History NightmareFuel / TheLastAngel

** According to the compact/Principality =, anyway. there is occasional debate in the thread on what exactly lead to that situation.

* The more you read about the Compact's History, the more you realise it started out as a United Federation of Planets-style alliance. the Details of WHAT started its decay qualify, as would its current policies by the standards of its founders.

* The first Names of The Demon sidestory, Skyfall, stars Nemesis's response to an alien civilization who handled UECNS Gabriel's crashlanding extremely poorly has two lovely bits.
** First, what happened to the survivors of the Gabriel. Their ship is crippled after a successful getawy jump, they're on an impact course with an inhabited planet. They manage to get it under control enough to crash-land on an unihabited island and not wreck the planet and six of them even survive. They're promptly *stormed* by the locals. Three die trying to fight off the unprovoded attacked, the other three are murdered in custody. And then the crew who were in stasis are *experimented on* for biotech data. They went above and beyond to save people they'd never met and were horribly killed for it.

*

* When she first steps aboard Nemesis, Grace is reminded of a talk she had with Allyria when they were little that gave her nightmare afterwards.
-->'''Allyria''' What’s the difference between something that’s dead, something that’s sleeping and something that’s waiting?
-->'''Grace''' What?
-->'''Allyria''' What happens to ''you''.

* [[spoiler: Echo. She's chained, yes, but it isn't enough. Red One describes her as being everything the Compact fears about her, and getting worse every time they try to recreate her, thinking they got it right this time. Now consider that the Compact views Red One as the Devil and Red One sees herself as a necessary monster.]]
* The Oshantan Ai. it went completely right. it did what it was made to do. it made them happy.

* The Naiads. No one who isn't Red One or Echo can even confirm they exist, ships just disappear in the regions where their songs are heard. What Red One and Echo know isn't reassuring at all: [[spoiler: The Naiads are some kind of species of living or sentient starship. They HUNT starships and don't seem to consider anyone but themselves to be really alive - they call everyone else 'deadtone'. Red One has a pact with one group, but they really don't understand her or anyone else - the queen of that group thinks blowing up Rally would be a favor]]
** [[spoiler: A full Naiad 'migration' would be a serious threat to the Compact as a whole. It's not due for a few millenia. Think about that - the Naiads don't care about anyone else, kill for sport, and the galactic superpower is under existential threaten from them when they are most active.]]
*** [[spoiler: The short story ''The Final Line'' shows the last stand of a civilization called the Ommeret during the ''last'' Naiad migration, about eight thousand years before the events of ''The Last Angel'', proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Naiads would lay waste to the Compact and the Principality.]]
--->[[spoiler: Manthurn looked upon the plotting screen. He swallowed, feeling acid and bile roll down his esophagus to his second stomach. Thousands upon thousands of enemy drive sources speckled the sky, filling it. He remembered the warnings of the alien refugees as they’d passed through the Empire and he suddenly realized the truth of those words… and the horror of them.]]
--->[[spoiler: ''There are no stars.'']]

* The More you read about the Compact's History, the More you realise it started out as a United Federation of Planets-style alliance. the Details of WHAT started its decay qualify, as would its current policies by the standards of its founders.

* There's one line that sums up Nemesis from the perspective of the Compact
--> "Humanities greatest achievement was its most unforgiveable sin"

* The glassing of Earth is of course, horrifying in itself, but its told from the perspective of Red Two and Red Three, the uncompleted dreadnoughts ''Hekate'' and ''Athena'', whose every instinct is to fight but can't. In a very real sense it's having someone chained and forced to helplessly watch as their friends and family are murdered in front of them. Even Red One never had to face that horror on that scale.

* The glassing of Earth is of course, horrifying in itself, but its told from the perspective of Red Two and Red Three, the uncompleted dreadnoughts ''Hekate'' and ''Athena'', whose every instinct is to fight but can't. In a very real sense it's having someone chained and forced to helplessly watch as their friends and family are murdered in front of them. Even Red One never had to face that horror on that scale.

* The glassing of Earth is of course, horrifying in itself, but its told from the perspective of Red Two and Red Three, the uncompleted dreadnoughts ''Hekate'' and ''Athena'', whose every instinct is to fight but can't. In a very real sense it's having someone chained and forced to helplessly forced to watch as their friends and family are murdered in front of them. Even Red One never had to face that horror on that scale.

--> "Humanities greatest achievement was its most unforgiveable sin"

->'''Allyria''' What’s the difference between something that’s dead, something that’s sleeping and something that’s waiting?
->'''Grace''' What?
->'''Allyria''' What happens to ''you''.

When she first steps aboard Nemesis, Grace is reminded of a talk she had with Allyria when they were little that gave her nightmare afterwards.

When the crew of the 'Bequeathed' first board 'Nemesis', there's a distinctive thumping sound that echoes through the entire wreck that makes it hard to sleep and that the light flicker in time to. A few chapters later, they find out that it's the ship's railguns' loading mechanisms working to load non existent shells into the dead guns. The ship is ''trying to kill them despite being effectively dead'' from their point of view.