Re: QUIETUS [S!5] [Round 1: Godsworn Valley]
05-28-2012, 03:37 AM
Originally posted on MSPA by Jacquerel.
The towering white cliff face had initially provided a surge of hope, a vast outcropping of minerals free of any of that detestable muck from earlier would have been wonderful. But alas its appearance proved deceptive as the origins of its white colouring were revealed to be copious deposits of chalk, as much crushed ancient seashells as honest rock, and it tasted revolting. Chaete had grown up both on and eating a planet containing absolutely no forms of life that were not directly related to her, and none of them had been dead or crushed into any kind of mineral. While she could certainly digest this new planet which so far appeared to be made almost entirely out of bits of dead things (there were few things she could not digest, if the occasion called for it) the flavour was both foreign and unpleasant. It wasn't really helped by her species' evolved aversion to accidentally eating anything that might still actually be alive either.
If she'd nerved herself up and actually just tried digging downwards for a short while then she would have found that the soil layer was only about two meters deep, but I think she can perhaps be forgiven for being a tad unwilling to eat her body's length in mud and find this out.
Thus deprived of her preferred method of transit Chaete was reduced to dragging herself along the ground with her mechanical arms, leaving a snaking trail in the leaf litter behind her with her tail as she lurched away from the cliff face and under the cover of the nearby trees. It was both slow and undignified but she really couldn't bring herself to make another blind jump through space on an empty stomach (especially with no guarantee that it would actually help, she'd still be stuck in the same valley). She could perhaps have moved faster by dropping herself completely onto the ground and slithering like a snake but this would not only have looked even more ridiculous but she'd also barely be able to see where she was going; her eyes were placed for fast, forwards movement through solid substances that you usually wouldn't want flying into sensitive areas which meant that the bony protective plates around her eyes also blocked a fair amount of her forwards vision, not that there was usually much to see underground in any case.
The one consolation was that the carpet of leaves on the forest floor was far more solid than the sickening, rusty mud that she had landed in at the start of the round. Her sides were already becoming plastered with various pieces of bark and plant life that had gotten stuck to the dirt which she hadn't managed to scrape off against the chalk cliffs.
About twenty minutes later, one of the seamen plucked up the nerve to step through the shimmering hole which she had left hovering in the air in front of their tank formation, to the cheers of his shipmates as he was not immediately vaporised. The gateway clearly wasn't large enough to accommodate one of their ships but they could march men through it two or three abreast, if they so desired, and just imagine the practical applications of that if they got their hands on one of their own. Teleportation has billions of practical applications even outside of wartime, the idea of another faction having it was deeply worrying and so as soon as they had established via GPS that this was what they were actually dealing with, acquisition of whatever created it became a pretty high priority.
Why a lone unit carrying experimental technology would be out scouting them alone was a mystery, especially if it had the limitation that they couldn't close portals behind them and would thus leave a fairly obvious trail, but it was certainly a lucky break and important enough that they couldn't risk too much time worrying about how disturbingly easy it all was. Ceraceros's followers were a little lost in the war-torn valley, they'd come for the war and to defend their pride but they'd had to drive their re-rigged whaling fleet over many miles of land before they reached the battlefield and the months without view of the sea was starting to make some of their soldiers a little landsick. It was just unnatural, the way the ground stayed all still like that (at least it did whenever the Earth Clan weren't around).
Their mildly ridiculous forces had been smashed against the cliffs like rocks hurled by a tidal wave, their morale was low and they really needed any kind of lucky break they could get their hands on. They really weren't in the position to look a gift horse in the mouth, although the sheer lack of caution displayed by their new quarry was slightly worrying in itself. Chaete's species (as was previously discussed) usually enjoyed a lifestyle of being really big and living in space and thus the only ones who were ever predated upon by anyone were the unfortunate eggs who landed on already inhabited planets and thus had basically no chance of continuing on the species' genetic line anyway. The planet of her youth had features no trees, no predators and nothing more risky than the occasional game of hide and seek with a bunch of sycophants who would always let her win. Her instincts for surviving and avoiding detection in a deciduous forest (during a war) could therefore be summed up with a single blank piece of paper.
The followers of the Great Lord Narwhal could hardly be described as master trackers of beasts on land as their expertise (perhaps slightly paradoxically) revolved more around whaling, but it really didn't take an expert to follow a clear undulating trail through the leaves, marked at the sides by ravaged bushes and the occasional tree with bite marks in it (pulped masses of splinters spat at their bases, apparently trees aren't made of stone either).
As if this wasn't enough, Chaete decided to pick this moment to hammer home her mastery of woodlands survival via the psychic equivalent of shouting loudly in an attempt to gather someone's attention. Birds exploded from the undergrowth as their heads were suddenly filled with the sound of mental tuning, extraordinarily similar to the noise you get when you hold a microphone up to its own speaker. Having never encountered aliens before she was actually totally unaware that she'd be transmitting to absolutely everyone within a certain radius rather than only other worms, it had just gotten to the point where she could no longer stand the unnatural quiet inside her own head which was normally filled with the whispers of her brothers and soothing words from up above.
