Black Temple: Deserters

Wait, what is the great treaty and who are the benefactors?

Wow, for a moment there you forgot what The Treaties were. Your education might have been a little spotty but you can guarantee that if you can hear the capital letters at the start of something that would otherwise be a pretty common word, it must be pretty widely known.
Without The Treaties you guess this desert would cover the entire planet and you wouldn't be alive. The terms might have been controversial (and remain so to this day) but without the intervention of the Troll Empire after the Cataclysm, human civilisation definitely wouldn't have lasted this long.
And if nobody had signed The Treaties then they would have just sat where they were and watched.

There were some more capital-letter words there, it's fortunate that you can remember what they all mean!

Absorb the desert into your body do it do it

You're trying your best not to do that!
You can't hold a whole lot more sand than you already are doing so you wouldn't get any larger and what you've got is conveniently uncontaminated by desert insects and worm eggs.
You have little desire to pick up passengers right now, plus you wouldn't fit in the car.

Ask about the number of people living mostly in the desert. Where should they go to make a living in there and warn them about the invasion ?

”There are no settlements in the desert. Only reinforced buildings such as this facility weather passing worms. There is little water and no food.
Only exception is Sand Goblins. This one sees them sometimes riding the small worms. Not sure what they eat, suspect they live in ruined city.
This is its destination, no? This one would advise you keep an eye out, for Sand Goblins are notorious bandits.”
”Sand Goblins are a myth! Nobody has ever provided any proof of their existence and they don't even make any sense!
What would a group of pre-industrial goblins be doing living in a desert? You said yourself that there isn't any food or water.”

The Foreman fixes him with a blank stare.
”This one has many goblins in its employ. They are industrious workers and tell me many secrets of Goblin ways.
This one thinks it knows little of Goblin society, also that it has done little but ask impetuous questions while committing illegal trespass on this one's facility.”

See if you can get them to organize some sort of defense in case those Black Temple folks do remember the worm hunters.

”It is persistent! This one still expresses grave doubt as to any danger posed by worm-farmers in desert.
Nevertheless it shall pose a guard and prepare the cellar as shelter. This one runs a good facility, the walls are strong enough to repel a mid-sized worm should it suddenly rekindle itself.
They shall easily repel enemy attack.

It is also not like we are unarmed, while they are not often necessary our vehicles are equipped with weaponry.”

You aren't totally convinced by that but it's probably the best you're getting.

He seems pretty proud, ask him about his species/people so he thinks you're interested. These types tend to like people who appreciate their history.

”This one is ashamed to be in exile. This one was outcast for killing broodmate during mating contest. This act brings shame to my brood and weakens the bloodline.
Atonement is found through difficult work for the benefit of brood. This one risks life daily in pursuit of worm extracts. These materials are not available on homeworld, which is unscarred by worm, desert or warfare.
Acquisition of materials benefits all of Cys'tar. This one may return home in seven more years.

This one will not be sad to never see Earth again.”

After that try and milk as much sandworm hunting tips out of him as possible - maybe ask for some supplies.

The Cys'tar rolls all of his eyes at once, a very impressive sight. It appears that he has given this speech many times in the past.
”It wishes to fight sandworms?
This is our advice to you, most worms will not pursue a person unless angered. They do not eat people.
Juvenile worm may decide it wants the car, in that case this one advises it abandons the vehicle and proceeds on foot back to nearest area of safety.
Adult worm will only eat car by accident, if it decides to do this then passengers already are dead. Large worms too big to outdrive in car.

Worms fear the road markers and the ruined city. If worm attacks, flee to there.
Do not attack worm because worm cannot be killed.”



”Deep inside sand is worm's real body, made of many spinning stone rings. It cannot be destroyed, only disabled temporarily.”
”There's no need to be patronising, we do live here.”
”To hunt worm we attract it with special apparatus, spray with fixative until sand hardens into solid trap, carry track to refinery and dissect to death with high-frequency laser array. We can take only small worms, and capture attracts bigger ones that want to eat it so speed is required.

