New Hope - A Rimworld Story

[Arkay_The_Arcane]

I'm... Not sure how to start this. My name is Axxel Anntis, but most people just call me Cyclops. Should be pretty obvious why, but if you can't guess, I'm missing an eye. I'm scribbling this down on the last papers I could find in what is left of New Hope, the colony I built from the ground up along with so many others... I guess I should tell how it started. I left my Glitterworld planet many years ago. I don't really remember why, probably a lust for adventure. I don't regret landing here. The last few years of my life, building this colony, finally doing something other than living in luxury... All of it worth it. I landed here about 12-ish years ago, along with Xinn and Bloody Mary. Well, that's what I called them atleast.

Xinn was a quiet guy. From what he told me, he came from a toxic planet, and lived underground his whole childhood before resurfacing and joining a Space Marine corps of a nearby system. He was our best gunman for the first few years. He died around 4 years ago. He was shot in the head by a raider while saving all of our asses. He survived it, but only barely. We kept him alive in a vegetative state for a season, hoping for trauma sauvant or something to bring him back, but... We decided it was best to let him die with what little dignity he had left after being spoonfed every meal for an entire season. We buried him in the middle of our greenhouse, his favorite place in the colony.

Mary was an interesting lass. She was 45 when we first landed, yet looked at most 22. She was beautiful, slender and elegant, with a single twist: She loved nothing more than murder. With melee weapons, preferably. I asked her why once, and she just responded with "Guns are too quick. You don't get to make them suffer, see the life drain from their eyes." A beautiful psychopath. She once took our a bear with nothing but a longsword, without getting so much as a scratch on her. Legends say she was genetically engineered to be a perfect assassin, but escaped the lab by murdering everyone in it, all 400+ people. Since then she roamed planet to planet looking for new contracts to murder. After all, if you're good at something, why do it for free? She died yesterday. I don't know of what, I found her body in what was once the rec room, her arm shot off and her head just... Mutilated beyond recognition. If it wasn't for the clothes she was wearing, and her favorite broadswoard lying next to her, I'd never have known it was her. I buried here where she once told me she'd want to be buried. "Amongst the corpses of the people I've killed." So that's what I did.

When we crashlanded, we didn't know what to do... It took us a few hours before deciding to settle inside a nearby mountain range. We built a long tunnel into the mountain, as well as some small rooms. For the first few days, we slept inside a nearby abandoned building, on the ground, and ate food on the ground. Like animals.
After a weeks, our colony was starting to become habitable. I had planted down some rice, a few potatoes, and harvested some berries. Xinn was hard at work with mining out our colony, while Mary guarded us from Raiders. The first attack wasn't long after we finished our kitchen. Three tribal raiders, probably scouts. We slaughtered them, and threw their corpses in a pile.

The fourth member of our colony, which we had named at this point, joined after about a season. She was a 16 year old girl who came in a droppod. Her name was Myrriam. She was wounded badly, and in shock when Xinn found her. We patched her up, but she got an infection in her leg some time later. We had to amputate, and quickly gave her a "replacement". She became our main researcher, and helped us in so many ways. From hydroponics to carpets, almost all we learned came from her research. She never told us her past, but rumours speculated that she was a slave. Ricky knows what happened to her before she came here. I found her dying in her room, bleeding out, covered in gunshots. I tried to help her, stop the bleeding but... It was too late... The noises someone makes when they're drowning in their own blood... It's unnatural. After a while it stops sounding human, and it's just an inhumane gorgling... She spat out the blood in her throat, and thanked me for everything before closing her eyes. I buried her outside, in the middle of a nearby field without a single shadow.

We had many other members since then that really aren't worth mentioning that much. Speedy, our farmer. Fast guy. He died six years back. Amika, cook. Nine years ago. Bundle, our doctor for a while before being killed by a manhunting pack of boars about seven years ago. And so many others I barely remember.

There's one that truly deserves to be mentioned, though. Cyber. Cyber, like Myrriam, survived a droppod crash. We called him Cyber because he was a game developer, as well as having a bionic leg. He was around 20-ish, and fell a year ago. Why is he worth mentioning? Because he saved my life. I was being chased down, but he jumped out of a corridor and beat the shit out of the attacker. He was stabbed in the meanwhile, though, and bled out not long after. This was about a day ago. Cyber saved my life, so I wanted to mention him here as a thank you back. It's not much of a thank you, I suppose. But it's all I can do.

I suppose I should write what happened? Well, it's complicated. Three days back we were sent a caravan of goods from a nearby outpost who we have a... Rocky relationship with. Well, had. It was the biggest caravan I've ever bloody seen, at the very least 10 muffalos, and around 30 people. Now here's the kicker... Right before they left, a pack of manhunting boomalopes attacked. It was the single most terrifying thing I've ever seen. The ground turned yellow from the sheer amount of boomalopes... As you can guess, the caravan stood no chance. We offered to let them in, but they decided to just run. The boomalopes were faster. There was a sea of boomalopes in front of our defenses, and then one of those STUPID caravaneers decided to shoot one of them. It was a chain reaction. Boom after boom after boom. Everything was destroyed. All the trees knocked over, the grass burned, and the land covered in corpses. The caravan? Dead. And guess who was blamed?

