[DangerousLines] Pirates of the Coal Sack

[lamythefirst]

[DangerousLines] On the menu:

 

[lamythefirst]

Artist's note:
"What to do with Mercedes Jordan.

I like the character, but Song snuck in and stole her main narrative role of being the non-Star Fleet-trained member of the command team, who had to have things explained to her. That left me with no clear idea of how to use her in the story. So I decided to do this story arc, to give her some focus and develop her and establish a new place in the universe for her. Obviously we’re not done with that–continued next issue–but that’s what was in my head writing this one.

I also took time to deal with a couple of our subplots, like the mystery of the twins’ origins and the budding romance between our two no-longer-most-junior officers. Personnel shuffling continues as new crew come aboard from Vritra III and Phoenix adapts to Jordan’s departure. And we see why it’s not wise to be locked in an airtight box with a tiger.

There are some subtile differences to the ship this time, as I continue rebuilding the sets and the model along with the on-camera refit. The biggest one you haven’t seen yet, but I’m curious if anyone can spot what has changed."


[DangerousLines] Pirates of the Coal Sack Chapter 18:

 

[lamythefirst]

[DangerousLines] Shore leave:

 

[lamythefirst]

Artist's note:
"Welcome back, Ms. Jordan.

I ended up spending a lot of time figuring out ground warfare in the setting before launching the invasion, a lot of it to answer the question, “Do tanks exist?” Having figured it out, Jordan was able to figure her plan out, and we’re off.

I think the scenes in the Atlasova tavern are some of the best I’ve done. It’s a great set from Daz 3D, but I had to rip out a lot of it to convert it from medieval to rustic futuristic, and somehow I got a lighting setup that I really like.

And people have been asking for a while about the Putti – here one is. Or at least, the avatar it presents. I wanted to show a Putti starship too, but it would have just been a gratuitous effects shot because I wanted to show the starship; it wouldn’t really have added anything to the story, and probably would’ve taken a week to set up. So I’ll save the halo ship for another time.

Once I had Jordan’s plan, the image of Athena and Merran sneaking through the dark snowy woods was stuck in my mind. Figuring out the winter uniforms occupied way too much of my time though.

And then the boats. For some reason, I felt compelled to build not one but two complete new boats instead of reusing the existing longboats. I do like them better, so Athena’s gig and the multi-role cutters will be a permanent part of Phoenix’s inventory, even though Butcher is going to have to sell off most of them due to lack of hangar space to park them."


[DangerousLines] Pirates of the Coal Sack Chapter 19:

 

[lamythefirst]

[DangerousLines] Big Booby Contest:

 

[lamythefirst]

Artist's note:
"And with that, we’re underway again. This issue is meant as a jumping on point for new readers, so the old salts will notice a lot of old concepts being reintroduced. Phoenix has been refitted and is now a little more comfortable for a majority human crew. We also have more than doubled the size of the crew, with recruits from Vritra III and the port making the crew large enough that they can get some sleep sometimes. But warm bodies may not be everything they need, as we see this issue.

Among the new faces (Singh, Padda, Madison, etc.), the sharp-eyed veterans will notice Sister Victoria has transfered to tactical. The cloaking system has been moved from engineering to tactical, and Chief Medes takes over Victoria’s old job as Rigger for the warp drive. The sisters in general are now wearing their cloister habits aboard ship; the void habits will still be seen when they join away parties.

This is also the first look at Phoenix’s redesigned bridge. Harding missed having a chair, and I found it difficult to maneuver the camera around for good shots on the old bridge, so the new one is a hybrid of Aenean and Terran design. It’s still missing the big screen forward, but has the Aenean-style holographic tank. I spent a lot of time thinking through this space; I was avoiding bridge scenes because of the difficulty of shooting on it, so expect to see more up there from now on.

