Crusader Lord

Through the Gateways: Humanity [Closed] [Soon to be Concluded]

The Xandalian Republic

Senate Chamber, Capital City of Thalus, Xandal

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Executive Officer Garand had been having what most might call a 'very long day'. He'd been woken up in the wee early hours of the morning by the most urgent of calls, one that he nor the Senate or anyone else on the planet had likely expected to happen. From there it had been full-stop action from the start, ranging from calls to staff and the rousing of proper military resources and units to the informing of the Senators who were already going to meet in a session today anyways. Upon getting the information, the Senate had declared an 'emergency session' early and called in even the Head Judge and Council of Seven. Ultimately they had naturally delayed the originally-scheduled meeting, but this matter was far more pressing than discussions about the weekly issues. No, those were already being delegated and handled at the continental and lower levels at the moment to keep things moving and ensure the daily matters continued to run smoothly.

All in all, the flexibility and efficiency of the Xandalian System was able to handle this and respond with speed without sacrificing functionality. It was something to be proud of for sure, whether in the minds of any citizen or even as high up as he himself was in the grand scheme of things.

Still...yes, back to the matter at hand.

As Garand walked into the grand, semi-circular auditorium-style Senate Hall he had minor flashbacks to when he'd been called in to be given his appointment as Executive Officer. The floor was a polished marble, great pure white columns carved in ancient Earth style but modern techniques held up the fast domed roof, and yet rows of semi-circular arranged seating in proper order and where those at the center where the podium was could be heard and seen with maximal efficiency. Whilst the 'charm' that hailed back to old Earth was noted, the technology the room was made with and that it continued in the seating and at the podium and so forth was far more advanced. Holographic displays for three-dimensional presentations, proper microphone design that allowed for simple voice projection as clear as crystal, and even personal displays at each of the seemingly innumerable senatorial seats for each Senator to use for clear communication and analysis purposes. That was just the general gist of it, however, as what hit the Executive Officer soon after was the feeling of the eyes of the Senate on him.

As large a man as he was in height, and as imposing as his highly-decorated formal military garb with badges and awards and so forth was, the six-foot-two Garand still felt a light chill down his back as he calmly stepped up to the podium. Soon after, though it felt like much longer than that, Head Judge Marianna von Marua would step up next to him. Whilst Garand himself had quite the tan complexation, complete with a soft, yet kept in a short-military-cut, black hair, Marianna was rather fair skinned and seemed quite pale. This stood in stark contrast to the intricate black Judicial robes she donned, whose collar was golden and woven with fine silver filigree that looked like a 'laurel wreath' design (a plant long lost to Xandalian knowledge sadly) was around her neck...and whose bottom skirt that nearly touched the floor was embroidered with intricate depictions of major Xandalian Historical Events. To some she might as well seem like she was sick, but that was far from the case. Indeed, Garand himself had never seen someone with such raw force of will and good health and a sense of justice as she carried.

Soon, however, the voice of the Senatorial Herald would echo across the room, kicking off the meeting in a rather familiar manner for such an unfamiliar topic.

"Welcome, all to the First Emergency Session in Year 300 of the Post-Colonization Calendar (PCC). Today the Senate has convened to discuss the serious matter of the ancient Gateway re-opening, as they were alerted to by Executive Officer Garand Marks, inviting all major officers to come. Direct Representatives of Continental authorities are also tuning into this session for informative purposes.

At the stand are the Executive Offer, who is joined by Head Judge Marianna von Marua.

Executive Officer, you may speak first."

Garand nodded his head solemnly, and soon the vast open air of the chamber was filled with a 3d holographic display showing himself. It was real-time, meaning as he moved and talked those watching would see it and how he was conducting himself, hearing every word if not breath that came out of his mouth. Quite the pressure, but it ensured clarity and quality of understanding.

"Members of the Senate, representatives listening in by a secure channel, and most honored Head Judge beside me," the man began, gesturing politely with one hand to the Senate and to Marianna (who nodded back at him) as he addressed them before continuing, "As of 0200 hours this morning, confirmation of the opening of the ancient Gateway was received by staff on Listening Station Alpha. Thirty minutes later I received the first call about this after further analysis was done to confirm the initial readings. By 0400 hours, I had sent out all necessary emergency orders for military reactivation and deployment up to 40% total capacity and for forces to secure the Gateway. Anti-piracy forces remain active, however, so as to not compromise the safety of our space.

Listening Station Alpha has kept tabs on the Gateway and area about it for anti-piracy means, but also to keep an eye on the ancient Gateway. This 'artificial wormhole generator', as the 300 year old records recall it as, was left by our forebears who settled this world and fled a dying one to settle various different places. For all of our history here, it has remained inactive and we have not had the means to bring it back online despite attempts to study its arcane technology.

