have come from, but I still feel like I understand most of what is going on there.

But one sentence confused me. Not being a native speaker, I’m not sure whether it’s grammatically possible that a minor demonic entity had taken up residence with a bin of electronic components or whether it should be obvious that Tom used a bin of electronic components together with the scanner app on his phone, and a working knowledge of Old Enochian (but where had the demon taken up residence then? Or should this be obvious too?) Maybe some words or some punctuation are lacking there, but I guess breaking the sentence up to make it more clear would be best.

Overall, I get a good first impression of your agents, and I can picture their RC. (Or should I imagine it? I’m not sure about that choice of word.)

HG, before reading the notes.

Yeah, my train of thought went: Turn it on top – how would this manifest to my agents – but how would this be spooky? – And although I’m afraid of having to write the drama that should ensue after "I am your creator", this easy copout should better not be canon.

Since I’m not a native speaker, grammar and word choice is actually what I need most help with; I would appreciate that. (Note: While my posts on the board are mostly American English because that’s more common here, in stories about my agents I try to follow British rules, because that’s what they do in the Harry Potter division.)

HG