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madmax460 [2020-07-01 19:34:01 +0000 UTC]

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LordArcheronVolistad [2020-04-19 19:01:01 +0000 UTC]

About how large would you put this ship at? The name of "Titan" aside, the structure of the ship (being one of the whale-like ones which are practically mobile armored cowlings built around colossal central guns) and what is seen from the terminals with it in a role as the center of battlegroups, we can safely surmise that the ship you have here is a powerful and sophisticated capital ship. The fact that you mentioned a similar ship being able to fight off superior Forerunner forces for over a month devoid of support lend credence to my hypothesis that this class of ship is made to be adaptable and omni-purpose as possible. It can function as the center of a battlegroup, in a support role, or as a lone wolf, something which due to Forerunner Slipspace-jamming tactics would be a common position. Of course, such capabilities mean that such ships are costly to produce abd maintain, so those in service would be concentrated as much as possible on critical and strategic areas. This is corroborated by the description, which has the man remembering that such large ships usually like to stick to the core worlds of the Empire. 

Another interesting thing I noticed is the placement of the explosions on the hull of the ship. I'm not sure if you intended it, but I see it as visually demonstrating that the ship was likely aimed to br disabled as fast as possible by the Forerunners. This is due to the ship's largely-intact frame and the explosions on the hull. One id located just above the central blue glowy ring of the ship, meaning that the Forerunners wanted to hit the reactor system, likely by overloading the shields and burning to the inside or to disable the power systems to the main gun. The other explosion is locatef where the lower engines would be on Forthencho's ship class. Since this vessel shares the majority of hull details and shape with that ship class, it would be logical to assume that at least some of the engines would be in the same places. Even if the majority of them are located at the bsck of the ship, some on the sides beneath armor cowling woupd appear to make sense, if the main cluster is compromized. Not putting all the eggs in one basket, as it were. 

Also, I think my favorite part of this story is how you mentioned that the AHE had lost "millions of colonies" at the point in the war this takes place. The official numbers of the Forerunners having 3 million inhabited worlds despite being a more-or-less functional, stable civilization for almost 15 million years and the AHE having only 20-30K worlds despite aggressive expansion and rapid breeding rates (even assuming these numbers are after the Flood rendered the majority of their territories gained after 50k years of space travel FUBAR) to be frankly ridiculous. I mean, NASA has put an estimate that there could be between 40-80 billion terrestrial worlds alone in the galaxy, so the 2 top civilizations there would have lots of room to claim stuff. The numbers could work if they were talking only about the absolute most-important amd strategically-crucial worlds, but to single them out would be rather strange. It would imply that the AHE didn't see any of their other colonies as properly-existant or something. 

Another possibility is that the AHE, likely being an empire with a greater degree of freedoms and less obsession over order and control before the Flood era than the Forerunners, would have tons of individual sector and system governments and all sorts of private enterprises sending out expeditions and colony fleets everywhere, and these would likely be allowed to operate how they like within the confines of AHE laws (pay your taxes, report anything strange or useful and don't do stupid shit and you're good). The extent of these colonies could be to such an extent that it got to the point that like you stated in this story, some colonies would be straight-up forgotten by the central government. This might also explain why Forthencho was quoted as saying that by late-war, the AHE had only 20K worlds in 1000 systems. He was not sure of the state of all of the unofficial colonies. That, combined with the fact that the Forerunners loved to jam AHE Slipspace to scatter and slow their forces, preventing a proper cohesive resistance on any large scale. With the empire shattered like that, perhaps only the sectors which hadn't been cut off on this way were counted? Anyways, I really like how you incororated the idea of forgotten colonies into tge story, it makes it feel not only more-impactful in terms of scale, but it feels more genuine for the factions involved. 

I have always had it in my head that if the numbers were exponentially scaled up, they would make far more sense. The Forerunners would have at least 3 billion inhabited worlds (some might be Ecumenopolis shield-worlds and others might be private estates of a single family, like was the case with Bornstellar's Builder parents). The AHE, depending on if the quote took place before or after the sacrifice of a third of their space to delay the Flood, would have around 20-30 million worlds and assuming that at least 50% and at most 90% of their original territory was lost before attacking the Forerunners, that would give the AHE pre-war colony worlds at 40-60 million at least and 200-300 million at most.

Most likely it is somewhere in between, and even though the AHE have been spacefaring for only about 43K years, they would be desperate to expand and take as much as possible not only due to their 40K/wide Stellaris-levels of manifest destiny, but because they paled compared to the Forerunners so much it wasn't even funny. The AHE would expand slowly at first, but they would exponentially get faster as more and more planets would grow more and more pops that would each be able to colonize more worlds at a time, ad nauseum.... That is, until the Flood happened. What do you think of this?

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Kamikage86 [2020-04-19 18:36:52 +0000 UTC]

Wow, that is quite a bit of metaphorical lore to go with a heart pounding image, incredible work, thank you for posting more art.

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