It has no fixative, no hose and no laser array. If it fights worm, worm will not die and noise of fighting will make bigger worms appear.
And watch for riders.”
”I bet I could rig up a laser array...”
”It is welcome to try, this one will not attend tiny metal man's funeral.”

He makes no motions to get any supplies. Your welcome appears to be quickly wearing thin.


You say a few goodbyes and decide to leave before something bad happens. He might not have been willing to lend you anything but it feels good that you managed to warn them about the attack, they probably wouldn't have had any idea it was coming otherwise. Hopefully he'll take it to heart!
The worm advice at least will probably prove useful to know as well, although you aren't sure that Coat was actually listening to it. You might have to remind him before he tries driving directly at its mouth, guns blazing.
With any luck it won't happen anyway.

A few minutes later you're off towards the ruins again, where there'll be nothing to do but sit in an old apartment eating rations for a few weeks until the Trolls roll in and sorts everything out.
I mean, the invaders did blow up that cruiser but there's pretty much no way anyone could hold out against those guys.
You're surprised it's taken this long for them to show up really, would have thought they'd be in like a shot when someone broke the treaties.
You guess they just haven't realised what is going on yet, it feels like six or seven months have passed but you guess that really it's only been a few hours.
You're not worried though.
They're coming.
It's not like anything could have stopped them.
Right?



While our heroes undergo their undoubtedly boring and uneventful journey maybe it would make sense to look somewhere else.
Of course if that was true it would imply we were following anything in some kind of linear time frame which obviously isn't true because by the time any of the following events happen Robert and Coat have already arrived. Perhaps this is just another side-effect from that time that girl in the green tank forced your vision elsewhere, who knows?

A Black Temple agent sets off on what he knows full well is meant to be his final mission. With a boss like his, you don't have to be a mind reader to pick this kind of stuff up. Not that he isn't a mind reader.


Hell, maybe if he somehow completes this nigh-impossible task he can just retire instead of dying. Ha. Ha ha.
Not that it'd be a long retirement either way, he's getting on a bit. Might as well go out with a bang, right?

The job is to retrieve the drive core of a malfunctioning Temple vessel which really doesn't sound hard at all, the problem here being that when you get to the bigger and more complicated stuff the higher ups really don't want anyone else getting their hands on the technology. So much so that the entire Grey Temple division was formed just to keep their secrets... secret.
So he'll be racing against a force far more powerful than any that could be brought to bear by the cavemen on this dump of a planet with the only advantage that he doesn't quite have quite as far to walk. Whether they'll just calmly hand it over instead of pulling rank or opening fire even if he beats them to it is going to be the killing question.

Frankly he's not quite sure how far this interdepartmental conflict will go, would they lay siege to the HQ if he managed to deliver the goods there? It's be an interesting thing to find out.


Of course first he's going to need to go and gather his crew (he has a feeling this is not going to be a solo job). And requisition some kind of vehicle (let's hope the Troll Squad hasn't already snatched all the good ones).
The former are probably scattered around on various forms of guard duty and tracking them down could be a pain. His waving friend Meathook over there's the closest you could get to a right-hand man in these circumstances and probably knows where a fair few of them have got to, though the longer he's kept waiting the more of them are going to wander off. Unattended Amputees aren't the smartest or most dutiful bunch.
The latter isn't going anywhere but the various war engines certainly are, leave it too long and there'll only be crawlers and one-man craft left anyway. The agent's unfortunate lack of limbs mean he probably couldn't use half of the one-seaters in the first place, and they'd be unsuitable for transporting anything.
Decisions, decisions.

SpoilerShow

Sorry about the sudden perspective switch, I'm swapping some things around to deal with some left over pacing issues.
Do have another look at the OP too, I added a couple of panels to it so it's a bit less misleading and maybe also looks nicer.

And uh
Thanks for coming back <3

I will do my best not to let you down again.