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Planet Designation: Agrestic Status: Terrestrial, Q-class. Non-sentient life: Extensive agricultural flora and livestock. Natural habitats have been entirely eliminated Semi-Sentient Life: None. Sentient Life: Population 18 billion. Variety of races due to history of heavy immigration from neighboring universes. Dominant race Kanil, although representatives claim no species-based discrimination exists on planet. Water: 80% of the planet's surface. Climate: Varied. Current location is warm and moderately humid, average temperature 60 degrees Farenheit. Regular rain seasons. Landscape: Mountains, plains and oceans. No deserts. All terrain has been terraformed for maximum productivity. Air: Type I (breathable) Sky: Red. Warnings: Daligig not permitted within Agrestican territory. Mission: Shore leave and refueling.

As Stacy's shuttles bring the crew down, they're treated to the sights of massive mountains to dwarf even the mightiest Earth mountain range and golden, green and purple grain fields that take up more space than some entire civilizations have managed to colonize. The shuttles finally settle at the primary port city, Rura, which is ideally situated near and equidistant to a sprawling ocean, the base of a mountain range and a swath of farmland.

The people of Agrestic, including humans, Helians, Kanil, and plenty of other races, are for the most part hard at work and rushing from place to place. Very few pay much attention to Stacy's shuttles, as travelers stopping at this city and incredibly commonplace. Those that aren't working are relaxing, unencumbered by technological gadgets - while the technology here is very advanced, it seems primarily used to aid workers in their duties, and not for leisure. Fresh produce brought into the market is scanned by tiny mechanical beetles that inspect each piece for defects, but the children are more likely to be playing with sticks and rocks than anything else.

The crew exits the shuttles to find themselves at a large air-port like building, which opens up to a farmer's market and a strip of restaurants. As they exit the shuttles, some of the human port workers apologize for any inconvenience.

"We're sorry you couldn't bring the whole ship down, but the Truce specifically forbids Daligig to enter our airspace. You're lucky we managed to get clearance for shuttles of Daligig make to come in!" they say, before rushing off to help the next arrivals.

To return to the ship, a crew member may enter a shuttle and the autopilot will zip them back up to Stacy's underbelly. The crew may make as many trips back and forth as they like.

[OOC: This post itself will be for interactions with NPCs. Please do not set up subthreads in this post unless you are an NPCer. If you would like to create a new location on Agrestic, or do an open/closed log on the shore leave, please set up your own log. This will make it easier for our NPCers to know where they're needed.]

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"Not really. The GIA used to be a unified front, but due to some of the participants' more...unsavory opinions, we've seen become more of a network working individually, with alliances forming between us."

The spider pokes at Atom's face and then settles in the crook between his neck and shoulder.

"Anyway, that's Marion. She's from the planet Noxvie. They're one of our foremost partners in the war and helped draft the Truce that protects us from being the Daligig's canaries into the mine. You can have her, if you like. As a souvenir and companion."

"Hey, careful!" Atom laughed as the spider poked at him, giving her a little pat. Then he looked up at Sunflora.

"They helped you draft a truce? Really?" He looked at Marion with a considerably greater amount of respect than before. "Are you sure it's okay to let me keep her? I mean, she's your friend, right? I wouldn't want to take her away from you..."

Then he frowned a little, going back to something she'd said. "Wait a second -- what do you mean, 'canaries in the mine'? So they're trying to use you?" That didn't sound like the Daligig were allies at all.

"Oh, not the spiders, the Nox helped us. But the spiders helped us with the ink." Sunny looks over the receipt to make sure everything's in order. "I have a family of spiders at home. I suppose you could say I'm sort of a collector, since I sign up to have a new one issued every time quarterly inventory comes around. I can't bear the thought of them sitting all lonely in a box somewhere. Go on, take her. She likes you."

Sunny pauses a moment and furrows her face as she tries to think of what that idiom translates to. Sometimes her translator goofs up when trying to pick up phrases from other worlds, but it seems like Atom got the gist of her sentiment. "The Daligig use everyone in their war. They don't believe anyone else is a developed enough race to even have a concept of consent. Most of us would help them to fight the Ohm if the Daligig were honest about their intentions, but instead they manipulate us into dying for them."

Atom smiled. "Okay, then. I will. And I'll take good care of her! Um, does she need any special energy type? Otherwise I can give her some of mine..."

As Sunny described the Daligig's stance on other species, Atom's face grew more solemn. "Well, what makes them so advanced, then? I mean, you're supposed to be friends, right? That's not how you treat your friends."

He looked down at his feet, scuffing at it a little with one shoe. "I'm traveling around on that big ship up in orbit; we're supposed to be working with them, too. Except they don't tell us anything about what we're supposed to be doing. I heard they even did experiments on some of us... sometimes worse."

"She's programmed to work with most means of getting electricity. Plugged in, friction, even just absorbing static from the air." The physics there totally makes sense. Totally.

"They were the first to achieve multiversal travel by a large margin. And admittedly...most of the technology in this quadrant of the multiverse is derived from their designs." Sunny sounds as if it pains her to admit this. "We're supposed to be allies, but even with that title the Daligig treat us as cannon fodder when they don't want to get their hands dirty."

Sunny looks downright sad at that. "We would never hold that against you, sir. The bit I mentioned about consent? They don't say please before they kidnap innocents from their homes."

"Really? Wow, neat!" Atom's face lit up, just like that. "Where I came from, robots needed specialized fuel cells. Most of them, anyway." He gave Marion an affectionate pat.

