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#space pirates
nerdy-the-artist · 3 days
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Maytroid 2024 is here!
I am so excited to get to work on these new prompts. Last year, my entries for each day were fairly sloppy, and I was new to the series, so I was lacking a fair bit of information. Now, I’m armed with more knowledge and am eager to use it.
For those who haven’t seen what I did for Maytroid last year, what I’m going to be doing instead of art is something more writing focused. These little text entries are mostly styled after the scans from the Metroid Prime series. Matter of fact, this new set of prompts actually lends itself much better than last year’s, as I have a lot more leeway to play to my own strengths than last year (I still don’t know what the fuck I’m gonna do with Gorea). These are all canon to my own Metroid AU currently, though as things change in development, these may become out of date. They will give the vibe my stories are going for, but these shouldn’t be held to as the absolute canon for them. I’ll be posting these week by week, around 7 at a time, starting today.
Day 1: Ridley
Transcript of Security Footage
Several individuals in this footage cannot be identified at this time. They shall be identified as Pirate 1, Pirate 2, and Pirate Major.
Ridley: What I want to know… is why he is not in custody.
Pirate Major: I gave them their orders, they knew he was to be brought in alive, and instead they killed him.
Pirate 1: You told us to take care of him! We thought you meant an execution, not milk and cookies!
Pirate Major: Insolent Wretch! You say such things about your orders in front of our Commander?! You know how we handle that sort of insubordination!
Pirate 2: Cool it, we’re already in hot water.
Pirate 1: We’re in hot water because of the life of some winy little nobody that begged for his life with money he didn’t even have.
Ridley: While your insolence is… aggravating… I am willing to forgive this misstep.
Pirate Major: What?
Ridley: He was an insignificant pawn. We can always find another. As I was saying, I am willing to forgive this on one condition. Did he die in pain?
Pirate 2: Yes. He did suffer before he died.
Ridley: What methods or torture did you employ?
Pirate 1: Waterboarding. Works wonders on humans. I always liked how they sound when they cough and gasp for air.
Ridley:Mmmmm… was blood shed before his end?
Pirate 2: Yeah. My partner here has… quite the way with knives.
Ridley: Do tell.
Pirate 1: Slashed his wrists. Those arteries gush lots of blood from humans. And we started pulling teeth when he lied.
Ridley: Delicious. You have escaped capital punishment, but you will still be serving as guards for the Metroid containment units. For further forgiveness, you will need to be more creative with your implements. I find Revine’s death, by your account, to be quite dull. Your are dismissed, unless you wish to enlighten me further.
Day 2: Fiery
Scan of Pipe System in Norfair
“These pipes appear be delivering superheated magma into the Norfair region. Given the proximity to Ridley’s personal quarters, likely explanations include terraforming the area for Ridley’s own comfortability, additional protective measures, or the intentional destruction of Chozo artifacts not deemed useful. The latter is most likely, as the immediate area was once a Chozo burial tomb. It is now completely submerged in magma, disintegrating much of the artifacts within.”
Day 3: Winged
Scan of SA-X Mutations
“This X-Parasite copy has suffered some form of destabilization of its copying abilities. Abnormalities include a malformed, beak like structure around the mouth, several atrophied fingers, several hypertrophied fingers, small patches of feathers, and an extraneous structure protruding from its back resembling a Chozo wing bereft of feathers. These unusual deformities could be the result of DNA infusions during childhood complicating the process of anatomical replication within X-Parasite offspring. This individual seems to suffer great stress from its predicament, but it is unsafe to assume that its combat functionality is greatly hampered. Adaptation is this species’s main trait.”
Day 4: Pirate
Scan of Space Pirate Elite
“Subject is a member of an unknown species known only from individuals working within Ridley’s special operations group, The Revenants. This group acts as Ridley’s personal enforcers and assassins, fanatically worshipping their commander as a literal God of Death. They wield melee weapons personalized to their unique fighting styles. Each weapon is charged with electricity, giving them an additional ranged attack capability. They have operated since before the Galactic Federation, making a name for themselves in fighting Chozo warriors. Their endurance, agility, and strength cannot be overstated, in spite of their gaunt appearance.”
