The Curious Cautionary Tale of Greg

Started by MemeVampire, January 29, 2018, 10:05:20 AM

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MemeVampire

Please note, this story is told in the green-text (4chan) style because it was the medium I felt it was best in. If there is any demand for it, I could also produce a short story as I am a more than capable writer. Please enjoy, the Curious Cautionary Tale of 'Greg'.

First of all, some background on the colony.

I was playing an older modded save. While this colony was unfortunately lost during the update to B18, most notably I had the Sparkling Worlds and EPOE mods and thus could, with the appropriate amount of resources, time and highly-skilled colonists, could produce almost anything including bionics (I had not yet researched synthesizing luciferium, to put things in perspective, but it was a low priority in comparison to other options in my wonderful techtree full of guns, agriculture and cyborg enhancements).

I should note that this colony began as a standard Lost Tribe start; after a string of short-lived runs (as I always play Randy Rough or Intense) I determined that I would see a run through from the neolithic era to the space age. Sadly, losing my save denied me this, but I'm working on another run even now. Anyway, the colony started in an arid shrubland (my favourite biome) and things actually went very well. We were often raided by Ferals (Rimsenal) and pirates, but they became a steady source of new colonists over the years.

As a final indicator of how well this colony was doing, I had described my situation to a friend thusly: "It's easier to replace infected limbs with bionics than it is to treat them at this point."

P.S. All references to 'psycocaine' refer to psychoid pekoe and other exciting psychoid derivatives.

Without further ado, the story as it was first written down:

Part 1 - Meet Greg
>Doing well
>Basically glitterworld-level technology right now
>Can produce most anything i need including glitterworld meds, periodically send out big mining parties to stripmine an area then bring the resources back

this story is about a rather unhappy person, let's just call this person Greg. Greg is perfectly normal and apart from some easily-treated anxiety there's nothing wrong with him. He's not very useful (he's one of those wandering colonists where you don't get the chance to say no, they just join your colony) but he hauls stuff and that's ok.
>Be Greg
>Colony is under attack by raiders who drop podded into the freezer, where all the temperature-sensitive neutroglycerin and chemfuel is stored
>Watch as the benevolent overmind in the sky, that guides every waking moment of the colony (and the unconscious ones too), issues the order to seal the freezer off, replacing the doors with walls

Part 2 - Acting on Impulse
The colony started off as a basic tribal start where the best medicine user had 4 skill (but a burning passion). Electricity was one of the first things the colony researched, and modernisation came quite quickly. However, a MASSIVE feral raid (20 dudes with mostly melee weapons, but one 11 Shooting dude with Trigger-Happy and a fucking minigun) occurs. One of these raiders is a woman called Impulse with 14 Medicine and a host of other useful skills including Construction (another thing the colony sorely lacked, having only just then been able to put up solar panels due to their construction skill requirement). A psychic insanity lance was used to secure Impulse and she was quickly converted (shamefully, defeating this raid AND securing Impulse required me to load a save made at the raid's inception many, many times). Over the years Impulse suffered many injuries but was one of the bravest and most useful colonists in the entire colony, and as such was first in line for bionic parts when they became available, first managing to scrounge a bionic arm from a trader to replace her missing one, and the very first bionic parts manufactured were bionic eyes, to make her a better surgeon.

Impulse comes into Greg's story right about now. Impulse is a walking demonstration of the colony's finest resources and technologies, strapped into power armour and with a full bionic reconstruction including spine and fibrous/sensory mechanites (with a convenient painstopper). Impulse also has very close to 20 in both Medicine and Construction, along with her bionics this means she is adept at building things and treating people fast. Whenever she walks into the medical bay, Sonic the Hedgehog's theme plays automatically. But this story is not about Impulse.

Part 3 - Greg's Shitty Day
>Be Greg, autopistol in hand, struggling to process the raid in progress, wondering why the overmind wants the freezer sealed off.
>Watch as Impulse goes thundering past, jaw hits the floor at the sight of the mechanised mistress of medicine and mayhem. Overmind immediately schedules bionic jaw replacement.
>Watch as Impulse calmly tears down the freezer doors and replaces them with a solid wall of plasteel in a process taking a little over a second. Raiders don't get a chance to actually fire their weapons before they lose line of sight.
>Overmind sets freezer controls to -100*C. Impulse constructs additional coolers in similarly record times, to get the temperature low enough to kill.
>Be Greg, be smart enough not to question the overmind and return to daily business.

Part 4 - Greg has some Mental Breaks
>Be Greg, be really unhappy for no reason. Go on a rampage and break some stuff, given stern reprimand and compensatory psycocaine in attempts to improve his mood.
>Overmind racks its brains trying to work out why Greg is so unhappy.
>Overmind carefully studies Greg's needs; sees that Greg's wife, daughter and brother have all died, needless to say this makes Greg rather unhappy
>Overmind's eyes twitch, navigating to the aptly-named Boneyard where the colony's enemies are left to decompose. Start rapidly clicking through bodies until the most recent raiders are found
>Check raiders relationships
>Greg'sFamily.jpg
>GFW (Greg's Feel When) he watched his entire family freeze to death in the colony freezer, broadcast on every flatscreen in the building
>Be Greg, get immediately stuffed into a cryptosleep pod. Get brought back out again when it's clear that time in a cryptosleep pod won't reduce the duration of the negative thoughts about Greg's family all dying.