Now...this machinery has returned to an active state once more, and regardless of the 'how' or 'why' we are faced with a serious
matter. To this end I have been asked to speak first here this day, and give my initial recommendation on what should be done. To this end I suggest we maintain a secure space about the Gateway, and send out a mixed diplomatic and scouting mission to begin investigating things with a degree of caution.

I now hand the floor to Head Judge Marianna."

Garand gave a nod, before taking a step back. Marianna's gaze seemed as piercing as those light blue eyes of hers hinted at, though she quietly nodded to him as she took center stage at the podium now.

"This is indeed a most awe-inspiring moment...and also one that inspires tensions to boot," the Head Judge began, her words pronounced with a very deliberate clarity and smooth tone, gesturing out with her arms as she spoke with her blue orbs scanning the audience of Senators for reactions and so forth, "We have no idea what lies beyond the Gateway, whether it be hostile forces who do not remember their origins or perhaps those who have abandoned the ancient definition of 'humanity' in regards to their own actions. Alternately, there might be friends and allies with which we might come to an understanding and greater prosperity as we have come to achieve with our Gusb brethren at the other end of the system.

In this vein, simply tossing a scouting party and diplomatic mission through the Gateway I believe would be too dangerous to consider for a first impression. Too hasty, with high chances of causing fright to either potential friend or foe. Should we take such a rash risk that might tarnish the name of this proud nation and people? Should we really have military forces sitting about as well, bringing tension or perhaps rash actions to any who might enter through the Gateway as well?"

She seemed to glance back at Garand himself for a moment. In turn, it wasn't hard to notice that her words did seem to stir some sense of unease among some of the Senatorial faces Garand could most clearly recognize in the room. Unease at his idea that was. The Executive Officer grit his teeth in silence. Woman could have been a Senator with the way she could direct and guide and capture the attention of those about her. Even so, she had 'some' of a point at least. Yet at the same time...

"If I may interrupt for a moment?" Garand said, stepping forward once more and his holographic projection appearing next to Marianna's as his words began to be projected as well, "Head Judge, with the utmost respect I do wish to note that decisive actions must be taken in some capacity. To leave the Gateway unsecured in its current state would invite pirates to potentially make use, which would leave a far worse impression of us perhaps, and what if something hostile enters our space as well? Shall we take forever to respond, potentially allowing hostile forces to secure our own Gateway?

Would you leave our people and allies in danger over any proper sense of security?"

The military man's voice carried authority and a resounding boom to it that brought attention back to him, and after a minute several heads would nod in mild agreement within the crowd in turn. Marianna didn't even bat an eye at his interruption, however, simply smirking at him alone for a moment despite his attempt to cut back. She then went about returning her attention back to the Senators.

"Ah, Executive Officer Garand does have a point...so perhaps a compromise might be in order? How might we secure ourselves, and yet approach things with a more even hand? To that end, I have a potential solution of my own I would wish to suggest to the Senate as a whole. A compromise, if you will."

Wait a second.

"Let us secure our Gateway, but rather than seek others we shall invite them to meet us. We should invite them forth, and have ships ready with each of the Council of Seven to receive diplomatic parties as they arrive...and the troops to fire if the worst enters in."

Oh that sneaky little manipula-...wait. No. There was only one good way to follow this up, and he had an idea!

"How so, Head Judge? I believe the magistrates would be rather busy with the day to day, unless you mean to use them instead of our nation's finest diplomats?" Garand said, after giving a click of his tongue, "As for the delivery method, I believe we have the solution already.

We program a series of modified automated scouting drones, and send one to each world with care. Each will bear the same message, projected out, as they send us cursory data in return."

Marianna chuckled.

"My, I did not mean any offense to our nation's diplomats. Simply to relieve the pressure upon their station as they perhaps get ready for whatever times are to come, and to make my own proposal as were both were requested to prior to this meeting.

Yet you are correct, Executive Officer, our finest diplomats should be prepared for this," the Head Judge responded, before extending her arms out in invitation as she looked back at the Senators one last time, "Then, oh members of the Senate, oh voices of the people, what say you to this plan? To secure our Gateway, sending out messenger drones and preparing a diplomatic welcome on our side for any who might deign to visit?"

---

~Many Hours Later~

The joint plan had been approved, at least after the Executive Officer and the Head Judge were dismissed as the Senate Floor began its own internal debate and decision-making. It had only taken two hours for them to come to a conclusion, which for the Senate was quite the fast decision indeed. Albeit this emergency situation called for such a fast response...so there would be no week of debate over this thankfully. Still, the extended military forces had been assembled at the Gateway already. A couple of Diplomatic vessels, escorted by a destroyer, a carrier, and a humble swarms of Corvettes. The rest would have to take the time for further deployment, but at the same time the Military-Frame pilots with their 3rd Generation mechs were primed and ready in case of the worst. Two squadrons of them were already deployed into the vacuum of space itself as an 'honor guard' forming a safe channel to the diplomatic ships for any potentially-arriving diplomatic parties...or to intercept anything hostile that came through otherwise.