Day 5: Mecha
Scan of automaton codenamed Mecha Ridley
“Subject is a battle ready drone, seemingly created by Ridley’s fanatical special forces, the Revenants. Mecha Ridley is heavily weaponized, as there could be no altar to the God of Death without the ability to take a life. Weapons include flamethrowers, guided munition launchers, and superheated claws. Mecha Ridley’s armor is highly durable, but greatly hampers mobility compared to its inspiration. Additionally, as a cult idol of worship, advanced artificial intelligence was not prioritized during production. Mecha Ridley displays average combat intellect for a war drone. Recommend staying moving and outsmarting the automaton.”
Day 6: Fang
Scan of Rundas’s Necklace
“Rundas appears to have begun collecting Metroid Fangs as trophies since last he was approached. Assuming one fang was taken from each Metroid he has eliminated, he has defeated 15 Metroids in the two months since he was last seen. Unfortunately, his ego has grown with his kill count.”
Day 7: Cunning
Scan of Abandoned Home
“Old Bird and Grey Voice’s abandoned home has been left mostly in tact, minus the usual signs of neglect. However, there appear to be a plethora of traps lain around the home. Various grapple snares have been detected, alongside explosive charges, beam emitters, and microphones. Much of these systems appear to be inert, and once reported directly to Mother Brain. It is clear she anticipated you might return here before confronting her. Given her destruction, several trap systems remain completely dormant. Still, any approach must be made with great caution.”
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elliottkay · 1 year
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Every show and film and book I grew up with presented the military as a place where you’d find yourself. The military could be good, could be bad, and all that “glory” stuff was clearly nonsense… but shared trials made you stronger and forged ride-or-die buddies for life. And hey, it’d pay for college.
Then I joined. It didn’t work out. Every day ranged from tedious to toxic, even when we did genuine good. I made one short-term friend in four years.
I still loved those stories, but none of them were ever about the guy who joins up and doesn’t find himself and never belongs—so I wrote it.
Poor Man’s Fight is a rockin’ space opera built on shattered dreams, student debt, and space pirates. Lots of space pirates. It’s funny, it’s sober, and you’ll want to hug Tanner Malone even when he’s covered in blood. The real enemies are always capitalism and toxic masculinity.
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And then comes the war with the corporations that built this whole dystopia, because the enemy is still capitalism, even for the aliens.
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On a brighter note, Tanner does make it out of the military and into college, becoming the Deadliest Unpaid Intern in the Galaxy… and the Resident Advisor for a freshman dorm full of chaos goblins.
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(Cover art by Lee Moyer, Julie Dillon, Dan Watson, and Brittany Torres, for which I’m forever grateful.)
If you’ve made it this far, hopefully you’re looking for where to pick this up. They’re all available on ebook and Kindle Unlimited, and everything from Poor Man’s Fight to Last Man Out is also in paperback and audio.
And bonus: they’re cheap!
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cakbanedraws · 2 months
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HONK!!
Original Pic:
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scottvansketches · 1 month
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theochrelord · 3 months
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SPACE AU SPACE AU SPACE AU SPACE AU
HELLO JRWI TUMBLR me and my friend GGHOSTII have been working on a SPACE AU for JRWI Riptide for the past few days and decided it would be fun to make it public :p
WELCOME TO OUTERTIDE!!!
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This whole thing started as a joke my partner made but it stuck to gghostii and I's brains like glue. We're still fleshing stuff out but with the help of some friends (Remy, Corey, and Edmond), the pirates are now in space
ALSO WE MADE A SMALL GOOGLE DOC OF ALL THE INFORMATION WE CAME UP WITH ON THE SPOT just so we wouldn't forget (THE DOC HAS MAJOR SPOILERS FOR EP 109 ONWARD proceed with caution) it may also keep updating as we think of more and more, this is extremely experimental
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slabmangrave · 10 months
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Kraghurst the Space Pirate king, his big titty moth GF Mia and their loyal crew of sleazy violent alien no-goodniks
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n64retro · 2 months
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Thermal Visor in Metroid Prime (Retro Studios, Nintendo, 2002) for Nintendo Gamecube.
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moiderahart · 2 years
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It’s been a long day.
You might’ve seen this before. That’s because you have. I’m posting it again.
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frishbi · 5 months
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silly gay dragon-pirate from my discord server :p
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ghostlyghosti · 6 months
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Dragged my partner into a Starfinder game so had to slap the big boy Graeskar into it! Half orc, space pirate Graeskar is super fun to draw.
