Stripe's Story

After several long months travelling under the radar through the vastness of the Milky Way, after launching its way from the Empyrean Sea Beach on Gaia, over the Empyrean High Seas, passing the moon Skygem before leaving Gaia's orbit and wandering into the Sirius system, the Stjornhestr drifted silently at harrowing speeds, propelled by its seemingly magical solar-powered energy crystals which were stored like miniature wireless electroplasmic batteries, causing the fabric of timespace to distort and fold around the vessel while causing a field of heat lightning or purple ectoplasm resembling a feintly glowing spiderweb around the Viking-styled space ship, completely harmless to the touch, but magnificent to behold as the eyes of the horse-headed golden prow were lit up like gleaming headlights as the Stjornhestr hovered quietly and safely into Bastion IV's gravitational field.

Jarl Goffre Alvisson, the ship's Nordic captain and leader of the 500 personnel aboard the tiny stalion-shaped longship had successfully led the Empyrean Norsemen halfway across the galaxy, following the constellations on the star charts that were drawn many years ago by Gaian Norse explorers and skywatchers. After leaving Norma Arm and descending into the Outer Arm of the Milky Way, entering the Kos solar system and nearing Bastion IV, the Nordic Gaian astronauts gazed out at the marvelous blue-green planet below, staring down over the exosphere at a large disc-like continent surrounded by the bright blue ocean. Goffre Alvisson was not aware of it yet, but he was now looking at the entirety of Xamoyos, a place which looked strikingly similar to Ellaria, at least from the outer orbit of the planet. Goffre was reminded of the old stories his father Jarl Alvis used to tell him, about how Midgard was just a flat circular world surrounded by a ring of water. And while although Bastion IV certainly wasn't a flat planet, to the crew aboard the Stjornhestr, their perspective of the continent of Xamoyos was that it looked like a disc surrounded by water from the sky, and so Goffre Alvisson determined that perhaps the old stories were more metaphorical than literal, something which few of his predecessors had the mind to think for themselves.

As the longship neared Bastion IV's exosphere, it hovered silently in orbit around the planet for the first few days, undetectable by radar or satellite as the Stjornhestr did not have any radios or computer systems on board, and was much too small to be seen from other distant spacecraft, or from anyone on the planet's surface. The only hint of its quiet humble existence was the feint purple glow, and the gleaming reflection of the golden prow under the nearest moonlight or sun's rays. Otherwise the Viking longship just appeared as a small black silhouette floating before the curtain of the moon, its soundless form hovering silently in the darkness as it orbited the planet from above while Goffre's astrologers and mapmakers took the time to draw out their coordinates on paper, and make a sketch of Xamoyos while staring out of the large curved thick round gold-plated mirror windows.

Goffre Alvisson was staring out of the cockpit window of the Stjornhestr, a Norse space-faring longship known in the common tongue as the Star-horse, due to its speed and the enormous horse-bust golden prow at the front of the ship. It was a rather large ship by Viking standards, about the size of a giant Spanish galleon, though still very small in comparison to other contemporary spacecraft as it hovered above the exosphere of Bastion IV, for reasons unknown to anyone but the crew onboard.

"How is that map coming along?" the Jarl asked while looking down at the continent of Xamoyos from orbit.

"Ay, nearly finished my Lord," answered the mapmaker, who was standing on the command deck over a large round table, hand-drawing the continent and its surrounding oceans in great detail using a feather quill pen and a jar of black ink on parchment paper.

Suddenly, the spacial field around Bastion IV started to distort and bend as another ship emerged, seemingly from nowhere, flickering into existence about 1900 miles off the Stjornhestr's prow. Goffre would catch a glimpse of the flashing light as it appeared in his peripheral. The Jarl was not the only person in the cockpit to notice, as the pilot and his co-pilot turned to inform him.

"Anomaly, straight ahead," the pilot claimed, pointing to the feint bright dot in the distance.

Alvisson would turn and walk casually over to the cockpit window, peering at the Conflagration while trying to make out what it was. Goffre would extend his hand to the side as the co-pilot reached over and handed him a makeshift telescope, a simple crystal ball encased in a leather bound tube. Goffre would raise the telescope and peer once again at the object in the distance, which was now magnified under the looking glass.

"It's a ship... Not one of ours either," the Jarl said, handing the looking glass back to the co-pilot, who proceeded to glance through it as well before passing it off to the pilot.

The pilot of the Stjornhestr would stare long and hard at the Hastiti Class cruiser, taking note of its strange alien symbols and metallic design, something that none of the Empyrean Norsemen had ever seen before. Meanwhile, the jarl would signal for his bodyguards to follow him out of the control room and on to the bridge. The pilot of this particular shift was one Hanson Forstein, a seafaring captain of Nordic descent with Germanic roots. Forstein had never piloted a space-faring Viking longship before, and in fact, was the first of the Empyrean Norsemen to ever do so. He glanced back at the jarl for a brief moment, who ordered him to maintain their position as the Stjornhestr drifted slowly towards the Conflagration in space. The mapmaker also paused, but Goffre just patted him on the shoulder as he walked by and told him to keep working. Despite never having been this far from the Viking's home planet before, Goffre Alvisson seemed quite calm and relaxed as he and his bodyguards left the command deck.

Hanson Forstein glanced at his co-pilot before peering back through the looking glass. At that moment, he noticed something very strange about the alien cruiser in front of them. It appeared, to Forstein, that the cruiser was starting to tilt. The nose of the ship was leaning downwards towards the planet, and, seeing no lights or anything on the outside of the vessel, it looked to Forstein as if the cruiser had either been abandoned, or else the Conflagration's crew was experiencing some technical difficulties. He handed the telescope back to his co-pilot and pointed out the strange occurrence to him. The co-pilot agreed, and as the Stjornhestr came slowly to a halt, they decided to wait and see if the cruiser would keep heading towards them or if it would alter its course.

Forstein then turned to one of the karls on the command deck, and signalled for him to approach the gjallarhorn. The karl nodded and walked casually over to the large musical instrument, an enormous curved horn that was simply exaggerated in size and length, much bigger than the karl himself as he stood by, waiting for further instructions.