It was fancy as hell for all involved, but with the two ships each equipped with two diplomats up to four foreign diplomatic parties could be hosted comfortably at the same time. Already Listening Station Alpha would now have a carrier and destroyer stationed there for added response capabilities, all as space crews would be arriving to begin building onto the space station itself to accommodate more staff and versatile capabilities (such as a diplomatic wing and one for stationed troops) using premade space station modules shipped from planetside.

However...one thing was for certain. As the Gateway was operated, sending each of the now-modified scouting drones through, things would never be the same again.

And as each drone would arrive at each of the other Gateways, they would begin broadcasting a simple message in Xandalian, translated Old Earth English, and Binary respectively:

"Attention, nations and sentients on the receiving ends of these Gateways. This modified drone has been sent by the Xandalian Republic, bringing greetings to any and all remnants of humanity's ancient voyage into the stars. You are not alone.

We invite any who wish to engage in diplomatic talks to our home system, where our diplomats await you on our end of the Gateway. Coordinates have been encoded into this broadcasted message in simple binary.

Our military has secured our Gateway site as well, therefore any actions of aggression or hostility sent to us instead will be responded to with decisive force. However, diplomatic missions and friendly arrivals will be safely and warmly received

This signal will repeat for three hours, and the drone will then automatically shut down and begin self-destructive protocols away from yours Gateways and any detectable ships or life signs. Remain away from them, but it will only be a small blast that will dispose of the drone safely and efficiently."

@MetalWeight@ClocktowerEchos@Tortoise@Irredeemable@Ekreture@datadogie@Timemaster@GreyGoblin@Sigma@Raylah

Through the Gateways: Humanity [Closed] [Soon to be Concluded]

Xandalian Republic

Nation Name: The Xandalian Republic

Government Form: Unitary Democratic Republic

Demographics:

***Humans (Homo sapiens sapiens fotis) - The humans of the Xandalian Republic, looking the same outwardly save for their notably improved physiological capabilities and denser bodily tissues (see the first part of the “History” section for further details). Can interbreed with other humans who haven’t been too varied from the standard, generally passing on a few improvements to the children in the process, but are incompatible with wholly-changed humans or those whose genetics are too twisted to pair with theirs.

***Gusb - Sentient and sapient silicon-based life forms that originated from the planet of Karag in the same home system as Xandal. Their bodies might be silicon-based, but are hardy and can subsist on even carbon-based worlds due to generations of evolutionary adaptation (and some gene therapy) and the odd way their homeworld evolved to sustain life. Their race eventually became advanced, and detected human technology from afar...yet thought it was another sentient species itself. They thus arrived at Xandal, but were unable to recognize humanity as a sentient species and the machines as just tools at first and engaged in a war until the truth was discovered. Feed on electrical impulses and silicon-based foods primarily back home, but on carbon-based worlds their cells utilize a form of Cellular Nuclear Transmutation to form the needed silicon from carbon and so forth with other materials for their nutritional needs.

They do have a division of sexes, though in total there are 3. “Sex A” and “Sex B” can both mate with C and give birth to young, but note mate with each other. A only produces young of the C sex, and B only produces A and B young.

Gusb Example

Population: 3.2 Billion (3.1 Billion Humans, 0.1 Billion Gusb)

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Planet Name and Description: Xandal - A beautiful, flourishing planet the literal size of Jupiter, with wide temperate zones in the north between the large equatorial/tropical lands and the rather large northern pole (near which are terrains such as taiga and such things). In the south below the equator there are areas of desert and savannah and such dryer lands, but as one approaches the south pole things become rapidly cold and many icebergs can be found in seas near the southern pole. The spread of climes and types of wildlife is generally analogous to Earth, but the wider equatorial area and far colder/large poles have led to some interesting species evolving.

(A very barebones description added real fast because brain hurts and most of this was made super late the night of the 28th of May. XD)

History:

Long History

When colonists in three of the larger colony ships first emerged from the wormhole, they got their first look upon the world of Xandal. The literal size of Jupiter, the planet’s surface was from space visibly covered in flourishing climates and oceans and fauna untold. A total of 62% of the planet’s surface was composed of sprawling oceans and two massive frozen North/South poles, as the colony ships’ sensors read to their respective captains, and the other 38% that was pure landmass. The landmass alone was equal to the landmass of Earth several times over, though the atmosphere of the planet had more of a peculiar mix of gases in it alongside the usual three (the ‘usual three’ in this case being: oxygen, nitrogen, and argon). The gravity was 2.4x greater than that of Earth to boot. Even so, at the first of the three landing sites in the planet’s northern hemisphere the first impression was that the world would provide a most splendid home to settle upon. The air was ‘breathable enough’, though initial settlers would post-settlement be eventually exposed to extensive genetic therapy to ‘adjust’ them as physiological issues like respiratory illnesses and effects of the increased gravity began to become more and more apparent post-colonization.

