Roleplay / Neuroi Quest

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"Humans are Bullshit!"

— Neuroi of Hive Core 206, Earth.

It is January, 1946. For six years humanity has battled against the alien invaders known as the Neuroi. Where conventional weapons fail, the greatest successes are guaranteed by the Witches, young, magic using girls in Strikers. The most famous of the witches, the members of the 501st Joint Fighter Wing, have won another victory over the Neuroi in Gallia.

This is not their story.

Neuroi Quest, is a Forum Quest on the Spacebattles BROB/Sufficient Velocity Quests Forum set in the Strike Witches universe where you are in control of one of the few remaining Neuroi hives on the planet after the destruction of the Super Hive by Yoshika Miyafuji at the end of of the Strike Witches anime. As such, you must fight to survive in a world where you are the main antagonist against the forces of humanity.

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• Alien Invasion: Main premise that started the whole series.
• Aliens Are Bastards: General consensus among humanity Though there are a few exceptions like the people the Neuroi rescued from Unit 731.
• Aliens Never Invented the Wheel: The Neuroi are completely shit when it comes to anything that deals with Kinetics.
• Always Accurate Attack: What lasers turned into once Hive Berlin got done with them.
• Bizarre Alien Biology: There are a lot of things different between the Neuroi and Humans.
  • For one, Neuroi don't need to eat. This leads to a pretty big problem when Hive Berlin is in charge of caring for human captives. He's come a long way from just feeding them tasteless nutrient sludge. He's even learned to cook, though this is more through replicator technology than actually doing anything humans would consider cooking.
  • Another, is that Neuroi don't need constant stimuli to not go insane. So he's quite perplexed when the witches he puts in solitary confinement begin to get a little stir crazy.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: The Neuroi have mined out or destroyed a Lot of planets and races either through collateral damage in their war with the Fahrong, mining worlds dry, or wiping out the planet because of Neuroi Doctrine.
• Came from the Sky: How the Initial Neuroi Invasion happened.
• Crapsack Galaxy: The universe the quest takes place in is Not a happy place. 68% of the galaxy has either been wiped out or mined as resources in the Universal War between the Fahrong (Rock People) and the Neuroi (Robots). And there are apparently worse horrors out there.
• Darker and Edgier: This isn't anywhere close to the original happy and cheery fanservice loaded anime in tone.
• Epic Fail: During Turn 8, a pirate fleet attempt to rob a large group of Neuroi tourists after they all gather in one location... while forgetting that the gathering was to witness an upcoming supernova. The entire fleet gets incinerate when the star goes boom. The description for the event even refers to the trope by name.
• Forever War: The war between the Neuroi Empire (robot people) and the Fahrong Conglomerate (rock people). The end of the first turn of the quest reveals that is has reached its 89th year.
• Game-Breaker: What the Neuroi generally think magic (AE) is and the major reason why Humans have fought the Neuroi so well despite the tech disparity.
• Golem: The Fahrong (the Archenemy of the Neuroi Empire) are living masses of rock that Word of God has explicitly referred to as golems.
• Homing Lasers: One of the first improvements Berlin works on. They are currently accurate enough that human planes have no hope and the stunts Witches used to pull are no longer enough.
• Humans Are Special: Out of all the races the Neuroi have found in the universe. Humans are the only race that can produce Ambient Energy (Magic) continually in such large amounts just by existing. It's also the reason why Earth isn't a lifeless husk yet despite all the AE the Neuroi have mined out.
• Humans Are Warriors: Humans have killed off nearly every Neuroi Hive on the planet, despite the large initial technology gap.
• Humanity Is Insane: General consensus among the hives is that Humanity is Crazy. And Cheaters.
• Insignificant Little Blue Planet: What the Neuroi Nation thinks about Earth. Of course, then the Neuroi of Earth discovered that Humans Are Special. Though this information hasn't been shared with the rest of the Neuroi Nation. just to provide the a sense of scope, the Neuroi Nation is large enough to have people flocking across star systems to witness a supernova.
• Kill Sat: What the Neuroi developed once it became apparent Hive 302 was coming.
• Lensman Arms Race: The race between the Humans and the Neuroi of hive 206 to remain on top.
• Mood Whiplash: A common occurence in the "News" segments between turns, where the conflict against the humans on Earth and the Fahrong in space are contrasted with utterly banal events happening elsewhere in the Neuroi Empire. The first such segement also includes on in the Earth section, noting all major battles going on across the Earth... before noting that the Atlantic Hive is doing "fuck all".
