And off to Crater we fly.
Paragraph 690
Your long-range scanners indicate that the planet Crater is hardly the side of a large asteroid, yet it bears the most enormous chasm you have ever witnessed in all your travels, a colossal smouldering crater which deforms approximately a third of the planet's surface. From space, much of Crater appears to be covered by mines and vast structures whose austerity leads you to suspect they are factories. However, it is difficult to be certain of this from afar. Closing in, you scan the planet's industrial surface for any sign of inhabitants, and find none. You decide to defer any attempts to contact possible Craterians until you do a bit more exploring.
Aiming your x-ray scanner at a group of buildings, you see that the buildings are filled with impressively sophisticated missiles which appear ready to be launched. On panorama, your scanner's screen indicates that every building on the surface either houses defenses or manufactures them. But where are the beings who built all of this?
Suddenly you realize your ship is losing altitude, and you are headed in a completely different direction than you had intended. Your controls are unanimously inoperative. However, you are decelerating at a pace which is too gradual, too controlled to feel as if you are about to crash. In fact, if you had complete control of your ship, you would not be capable of executing as precise a landing as you observe your ship doing on its own. Just now, the thought occurs to you that it might be a good time to radio the Craterians and identify yourself.
The moment you turn on your radio, you are blasted by the voice of spaceport control who, luckily for you, speaks Earth Standard with a slight Leucothian accent. "Who are you and what do you think you're doing, entering our atmosphere and flying around our planet without permission?"
"I am from the Nine Worlds," you reply. "I come in peace."
"Peace? Do you really expect us to believe that? We are bringing you down for interrogation."
"I mean you no harm, honestly. I'm not your enemy."
"Don't try anything funny—we are armed!"
And they're not kidding. Their whole planet is a fortress.
As your ship lands in one of the few barren, undeveloped areas on the planet, your radio picks up a conversation between spaceport control and some authority deep in Crater's interior.
"We have landed the ship on the median ramp of the visitor's minefield. We request permission to detonate V611's in the event of a catastrophe."
"Permission granted for V611 detonation."
Frazzled, you radio spaceport control. "Excuse me... uh, spaceport control... I didn't mean to eavesdrop. Actually, my radio accidentally... did I hear you say I've landed in a minefield?"
"This is routine procedure here. When your hatch opens, exit unarmed. Step onto the gray platform directly beside your ship and ground transport will take you to the holding area for quarantine."
Following four days of quarantine, you are taken to Crater Security for interrogation.
"This won't harm you, although it may sting a bit," a security officer tells you as he draws forth some fluid into a syringe.
"What is that? What are you doing?"
"This is an ancient means of ensuring that you come in peace, as you claim. In fact, it was invented on the planet Earth. It's called 'truth serum'. You will have no recollection of the forthcoming investigation. If the magistrate concludes that you are safe, you will be permitted to continue your visit on our planet. If you are deemed a threat, you will be disposed of."
Holy shit. Luckily for us, we do indeed come in peace.
When you regain consciousness, you learn that you have been granted permission to remain on Crater, and you are placed in the custody of Olarus, an armed guard. Olarus, like all Craterians, lives underground. Viewing the Nine Worlds Boundary as inadequate protection from alien invasion, Craterians spend their entire lives entrenched deep within the interior of their asteroid-sized world, while the planet's exterior has been transformed into a battleground. As Olarus puts it, "Crater has been fortified to withstand repeated attacks. When the alien invaders destroy the rest of humanity, Crater will be Mankind's last bastion of hope."
Sounds a lot like Cleve's bunker of the future.
You follow Olarus into a subterranean vehicle which descends several kilometers into the ground, taking you to the vast underground city where the planet's inhabitants live. You hear the constant rumble of heavy machinery everywhere as you travel past brightly lit, crowded sections and across dark, open cavities deep within Crater's interior. By the time you arrive at the terminal, marked "level 147, station E3", Olarus has told you a bit more about the planet. You identify five possible options for further activity:
- GOEFMI (3 phases) Trade commodities at Crater's commercial exchange port.
- WOGFEI (7 phases) Investigate Crater's robot drone technology. Olarus says that the experimental robot drones are the only completely safe way to trade with aliens, and are supposed to be very efficient as well.
- G8EHMA (3 phases) Tour one of Crater's personal weapons factories, and see if there's anything you'd be interested in buying.
- W8GHEA (4 phases) Visit a Craterian shipyard, in the hope of acquiring something new to improve your ship.