Worm eggs scatter in clutches pretty much at random throughout the universe and therefore do occasionally land in places where they aren't wanted, like on worlds that are already occupied by animals. As far as the species as a whole is concerned these children are (as much as their parents lament it) basically genetic dead ends as a girl worm will meet active resistance trying to eat such a planet (and even if she manages to finish it off will grow up weird and unsociable from all the dead things talking in her head) and all the boy worms (if they survive life while no longer at the top of a food chain of one) just sit around not being mated because no sane girl is going to swallow a planet with a functioning biosphere. It was Chaete's hope that she'd landed on such a planet and thus the otherwise useless males would therefore leap to her rescue, but this was fairly unlikely as there wasn't really even any guarantee that The Outsider had put them on a planet in the same dimension and there was a distinct possibility that she was not just the only Space Worm on the planet but the only one within this sphere of creation.
Also her idea that they'd just rush to help her out might not have gone to plan even if these theoretical guys had existed. Having to live on your own, essentially abandoned by your parents in a weird environment that is trying to kill you usually disenfranchises people from the societal quirks like “girls are more important than you are” that they would otherwise have grown up with.
This new sourceless voice both aided and disconcerted Chaete's maritime hunters. If nothing else it did tell them that there was something nearby; though the sound appeared to be coming from every direction at once and so close that it must be directly on top of their heads it still wasn't hard to follow her trail of minor wreckages to figure out where she'd gone. The problem arose from the fact that it was talking to them via a means hitherto experienced only in the presence of the divine, which made them begin to worry that they might be slightly out of their league. The words themselves were also a bit of a problem because even as hardened soldiers they felt a little uneasy hunting something that was both repeatedly calling questioning greetings and begging for aid (apparently in fluent English), though as most of them had fought Sirens before they assured each other that there was always the possibility that this was some kind of trap. In a war led by gods, there's plenty of things that might want to lure a small group of soldiers into danger with counterfeit cries for help, especially after getting them away from the larger body of their army via a magical gateway.
Still, Chaete's feckless disregard for stealth (and blissful unawareness that she was even calling anyone's attention in the first place) did at least have one silver lining in that it convinced the squad to loosen their grips on their harpoon guns. They probably wouldn't shoot her on sight now, though after introductions were over all bets were off especially if they learned that the ability to make fancy space holes didn't come in the form of a device that they could just confiscate from her.
Considering the ruckus she had been making, she could have had it much worse. Still blissfully ignorant of any threat to her life at all, she'd have to hope that there wasn't anything less... merciful haunting the woods nearby.
There were worse predators at loose on the Gods' battlefield today than even the least fortunate of her siblings would ever have had to contend with.
The towering white cliff face had initially provided a surge of hope, a vast outcropping of minerals free of any of that detestable muck from earlier would have been wonderful. But alas its appearance proved deceptive as the origins of its white colouring were revealed to be copious deposits of chalk, as much crushed ancient seashells as honest rock, and it tasted revolting. Chaete had grown up both on and eating a planet containing absolutely no forms of life that were not directly related to her, and none of them had been dead or crushed into any kind of mineral. While she could certainly digest this new planet which so far appeared to be made almost entirely out of bits of dead things (there were few things she could not digest, if the occasion called for it) the flavour was both foreign and unpleasant. It wasn't really helped by her species' evolved aversion to accidentally eating anything that might still actually be alive either.
If she'd nerved herself up and actually just tried digging downwards for a short while then she would have found that the soil layer was only about two meters deep, but I think she can perhaps be forgiven for being a tad unwilling to eat her body's length in mud and find this out.
Thus deprived of her preferred method of transit Chaete was reduced to dragging herself along the ground with her mechanical arms, leaving a snaking trail in the leaf litter behind her with her tail as she lurched away from the cliff face and under the cover of the nearby trees. It was both slow and undignified but she really couldn't bring herself to make another blind jump through space on an empty stomach (especially with no guarantee that it would actually help, she'd still be stuck in the same valley). She could perhaps have moved faster by dropping herself completely onto the ground and slithering like a snake but this would not only have looked even more ridiculous but she'd also barely be able to see where she was going; her eyes were placed for fast, forwards movement through solid substances that you usually wouldn't want flying into sensitive areas which meant that the bony protective plates around her eyes also blocked a fair amount of her forwards vision, not that there was usually much to see underground in any case.
The one consolation was that the carpet of leaves on the forest floor was far more solid than the sickening, rusty mud that she had landed in at the start of the round. Her sides were already becoming plastered with various pieces of bark and plant life that had gotten stuck to the dirt which she hadn't managed to scrape off against the chalk cliffs.
About twenty minutes later, one of the seamen plucked up the nerve to step through the shimmering hole which she had left hovering in the air in front of their tank formation, to the cheers of his shipmates as he was not immediately vaporised. The gateway clearly wasn't large enough to accommodate one of their ships but they could march men through it two or three abreast, if they so desired, and just imagine the practical applications of that if they got their hands on one of their own. Teleportation has billions of practical applications even outside of wartime, the idea of another faction having it was deeply worrying and so as soon as they had established via GPS that this was what they were actually dealing with, acquisition of whatever created it became a pretty high priority.
