User:Murgh

Though not responsible for the organism's appalling rate of reproduction, the young Murgh did craft the obscenely cute gaze of this inauspicious and undesired mascot.

Murgh, an oldtimer of the first wave of the Oolite era who briefly showed traits of intense and profligate industry, before he suddenly vanished into the soupy fog of a distant nebula.

Initially scouted from the factory floor of GenFun by the august benefactor Aegidian, who saw beyond the excessive exuberance of the young sycophant and took notice of his sickly cute tweaks to the latest genetic modifications of the Trumble menace. He was taken from obscurity and given the means to try his hand on material construction in a few diverse fields. A brief but chaotic reign running the Murgh Shipyards saw the construction of several ships and stations, as well as running a space-taxi service and an advertising firm on the side, with varying success.

Perhaps fundamentally unsuited to the pressures of such widespread consumer demands, his career came to a sudden halt in the middle of the production of a new announced racing league, as shoddy work was found strewn about, dumbfounded investors left empty-handed, and the supposed creator nowhere to be found.

Diso B2 Station, once "a first" with optimism, now a derelict outpost in a mass-lock maze with a permanently crashed market, though surrounded by a kaleidoscopic nebulae tapestry.

Decades since, accounts of a creature going by the name of Old Murgh indicate this may be the same individual having made a diametric occupational shift. Presently be located somewhere in the Teveri system, trading wine and other evil juices and describing himself as a humble wine-wallah, he consults patrons on complementing grubs and exotic foods with Ribilebian burgundies, Ditizaian sherries, and Leestiian tokays, for a fee.

Station constructions

The ill-conceived Globe station.

Irresponsibly toying with implementing alternate shapes to the classic cuboctahedral Coriolis, the Dodecahedron and the Icosahedron, Murgh found funding to go ahead with the construction of an Octahedron B2 prototype at Diso. As the money and enthusiasm dissipated, no further such stations were ever built.

The seminal Torus station at Onrira, before refurbishment. Initial designs proved hazardous as the construction was prone to spontaneously burst into a swarm of its constituent cells.

Consumed by egocentricity, Murgh's only response to this failure was to steam forward in a yet grander scale. The Globe station was promptly constructed, but also this project failed to capture the imagination of the public. Possibly due to the station bearing little distinguishable difference to a common planetary body, no further stations were ordered. A huge financial blow to Murgh Industries, spiteful tongues have for unknown reasons referred to the Globe station as a "death star".

Deep in a funk following repeated failure, Murgh happened upon a rare stroke of genius with the construction of the Torus station. Drawing inspiration from ancient cinema of unknown origin, this station was impressive to behold, but its true brilliance was found in the inexpensive nature of construction. Small modular pods were fabricated separately and programmed to auto-join, making the assembly phase the cheapest and safest station construction in the business. The triumph was short-lived however, as the tori proved equally easy to disassemble, causing mass casualties, obviously negating the previously set safety records. Upon foreclosure of Murgh Industries, other companies amended these issues, and the design may occasionally be seen in planetary systems.

Ad droidships was the preferred medium of Murgh's advertising firm.

The so-called advert hall of fame, showcasing campaigns that all went unrecognised at awards ceremonies.

Advertising

Already proven inclined to opt for profit while untroubled by conscience, the lure of the advertising racked proved irresistible to the young Murgh. Before the construction of a sizeable a fleet of advertising droidships was even finished, the newly formed promotion agency Murgh PR had landed contracts from a wide array of fields, ranging from the arms industry to the most questionable of all health sectors, the fungal cure alternative medicine.

Public announcement campaigns on behalf of the GalCop police authority were initially cause for optimism, and after wooing Hatchling CEO Ludo Van Der Budenmayer, Murgh PR secured the campaign to launch the highly anticipated luxury speed ship BoyRacer, which in resulted in euphoria, though prematurely. The joy quickly transformed to dread with the subsequent scandal in the wake of numerous tragic accidents as BoyRacers were revealed to come equipped with subpar automated steering. The unusually gruesome nature of these accidents made the affair a PR nightmare, leaving even PR firms such as Murgh's with no favourable solutions. The lineup of wealthy plaintiff ensured the demise of Hatchling, and Murgh PR was nearly caught in the wave of bankruptcies that ensued.

Though pulling in some revenue for a limited time, the Murgh ad firm was tainted. At advertisement awards ceremonies, the firm garnered precisely zero awards, and in an industry so dependent on laurels and the steady flow of fumes up one's rear by one's peers and rivals, the days of this venture, too, was numbered.

Murgh's submitted blueprint model for the announced Witchspace Point beacon contract which was ultimately rejected.

Ship construction

Nascent career

Despite all side gigs, Murgh yearned most to be a respected shipbuilder, to become a personage first and foremost associated with the vessels that make possible the noble act of interstellar navigation, the finest starcraft, synonymous with safety, innovation and style. As with many such dreams, these were not remotely anchored in reality.

Murgh first dared to dream when the magnificent Aegidian suggested he turn his hand on building something of use, rather than designing hypercopulating vermin. Granted access to the inner circles of true industry, Murgh became elated when the venerable one appeared favourable to a suggestion of the new concept of placing a series of beacons at the witchspace convergence point. Mirthful, Murgh presented the elder with his blueprint for such a beacon, daring to dream that this time too, perhaps, his design would be chosen. It would not, a different path was chosen, but instead being gutted , Murgh found in himself an optimism, a path to honing his building skills, and one day, to make something of himself.

