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Kerbfleet: A Jool Odyssey-END OF CHAPTER 21! (and hopefully not so many talking heads in 22!)


Mister Dilsby

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Although the CEO of Wild Blue Industries is mortified that one of her company's plasma screens found its way into a Kerbulan warship, and is bothered by having to F9 her sales kerbs who keep mysteriously vanishing, she does admire the engineering work performed on the Despair. She's also ordered the company's inventory of fusion reactors to receive a firmware update so that safety protocols can be bypassed with explosive effect. Just in case... :wink:

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5 minutes ago, waterlubber said:

as much as I would like to believe, the real one was not quite as regretful.

Yeah... the real WvB's life and especially his politics aren't a topic for discussion on the Forum. What I can say is that I was quite intentional in making our Wernher remorseful for his actions on Kerbulus. I'm very happy that you picked up on that :)

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2 minutes ago, Kuzzter said:

Yeah... the real WvB's life and especially his politics aren't a topic for discussion on the Forum. What I can say is that I was quite intentional in making our Wernher remorseful for his actions on Kerbulus. I'm very happy that you picked up on that :)

I always like to see little references to history, as a big /r/polandball fan.
Keep up the good work.

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18 minutes ago, Angel-125 said:

Although the CEO of Wild Blue Industries is mortified that one of her company's plasma screens found its way into a Kerbulan warship, and is bothered by having to F9 her sales kerbs who keep mysteriously vanishing, she does admire the engineering work performed on the Despair. She's also ordered the company's inventory of fusion reactors to receive a firmware update so that safety protocols can be bypassed with explosive effect. Just in case... :wink:

Um... there are actually three screens: one for Bill's "tantalus device" persistence editor, one for Bob's navigation/intelligence seat, and one main viewer which we haven't seen yet. But your reps are blameless--likely the Kerbulans captured the screens from a legitimate buyer such as Kerbodynos or Rockomaximus.

As to the reactors, no reason to build any H-bombs quite yet. That is, so long as Wernher and any reactors he built (which to date are just USI-LS fission, not fusion) stay out of Kerbulan hands, and Leader Gene continues to stare at that "E=mc3" :wink: 

Edited by Kuzzter
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4 hours ago, Mikki said:

I really love it when the Kerbulans get punished for minor expressions of hilarity. This simply cries for rebellion...

-*BZZZZZ*-           ....... sic semper tyrannis.....            -*BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ*-

And Jeb doesn't even find the agonizer painful... Oh dear.

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9 hours ago, Kuzzter said:

One wonders how Kurt and Melgee Kermulan became mad...perhaps they were stuck in an 'abandoned' Numar listening post spying on Rockomaximus for a few years? No matter... 

And now you've seen the Kerbulan flotilla headed for Jool. Not two but four fighters--and the analysis is correct, the Despair does indeed have plenty of LFO to refuel those fighters. Kerbulans don't carry mining equipment, of course; they take what they want, and every ship has a docking claw for that purpose. 

We've identified the four pilots in the fighters; might take a bit of looking through back issues but Newdun and Wehrford Kerman do indeed both exist in Kerbfleet. You've also seen most but not all of the Despair's crew. Note a subtlety of the Kerbulan ship's bridge (which, as some may have guessed, is built into that Mk3 cargo bay): while the engineering and science stations as well as the turbolift are all abaft the Intrepid captin's chair, a Kerbulan commander has the privilege of sitting with her back to the bulkhead. :D 

You still haven't seen the Ghost... but then again very few have, and fewer still have lived to talk about it.

I'm sure Wehrford Kerman is a command pilot, and controls Micarooni Station. So maybe before the Despair was launched, Wehrford Kermulan was in charge of an outpost used to refuel ships and to spy on the enemy.

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14 minutes ago, rlin said:

I'm sure Wehrford Kerman is a command pilot, and controls Micarooni Station. 

Correct! Yes, he is a Command pilot in Kerbfleet, but I needed another Kerbulan fighter pilot and it didn't feel right to use Tedus. After all, if an entire book was about rescuing Tedus and Bob Kerman after Tedus very nearly died, (and finding Kerbfleet's true soul along the way!) one would expect that in the quasi-parallel storyline Tedus Kermulan is dead or stranded. In fact, it was probably Centurion Bob who killed him!

There may be a reason you haven't seen any Imperial Command pilots other than Val. I'd imagine that that profession has a very short life expectancy given the usual Kerbulan path to promotion. Honestly, I still haven't decided whether Dilsby Kermulan is alive or not, that's why you haven't seen the front half of the Despair's bridge yet :wink: 

3 hours ago, 0111narwhalz said:

When did the acronym-demystification get implemented? I kinda like it.

It was not long ago, I saw a note from KasperVld somewhere. I was disappointed when I found out it was just acronyms, I was kind of hoping there would be an automatic link here whenever someone said 'Kerbfleet'. You think they'd do a demystification of KSMC? :D 

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Wow, they're almost there, 9-and-a-bit chapters, 3 Interludes, one crossover and a total of 305 pages (355 counting the crossover on this side & Plan Kappa chapter 30 and 31 but not the "engineering updates") and they're almost at Jool. I can simply say that I'm excited, with all this build up this is going to be good.