Such ‘adjustments’ were simply an increase in bodily resilience, body density, and enhanced respiratory and circulatory system capabilities to properly make use of the alien air with immune adjustments to compensate for the new internal chemistry. The treatments would take several years to be fully completed and then distributed fully all by the end of Year 10. In this case the genetic therapy used here had originated from a once highly experimental therapy from Japan back on the original Earth some decades ago, whose data was on the colony ships' databanks as part of their 'cargo' from Earth, and as the personnel both medical and scientific searched the databanks on the colony ships they found the data about this treatment. From here they would apply the more advanced technology they now had, very much so compared to back then when the treatment was originally conceived very long ago, and would ultimately return to it to 'tweak' it and develop it finally into a stable and frankly useful option. Considered a ‘blanket’ option to cover the myriad potential issues the planet’s climate and gravity would pose, and a faster and more cost-effective in the long run option than things like extensive artificial gravity generators and such to alleviate some of the risks, the long-term side effects were distinctly less understood for subsequent generations but were at least proven through testing to be safe for same-generation treatment and adaptation.

For the most part the lingering side effects of the gene therapy would remain unknown for a few generations, until scientists discovered that the descendants of the original gene-modded settlers had developed well beyond in comparison. The humans’ skeletons became notably denser, their tissues and organs become more potent and far more resilient to disease, their respiratory system and circulatory systems became superhumanly good at adapting on the fly to where they could even breathe fine in the thin gases in space (though the lack of gravity there would still mean their lungs don’t function without a pressurized suit), and their other bodily tissues like muscles had become likewise much denser and stronger. Yet the people simply took it as fact, as by then people and civilization had all become passively acclimated to how things were and what they could do, and society in everything from building to individual workloads and the like had already been adjusted to it.

However, the settlers and their myriad descendants would also discover, and then make use of respectively, a unique mineral on the world that came to be called “Thalarite”. This mineral, named after the scientist who first made the breakthrough of its uses (that being one ‘Thatcher Larsson’), had little known about its properties once it was first dug up in the 3rd year after the colonists settled. Many thought it to have been ionized by natural deep underground radioactivity, as being a decaying nuclear byproduct of some kind from some long lost ancient civilization or former settlers on the planet that left, or even as being the leftovers of ancient fossilized life. The theories would greatly abound until Thatcher discovered the mineral’s true nature: It was at base a simple mineral with many potent, versatile properties. The more it was refined the more energistic it became, and likewise the more compressed it was the more exponentially dense (and more energized in this case too if refined enough) it became, making it perfect for powering machines and vehicles and reactors and forming metal plates and such out of in the long term. The molecular structure was able to be compressed with minimal-to-low levels of refinement to create a passively semi-charged metal that could be used for military armor and so forth, as well as making civilian things such as dense metal sheets whose semi-charge would be able to be transmitted to weak electronics designed to take in that passive charge. Thalarite could also be turned into liquid fuel through much processing, though the mineral with low-to-moderate refinement was proven to make better quality and longer-lasting fuel than the unrefined mineral.

Transmitting the energy of the Thalarite was also found to be possible, albeit only some time later, making wireless power transmission and wireless charging and so forth rather viable. All of this combined pushed the colonists into a frenzy of development and expansion on Xandal, and technological development as well as the population afterwards began to greatly boom. New roads, new towns, new settlements, all of it began to spring up at an accelerating speed. Whilst this led to population super-booms and the various towns and cities growing in size and scale, this boom in everything in turn led to occasional ‘civil wars’ and various conflicts as the lure of power became apparent and the governmental apparatus was overstretched and had issues to cope with the sudden boom in technology and population. This whole 100-year period of technology/population boom and the wars and conflicts that ravaged it from Year 25 to roughly Year 125, as it started as things began to snowball hard a few years after the Thalarite breakthrough in Year 21, became known as “The Thalarite Century”. By the end of this century the planet had been brought under heel once more, emerging as the government finally caught up with the times and order was re-established as the many settled areas of the planet united bit by biu by the end of the Thalarite Century. Cities and towns were destroyed and rebuilt, governments of various kinds arose, but from this point progress and order would return as the “Golden Boom of 25” (as the century’s start is referred to) finally simmed out.

For the next sixty years Xandal would settle down into a measure of calm, with highway systems and business and advancement in civilian and military matters moving along. Nothing is of much note from this sixty-year-period aside from the world healing from the scars of the Thalarite Century and general progress in the technological field regarding Thalarite and its technologies being pushed further. Humans returned to space after a dark period of being kept planetside, and space stations began to pop up as citizens also moved to settle the two large and habitable moons moving about Xandal: “Hiron” and “Thalyssra”.

