“War. War never changes.” Which is why in order to beat it, you have to change instead.
Terraforming? Doesn’t work.
Well, it does. It just doesn’t work at any speed that’s meaningful to any civilization. Even the quickest terraforming techniques take centuries to transform dead worlds into only moderately livable ones. (There was this one set of experiments with the Speed Force in the mid-2600s – but that’s a whole other story…)
Think about that for a second. Hundreds of years. Most humanoid civilizations don’t have the lifespan necessary to consider terraforming on any serious emotional or mental level. Think about how hard it is to get global warming policies enacted right now, when we pretty much know that we’re fucked as a species if we don’t get on the horn immediately. Now let’s extend the scope of action even further. That’s terraforming. It’s hard for a government to initiate a series of actions that have the potential to outlast the lifespan of the government itself.
So terraforming barely ever happens. Alien civilizations guard their lush systems with near-paranoia because the perception is that that’s all there is – and as perceptions go, it’s mostly not wrong. Dead worlds serve as mining camps and little else, because everybody learns soon enough that there’s no point in stripping your own world’s metals when there are perfectly good asteroids nearby.
But of course there are outliers. Fringers ekeing out an existence on rimworlds barely capable of sustaining life. The United Planets, the Khund, what used to be the Dominion, and every other small stellar empire occasionally send out a tax collector, but really, who cares? They show up every so often, sell some raw minerals, buy some food – it’s money into the economy and who cares about them otherwise, right?
But there’s one system, smack dab between the Khund and the United Planets – the two giant gorillas of interstellar politics. Four planets, all barely inhabitable, all desert worlds with fringertowns and rimvilles. They’re called the Sandworlds, when anybody bothers to wonder what their name is. Nobody lays claim to it; the locals trade with both the Khund and the UP. And that’s pretty much it.
Until a routine UP surveyor ship, using the system as a stop point to recharge jump engines, notices that one of the worlds is suddenly a lush jungle paradise. And Khund intelligence finds out soon after. And then suddenly the issue of claim is very important indeed.
Nobody quite knows how that desert world became a rich life-bearing planet. (Even if the world was transformed into fertile soil, where did all the plants come from?) But it doesn’t matter, because this is the Holy Grail of interstellar colonization. (How much energy does it take to do this thing, anyway? Where do you even begin to get it?) And the fleets mobilize, and move into the Sandworlds system, because you can’t let anybody else have this technology if they won’t share it.
And that’s why Timber Wolf in particular is positive that somebody’s running a giant scam. Somebody wants the Khund to go to war with the United Planets. He doesn’t know why – but he knows this stinks. And what’s more, the United Planets government won’t let the Legion investigate, because they want that technology for the UP so badly they can taste it and no way some bunch of punk kids are going to ruin this – so the Legion gets drafted into the UP military.
This isn’t a story about battles and war – like we said, war never changes, and it’s always the same story with different trappings. This is a story about spying. Because, more than most superhero teams, the Legion has a proud tradition of being willing to out-sneak the bad guys just as often as they out-fight them. This is a story where Mon-El and Ultra Boy are the distraction to let Invisible Kid and Chameleon do the real work.
In short – this is a story about the Legion Espionage Squad.
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Meh, it’s all just protomatter anyway, so who cares?
I love these pitches, MGK. I most sincerely do.
Shiny.
Man. Looking forward to #50. Will that be a special double-sized reason, or just have a special guest-star?
I read through these and part of me wonders whether MGK would be better off writing short-stories about the Legion. I mean, we love comics and visually seeing space nomad gorillas would be awesome, but stories like this… I wonder if MGK would have more scope with just text.
Reason #50 Why I Should Write “Legion of Super Heroes”
SPECIAL FLAPJACKS EDITION
Um, given reason 46 (Time Travel), time scale can’t be a reason why terraforming couldn’t work. Pick your favorite candidate world, send somebody back 500 years in time, and start terraforming it then so you can use it now.