- COUFOI (3 phases) Attend a seminar at Crater's Institute for Scientific Research.
Per the usual procedure, we hit the market first:
Paragraph 619
Crater's commercial exchange port opens onto the inside surface of the huge, smoldering chasm you noticed from space. Standing on the long, multilevel space dock that extends out into the chasm, you can see the ragged, miles-long cliff stretching upward to Crater's surface. Though the smoky fog in the chasm obscures your view, you can also make out some of the brighter stars in the sky above. Looking across the chasm to the other side, you see some flashing lights denoting protective weaponry, transmission antennae, and other space docks, but cannot distinguish much detail because of the fog and the distance. Looking further down into the chasm, you see some more flashing lights, and then darkness.
The port has a surplus of tools, which they are willing to give you in exchange for culture, food, fuel, iron, or medicine. They will offer you:
- 2 Tools for 1 Culture
- 2 Tools for 1 Food
- 1 Tools for 1 Fuel
- 1 Tools for 1 Iron
- 1 Tools for 1 Medicine
If you decide to make any of these trades, the Craterian atmospheric traffic control system will automatically transport your ship to the port's space dock, where Craterian port workers will perform the loading and unloading for you.
You may select this option again.
There is, however, no point in trading until we know the cost of weapons around here, so to the weapon market we go:
Paragraph 353
The salesman implores you to defend yourself better, "Buy at least something, my friend. The final war is on its way—don't let it catch you with your holster empty."
The weapons the factory can sell you and their current prices are as follows:
- Stunner—1 Culture, 1 Munitions
- Hypnotic gas sprayer—1 Food, 1 Crystals
- Molecular disrupter—1 Iron, 1 Medicine, 1 Radioactives, 1 Fuel
You may select this option again.
Next, we visit the shipyard:
Paragraph 137
Olarus takes you to the shipyard, a crowded industrial area that occupies all of levels 87 through 94. Most of these levels are off-limits to visitors, and some of them require special gear to move around, so you are restricted to a small portion of level 91.
Even this small fraction of Crater's ship assembly and repair operation is quite impressive, however. Huge, fully automated machines work on ship subsystems ranging from drives to environment support to computers, and of course, weaponry. The shipyard representative tells you that they build more than fifty full-size interstellar lifeships a year, most of which are exported to other ghostworlds such as Wellmet and Supa. In addition, they build hundreds of atmospheric cargo freighters and machine ships, used for industry both on Crater and on the other human worlds outside the Boundary. Finally, they build top secret patrol vessels and battle cruisers used by the military to bolster Crater's defenses.
They have some equipment that they would be willing to sell you if you want to improve your ship. They won't give you any of their top secret military technology, of course, but they have a few things that you might find useful. The prices for these things are as follows:
Entanglement mines—1 Food, 1 Fiber
Warp winder—1 Culture, 1 Fluids
Pulse inverter—1 Munitions, 1 Fuel
Boarding Robots—1 Radioactives, 1 Medicine, 1 Iron
You may select this option again.
And finally, let's have a look at the drone ships produced here:
Paragraph 343
Crater's top roboticists have been working for some time with ship design engineers to construct an interstellar remote-controlled robot ship. The idea is that interstellar robotic cargo vessels would enable Crater to engage in commerce with aliens without having to risk actual contact with them.
Such ships are useful for storing and transporting cargo. They can be used to make trades at any markets you have already visited that allow drones to participate in trade. They are also helpful in trading with other players for both items and cargo. Because of its jump engine, the drone ship only takes one turn to travel to its destination and complete its trade. In the meantime, you are free to continue on your own way with no loss of time for the additional move. The only drawback is the jump engine's lethal effect on any living organisms who are unlucky enough to be aboard. The trick, therefore, is to send only nonliving cargo.
You are very interested in the conditions of trade for such a ship and, after inquiring within, you learn the ships are available for sale.
One 3-cargo bay drone ship may be purchased here for the following:
You may select this option again.
Aw, too bad our Crystals got stolen and we ain't got no Food either.
A cargo drone would be real helpful for trading. But anyway, it's voting time.
1. There's plenty of things to buy on Crater, but hell,
do we buy something? Can we even buy something? Our current
cargo is 1 Culture and 3 Fuel, by the way.
Meanwhile, I'll update the OP with the shopping lists for all the planets we've visited:
check it out if you want to maybe think up a trading plan for us.
2. Also,
do we attend the seminar at Crater's Institute for Scientific Research?
3. And finally,
where do we want to go next? (Galaxy map)