Edited by AkuAerospace
Removed "sign off"
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@Kuzzter, I remember that the tantalus device used to read "Traitor=False" on the last line (link). The text was mostly hidden by his head the last time we saw the device, but you mentioned it in a follow-up post on the same page. Have you decided to change that detail, or was it overlooked? It works great either way, of course.

Edit: I forgot to mention that Kurt and Melgee are wonderful, whether they are evil or not. But the big question is: do they have cheese?

Edited by Deddly
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6 hours ago, AkuAerospace said:

I can simply say that I'm excited, with all this build up this is going to be good.

I hope I don't disappoint! :) 

6 hours ago, Deddly said:

@Kuzzter, I remember that the tantalus device used to read "Traitor=False" on the last line (link). The text was mostly hidden by his head the last time we saw the device, but you mentioned it in a follow-up post on the same page. Have you decided to change that detail, or was it overlooked? It works great either way, of course.

Edit: I forgot to mention that Kurt and Melgee are wonderful, whether they are evil or not. But the big question is: do they have cheese?

Boy, are you sharp-eyed! Yeah, you're right, the most recent screen should have looked more like the one your referenced. We'll just call that an error; I will likely not take the time for a re-shoot to correct it. :) 

Do Kerbulans have cheese? I don't know. If not, it could explain why they're so darn EVIL!

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12 minutes ago, Kuzzter said:

Taking another long weekend in the woods, including a 10 mile (~16km) road race in not-insignificant heat on Sunday. So this is all you'll get I'm afraid until next week sometime--assuming I survive :) 

*waves hands*

Have fun!  :cool:

Edited by Just Jim
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3 hours ago, Deddly said:

Kenlie just learned something important about strategy and keeping out of danger. It'll be interesting to see how significant that is.

No time for exposition! Don't you know there's a drill on!?!

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54 minutes ago, max_creative said:

Seriously, how does she even pronounce that?

Even I don't know, but is the idea of "comic characters speaking visually" any kind of trope? If not, I claim inventorship!

Fun game while you wait for the next update: what was the original text of Gene's kmail? (I did write out the whole thing before garbling it.) Closest guess wins... the honor of having the closest guess!

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"Val--I don't know how to tell you this. I
mean, I literally don't know. But I'll try.

That planet is called
Kerbulus. DON'T go there! It's inhabited
by kerbs a lot like us, except they have
hair on their faces.
But the main thing is
they will actually try to blow your
ship up
with explosives! Stay
away from Kerbulus, and if you see
them, run far away!

--Gene"

Howzzat?

Also, it's obvious that she pronounced it "ASG%^%@g" Geez, are you guys even paying attention?

Edited by 0111narwhalz
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Mine is very similar to @0111narwhalz (who's name is ovbiously pronounced "0111narwhalz") but I didn't see it before writing this.

That planet you found is called Kerbulus! Don't go there! It's inhabited by kerbs a lot like us, except they have facial hair and are mad. But the main thing is they will actualy try to destroy anything that comes close with explosives! Stay away from there! And if you see an unknown spacecraft, run away!

It doesn't look like we can go by the number of characters, but I'm not sure.

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Well, nice job breaking it villains, they were worried about the Intrepid crew visiting so they tailed them to intercept, they wanted to deal with them so they garbled their comms so now they want to go there. I think we have a Self Fulfilling Prophecy of a sort on our hands.

As for Kenlie, looks like he's got a long way to go. come to think of it, very far and not just Cheks, in dealing with the Kerbulans.
Currently he's gone the typical amateur strategy: take out the opponent's pieces, while this can be a viable strategy, as this incident with Nimzo demonstrated, it isn't the aim, you could wind up "winning the battle but losing the war". I've seen quite a few checkmates with plenty of pieces left on both sides. Likewise with the Kerbulans it seems Kenlie is focussing on dealing with the fleet shadowing them but this is just the tip of the iceberg, there is a whole planet of these maniacs and even if he manages to deal with this lot, there's plenty more where that came from and the threat to Kerbin is left unattended to (I know this is from his "story" but there is a strong implication that a certain G. Kermulan is already after their home planet). Also, taking the analogy further; his stalemate with Nimzo left only a few pieces of his standing, if he takes on the Kerbulan fleet, even if he wins, what will the cost be? It probably won't be snack rations I can assure you.
Based off this, he does indeed have a way to go if he wants this to end well, he needs to learn to look a the big picture, to look beyond the stalking fleet, they aren't the source of the trouble, they are like the pieces but not the "Kwing", important and not to be ignored but ultimately unimportant in the long run. If he can look to the true threat of Gene Kermulan's Empire itself and focus on that, while avoiding the fleet hunting them (hey, I didn't say it was going to be easy), then maybe he can find a Scholar's Mate solution, the "war" won and everyone lives.

Please note, I am not even a good chess player (I'm hopeless at it) and this may have been unintentional but I thought this fits and it's been a while since I was able to meaningfully contribute.

Edited by AkuAerospace
Removed "sign off"
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