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domuspopuli · 9 days
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Day 01 Ridley
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rustic-space-fiddle · 11 months
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Some Jimbo sketches from a livestream I did couple nights ago. I LOVE MY SPACE-BOUND SON
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cakbanedraws · 3 months
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Did some variant covers of my fancomic, I try to study Hugo Pratt line arts (the creator of Corto Maltese). The results looks a bit cool I guess.
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inbabylontheywept · 11 months
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That isn't a ship, it's a cannon with FTL
Aggral Thrawn’s gut was a grotesque thing to behold: Soft and distended, covered with a coarse layering of fur, a fat purple worm of a scar crossing over it’s almost spherical circumference. So vicious was the scar that even gazing upon it brought unwanted imagery of the fat ape-like creature screaming in pain, both arms working as a dam to keep the tidal wave of bloody guts from spilling out of its three-fingered fists
Yet, for all its grotesque horror, he trusted it. That same gut that had almost gotten him killed so many years before had worked hard to save him again and again after. It was what had brought him from mere gangpress, to quartermaster, all the way to the captain of his own pirate vessel.
And right now, it was telling him to call off the attack. The readings he was getting from the craft ahead made no sense. The crew space was too small, the energy readings were off the charts, and there was something almost military about it. Yet, as he looked over the hull, he couldn’t spot a single weapon. Nothing about it made sense.
The crew had enough in the larders to pass on a ship this sturdy. Even as ships on either side of him pulled forward, eager to be the first to raid the craft, he aborted the ram sequence to watch from a distance.
The crew was disappointed. It’d been too long since they’d had a good, solid fight, but they knew better than to second guess Aggral’s gut. It had earned its place as the ship’s oracle by rite of blood, and was to be respected accordingly.
---
There were only four crew aboard the USSN PMAC: Dalton Dial, in charge of weapon systems, Elizabeth Harris, in charge of navigation, and the Pratchett siblings, who worked together to keep the fifth generation fusion reactor that powered the whole abomination within some semblance of working order.
The Pratchett siblings’ love of the reactor (which they had affectionately named “Sun-Son”) was rivaled only by their hatred of the rest of the craft. Elizabeth and Dalton had more mixed feelings on the matter. Elizabeth considered the ship “Perhaps a little ridiculous on paper, but a work of military genius,” while Dalton lauded the idea as “Literally the coming of the Messiah, the only thing I prayed for my whole adulthood, and the answer to that prayer manifest, just for me, to bring me back to the flock.”
Their mixed feelings could be explained away just by describing the craft concept:
The PMAC was not a ship. It was the largest possible gun that could still be attached to an Alcubierre drive, with just enough manpower to steer, aim, and maintain the thing for long term patrols.
The prototype MAC that the life-support, thrusters, and reactor had been constructed around hadn’t even been built with space in mind. It was originally designed as a ground-to-orbit defense weapon. If it wasn’t for the capacitor bank the ship would’ve needed almost a minute between each shot to get enough power, even with the fifth generation reactor. Luckily, it could start out each battle with enough charge to fire off a salvo of four before needing to begin recharging for its next launch.
It had just such a salvo prepared for the pirate ambush that their military grade scanners had picked up minutes earlier.
Dalton was not taking the delay very well.
“With all due respect mam, I’ve had a lock on all three for almost a minute now. I could just fire and claim that I sneezed. The Pratchetts would back me up on this. Right guys?”
Emily Pratchett snorted.
“Why is it that when the weaponsmaster says ‘with all due respect’ he always means ‘fuck you for giving my stupidly giant gun blue balls?”
Thom Pratchett shrugged.
“Maybe he’d say it less if you weren’t so eager to translate it to the navigator for him.”
Elizabeth was slightly amused by the conversation. It was hard to keep things particularly formal while on a crew this small. Still, she was waiting for something. She’d gotten permission from the brass to take a new approach to fighting with the ship.
They’d proven it could win battles. Now, it was time to establish shock and awe. And as it currently stood, dead men told no tales.
Thus, they needed more living ones. And as she watched two pirate ships pull forward, with one hanging back, she knew just who’d live to pass on this particular legend. ---
Aggral watched the ships advance on his HUD, the blips crossing the thousands of kilometers between them and the strange ship in seconds. For a moment he felt regret. Was he making a mistake? Was this going to be what led to some upstart in the crew thinking they could do things better than him?
