Fan Favourite Alex White Returns With New Novel, Alien: Into Charybdis!

Started by Corporal Hicks, Feb 03, 2020, 03:53:38 PM

Author
Fan Favourite Alex White Returns With New Novel, Alien: Into Charybdis! (Read 96,605 times)

Gentleman Death

Quote from: HuDaFuK on Mar 30, 2021, 09:04:38 AM
Dunno, I'm a sucker for Dorian :) Guy was just such a c**t.

Yeah, he might just be one of my favorite characters out of the novels.

BlueMarsalis79

Quote from: Kimarhi on Mar 28, 2021, 03:14:28 AM
I've just read the book once so there is quite possibly a passage I skimmed over and didn't register, but I always got the impression that the
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first batch of Aliens arrived on the Darkstar and were brought there by Marsalis and that there never was an Alien presence on whatever the planet designation was beforehand.  Just the goo.  Then crazy woman sets the Aliens loose and they find away to reproduce Alien Isolation style (interesting that no queen is mentioned in Isolation, Cold Forge, or Charybdis yet it seems there are growing alien populations even without them)  I also always thought that those first Aliens were the rest of the crew on whatever station they tried to pull the plug on Marsalis.  HOWEVER, I'm not sure about that since Crazy woman falls into the goo and does not mutate into a drone.  So even though you have a common denominator in the goo being in both places, you get two totally different results Marsalis and what happened to Crazy Woman.  Too me it is kind of implied that the other drones were the initial lab crew because it seems Marsalis tries to go out of her way to avoid killing unless its necessary.  I'm guessing that some of the goo got some of the crewmates infected as well and they turned and followed Marsalis as being the most dominant praetorian/baby queen whatever you want to call her.  If they weren't goo infected crew members then maybe she does have queen functions and can't help herself and infected some refueling station people somewhere or something.
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Mfw reading this part:


Quote from: Trash Queen on Mar 25, 2021, 11:59:36 AM
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Am I totally crazy or did Blue not refer to them as their children?

Meaning this' the result of not just Plagiarus Preapotens that your standard Facehugger carries, but the variation that your Royal Facehugger carries, hence the other Aliens recognising Blue as an authority temporarily. (I presume until a Praetorian or Queen got brought into the equation.)

If so that means just like we see suggested elsewhere, under the right conditions the standard Facehugger's capable of turning it's standard Plagiarus Preapotens into Royal Plagiarus Preapotens or as dubbed by Blue Marsalis "the Queenscode" that right?
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But also:

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Thought it fairly clear that the stuff our main antagonist falls into's The Pathogen from Prometheus and Alien Covenant hence falling apart and birthing a Neomorph.

Whilst Plagiarus Preapotens' specifically the fluid the Egg and Facehugger carries within to create an Alien.

And it is that named substance Blue Marsalis manipulates into "the Queenscode" not as sophisticated a name but gets the point across.

And uses on themselves.

I imagine Blue tried to reproduce the effects one way or another, biologically compelled or otherwise, but ended up inevitably creating Drones.

They obeyed Blue until one of them inevitably Ovomorphed a victim or transformed into a Praetorian or Queen.
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Kimarhi

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I don't think there was a queen simply because such a monster would be hard for Duncan and Lee to miss as they rampaged through the hive.  My question wasn't how they were made as much when they were made.  They obviously came to the planet aboard the Darkstar, so the drones had to be egg spawed or goo spawned before the planetside instance.  It doesn't really effect the story, but it does show that Blue was up to something pre Charybdis.  Whether that was looking for other blacksites, accidently gooing people (a shootout in a laboratory never a good idea)  or maybe even escaping with some staff and then infecting them because she couldn't always not be an alien. 
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I thought the Preapotens was the black goo like harnessed to speed development through to a xenomorph?  Why would she be after it if not to use it to f**k around with her genetic coding?  Didn't david use the goo to kind of force develop the Aliens in Covenant?  And wasn't there a passage in the book where somebody tipped her off that Charybdis was a secret storage faciality of the black goo?  Wasnt it the black goo that actually turned her into the Alien?  I'll have to look at it all sometime tomorrow.  Its 11:48 pm and I got to get up at 0500 in the morning.  Part of my trouble is probably that I started Cold Forge like as soon as it came out, and then finished it like a day before Charybdis came out. In the however long time between them, I'm probably forgetting something obvious.
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426Buddy

426Buddy

#408
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No Blue was working with the substance that the facehugger puts in your chest, only she modified it enough to become what she became.

She brought some aliens with her,  but I assume she laid a ton of eggs before the Marines arrived maybe? I think there was a couple weeks between Noah's distress signal and their arrival.

She was looking for the black goo because she thought it would be easier to work with than David's twisted version.
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Kimarhi

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I thought that the facehugger stuff was just basically refined goo.  Like it was a finalized version that lead to the xenomorph series.  David used the goo to make the Aliens right, or do I need to watch Covenant again.  I guess I must have missed where facehugger jizz also has mutagenic properties on its own.
  Thought it had mutagenic properties because it was finalized black goo.
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426Buddy

Quote from: Kimarhi on Apr 01, 2021, 10:07:42 AM
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I thought that the facehugger stuff was just basically refined goo.  Like it was a finalized version that lead to the xenomorph series.  David used the goo to make the Aliens right, or do I need to watch Covenant again.  I guess I must have missed where facehugger jizz also has mutagenic properties on its own.
  Thought it had mutagenic properties because it was finalized black goo.
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The face hugger jizz is David's version of the goo, but it's been twisted and only creates aliens. Blue tried to change it but what she used on herself was the most she could manipulate it without access to the original pre-david black goo... I believe.
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BlueMarsalis79

Exactly yes.