Why a lone unit carrying experimental technology would be out scouting them alone was a mystery, especially if it had the limitation that they couldn't close portals behind them and would thus leave a fairly obvious trail, but it was certainly a lucky break and important enough that they couldn't risk too much time worrying about how disturbingly easy it all was. Ceraceros's followers were a little lost in the war-torn valley, they'd come for the war and to defend their pride but they'd had to drive their re-rigged whaling fleet over many miles of land before they reached the battlefield and the months without view of the sea was starting to make some of their soldiers a little landsick. It was just unnatural, the way the ground stayed all still like that (at least it did whenever the Earth Clan weren't around).
Their mildly ridiculous forces had been smashed against the cliffs like rocks hurled by a tidal wave, their morale was low and they really needed any kind of lucky break they could get their hands on. They really weren't in the position to look a gift horse in the mouth, although the sheer lack of caution displayed by their new quarry was slightly worrying in itself. Chaete's species (as was previously discussed) usually enjoyed a lifestyle of being really big and living in space and thus the only ones who were ever predated upon by anyone were the unfortunate eggs who landed on already inhabited planets and thus had basically no chance of continuing on the species' genetic line anyway. The planet of her youth had features no trees, no predators and nothing more risky than the occasional game of hide and seek with a bunch of sycophants who would always let her win. Her instincts for surviving and avoiding detection in a deciduous forest (during a war) could therefore be summed up with a single blank piece of paper.
The followers of the Great Lord Narwhal could hardly be described as master trackers of beasts on land as their expertise (perhaps slightly paradoxically) revolved more around whaling, but it really didn't take an expert to follow a clear undulating trail through the leaves, marked at the sides by ravaged bushes and the occasional tree with bite marks in it (pulped masses of splinters spat at their bases, apparently trees aren't made of stone either).
As if this wasn't enough, Chaete decided to pick this moment to hammer home her mastery of woodlands survival via the psychic equivalent of shouting loudly in an attempt to gather someone's attention. Birds exploded from the undergrowth as their heads were suddenly filled with the sound of mental tuning, extraordinarily similar to the noise you get when you hold a microphone up to its own speaker. Having never encountered aliens before she was actually totally unaware that she'd be transmitting to absolutely everyone within a certain radius rather than only other worms, it had just gotten to the point where she could no longer stand the unnatural quiet inside her own head which was normally filled with the whispers of her brothers and soothing words from up above.
Worm eggs scatter in clutches pretty much at random throughout the universe and therefore do occasionally land in places where they aren't wanted, like on worlds that are already occupied by animals. As far as the species as a whole is concerned these children are (as much as their parents lament it) basically genetic dead ends as a girl worm will meet active resistance trying to eat such a planet (and even if she manages to finish it off will grow up weird and unsociable from all the dead things talking in her head) and all the boy worms (if they survive life while no longer at the top of a food chain of one) just sit around not being mated because no sane girl is going to swallow a planet with a functioning biosphere. It was Chaete's hope that she'd landed on such a planet and thus the otherwise useless males would therefore leap to her rescue, but this was fairly unlikely as there wasn't really even any guarantee that The Outsider had put them on a planet in the same dimension and there was a distinct possibility that she was not just the only Space Worm on the planet but the only one within this sphere of creation.
Also her idea that they'd just rush to help her out might not have gone to plan even if these theoretical guys had existed. Having to live on your own, essentially abandoned by your parents in a weird environment that is trying to kill you usually disenfranchises people from the societal quirks like “girls are more important than you are” that they would otherwise have grown up with.
This new sourceless voice both aided and disconcerted Chaete's maritime hunters. If nothing else it did tell them that there was something nearby; though the sound appeared to be coming from every direction at once and so close that it must be directly on top of their heads it still wasn't hard to follow her trail of minor wreckages to figure out where she'd gone. The problem arose from the fact that it was talking to them via a means hitherto experienced only in the presence of the divine, which made them begin to worry that they might be slightly out of their league. The words themselves were also a bit of a problem because even as hardened soldiers they felt a little uneasy hunting something that was both repeatedly calling questioning greetings and begging for aid (apparently in fluent English), though as most of them had fought Sirens before they assured each other that there was always the possibility that this was some kind of trap. In a war led by gods, there's plenty of things that might want to lure a small group of soldiers into danger with counterfeit cries for help, especially after getting them away from the larger body of their army via a magical gateway.
Still, Chaete's feckless disregard for stealth (and blissful unawareness that she was even calling anyone's attention in the first place) did at least have one silver lining in that it convinced the squad to loosen their grips on their harpoon guns. They probably wouldn't shoot her on sight now, though after introductions were over all bets were off especially if they learned that the ability to make fancy space holes didn't come in the form of a device that they could just confiscate from her.
Considering the ruckus she had been making, she could have had it much worse. Still blissfully ignorant of any threat to her life at all, she'd have to hope that there wasn't anything less... merciful haunting the woods nearby.
There were worse predators at loose on the Gods' battlefield today than even the least fortunate of her siblings would ever have had to contend with.