Yet in the year 186, something else came to loom over the world of Xandal. A massive ship of an unknown origin, from seemingly farther away in the Xandalians’ home system, approached the planet. It blared no signal, nor spoke a word at first, and then after a few weeks of this they simply began to fire. It then launched a bombardment of stone-like monoliths down upon the surface of the planet, which began to emit alien organic-tissue-decaying toxins, even as smaller ships emerged from the ship’s massive bays on its sides to attack. The oddest thing was that mechanical things were left alone, but any humans were targeted with anything organic in the environment being generally just collateral. Thalarite technology and pressing needs for bigger military advancements allowed humanity to respond without being utterly devastated, but it would take another five years of struggle and battling before humanity would develop a sufficient space military to go from the defensive to the offensive by Year 192. In this year the first major space retaliation against the unknown attackers began, launching an assault on one of their carriers that used Thalarite-Uridium bombs to blast holes in their dense metal hulls.

War would continue for two more years after this, with humans trying to find any way to understand the seemingly silent enemy comms...until in late 194 ‘something’ would be intercepted. A clear signal from an alien ship, faint but coming from inside. The first to be properly identified, after it was found to be using a frequency far higher on the electromagnetic spectrum than anything humanity had ever known before. From here it took only two more months to decode the language spoken in the message. Yet...what the humans heard once they could understand it was something entirely different than they had expected.

“Our sensors indicate other lifeforms upon this planet’s surface. Do you read? Repeat, do you read? We detected your electronic life-signals from afar, and we have come to speak.”

“...Blast, more silence. They seem to be mindless drones, just as Command feared. Primitive electromagnetic communications, focused on inputs and outputs and simple calculations. You think with destroying those strange parasites in them that they’d be able to respond...but perhaps it is too late?”

“Don’t give up, Comms Officer [indiscernible alien name inserted here]. Even if their race, as peculiarly varied as they are, does not respond...we shall ensure the odd carbon-based infestation that took them down will be stopped at least. As sentients it is our duty to ensure we figure out what is going on, and those Deterioration Bombs should be doing the trick.

Tch.

To figure a pest-control measure would be used on a planet here though...it is strange. As strange as these lifeforms akin to us living upon a mostly carbon-based world.”

“But it makes me wonder if there’s something we’re missing here? If these are carbon-based parasites without sentience, aren’t they just doing what their instincts indicate?”

[A brief but somber silence over the line]

“I pray there isn’t anything we are missing, but let me reiterate the situation for you, Officer, and the others I know are listening to the general comms line here.

These things have seemingly infested a whole race of silicates akin to ourselves in some fashion. It is unsettling at best with disturbing implications if anything else like this exists in the system and could reach our people. We even on arrival sent the greeting signal for days, as the diplomats on-board desired, but no response came from the life forms below. We did all the scans, found the seeming problem after much debate, and then tried to see what freeing some of them from infestation would do. Then still nothing.

Carbon-based life doesn’t have the capacity for sentience as we do, at least as far as our science has been able to indicate thus far. We are far from home as well, and we have had to harvest materials from the local moons and corpses of the fallen infested. It is unseemly, but it is all we have had to defend ourselves against this threat.

Even long-distance comms back home have been telling us to do our best to survive until the infestation is lessened. Then perhaps they’ll let off long enough to engage a retreat to home.

So hold strong, [indiscernible word here], we shall endure to the end! For our people!”

[a general repeating of ‘For our people’ echoes over the line in a myriad of voices]

The aliens...had no idea they were sentient. Most had thought even the enemy were robotic or were simply engineered organisms sent to assail a world, or perhaps some non-sentient hive wanting to harvest them in turn, but the discovery of this key message opened up the serious issue at the core of all of the conflict thus far. Upon reversing the process of decoding to encode a message, humanity would quickly work to figure out their own response. On one hand the war had been going on so long that there was no easy way to make up for it, scars had been left and devastation made manifest, and yet at the same time it was all some great misunderstanding that had to be rectified. Either way they chose to go about it, something had to be done.

Thus eventually, the top officials of the government would decide to send a message as soon as possible to the alien ship in hopes of getting them to talk, and two weeks later the humans sent this message:

“This is a message from planetside. Repeat. This is a message from planetside. Repeat.

We are not parasites. I repeat, we are not parasites.

We are humans, sentient carbon-based life-forms who settled here almost two centuries ago from a dying world. We created complex tools we call ‘machines’ out of metals and other minerals to form powerful tools of no sentience, ones that we use to maintain our civilization. I repeat, these are not sentient mechanical or silicate forms or husks of former sentient life, but are wholly mindless machines built as tools for a sentient and civilized society.

We’ve no idea how you read our technology as sentient life, but we are very much alive and sentient. We did not have the technology to understand your initial messages or notice them, but all of this has been a grave misunderstanding.