And then there’s the crew assembly on the hangar deck. All 300+ crewmen are not shown, but I think it’s more than half of them. That one shot took a week to put together. I don’t expect we’ll see them all assembled like that again anytime soon, but I did want to convey the rough size of the crew; it’s easy to get tunnel vision and focus just on the ones we’ve met. As part of getting set up for this voyage, I drew up a muster list for the ship. I may share it if there’s interest."


[DangerousLines] Pirates of the Coal Sack Chapter 20:

 

[lamythefirst]

Artist's note:
"This turned out to be a much longer issue than I thought. (I’m sure everyone is outraged.) The action on board Kintampo turned out to be more involved than I realized. There were a few curve balls during production where one character or another revealed something to me that I didn’t know about them, so of course that had to be addressed.

We get our first glimpse of the Uruk, the Terran Federation’s primary astropolitical rival. The Uruk Clans are my analog of the Klingon Empire, but the Uruk are not the honorable samurai-inspired Klingons Star Trek fans have known since TNG. They have a deserved reputation for cunning and brutality.

I enjoyed having the crew confront just what piracy is. In almost all “pirate” media, pirates prey only on other pirates, or they’re really privateers raiding in service of their country. The fact that their livelihood is basically mugging people at sea or in space is glossed over. Many of the Phoenix crew initially had this romanticized view of piracy; how they deal with confronting the ugly reality will be an ongoing point."


[DangerousLines] Pirates of the Coal Sack Chapter 21:

 

[lamythefirst]

[DangerousLines] Together:

 

[lamythefirst]

Artist's note:
"Had a rough time getting this one done with holidays and some personal issues, but here we are. May continue to be a little rough next issue, which will be annoying because this is a two-parter.

Morrighan’s storyline moves into a new phase. We haven’t heard the last of Goodbody, but Morrighan and the Captain are now in a new place, where she’ll be taking on more responsibility.

I don’t feel like the engineering department has gotten much camera time; I’m trying to change that. We’re getting to know Galens’ faults this issue; her arc continues next issue. I’d hoped to get more exposure for Mother Lovelace, but she kept slipping out of focus and there are only so many pages I can do."


[DangerousLines] Pirates of the Coal Sack Chapter 22:

 

[lamythefirst]

[DangerousLines] Bimbo bar break:

Just a bimbo at a bar. Sometimes my mind wanders, you know?

 

[lamythefirst]

Artist's note:
"This one was hard to write. In Star Trek tradition, I tried to tackle some serious themes. Hopefully I didn’t sacrifice the fun in the process.

Galens embodies the upper class of Terran society for us: elitist, racist, human-supremacist and complacent. How often in fiction have you seen a character like that confront their prejudice, realize they're wrong, and try to overcome it?

I couldn't think of a single one.

I believe prejudice is an error. We can learn not to make the misjudgment. Galens is trying to break a lifetime of conditioning and learn to be better. It will be a struggle for her, as it would be for anyone to reject something their whole society says is true and that is a large part of their identity. But I think people should be applauded for trying, while not being excused for their failures.

When our fiction tells us that no one can overcome their own prejudice, we excuse it. There’s no reason to “do the work” if you can never make progress, let alone complete “the work.” I think that needs to change; this is my little contribution.

The other story of division here... well, if you can’t tell what I’m talking about with red and blue going at each other for no good reason, then odds are you’re not aware of what’s going on in America these days. Every reason the departments had for fighting with each other was rooted in something real–different priorities or objective shortcomings–but how they expressed that conflict was toxic.

Everybody’s wrong sometimes. When we work through those differences we arrive in a better place. Shouting and fighting isn’t helpful.

Harding’s speech and the orgy that follows were also surprisingly difficult. It turns out ordering people to fuck just doesn’t sound right coming out of his mouth. Fortunately, the bosun stepped in to bail me out. I actually had to do the whole orgy scene twice; the first attempt came off too much as a montage. It’s still not as dynamic as I’d like, but at some point, you have to give up and ship it."