Yesterday it came. They sent in the raid. At the very least 50 men, armed to the teeth. We barely had time to fix our defenses, and our first few men were slaughtered. They ran through the mountain compound, burning everything they could, and killing all they could. I hid. I hid like a goddamn coward. I hid myself inside the goddamn fridge, hidden under a pile of raw insect meat. The smell... And that wasn't the worst. I just lay there, not moving a muscle as I heard my friends and colonists get slaughtered. Their screams filled the halls. There were children, and they weren't spared. I would have survived too, if it weren't for that one raider that went to the fridge... A young looking girl, with her brown hair in a pony tail, she looked nervous... I was scared. I was scared beyond imagination. I don't know why. I'd seen countless raids. I've been shot, stabbed, impaled, burned and more, and not once was I that scared. She looked at the pile of meat I was in... And took aim. I just sprung up and rushed her, grabbed her by the neck and just... Snapped. I kept slamming her head into the floor. She begged for mercy, but I didn't give any... I heard her, but I couldn't move. I couldn't control myself. I just kept ramming her head into the floor as she cried and tried to push me away...
And then it all came back to me. I just stopped. I froze in place. She got up and crawled into the corner of the room, grabbing her bleeding head. I didn't know what to do. I was in shock. I just stared at my blood covered hands as she sat in the corner, looking at me in fear, blood gulging from her head. I woke up from my trance. "I nearly killed a girl that couldn't be older than 16. But she nearly shot me. She's going to try again. I need to fini-..." My train of thought stopped as I looked her in the eye. I just... Couldn't. She was scared. She was as scared as I was. I moved up to her, and she flinched, covering her face. I just... Didn't say anything. Her brown hair was turning red, and I realized we were both shivering from the cold in the fridge. I noticed something else too... It was quiet. No more gunshots, no more screaming. The raid was over, and they had left.

I picked up the girl and rushed her to our hospital, lay her down on the last remaining bed, and looked for any medicine we could. I only found a single herbal. It would have to do. I patched up her badly wounded skull, and checked for a concussion. Somehow she had none. I sat down next to her, and just... Cried. Everything was hitting me in a snap. Years of work gone. All my friends, dead. Everything was gone.

I slept on the ground that night. Next to the girl. I don't know why I saved her, but I couldn't just let her die. When she woke up, she thanked me. I didn't deserve thanks. I was the reason she was near dead. I was the reason she was left behind. She didn't care. She was a slave to them, a slave they gave a gun she didn't know how to use. I freed her, according to her. She said her name was Cyprus. I told her mine. Together we walked through what was left of New Hope. It wasn't much. Bullet holes and burn marks covered the halls. The floor was covered in pools of red. Corpses littered the rooms. Both colonists and raiders.
We buried those we found together, both raiders she knew, and colonists. That brings us to now. I'm sitting at the dinner table, with some papers I found in the workshop room where we kept our research station. Cyprus is scavenging through what is left for anything useful. We're moving to Nova Garadon Republic, a friendly settlement north of here. I don't know wether to take this with me or not, so I'll ask Cyprus. I'm running out of paper, so I'll leave you with one last message:

Whoever you are, whatever your story is, know that you must always stay strong. I lost everything, but can't give up. Because New Hope lives on in me. My friends live on in me, in my memories. And until I die, they will survive. And the same is with you. Anyone you lost lives on in your memories, and only ceases once you do too.

Goodbye. -Cyclops

[kclace]

Great story! Can you tell us about the actual game play that inspired it?

[Arkay_The_Arcane]

Sure! It's actually inspired by a few different games with characters I collected from a few different playthroughs. I usually settle in a mountain base while keeping some ground outside for easier farming, hence the greenhouse Xinn was buried in.
I took Cyclops from a modded A16 playthrough of mine. He never died, but I had to abandon the colony because a couple mods never got updated and broke the game when it went A17.
Xinn was based on one of my first characters, actually. Back in A14, and he died just like described. Shot in the head, and later euthanized due to the brain damage being too severe.
Bloody Mary's name was made up completely, but her character was based on a real character of mine from my current playthrough, who didn't actually die.
Cyber is completely made up.
Myrriam was based on an old character who's actual name I forgot. She was actually one of the original crashlanders of that game.
Cyprus was also not really based on any characters, but I did get the idea of her backstory from a character out of rimworldcomics on tumblr. I forgot which character's, but I think it's Viper's.
The raid idea came after an a near-identical set of occurances in my current playthrough. We managed to improve our relationship with an outpost, they send a caravan, caravan gets attacked by a manhunting pack (although it was boars, not boomalopes) and they blame me for some reason. A while later they send in a raid, except I managed to kill them all with little casualties, as my defenses where in perfect condition.