(OK, there’s likely other issues, like “messing with the time stream is bad” and “somebody actually has to be there for 500 years” and “it takes a lot of energy and resources and people to do that.” But just time scale isn’t enough.)
You do realize that this is, in effect, a war for Project Genesis.
You also have the opportunity to find alliance groups within the Khund who must have had similar thoughts as Timberwolf and are also working behind the scenes to extract the truth behind this before their respective governments invest too many resources in a pointless war, especially if there are far greater wars they could be fighting.
I’ve gotta say, this is the most interesting “you should write the Legion” post so far.
Dude you are talking Macro.
Aquaman does it MICRO:
http://fullbodytransplant.wordpress.com/2009/02/04/look-inside-batman-and-what-do-you-see-pony/
The smaller, the better.
The end of the sandworlds occurred pretty much as we had predicted- too many humanoids, not enough space or resources to go around. The details are trivial and pointless; the reasons, as always, purely human ones.
For those wondering about Reason 50, remember, Rex the Wonder Dog is immortal…
Hey Robo did just that in Chrono Trigger during one of the side-quests.
That could be your “answer” as it were. You’ve got barren, uninhabited worlds that have been left virtually untouched for hundreds – maybe thousands – of years. So some mastermind sends a bunch of robots back in time to terraform the whole place 500 years earlier. Then he uses magical/technological mumbo-jumbo to keep his paradise hidden until its ready for release.
The motivations for all this are uncountable. Maybe its one big trap to lure the two empires into a fight. Maybe its more devious – a plan to lure colonists onto the planet and infect them with some biological version of the Anti-Life Equation. Maybe the whole damn thing is an elaborate illusion (although it would have to be pretty damn fancy to trick the millions of prospective new residents) or maybe the planet was previously under an illusion that some sinister villain broke in his attempt to take the planet for himself.
I mean, to a certain degree, I imagine there’s a limit to the kind of scam you can run on an entire empire, much less two. There’s got to be some there there, or you’re trying to claim billions of people are willing to go into galactic war over what basically amounts to Fool’s Gold.
So either the planet is one of the most elaborate illusions ever seen, the empires are composed of the most gullible slobs in a dozen generations, or both sides are so primed to pick a fight with each other that even the notion that such a planet might exist is enough to set people off shooting at each other.
That, or someone really did pull an inhabitable planet out of a hat. Maybe with disastrous consequences, but still…
There are usable elements here. The notion of drafting the Legion into the military is not one of them. It diminishes the Legion’s agency instead of enhancing it. This is a story where the Espionage Squad should be having to work around the UP as well as under the noses of the Khunds.
In addition, the notion of the UP not wanting the Legion to get involved works best, I think, if the UP officials involved are ultimately shown to be wrong, and to be a clear aberration from UP policy. (I prefer the near-utopia version of the UP.)
Given the suck of the reboot Legion’s membership draft, I’m willing to entertain the larger idea that the word “draft” should only ever appear in the LSH in an antagonist context. See also ME-Lad’s resignation.
Also, the UP is a civilization where the richest man in the universe got his fortune started by inventing a process to create suns. The energy cost and timescale of terraforming should not be an issue.
Exactly so, Greg.
UP: “We need the Legion to fight the Khunds! Mon-El, Ultra Boy, everybody with big fighty powers, get over here right now! You dorks with invisibility and shrinking powers… go make brunch or something.”
Invisible Kid: “Yeah, we’ll get right on that.” And then the Espionage Squad saves the day.
1.) Technology levels are what they are, not what previous editions of Legion history say they were. I’d limit time travel (or make it more difficult, anyway) a lot more than previous editions, for a start.
2.) Suns are essentially just very-large-scale fusion reactors; once you have the raw materials in place and the knowledge of how to kickstart it, they’re pretty easy. But there’s no way to make, say, lichen evolve faster without manipulating time itself. That’s the energy cost.
“But there’s no way to make, say, lichen evolve faster without manipulating time itself. That’s the energy cost.”