[DangerousLines] Pirates of the Coal Sack Chapter 23:

 

[lamythefirst]

Artist's note:
"Fifty-one pages and twenty-four issues. A new record. I had no idea this issue was going to go this long when I started it, but it seemed like every page in the second half turned into three or four. The pacing still seems good to me; hopefully it does to you as well.

Star Trek fans may recognize Elas and Troyius from the TOS episode “Elaan of Troyius.” It’s one of the episodes that convinced me I could do a 3DX series in the Trek universe, and yet there’s less sex in this issue than in almost any other. But the cultural impact of Elasian biology was something I couldn’t stop thinking about. So much of human history is about competition for mates by men; what if that competition took a different form? I kind of wish I could go back to first causes and re-work Elasian culture, but I’d dropped references to the one in “Elaan of Troyius” already, so I had to keep the form reasonably close to that.

I did re-work the technology shown by the Elasians in TOS; science fiction in the 60s wasn’t really comfortable with bullets and spaceships in the same tech level. As I fleshed it out in my head, both the Troyians and Elasians have atomic-powered spaceships (Orion-style nuclear pulse drives or similar), and ended up in a war over the dilithium-rich Tellun belt between the two worlds. The Terran Federation stepped in and conquered both before they could escalate to nuclear bombardment of each others’ home worlds.

This issue surfaces a lot of my thinking about how the Terrans occupy worlds. Gunboats are “littoral” craft, not really intended to operate outside a planetary system. They need warp drive to effectively engage intruders, but speeds in a system are limited so they don’t have to be as fast as a heavy unit. At least one gunboat squadron will garrison every system. The Legion ground forces aren’t numerous enough to actually be an army of occupation; it’s not practical for tens of millions of soldiers and their equipment to be shipped to Elas, let alone supplied from Earth. If an insurrection really takes hold, at some point the Legion will have to evacuate and let Star Fleet take care of it. (This creates the interesting protocol situation where a Star Fleet commander, OF-3 or OF-4, reports directly to a Legion Legate, an OF-9 or OF-10.) I may do a post just on the strategy of occupation if there’s interest.

The cave lighting was challenging. I had to keep it dark enough for it to seem, well, dark, without making the whole thing unreadable. I cheated in a few panels where expressions were really important, but hopefully it works for you.

Serjant-Chef London’s firing range was a few miles from the Ekeos Palace. The combadges have a subspace radio with enough range to cover the whole system, but subspace transmissions would draw the Legion’s attention. There’s a backup wireless datalink, but it was out of range of the palace. That’s why Aeysha says they can’t use comms and have to drive back."


[DangerousLines] Pirates of the Coal Sack Chapter 24:

 

[lamythefirst]

Artist's note:
"This is shorter than last issue’s epic. In a lot of respects it’s an epilog to last that story; if you haven’t read that one, I recommend you go read it first.

I knew planning out the series that we needed a breather here, but until I did #24 I didn’t know what it would be. It seemed like being made to love for the first time, and then immediately loving his love, should have some lasting impact on Harding, and it gave me a chance to explore his history and relationships. There’s some dark stuff here. Harding is not a nice person, and he has a broken moral compass. But he is trying.

I also felt like it was time to learn some about Harding’s background, and this gave us a window to do that. A few trivial clarifications: The Uruk War was fought 2241-2245, and is sometimes known as the Four Years War. He attended Dartmouth in England, known today as the Britannia Royal Naval College. The Prophet’s War, again against the Uruk, was fought 2256-2257.

The battles of Salamis and Masada are critical battles in Athena’s Greek Jewish heritage. Salamis was a decisive victory by the Athenian fleet against the second Persian invasion that led to Athenian domination of the Delian League. Masada has become a symbol of Jewish identity, a long siege in which less than a thousand Jews held out against four to ten times their number of Romans. Both are can be framed fights for liberty against tyranny.

Trek fans will recognize Alpha Eridani II from the episode “The Cloud Minders.” Fans of other genre fiction may recognize the dark figure in Mother Lovelace’s vision; I’ll be curious what your interpretations are.