We do not wish for war. I repeat, we do not wish for war. We did not know you were sentient either, and thought you were drones or engineered organisms sent to conquer us or kill us. Your ‘pest control’ weapons have been killing our people and any living carbon-based matter around them en-masse. Our grasp of your language is poor at the moment, and we have sent this message as soon as we could after finally decoding a conversation from your mothership.

Please, cease combat operations. I repeat, please cease combat operations. If you cease operations, we shall as well. I repeat, if you cease combat operations we shall as well. Let us stop this bloodshed.”

A set of two comms would be heard that were coming from the main alien ship soon after. The first read as followed:

“...S-Sir! We have received comms from planetside!”

“What?!”

“It is a communication from...it seems...the parasites. It didn’t come from one of our own regardless. It is rough, very rough, but it seems to get across a clear message from initial analysis.”

“T-T-The parasites?! Are you sure???”

“Yes, that word is clear so far from what I can translate, but the rest of it is worded very rough in our language. Very rough. I can make out a few words right now, but that’s it.”

“Then tell me what you can, Comms Officer! If not that, then the gist if you must!

Meanwhile, from the rest of you I want every damn hand on this right now...and someone get the diplomats and scientists to the bridge immediately! As in NOW!!!”

[echoes of orders being quickly and calmly confirmed by other comms officers on supposedly the alien ship’s bridge]”

This was followed by a second comms conversation a bit later, much more clear this time and far more widely broadcast even as far as the moons:

“Everyone I have opened the general comms link for the rest of the ship. We are opening channels to the battle fleets and other operations in this as well. This is a fleet-wide order, of the utmost urgency, so all of you need to listen.”

[the tone matching what is assumed to be the ship’s commander seems considerably more...shaky, as if he’s just seen a ghost or a terrible fright]

“...Ahem. Several hours ago we received a message from planetside, the first message we’ve been able to decode. A copy has been sent homeside by our ambassadors.

Our initial determination of the ‘parasites’ infesting the world below have been proven...incorrect. Gravely incorrect, all after these past few years. What we thought to be non-sentient parasites, potentially working in a planetary hive, are not the animals we assumed. I repeat, these are...we’ve been...the creatures are sentient organisms. Analysis of the message and so forth has made this most grim fact clear now.

As such I am ordering all hands, all personnel deployed beyond the Carrier, to return to base right now and leave behind all materials and resources you might have. Right. Now/

Any who do not obey this order will be court-martialed on sight, and those who return promptly will not receive punishment. I will only say this only once.

For those in the weapon bays: Do not continue deployment of Orbital Sprayers or other assault activities. I repeat, cease all offensive activities. Maintain the defensive shields instead.

As of this moment, we are to cease operations post-haste and wait for a return message from homeside.”

And so the war came to an end. And as a phrase coined about the war, officially called on both worlds “The Seven Years Tragedy”, and its tragic futility in later years would go: “No victory, no glory, but simply survivors”.

Even so, in the aftermath it was a more welcome thing for both sides to sign a proper peace. Likewise in the following century there were attempts at reparations, as well as the budding of interplanetary trade within the same system the two worlds shared. Inter-cultural exchanges, as well as even some immigration, would occur as the two worlds, two nations, and two species attempted to learn and coexist together in the wake of newborn understanding.

In this new era there was a boom in the technology sector for the people of Xandal, as well as those from the now-identified “Greater Union of Grusbrakg” the silicates came from, though the inevitable emergence of silicate and human space piracy would come as the two worlds figured out the interplanetary trade. Militaries in space and on-worlds would continue to advance, even as the march of time and civilian technologies would continue down their own path of advancement.

Peace in enough of a sense would reign as the humans of Xandal recovered and blossomed once more, but soon even this peace and stability would be eclipsed by a new event…

...what would happen after the Gateways opened up once more? What would happen once the humans were exposed to their long-lost kin, and a world long left in ruin?

Only time will tell.

Culture and Society: Xandalian Society is one that generally embraces the efficient and latest in advancements, emphasizing a preparedness for bad events and sustaining the freedoms of its citizen species. Citizens as a general body enjoy the latest in civilian products and technologies made possible by continued advancements in Thalarite and its studies, ranging from clean energy producing miniaturized Thalarite-Engine vehicles to appliances that generally make daily life easier to manage for busy citizens. They are generally an industrious and resilient bunch, generally respect their elders, enjoy anime (the original colonists took to it and evolved it on their own), and who will on one hand work their hardest to accomplish their goals but also raise up arms to shoot anything that threatens their home with a zeal.

Whilst not unfriendly to outsiders, and even adaptable as immigrant species might come into their fold and are welcome to, they are also stalwart about being able to live their own way of life freely and frankly are stubborn about it. For others to force that on them is a terrible thing to do, but ironically likewise can relate to getting involved in things for their own interests. The desire to rehabilitate or at least study the old Earth of their ancestors is a matter that has floated about in the public eye at some point, and with the opening of the Gateway things have become even more interesting as unknown empires or friends or nasty things lurk beyond.