He frowned a little. "Really? So they just... gave out all this information for free? Wonder how they got all that high-tech so fast..."

But that was kind of beside the point. He shook his head, a little flustered. "Oh, you don't have to call me sir or anything! Just Atom is fine. Um... do you know someone who was kidnapped by the Daligig? I thought it was just us..."

"What planet is that, then?"

She shakes her head. "Oh, no, not for free. They gave it to us so they'd have something to hold over us later, as a way to make us indebted. And so we would never forget how superior they were."

She smiles. "I'm Sunflora. A pleasure to meet you, Atom. And the Daligig have at least a few other ships that we know of, although yours is the first Transmigration vessel we've seen in a while."

He grinned. "Earth! It's really nice, although I guess it's not around any more. My version of it, anyway. Nice to meet you too, Miss Sunflora."

"Yeah, I heard there were a couple of them. Well, I mean, there have to be at least nine, including us." He furrowed his brow a little in thought. "So now they're acting like you owe them? Is that why they're not allowed here? And, uh... does that mean you've seen other Transmigrations show up here?"

"That's lovely." Sunny takes 'Earth' with a grain of salt. Nearly everyone says they're from 'Earth'. She assumes it's some glitch in her translator. "They aren't allowed here because that was the only way we could conclusively communicate to them that we didn't want any part of their war, and because their antics cost our people countless losses. We wouldn't even be in this war if they hadn't brought the Ohm to this part of the multiverse."

She thinks on that. "A few times before, but it was before I worked here. I could pull up some data on what they purchased here, but unfortunately that's protected by customer privacy."

"Wait, they brought the Ohm here? I thought the Ohm just showed up on their own. That's what they told us, anyway, that they were just going around destroying stuff for no reason."

He looked a little embarrassed. "Oh, well... I don't want to get you in trouble or anything. But is there anybody I could talk to who might know, maybe? Someone who's been around for a while?"

"The Ohm were never a problem of ours until the Daligig told us they were a problem. Then they forbid us to try and communicate with them and sent us on suicide missions for planets they'd determined important, for no reason they'd share with us. So yes, we think they brought them on us. They come from the same section of the multiverse, anyway."

Sunny shakes her head. "Not that I know of, no. The records on each ship are sealed. You'd be better off talking to someone who isn't bound by a contract to stay quiet."

Well, this was all news to Atom, though he could see why the Daligig had never bothered to mention it to them. "Really? What did the Ohm do before all this? Just keep to themselves?"

He frowned a little. "Well, I can understand not wanting to get involved with the Ohm, but... don't they attack planets with lots of people on them? That's why we've been helping out, you know -- even if we don't really get along with the Daligig, there are still a bunch of people who'd get hurt if we didn't do anything. And I wouldn't want the same thing to happen to those people as happened to my own world..."

"We have no idea. They were a non-entity before."

Sunny shakes her head. "There's a difference between fighting your foes to defend your planet and being sent to die on impossible missions. The Daligig used us for the latter. And while the Ohm are a destructive force, we are not a warrior planet and it isn't our responsibility to abandon our obligation on the homefront to die for people we don't know. That's another problem with the Daligig - they think having the sparkliest toys gives them the ability to draft people, rather than fighting with their own people."

Atom frowned. "What do you mean by suicide missions? Like Lirath? Battles on different planets, to fight off the Ohm?"

"Yes, we heard reports of what happened on Lirath. The Daligig refusing to fight and use their supersoldiers while letting their draftees incur losses." She pauses. "That wasn't your Transmigration at Lirath, was it?"

"...Yeah, actually, it was. We lost someone in that fight, and people got hurt, but the GIA got off worse than we did."

Atom looked down on the ground, as if focusing on something in the dirt. "After that was when a bunch of the Daligig showed up on the ship with their Kessek friends. They said they were here to help us, but then they beat up one of the ladies on board because she was resisting."

"This sounds like how the Daligig treat all their allies. Doesn't it seem odd to you that they only use their Kessek to enforce their laws, rather than to fight our mutual enemies?"

Atom looked troubled. "I guess I haven't been awake long enough to know about that. I mean, supposedly, one of the Kessek on board fought an Ohm fire worm. I thought all the other Kessek did, too. If that's an exception, and all the Kessek usually do is enforce laws... then I don't get it. They're more than strong enough to do that without a bunch of them all in the same place."

"The Kessek could win this entire war for us if they engaged as often as we did. The Daligig just don't want to risk losing them and they get special favor for being..." Sunny's translator glitches as it finds the idiom, "asskissers."

It's possible she's wrong about the Kessek's abilities, but it is true that they don't fight half the battles they could.

"I guess it'd make sense for the Daligig to want to protect themselves," said Atom. "But what about the Kessek? I mean, what do they get out of going along with the Daligig?"

"We don't know. The Daligig probably genetically modify them, like they do to themselves. Cheater's way out of learning to live with what you're born with."

"So they weren't born with all that... psychic shielding?" Atom wasn't even sure that that was even the right word; the idea of psychic powers was still a new one to him.

This was becoming more and more suspicious. What were the Daligig hiding? What was their purpose for genetically engineering themselves?

"Probably not. We know they've changed a good deal since even the Truce, and that wasn't long ago. I don't think any race is naturally born with psychic shielding."

He frowned a little, thinking. "Okay, so they genetically engineer themselves. Do you know what they used to look like? Or what they used to be?"

"No, we don't. But we think they engineered the races around them, too. The Ghyyl and Kessek and the like."

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