Plagiarus Preapotens (or the powerful mimic) to use AVP Extinction terminology either goes Transbreed or Purebreed, the former giving you either a Drone/Runner/Warrior/Defender, the other giving you a Praetorian or Queen.

The Pathogen itself's more open to manipulation provided you can obstruct it performing it's function.

SpaceKase

SpaceKase

#412
Quote from: 426Buddy on Apr 01, 2021, 09:49:29 AM
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No Blue was working with the substance that the facehugger puts in your chest, only she modified it enough to become what she became.

She brought some aliens with her,  but I assume she laid a ton of eggs before the Marines arrived maybe? I think there was a couple weeks between Noah's distress signal and their arrival.

She was looking for the black goo because she thought it would be easier to work with than David's twisted version.
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The Midnighters were the tip of the spear in a three year long covert operation to reclaim the world of the Hassanova colony in a way that could be deemed legal by the international community. The arrival of Matsushita aboard the Benning was timed to coincide with the arrival of the Gardenia at the Hassanova colony. The Benning was waiting at a holding point just out of the system, at Sulaco speeds about 4 light years distant or so, and they were just waiting for the inevitable distress call from the American contractors, which they got two weeks later.

Once they received the anticipated call, the Benning arrived two days later to commence the operation under the guise of a hostage rescue situation, but with the intention to clear out and occupy the colony and the research facility in the ruins beneath for the UA in joint operation with corporate sponsorship from WY. 

There were a ton of eggs found in cryostasis aboard the Blackstar beside where Kamran was found after Blue dragged him over from the old Weyland lab. Their origins are uncertain, and I have to review some more myself, but I think it's implied that Father and Blue were flying around in the three years since the theft of the Blackstar attacking secret facilities Zula and Davis style, working from information found in Seegson/WY databanks. Blue was pillaging bio samples and specimens anywhere she could find them, altruistically to remove them from the playing field but also selfishly to further her own research. She and Father were lead to HCC by mysterious Thien who provided them with the Ginza file and its information about the massive Engineer site beneath the current colony. So potentially she could have laid some of the eggs herself, but she and Father had also been hunting them and stockpiling them along with the drones they picked up along the way.
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BlueMarsalis79

Thank you for the extensive breakdown.

SpaceKase

SpaceKase

#414
Quote from: Trash Queen on Apr 01, 2021, 04:48:24 PM
Thank you for the extensive breakdown.

Oh thank you, that's very sweet. I'm just an obsessive nerd, but what good people around these parts aren't?

Not too extensive, I'm still not sure who's the puppet master yet, but I think it's
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Thien, they provided the info to Haroun in mid July and they contacted Blue in March and lured her out to Hassanova. Given how fervent Haroun's cousin was about Thien's legitimacy, it made me wonder if they were a shadowy cult organization that Harouns cousin was a member of, but given that Mitchell told Matsushita that the CIA was about to make contact with Blue earlier in the year, I'm wondering if Thien was just the CIA's sockpuppet. But given the universe it could very well be both, there's a lot of culty weirdos out there obsessed with the Aliens.
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Engineer

Quote from: SpaceKase on Apr 01, 2021, 05:21:00 PM
Quote from: Trash Queen on Apr 01, 2021, 04:48:24 PM
Thank you for the extensive breakdown.

Oh thank you, that's very sweet. I'm just an obsessive nerd, but what good people around these parts aren't?

Not too extensive, I'm still not sure who's the puppet master yet, but I think it's
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Thein, they provided the info to Haroun in mid July and they contacted Blue and lured her out to Hassanova. Given how fervent Haroun's cousin was about Thein's legitimacy, it made me wonder if they were a shadowy cult organization that Harouns cousin was a member of, but given that Mitchell told Matsushita that the CIA was about to make contact with Blue earlier in the year, I'm wondering if Thein was just the CIA's sockpuppet. But given the universe it could very well be both, there's a lot of culty weirdos out there obsessed with the Aliens.
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The Esoteric Brotherhood of Tulitu compels you...

SpaceKase

Quote from: Engineer on Apr 01, 2021, 07:19:48 PM

The Esoteric Brotherhood of Tulitu compels you...

Praise be to Tulitu the great and mighty! Lord of the Great Void! Master of the Star-Ocean!

Engineer

Lol I love that little one-shot.

426Buddy

Thank you guys for clearing all this up! Lots of bits I must have missed.

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Still finding the events around the eggs a little murky though.
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SpaceKase

SpaceKase

#419
Quote from: 426Buddy on Apr 01, 2021, 07:53:13 PM
Thank you guys for clearing all this up! Lots of bits I must have missed.

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Still finding the events around the eggs a little murky though.
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I got the chance to check again and Duncan does say that she transferred the egg crates from the Blackstar to the bottom levels using the dropships and the crab robots. Doesn't answer all the questions but it answers some.
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Quote from: Engineer on Apr 01, 2021, 07:52:32 PM
Lol I love that little one-shot.

Right? Who needs color, it's the best.

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