A moai located in the Tionisla Orbital Graveyard, intentionally poorly lit.

First commission

Early on in the efforts of honing his abilities, the young Murgh received a commission for a spiritual memorial stone to contribute to the long-neglected Tionisla Orbital Graveyard, whose foundation trust had recently come into some much-needed funds. With aplomb, Murgh sculpted an homage to the most ancient of navigators, the deadest of the dead, and submitted the work to the esteemed body of selectors. It was received with little comment, though it was remarked that the sculpture appeared to lack ears. It was nevertheless admitted to the body of monuments. Murgh outstayed his welcome, however, with unreasonable demands that the monument be given eternal spotlights, and the relationship with the TOGY board soon grew cold. The board had the last laugh, as the monument to date appears to orbit in perpetual obscurity.

Some years later it became evident that this ill will was not forgotten, when Murgh approached the TOGY foundation with a proposal to populate the stellar necropolis with advertising droids, and was met with contemptuous scorn. An olive branch from Murgh PR in the form of a promotional campaign with an aim to appease did little to mend the relations, possibly due to the work suffering from spelling errors.

An aggressive ad campaign made Murgh's frugal, rust-covered ships difficult to ignore.

Shipyard years

At long last, the young Murgh had some funds and as well as some investor confidence to establish his own construction facility. Murgh Shipyards was born. Casting his net again perhaps too widely, he began construction of ships of his own somewhat radical designs, while simultaneously recreating a series of designs once thought lost to posterity, and being of a mind never to waste perfectly useable material, he also set up a subdivision dedicated to restore derelict wrecks to adequate requirements within a margin of safety levels. His vision was to create ships for all manner of creatures, all manner of credit rating.

The rollout of the Heirloom series, the range of ships past their prime renovated to quite near spaceworthy standards, was a decisive success, in no small part aided by an aggressive advertisement campaign by Murgh PR. There was a niche in the market for implausibly cheap spacecraft, and plenty of spacefarers so desperate for interstellar mobility that they would disregard a moderate element of death hazard. Furthermore, to trade in one's newer spacecraft in order to claim the credit balance and then invest in other expensive equipment soon came into vogue, and having predicted this, Murgh was prematurely declared a genius.

List of OXPs

Griff's advert interpretation of the once gloriously ambitious Murgh's Shipyards reduced to a dubious used space vehicle dealership.

Ships

A Woma fuel transport which ought not to be fired upon.

Murgh Shipyards were based at Teorge

• Old Ships and Wolf Mk.2 (with detachable fangs), some painstaking model transcribing from unearthed ancient blueprints.
• M-Pack or "rusties" populating the spaceways with the sadly deteriorated ships of destitute pilots, also for sale!
• Transports, Liners Coral and CoachWhip, and fuel transport Woma.
• NuVipers, increased GalCop might with the GalCop Viper Mark II and the GalCop Viper Cruiser.
• Murgh's xShips, introduced the odd models Bandy-Bandy, Taipan, Chuckwalla, Eel Rapier, and the gruesome Rattle Cutter.
• Cobra Clipper SAR, a search-and-rescue pimp job.
• Racers, the shamefully unfinished prototypes for the FormulaOo racing models. An entire league left stood expunged.

a Hatchling BoyRacer and its likely unpleasant owner.

Ships with idiosyncratic AI

• Hatchling BoyRacers and their obnoxious owners.
• Frog Space Rickshaw, a chatty taxi service.
• Hognose Tugships towing various ships, with experimental touchy rudeness
• Refugee Adder, shoddily modded refugee ships full of desperate people. Maybe not so funny.

Planetary systems

• Diso OXP - the first second planet in Oolite. Also the first second orbital station. With extra added nebulae!
• Lave OXP - inspired addition of the lore from The Dark Wheel - advertising Droidships, restaurants, the moon Basta, incompetent student pilots.

Dockables

• Globe station
• Torus station

Activities

• hOopy Casino - Primitive space gambling (scored by the moody stylings of Jonny Cuba) in the spirit of the classic street con "shell game" or "cups and balls".

Carrier class starship, The Leviathan.

Ambience

• WPB OXP - An oldskool WitchSpace beacon, improved by Svengali, with a 2021 touchup by Murgh
• Murgh's Custom/Replacement Sounds - Some other SoundFX to consider, a bit more subtle alternatives.

Missions

• Military Fiasco - a call to duty by Col. Docherty adds a sticky mission and some nasty navy vessels including carrier class starship, The Leviathan...

Sandbox

• Murgh's sandbox

Lore

• Murgh Shipyards
• Obnoxicorp

Permission to update his .oxp's

...of course you may feel totally free to update any of the old OXPs or otherwise make use of the old scraps if they can still hold appeal. It would be very cool for me if something from so long ago could even in a small part manage to survive through the ages, along with the simple and brilliant concept of Oolite... Old Murgh 2021

BB post 2021

BB posts...

• On pitching the OoTrumble look (2005)
• On first finding Elite (2006)
• On a potential Norwegian translation (2006)