The Savage Brawl [Round 5: Battletopia]

Originally posted on MSPA by Ixcalibur.

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The Containment Hangar was like a warehouse, only filled with transparent cells where there would normally be boxes. Before the power was cut roughly ninety percent of those cells were occupied. About half of the creatures contained within were humans or Earth natives. The Ska'vans had surprisingly seen fit to abduct as many cows as they had humans though the reasoning was not exactly apparent. The other things that had been contained in this place had been, well decidedly more alien. Some of them were humanoid in shape but with for example green skin and eyes that blinked horizontally. In others the differences were less subtle; too many teeth, jet black skin and more limbs than could have been strictly necessary and there was one thing that looked for all the world to be a pile of moss.

The first indication that the power had cut was when the lights had flickered and died, there was a moment of darkness before the red emergency lighting had flicked on. The cell doors hadn't exactly popped open; there was just nothing to keep them closed with the power down. One opportunistic alien gave his a push and suddenly before you knew it the entire Hangar had erupted into chaos. There were not many guards guarding the Hangar, and though they might have gotten off a couple of lucky shots they were easily overwhelmed by the throng of angry aliens. Though you'd think that the situation might have instilled a sense of group togetherness in the recently freed aliens, it did not.

Humans that were lucky enough to get their hands on a weapon, or to have to hand something that could conceivably be used as a weapon, or even something that could not, began attacking the other things out of fear. Some of the aliens were just wild; there had never been any question that if the thing that looked like a centipede made of knives got free it would murder and kill anything that stood in its path. Those cells that hadn't been affected, the prisoners trapped inside them could only watch, or close their eyes and wish they could drown out the screams of the dying and the whoops of bloody delight that echoed through the Hangar.

When the back up power kicked in no more than two or three minutes later, a surprising sense of order had returned as well. The prisoners that had minutes before been at one another’s throats were stood side by side; a crowd had formed around a semi-insectoid alien.

While from below the waist it, or rather she, as she was visibly female, resembled nothing more than a giant ant upon several spindly legs, from above the waist she was roughly humanoid, though not so much that she would ever be mistaken for a human. The large compound eyes, the maw with protruding mandibles and her long slender arms with what were more like pincers than hands would all give her away. Not to mention that her skin was not skin but instead a hard rosewood coloured carapace.

Those in her proximity were completely silent; it was not the kind of silence that one commanded through fear or even through awe. It was a silence borne of reverence. The gaze of the former prisoners did not waver from the ant woman, not for one second. Those who were not in her immediate proximity had their attention drawn by the eerily silent crowd, but they were not transfixed in quite the same way. They were the ones to regard the scene with suspicion or perhaps fear. After a moment’s contemplation here and there throughout the hangar more former prisoners would willingly walk up and join her entourage. Those who could kept their distance and focused upon problems they deemed more pressing.

Her name was Ajota; back on her homeworld she had called herself Soulmother to a family of hundreds. Where others might have been grateful for their freedom or determined to put an end to the beings that had ripped her from her family, Ajota was for the moment concerned with only one thing.

She followed a blood trail that wound through the cells, her silent entourage following her like a group of lost puppies looking for a home, until she found one of the Ska’van guards, heavily wounded and desperately attempting to crawl away from those who had inflicted these wounds upon him. A human, one of the citizens of Jedesberg who would at this point in time have had a hard time telling you anything about who he was or his life before he had laid eyes upon Ajota, and something that was sort of human shaped walked from the group and hauled the guard to his feet.

Ajota did not stop walking, though her direction had changed. She was headed to the cell adjacent to the one that she had emerged from. Visible inside was a being like her but more masculine. It cowered in the corner as Ajota and her new family approached the cell. The Ska’van guard did not need to be dragged, he was as willing as the rest of them; he just needed assistance.

The guard was helped to the front of the cell, and without any kind of ceremony, he authorised the opening of the cell. His voice and DNA were scanned for authentication and the door opened with a click.

What Ajota did next was not typical of her. Normally when confronted with a poor suffering soul alone in the world she would endeavour to break down its defences and to welcome it into the bosom of her family no matter what kind of being it might have been. But this was one of her own kind. There was no way to bring him into her family and she would have no inclination to do so even if she could.

Nakaja share a telepathic bond, one that rather unfortunately is beyond their control. What this means is that every single thought she had had for the weeks that she had been confined in this ungodly Hangar had been unwillingly broadcasted to her neighbour, and vice versa. Nakaja did not tend to spend too much time in one another’s company and this was the reason why. Bloodshed was pretty much inevitable.

She did not kill him personally, she just held the door open as one of the former prisoners, one that was better described as a beast than a person, slithered through and tore the Nakaja to shreds. With the litany of his thoughts stricken from her mind she was finally able to think straight.

my children her perfect voice was loud and clear in the heads of those who surrounded her. the people who brought me here have done some very bad things to me and to my family, but it is okay; I forgive them. I will liberate them from their bitter lonely existences and bring them into my family regardless of their trespasses against me and mine.

A pair of Ajota’s ‘children’ who had broken off from the group a couple of minutes previously returned carrying a heavy box between them. They dropped it at her feet, thank you my children and disappeared back into the crowd.