This is the first time our verse isn’t from a sea song; it’s “Crossing the Bar” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson–a favorite of the captain's."


[DangerousLines] Pirates of the Coal Sack Chapter 25:

 

[lamythefirst]

Artist's note:
"This is something I’ve been building to in my head for over a year — Phoenix goes to Earth. I hope I manage to convey the hopeless trap that is this universe’s home of humanity, and the system that keeps it that way.

In setting up the number of ships in the Sol system, I did a ridiculous amount of economic modeling to figure out how many ships are in Star Fleet, and how many of them would plausibly be assigned to Earth. That’ll drive further numbers next issue. Sometimes I really let myself get sucked down a rabbit hole. The Federation has a GDP of around $29 quadrillion in 2023 dollars and a population of 185.5 billion, if anyone cares. It’s not cost-effective to ship ordinary grain and wood, but luxury foods, refined metals, and meat make up the less valuable cargoes. Of course, that's probably not what Phoenix wants in a cargo; they’re after the high-value stuff. Anyway, that let me back into the size of the merchant fleet, and from there into the size of Star Fleet.

The topic of ship’s time came up in a side discussion, and I guess I’ve never made it clear what it is and why we use it. Starships do experience some relativistic time dilation; they accelerate to about three quarters light speed before entering warp drive, and carry that time dilation with them until they drop out. That means time in warp passes at about two thirds of the rate it does outside. Ship’s time counts the subjective time experienced on a ship during a voyage; this voyage officially began at 0800 UTC January 2, 2290, when Harding ordered the ensign hoisted in Vritra (in #20). At the start of this issue, that was 37 days, 13 hours earlier (37/13:00)."


[DangerousLines] Pirates of the Coal Sack Chapter 26:

 

[lamythefirst]

Artist's note:
"Whoo boy! That one got away from me. In retrospect I should’ve structured this as two issues, but instead it’s another mammoth.

I didn’t get to show as much of Porto Alegre as I wanted; there simply wasn’t anything for the landing party to do in the city. The cover gives a little taste of how I visualized it.

The crew hasn’t been in cloak this long without a break since they discovered the impact it has on them. Cummings’ problems aren’t the only ones on the ship, just the only ones we got to see – besides Jordan and Darling and the captain. The new chums now know why staying in cloak all the time is a bad idea.

Pay close attention to the timestamps in the second half of the story. (Phoenix time is UTC +5; Porto Alegre is UTC -3). I did a lot of work on the battle going on in the background, and that timing drove when things had to happen, in particular when the planetary shields went up and when the ships in orbit moved out to intercept the incoming enemy fleet. The fight’s not over yet, but I spelled out what’s happening more clearly in the Lore article on the Battle of Earth. For the real lore-junkies there, there’s about a hundred and fifty ships identified.

I hope all of the landing party got to show their stuff. Butcher’s was easy to miss, since the whole point is that his victims don’t realize he’s convincing them to make poor decisions, and Leigh was basically there in case things went wrong. From the crew’s viewpoint, ideally it would’ve been Leigh with Morrighan when Morrighan got stunned, but Bowlin came through. There’ll be some consequences of that for her.

There are more than a few Easter eggs among the Sisters’ artifacts. Don’t take them any more literally than you would quotes from Buckaroo Banzai on signage aboard the Enterprise-D. But then again…"


[DangerousLines] Pirates of the Coal Sack Chapter 27:

 

[lamythefirst]

[DangerousLines] Happy New Year!:

 

[Deleted member 170]

 

[Buttercake]

One of the best sci-fi stories ever written. Thanks lamy, my friend, for sharing with us.

 

[lamythefirst]

One of the best sci-fi stories ever written. Thanks lamy, my friend, for sharing with us.

You're very welcome, my friend.

 

[QueenofHearts]

One of the best sci-fi stories ever written. Thanks lamy, my friend, for sharing with us.

You are absolutely right, my big friend.