Earadan Discovery of the Swarms

[I do love the irony of the captain who first met the swarm, truly prophetic]

[By the way, the perfect cube might prove to be... interesting...]

[Oh, really? And it is certainly not some kind of revenge on the captain's part?]


Startled by the seemingly random explosion the ships approach the cube, one of them hauling it in.

[At least it won't explode.]

The cube is a cubic meter in size. It is made of some dark monotone metal, which keeps the same temperature as its surroundings.

One of the swarmlings onboard of the ship has started to try and break it open.

It seems to be indestructible, for some reason. It cracks if a massive force hit it, but seems to mend back to normal. It ignores heat.

Now properly intrigued the swarmling fetches some bases to pour on it.

The strangeness of the cube goes on, as nothing seems to affect it. Whether this is actually a natural metal, or perhaps some artificial material comes to mind.

When nothing else works they decide to simpy drop it and let it fall down to the planet's surface.

[These failed attempts are rather amusing but note that if nothing succeeds they will simply stop caring about it]

Meanwhile they also start to scavange the corpse and wreckage of the ship and haul them back to Beta-Home, having concluded that this was non-hive technology that no other animal before had ever possessed making it a unique find allow the overseers to desicate the corpse of the woman wh had the missfortune of having a first contact with soch a species, as well as reverse-engineer what Little was left of the ship.

A few days later, the cube creates huge signal reaching the closest systems. This happens as the cube seems to change into a far less durable material, although it is unsure whether this is just a natural change.

A few of the Swarmlings left on the planet's Surface approach the cube to see what the matter was. Seeing the apparant metamorphosis of the cube they decide to have Another go at it to see what is inside.

The cube is no longer invulnerable, in fact, the material seems to grow soft over time. A large antenna-like machine pokes out of it now, and the rest of it is inside. From what you can gather, the machine was placed there to show the location of the planet to neighboring planets. Despite the weird cube it was placed in, nothing about the machine itself seems too advanced.

[Not very suprising, the captain said as much, but didn't you already know the coordinates from when your ship was in the system though?]

One of the Swarmlings begin to vigorously attack the attenna.

[They had not surveyed the system, and didn't know whether it was a barren world or an alien colony. Anyways, which of your planets is it?]

The antenna breaks, and stops giving any signal.

Back at home, the Grandest Master orders one of the Nineteen to prepare a gift ship. In addition, stealth drones are prepared to scout the system and close systems for any information on the species they have met. Anyways, they codename the aliens "The Swarm" after Swarmking's book series, due to the known similarity. The Grandest Master do however remind the population that they might not be similar at all on closer inspection. The hivemind nature of the book's villain aliens and the hive queens are unconfirmed, while the biological ships of the fictional aliens seems unlikely.

[Your ships aren't biological, right?]

[Only partly, and it is Delta Home, the planet over which the first battle of the war was fought, do note however that unless you go deep under the ice the planet would look just like any other barren ice World. Also it seems fitting that this is how my species got it's name as they do not refer to themselves by anything]

[I will remember that this is Delta home, meaning that my "stealth drones" shall have difficulty finding anything. They are called "stealth drones" because they avoid transmitting any signals unless necessary, but they are quite easy to see still. About the name, I had a vague idea that might have been the case, and if it wasn't the case, the Eogons speak another language anyways. Something is quite weird when a species gain their name from a science fiction series, but as I can see that happening with humans, it makes quite sense for the Eogons. All hail our lord martyr, Swarmking!]

[By the way isn't it a bit unrealistic that not only the metal box but also it's content would survive being dropped from orbit?]

[Actually I kinda regret the whole cube thing, since it sort of came of a bit more unrealistic than expected in general. The metal itself, is supposed to actually be the flesh of a rare submarine species, which can temporarily turn extremely durable.]

[We could simply have that you transferred the coordinates together with the pictures, seems like a more logical way to solve this.]

[Yes, let us undo all the cube stuff and do that.]

Warning - a large fleet of ships has entered the system, and has dispatched ships to scour it of all hostile objects. The drones are being hunted down.

The drones attempt escape down on planet and asteroid surfaces, to hide, as they notice the distress signal of other drones, who are found before them.

A few drones manage to land unnoticed, as the ships are more interested in hostile ships than objects that can land on Surfaces but many others are detected as they move.


Aftwerwards the ships deploy in different places around the system so as to ba able to quickly take down anything that enters it. It is unlikely that the drones can leave their safeties until the fleet has departed without being detected.

[By the way the ships have left the system]

The drones finally resurface, while some have presumably been destroyed by different causes. The surviving drones has now confirmed that there seems to be an alien conflict here, alongside the existence of alien life under the surface of the ice.