Then, the world went mad.
The power readings on the strange ship spiked. Hard. He’d thought that the baseline levels were outrageous, but they must’ve had some sort of absurd capacitor bank to expel that much energy that fast. The twin prongs that made up most of the length of the ship gave off some sort of EMP that fried the electronics of the Viscera, his sister ship, cutting off their radio traffic. His crew scrambled to find some way to regain contact when Gods of the Dead, forgive me my sins, and and forget me my debts, the actual weapon went off. The EMP hadn’t even been the attack, it had just been a side effect.
He hadn’t seen a weapon because he’d been looking for one on the hull, some kind of guardian laser, or a missile pod. He hadn’t even conceived that the whole goddamn vehicle could be the weapon. But what kind of weapon would charge up like that? A laser would just fire over a sustained period. What would need a burst like-
He stopped midthought as it hit him: A railgun.
He stopped again as it hit them: The kinetic charge would have to have been moving at almost 0.8c for it to just ignore the evasive maneuvers like that. The ferroslug itself wasn’t detected by any of their defense measures aboard, but the thermal readings of the Viscera made every infared sensor aboard scream in horror. Contact with whatever slug had hit it must’ve reduced the whole thing to plasma. It was almost inconceivable.
He was already screaming out the full retreat call when the ship fired twice in rapid succession at the Rictus, which was still recovering from what had just happened to its partner. The first shot was dead through the center. The second hit some target a few dozen meters off to the side.
A direct hit on an escape pod. Apparently, the captain had tried to save himself. Even in the mortal terror that he felt at that moment, Aggral could take a grim satisfaction at that second shot. To leave all the men that followed you to their deaths was a cowardice that he could not bear to consider. He would rather die.
And now, he was going to. Jump was fifteen seconds away, and the console was telling him that the ship was pinged. They knew where he was, they had him in their crosshairs, and they were going to pull the trigger.
He traced a finger over the purple scar absentmindedly. This was it. He’d been living on borrowed time since that first wound, and now he was to meet his ancestors.
He was ready.
---
Dalton was wincing, even as he maintained his ping on the ship. He knew that Elizabeth was just doing her job, but even by his admittedly bloodthirsty standards, there was something fucked up about keeping a ship in ping like this. It was like forcing someone to look you in the eyes before you slit their throat. Way too personal for his tastes.
Elizabeth was keeping an eye on the craft, making sure that no escape pods were jettisoning. Part of her was hoping that some would, but whatever other faults these pirates had, they were loyal to each other at least. As the ultraviolet scanners gave the telltale flair of redshift, she told Dalton to turn off the ping.
To say he was relieved was an understatement. In the middle of a firefight, he couldn’t question Elizabeth’s orders, but for the first time in a long time, he’d been afraid to pull the trigger. Now he didn’t have to.
He almost slid out of his chair as he asked the question that had been on his mind since the engagement began.
“Mam, what the hell was that?”
Elizabeth smiled warmly at her very surprised crew even as her words came out, cold as ice.
“A message.”
---
Thanks for reading this far! I'm moving my previous works from reddit to here. If you follow me, more will come. If you're impatient, you can skip to the source and read things at https://www.reddit.com/user/InBabylonTheyWept/
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oshlet · 9 months
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War Ape Spacecraft-Mech. Scattered across Crossroads like cockroaches, they vary wildly in form aside from the standardised pattern of four limbs, and the brain-stem linking system which allows suitably augmented pilots to control the machine as if it were their own body. The system is incredibly crude, especially compared to NuHuSoc's mastery of bioengineering.
Crudeness aside, the system's relatively safe aside from the dangerous installation process of the body hardware required for interface. It still has a reputation for being a killer because of the abilities it offers the pilots. Heightened awareness from a body studded with cameras, the incredible power of the rocket motors. The transformation from meat to machine is addictive, and pilots frequently push for extended hours, usually ending in their demise as mistakes happen and systems fail.
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rustycopper4use · 3 months
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Space Pirates (GBA)
paradise!
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The name isn’t the most creative but I like it.
(Also fun fact his was technically one of the first listener designs I made. I think the first first one was faithful.)
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