The Xmaspiration: Scrapbook

If you’re not familiar with The Aspiration, check out the supershort summary of this most epic of Neptune’s Pride diaries – The Aspiration Retold In Nine Pictures.

-85HH1HX7HC4MC- Virtue is Bond. On this most operationally lethargic of days, I/We present a selection of snapshots from The Aspiration’s campaign for galactic pacification in 2010. Click each screenshot for the full size. Be merrysome this Christmas Day. Together we Aspire.

Scrapbook - Day One — The Aspiration were virgin warriors. These opening diplomatic communications were fearful in themselves. Are these lies? Are these deceptions? Where is truth?

Scrapbook - Expansion Plans — I/We were early leaders in the campaign to secure galactic peace. But watch how My/Our doom is stencilled in these fleet movements. The trigger oozes into position. At Procyon, a Cold War with neighbour Facewizard will begin.

Scrapbook - Fog of War Paranoia — The fog of war creates such imagined terrors. Look below My/Our homespace: what terrors do you see in the dark when your eyes are shut?

Scrapbook - Confronting Veret — How mighty and bold The Aspiration looked when confronting the aggressor from the Rim. My/Our number and colour is more impressive than those of Veret, but I/We were marked for failure. The Virtuous Rapture demanded it.

Scrapbook - Patrols — Historians sing of action and event. But they do not sing of the maintenance of security, the grey pleasures of patrol and fleet distribution. The human heart circulates blood to despatch oxygen to where it is required. In this war game: fleets are blood, ships are oxygen.

Scrapbook - Pollux Falls — Despite a ignoble retreat from Facewizard space, The Aspiration seized the homeworld of the Crossheart empire. These troubling days still seemed full of potential, even as twilight drew across The Spiritual Domain.

Scrapbook - Home Sector Is Red — Ankaa recolours My/Our space. The Aspiration launches a valorous counterattack, but the writing is in the stars.

Scrapbook - Home Sector Goes Green Again — But taking the colour back gives hope to The Aspiration in its darkest hours.

Scrapbook - The Last Journey of Refugee North — All too soon, the stars revert to Ankaa's ownership. Even though a second rearguard closes in, rebellion fleet Refugee North is on its final flight en route to Phad.

Scrapbook - Recovery — With the aid of the Switchbreak Foundation and Starspackle of the North, it appears that The Spiritual Domain has been restored. But these are charred, dead worlds, patrolled by fleets on auto-pilot. I/We secured grave worlds, nothing more, nothing less.

Scrapbook - Celebration Preparation — The galaxy nears complete pacification. The Aspiration, now en route to Earth, orders My/Our auto-security rearguard to commence an interstellar acrobatic manuever. All fleets will convene at Achernar and then depart simultaneously, to form a starburst pattern. However, pacification occurs before the movement is complete and all fleets are marooned at Achernar.

Scrapbook - Tyrant's Remains — The horror of the Rim. The ancient tyrant. The Mad One of Ankaa. Only five ships remain within Veret's command. He is lost. He is pacified. He is ripe for ascension. But grimness: the campaigns for galactic pacification halt for peace before to the tyrant's inevitable nullification. And so: he still exists. I/We are unmoved.

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4 thoughts on “The Xmaspiration: Scrapbook”

BeamSplashX says:

December 27, 2011 at 04:35

O Pollux, the jewel in myne empyre’s crowne
Alack, alack says I!
For I ha
-the only surviving work from the beginnings of the Crossheart Empire’s cultural revolution

Merry Christmas, Joel.
HM says:

December 28, 2011 at 09:11

Merry Christmas, Sid. The overwhelming, server-breaking traffic for this experimental Christmas series has encouraged me not to try another Christmas project. Unless it’s full of annual top tens.
Gregg B says:

January 1, 2012 at 14:32

When I was looking at these pictures, I thought to myself how cool it might be to blow one up and have it printed as a canvas or piece of ‘wall art’. These are a lot more than mere screenshots now.
HM says:

January 1, 2012 at 21:26

Interesting idea. I’ll ask Mrs. HM to see what she thinks about putting up — ah, no.

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4 thoughts on “The Xmaspiration: Scrapbook”

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