---

Governance and Politics: Governance of the Xandalian Republic takes the form of simpler but more efficient unitary models at the local and district and regional levels. Excessive amounts of staff and overcomplicated bureaucracy are avoided, and as such the elections for these positions are usually big turnouts and a major deal.

Above this there is the simple and full power of the Central Government. The Central Government takes the form of the neatly organized Senate, which represents the various groups and constituencies of the republic and is elected from all over, but which has the ultimate power. This body of the Senate controls the legislation, appointing by two-thirds majority an Executive Officer who is fully answerable to the Senate and executes the law and leads the military as the Head of the Military by the Senate’s permission. The Senate also appoints the Head Judge, who presides over a council of 7 judges they appoint and that the Senate approves and confirms.

Being a Unitary state the Central Government has the power, and has delegated power to the elected lower authorities to maintain over a given area (but with these lesser authorities still being answerable to the Central Government). As the Senators of the Senate represent the will of the people from all over the nation, they seek to reflect that lest they not be able to be re-elected to their Senatorial office. Functions of the various levels of government are kept streamlined and effective, from the judges to the legislation, and whilst the Central Government is given full political power it is also legally formed by the will of the people (thereby keeping it in-check from going full-tyrant).

The system can respond to threats and other actions with great speed, maintains a consistent system of communication on all governmental levels, and is ultimately the final form of governance formed during the Xandalian Republic’s history.

Technology Overview:

***Thalarite Technology -

(A) unique mineral on the world that came to be called “Thalarite”. This mineral, named after the scientist who first made the breakthrough of its uses (that being one ‘Thatcher Larsson’), had little known about its properties once it was first dug up in the 3rd year after the colonists settled. Many thought it to have been ionized by natural deep underground radioactivity, as being a decaying nuclear byproduct of some kind from some long lost ancient civilization or former settlers on the planet that left, or even as being the leftovers of ancient fossilized life. The theories would greatly abound until Thatcher discovered the mineral’s true nature: It was at base a simple mineral with many potent, versatile properties. The more it was refined the more energistic it became, and likewise the more compressed it was the more exponentially dense (and more energized in this case too if refined enough) it became, making it perfect for powering machines and vehicles and reactors and forming metal plates and such out of in the long term. The molecular structure was able to be compressed with minimal-to-low levels of refinement to create a passively semi-charged metal that could be used for military armor and so forth, as well as making civilian things such as dense metal sheets whose semi-charge would be able to be transmitted to weak electronics designed to take in that passive charge. Thalarite could also be turned into liquid fuel through much processing, though the mineral with low-to-moderate refinement was proven to make better quality and longer-lasting fuel than the unrefined mineral.

Transmitting the energy of the Thalarite was also found to be possible, albeit only some time later, making wireless power transmission and wireless charging and so forth rather viable.

About Thalarite

A unique mineral of Xandal that, by current times, is both mined and synthesized to power the nation’s technology and fulfill other uses. When mined it looks like a silvery-gray rock that can’t be seen into (much less seen through), but as it is refined and purified it becomes a silvery/dark purple colored mineral. The more refined it is the more crystal-like its appearance and structure becomes, and the most highly purified Thalarite looks like a stunning pure light purple (as the coloration gets lighter and the faint silveriness is lost the more it is refined) cluster of crystals that is actively glowing said color and has raw energy literally crackling over its surface constantly and is too dangerous to not be contained within proper measures.

The uses of this mineral are incredibly diverse, ranging from fuel to engines to reactors to bombs and powering mechs and appliances to being used as armor and even medical applications and so forth. It is what revolutionized Xandalian technology the most of all things that have been found or developed there over the last three centuries. Also due to this revolution of technology, citizens are not rather used to non-Thalarite technology and its operation...though contact with the Gusb has mitigated this issue ever so slightly over the last century. Historians have records about non-Thalarite tech, as do the archives of the old former colony ships that remain public displays and are well-maintained as national history/planetary history exhibits. There are also a few major museums that display Thalarite artifacts and teach about the origins of Thalarite and the time period of “The Thalarite Century”.

(Aside: Was inspired by Ragnite and Ragnite-applicable tech from the “Valkyria Chronicles” game series.)

***Xandalian Mechs - A technological innovation whose roots began within The Thalarite Century, their idea beginning in the form of worker-piloted Labor-Frames (as the tech was called at the time) that used a humanoid designs scheme. When Labor-Frames were often weaponized for their use in revolts and various conflicts, those with humanoid frames were found to be more versatile in application. By the end of The Thalarite Century, many of these had been built or converted into military-style bots to be used alongside standard types of military vehicles or cobbled-together ones that so colored that time period, and came to become the blueprints for the Central Government that emerged from the end of that time period.