Part 5 - Coping With Being an Orphan
>Be Greg, be generally very unhappy, but mitigate it with copious amounts of psycocaine and sexual flings
>Be Greg, manage to coax the legendarily icy Impulse into bed
>nice.jpg
>Be Greg, propose to Impulse. Impulse says no and immediately breaks off the relationship
>Greg is even more unhappy
>Send Greg out to the animal farm, the second settlement where the only people he'll be able to bother won't give a shit.
>Greg has a hitherto-unused burning passion for animals (skill 1 though) so he fits right in
>Greg manages to bond with three separate muffalos while milking and shearing them
>Greg is still unhappy but it's ok
>Suddenly, mechanoid ship crashes on the lightly-defended animal farm
>Most of the farmers including Greg are prosthophobes and anyone else undesirable, and as such are poorly armed and without bionics and combat drugs
>Greg is a hardened killer by this point and helps the farmers fight off the mechanoids; notably, a couple of centipedes with inferno cannons
>Overmind leaves Greg to his new duties and goes back to managing the old colony

Part 6 - Greg's Shitty Holiday
Some time has passed; important p.s. animal farm settlement has very tightly delineated home zones to keep animal filth from piling up inside the corridors and medical bay
>Overmind begins noticing increasingly high frequency of mental breaks coming from animal farm
>It'sGreg.jay-peg
>Notice that the entire fucking forest has burnt down, missing some animals
>Ohno.jpg
>Check Greg's needs
>Greg's bonded animals have burned to death
>Greg is somewhat miffed
>Greg misses his regular doses of psycocaine
>Another sudden raid and the Overmind decides to abandon the animal farm, bringing everyone back to the colony including Greg. Brief, merciful respite from Greg's mental breaks while the caravan is travelling across the world map

Part 7 - The Return of Greg
>Be Greg, arrive back at old colony, immediately start breaking stuff in mental break. Generally be a nuisance until one day...
>Notice colony security officers (fuckhueg roided-out terminators with painstoppers and Psychopath trait + tasers) coming, calmly agree to be arrested; Overmind notes this is a smart choice
>Be Greg, led down dark corridor at deserted end of old colony building
>ThisIsNotTheRegularPrisonBlock.jpg thinks Greg
>Greg does not know that the Overmind has had enough of his shit. Quite apart from his frequent mental breaks over losing everything he ever loved, Greg has an addiction to psycocaine (don't do Flake and Yayo, kids) and kept managing to break into the hidden drug stashes to get a fix. Generally causing a nuisance.
>Be Greg, be led into and held in small room with a light, a legendary-quality TV and a nutrient paste dispenser carefully hooked up so it's basically automated. It's also got lovely airconditioning; and this is a desert map so you know there's more than one A/C. There's like...5. Greg thinks this is weird but does not object, remembering the last couple of heat waves that sometimes got up to 60*C.
>Greg has a mental break (typical Greg), Berserk this time, and must be subdued; fortunately this holding cell is already here and the colony sends over a doctor.
>Be Greg, see doctor coming. Doctor is some stranger Greg hasn't met, wearing a badly-fitting lab coat and a fake stethoscope.

Part 8 - Greg Learns a Lesson
>Be Greg, notice doctor has brought in a couple pairs of bionic legs
>Also notice that doctor is not Impulse, but some scrub with 0 medicine
>Also notice that Overmind intends to use Herbal medicine for whatever is coming
>Be Greg, start to panic
>Overmind assigns the terrible doctor to install bionic replacements for Greg's legs
>Predictably, doctor fails, cutting off Greg's legs and leaving him unable to move. Doctor tends the stumps and leaves.
>Why would overmind waste bionics, thinks Greg
>Be Greg, see Impulse coming at last
>Realise that it was a misunderstanding and the Overmind now wants to set things right and give him that bionic makeover he always wanted
>Be Greg, be confused because Impulse isn't holding any bionics, Impulse is holding a power saw and a stack of plasteel
>Be Greg, have horrible flashback of the night his entire family died
>Be Greg, uselessly scream and flail about on the bed in the middle of the room as Impulse rapidly replaces the door with 5 feet of solid plasteel
>Be Greg, plead, beg and eventually have Hiding in his Room mental break as the Overmind calibrates the A/C to slowly freeze Greg to death
>Be Greg, wonder if having a Slaughterer mental break and killing the colony's miracle-self-tamed Thrumbo was such a good idea after all

Moral of the story: Don't be Greg.
Also check raiders' relationships.

Jackalvin

You have... a questionable sense of justice my friend...
-Insert Witty Joke Here-

MemeVampire

I may have been a little incensed at the time, admittedly.