I think I might not be following along properly, but that’s the establishment of an ecosystem, not necessarily making a planet livable. Surely there’s a way to impose a breathable atmosphere externally (orbital platforms, maybe?) and generate consumable biomass locally without establishing a entire home-grown ecological chain out of whole cloth (I admit I don’t know enough about Legion-era technology to give any examples, these entries have inspired me to collect a lot of back-issues but I haven’t gotten around to reading them yet).
A few pre-fab dwelling cities could surely sustain a million or two for the time it takes to get those lichen effecting the environment. Now if this is economically or politically viable is another matter (I expect not, for most of the reasons you’ve claimed), but it seems given what can happen in the DCU today the energy cost wouldn’t break an empire.
Of course, I expect the sudden emergence of jungle on a desert world is due to sandtrout. Damnable sandtrout.
Hmm….
I see….
So the planet wasn’t terraformed, it was just colonized by plant aliens.
They’re probably gonna be mighty pissed when people keep invading them.
I’d change the name of the worlds. “Sand” says “Dune” to too many people.
And perhaps there’s some horrible beings on this planet. It was designed as a prison for them, but if they get out…..
Or it’s Mogo.
I read the title as “sandworms” and read the thing about “new wars” involving “new resources” and assumed it was a massive Dune ripoff.
Hmm… I like this. It’s the kind of story that is tailor-made for a group that favours stealth over might, and which would have the kind of political ramifications that few superhero comics ever really get into (and with good reason).
My only problem is that the story should feature the entire LES doing its thing. Your scenario posits that Ultra Boy is off on the front lines. This is a perfectly valid thing to do, since Jo is quite powerful– but he’s also the Legion’s Han Solo, so I would hope that there’s some front-line stuff going on that only he can uncover.
So I read the above, went to work, and fleshed out the next essential element. It turns out that after all this time, Matter Eater Lad and the people of Bismol have been terraforming the planet by depositing their waste product on the sand world. Matter Eater Lad goes public with this news thus creating shock and disbelief, which furthers the Espionage Squad’s effectiveness, giving them more time to find the true cause or even enabling them to escape capture. I call it the “Keith Giffen Macguffin”
“Terraforming? Doesn’t work.
Well, it does. It just doesn’t work at any speed that’s meaningful to any civilization. Even the quickest terraforming techniques take centuries to transform dead worlds into only moderately livable ones.”
Miracle Machine or Superboy-Prime Punch ought to take care of it…
Even the quickest terraforming techniques take centuries to transform dead worlds into only moderately livable ones
Dude, their sponsor is a guy who builds stars.
I think this is actually my favorite one yet; it’s the least reliant on Legion history, which is something I think that a good Legion writer needs to be, and it’s a clever, simple, and engaging idea. Well done!
This is an idea that could stand on its own, but wrapping the Legion’s universe around it makes it even better. Sweet.
I also have to agree that this is the best we’ve seen in awhile.
Yayyyy!
remember guys, MGK’s theoretical legion run takes place during the 3boot timeline. There’s no RJ Brande in 3boot.
Tell me, why AREN’T you writing Legion of Super-Heroes, again?
Floronic Man and Swamp Thing hijacked the Body of Solomon Grundy and used it like an escape capsule when the Earth became too Technological.
Bringin’ the green, bringin’ the funk.
Immortal Elementals, HO!
this was awesome man
Dude, why are you just throwing the pitches out there? Write this as a novel – just leave the Legion out of it.
Hell, I’d read it.
Obviously, I’m going back through these at a much later date, but I still think that the Legion Espionage Squad is a great idea. It reminds me of an idea I had after the second X-Men movie, that after two separate incidents of Professor X getting bushwhacked and getting taken out of action and/or turned against everyone else, it might be time for the school to take a more proactive approach to identifying possible menaces before they show up on the basketball court/Blackbird landing pad; the group would be run by Wolverine and Nightcrawler, and junior members would include Kitty, Rogue and Channel-Surfing Kid.