• Mook Horror Show: The Neuroi are subjected to this during the Battle of Berlin where the humans turn into half-undead magical berserkers.
• Moral Event Horizon: When everyone finds out exactly what Fuso Unit 731 is.
• Naval Blockade: Once Hive Atlantic started moving, this is basically what he started doing to Europe.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Unfortunately for the 501st, and Yoshika Miyafuji in particular. Destroying the Super Hive actually made the remaining Neuroi More competent.
• No Recycling: Averted. The Neuroi can salvage pretty much anything from battle and use it for resources.
• Orbital Bombardment: The Neuroi have the capacity to do this, but civilian groups (including Hive 206) are forbidden from doing so. When word reaches 206 that Hive 302 is coming, though, 206 starts looking into building space weapons to defend against them.
• Planet Looters: The Neuroi (and to a slightly lesser degree, the Fahrong) do this to any planet that has Ambient Energy. Unfortunately for everyone else, Ambient Energy can only be found on planets that support life and once a planet runs out of AE, it dies. Luckily for Humanity, Humans Are Special.
• Pragmatic Villainy: Part of the reason that Berlin and the Earth Neuroi start making plans to not exterminate humanity — as humans produce Ambient Energy by virtue of existing, killing them would destroy an irreplaceable source of potentially infinite Ambient Energy.
• Random Number God: As always, Critical Success and Critical Fail rolls are at this God’s mercy. But the Neuroi take this to an extreme when they start to outright worship the Dice Gods, to the immense confusion of humanity. And yes, they gain tangible bonuses from doing so.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: The remaining Neuroi hives are pretty much this. Unexpectedly, they've done a lot better now than when they had a full mining company. Of course, a lot of this is due to not having to listen to the incompetent Super Hive anymore.
• Ridiculously Fast Construction: How the Neuroi remain competitive in the war against the Humans and the Fahrong.
• Robot Master: The Neuroi hives naturally, since they build numberless hordes of Mecha-Mooks for battle.
• Rousing Speech: Towards the end of the Battle of Berlin one Karlsland officer starts yelling.
  "Soldiers of Karlsland! Look around you! Do you see what these invaders have done to your homeland? Look! Look at the glorious legacy the Fatherland has given you! All ruined, all destroyed by the Neuroi! They have slaughtered us! They have murdered your fathers, your mothers, siblings, sons, daughters, infants in the mother's womb! Ancient monuments, sacred cities, priceless memories! All of Karlsland, RUINED!"
  —>"We are homeless, damned, and now doomed! But we still have one thing! YOU ARE SOLDIERS OF MANKIND, AND YOU WILL NOT LET THESE INSULTS, THESE BARBARIC CRIMES, GO UNAVENGED! FIGHT! FIGHT TO YOUR LAST BREATH! FIGHT UNTIL YOUR BODY IS A RUIN! KILL! THEM! ALL!"
• Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: The original leader of the Atlantic Hive apparently used a combination of connectios and bribery to get in on the mining operation on Earth.
• Ship Tease: Between Berlin and Vladivistok. Apparently after he saved her from the Joint invasion from Orussia, Gallia, and Britannia. She repays the favor though.
• Shout-Out:
  • The option to invade Baltland is titled "Swedish Pagans".
  • The build option for starships is titled "To Boldly Go Where Pretty Much Every Neuroi Has Gone Before".
• Sufficiently Advanced Alien: While the humans think the Neuroi are "invading". It's actually just a small time, Civilian, mining operation to get resources for the Neuroi Nation. The Neuroi military have been stated to have weapons that casually shatter planets and warp reality.
• Those Were Only The Scouts: It's made clear in the first turn that the Neuroi forces on Earth are actually a mining operation (albeit one that is fully equipped to exterminate whole sentient species). The actual Neuroi military is busy fighting a galaxy spanning war against the Fahrong.
• The Right of a Superior Species: Unfortunately for humanity, and any other species not on the Fahrong and Neuroi's tech level. This is the general way they treat lesser species. Of course, there has been a growing movement in the Neuroi Nation that believe the Neuroi don't have to be Genocidal Assholes. The Hives of Earth seem to be adopting this viewpoint for both a pragmatic and ideological reason.
• Villain Protagonist: The main characters are the Neuroi. This is a given. That said, they do seem to be sliding more and more towards being Anti-Heroes as time goes on.
• Weaksauce Weakness: Most Neuroi can't stand H₂O and refer to Earth's oceans as "The Liquid Death". Averted by Atlantic Hive and the Submarine-Bots who love being covered in the stuff.
• We Have Reserves: For the Neuroi, As long as they have resources. They can rebuild their army every month regardless of how many losses they take. A good thing too because the Neuroi forces get wiped out a lot trying to complete their objectives.
• Wham Line: "One by one, Inchons kneeled down to an utterly stunned Song Su-Hyun, Ghost Queen, and the last remaining heir to the throne of Inchon."