The soulmother opened the box and pulled from it handfuls of necklaces. They ranged in quality and the materials they were produced from, some were forged from gold or fitted with glittering jewels while others were little more than beads threaded onto a piece of string. each one of these was a gift, from a member of my family that these aliens took away from me Ajota draped the collection of necklaces around her neck. I will never forget them, I will hold them in my heart and hope that soon I will return to them, and when I do I shall bring them many new brothers and sisters… I shall have the greatest family that has ever been seen

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SpoilerFor clarities sake this post is supposed to be like going on simultaneously with Konka meeting Jack Zeke and Daisy. I imagine that by the time they are ready to leave Ajota and her family are just about heading off to recruit more people into her army/take control of the spaceship or whatever

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SpoilerName: Soulmother Ajota
Gender: Female
Race: Nakaja-Houmin

The Nakaja are an unusual race. They physically adapt to those around them as they grow and mature. In their most natural, but by far least common, form they are reminiscent of giant ants. Nakaja have the ability to control other creatures through a mixture of pheromones and telepathy. The more sophisticated an intelligence is the more resistant they are to being controlled by a Nakaja. They also have access to limited information from ancestral memory, most of which is traditions and information about worlds that their lineage has inhabited. Nakaja communicate with one another telepathically, though they lack the ability to filter out unwanted thoughts. It is for this reason that they do not tend to spend much time around other members of their species, and for this reason that their rather astounding life cycle has developed.

After a mating season has passed (season here means a window of roughly a decade) the clutch of Nakaja spawn will be jettisoned onto a planet they have not yet populated. The Nakaja spawn quickly get the hang of using their pheromones and their natural telepathy to subdue and enslave whatever species is native to that planet. As they grow they physically change to resemble whatever creature they have the greatest control over, and their abilities improve as well. Due to the sheer number of Nakaja spawn that can be deposited in a single clutch and their inability to be around one another for long periods of time, some bloodshed is inevitable, but eventually the numbers will be whittled down to a sustainable amount. At some point in this process the Nakaja will begin to have their thralls build spacecrafts, built from the specifications contained in their ancestral memory and rejoin the rest of their race for a new mating season. It is presumed that pre-space flight they had to make do with strict population limitations.

Color: #65000B
Description:

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Spoiler

PICTURE BY PHARMS [img]images/smilies/icon_heartbeat.gif[/img]

Maturing on Houma with a group of mainly houmins under her control Ajota has grown into a form that is best described as a hybrid of an ant and a houmin. She has a rosewood coloured segmented exoskeleton in a roughly humanoid shape. She has four legs and a pair of arms ending in pincers. She has a pair of mandibles where a mouth would be on a human and large compound eyes. There is a pair of prominent breast-like lumps on her abdomen, they are aesthetic not functional and they are as rigid as the rest of her body. Hanging around her neck is a multitude of different pendants and necklaces made from various different materials ranging from gold or silver to wood or beads threaded on a string. Smeared across her abdomen and between her compound eyes are whorls of blue and white body paint.

While a lot of Nakaja consider themselves to be superior to the beings in their control it is mostly done without malice; they see the subjugation of other species as just how things work, the natural order of things so to speak. Ajota is a little different from most; she feels an affection for those in her control beyond most Nakaja. She considers those in her control to be her family; her children. This is reflected in her choice of moniker, that of Soulmother. She genuinely believes that taking control of someone is doing them a favour; ushering them from a life of loneliness and solitude into a loving family. Like all Nakaja she sees nothing morally wrong with stripping their free will and forcing this fate upon them. Ajota is very protective of anyone under her control and she will take any harm dealt to one of her family very seriously. She is always keen to expand her family, and is likely to be overjoyed at a world without other Nakaja to compete with. She lacks the capacity to communicate with anyone outside her family and will likely speak through someone who is if she needs to.

Items/Abilities: As a Nakaja her primary ability is the use of her natural pheromones and her telepathic abilities to brainwash people and put them under her control. More sophisticated intelligences are more resistant to this, especially if they have a stronger than average resolve (essentially other battlers are probably fine, Ajota is more likely to be taking control of NPCs and adding them to her family). Ajota has control of his and if she sees value in doing so she could refrain from taking control of them entirely. She also has access to an array of potentially useful information stored in her ancestral memory. She is probably okayish in a fight but she has never had to fight for herself, she always lets her family fight for her.

Biography: Ajota was not exactly exceptional among Nakaja. She was part of the clutch that was sent to Houma; luckily she landed in a part that was both habitable and already occupied by the dominant species of the planet, a race of humanoid aliens called houmins. A couple of other Nakaja landed within auditory range and so for the first couple of weeks of her life she was subjected to their every waking thought, as they were no doubt subjected to hers. As soon as she could she exerted control on the local houmins and forced them to end the lives of the nearby Nakaja. This continued for a couple of months as Ajota established her family.

Things settled down for a number of years and slowly Ajota began to mature. Her abilities grew with her and so did her ambition. Once maybe twice she provoked another Nakaja unnecessarily, merely as a means to expand her land and expand her family. She would very likely have continued to do so but for the arrival of the Ska’vans. Their presence upon Houma was more low-key than their presence upon Earth. They snatched away a few Nakaja; their first encounter with this spacefaring species, and a couple of houmins and after determining the planet to not be worth colonisation, they left.