Sixty years of peace would allow for a semi-active development of these in order to raise effectiveness and hold them to a higher standard. In this vein the “Military-Frame Type 1” would emerge as the first ‘proper’ humanoid mech unit, and at first was mostly used in ground operations. It sported a wide base variety of equipment that it could both carry and have attached to it, but lacked the sophistication and fine-tuning of much later models. Whilst this would be the primary line that was used and upgraded, later experimental sub-types would emerge including (but not limited to):

-The “Military-Frame Type 2: Underwater Model” initially emerged as a design for deep sea operations and underwater combat, using long-reach melee weapons like harpoon-tipped spears, ranged components such as sophisticated torpedo launchers, advanced propeller technology for swift movement and evasive potential, and having both a far denser armor and an ‘Antique Diving Helmet’ style look around the cockpits for pilot protection/insulation. These units proved to be rather poor in effect when trying to move on land, making the design not good for amphibious assaults as the designers had hoped for, leading to the creation of the more successful “Military-Frame Underwater Type 2.5: Deep Sea Model” that abandoned the legs altogether, increased propulsion power, increased torpedo armaments, and kept the arms as the design became more compressed and crab-like aside from the head that sat on-top. These would be held underneath naval vessels, or dropped from the air, entering the water to perform operations.

-There was also the “Military-Frame Type 3: Paratroop”, which initially used a glider-style design and took on the role of a paratrooper-style mech dropped into combat zones by larger aircraft. Armor was lightened for carrying purposes, and their weapons standardized and lightened for swift and versatile use in the field, but proved to be ill-effective against heavily-fortified or highly-entrenched positions unless paired with a proper ground assault. In this manner they were successful, but ultimately led to improvements in aircraft and glider technologies that culminated in the making of the “Military Frame Attachment Line: Aviator” line of equipment that allowed standard ground mechs with better armor and far greater speed to deploy in the air for a limited time and land behind enemy lines.

Ultimately, the development of Xandalian mechs would close in on its speak during the shorter but far more intense fighting of “The Seven Years Tragedy”. Here the mechs would finally take on a space-variant simply dubbed the “Military-Frame Type 4: Exocombat Model”, which would prove effective at moving through space and landing on either of the two moons of Xandal (whose atmospheres were not as intense as that of Xandal itself). By the end of the war, the mechs received significant upgrades, mostly as an all-purpose unit was desired for the various theaters of war, and thus was born the “Military-Frame Version 2.0.”, which took the best from different models and past instances and data from the war to create a highly-advanced warform that could go underwater, fight in space, fight on the ground, and could make use of hard-mounted specialized loadouts (ones that admittedly had to be changed prior to deployment) to take on various types of missions from the same base frame. Versatile carried equipment that could be carried was also still made available, though it was far from the main emphasis now, which could act as Supplementary Equipment for units in the field depending on one’s tastes or the given operation/situation at hand.

This version of the mech could also undergo atmosphere re-entry, and exit with rocket assistance, directly. They could withstand the vacuum of space and the farthest of underwater depths, and utilize attachments updated for them to get behind enemy lines in planetary engagements. Omni-Adaptive Thruster technology made maneuverability in space or underwater much easier at that! Thalarite Armor and use of alien-inspired Thalarite energy shielding technology, the latter of which plays into atmospheric re-entry and exit capabilities directly, would give suitable versatile defensive capabilities for the Military-Frame Version 2.0. as well.

By current times, the design of the latest version has been ongoing, already seeing another generation of the Military-Frames pass on to the distinctly better “3.0.” version in regards to armaments and attachments and even the base mechs in full. Currently there are highly experimental but even more advanced “4.0.” versions, but none have been deployed into the field yet beyond limited experimental test runs thus far. Rumors say some of these fourth-generation Military-Frames themselves wield even more incredible highly experimental technology, ranging from micro-thrusters with manyfold the output of current standard ones...to even incredibly miniaturized supercomputers that analyze the battlefields the pilot is one, learn from them, and beam predictive battle info directly into the pilot’s mind for moment-to-moment battle adaptation capabilities (better and better so the more the mech is used in battle against various types of foes and strategies).

In the end, the Xandalian Mech is a technology that is no slouch when put to proper use.

(Aside: Was inspired by Gundams, because I thought that was cool. Experimental 4th generation models are highly experimental for a reason too, but still cool Gundams. Yeah!)

***Gusb Technology - Some of this has been imported alongside immigrants, but most of it has been adapted or converted to Thalarite power sources or is in its ‘true’ form only ever kept in scientific labs for study and research. This tech originated by the Gusb species works originally off of electrical/unidentified-alien-gas hybrid form of power created from a form of advanced-fusion energy tech. This Gusb energy tech utilizes a naturally-occurring and distinctly radioactive (by old Earth radiation detector measurements at least) alien mineral nicknamed “Gusbite” by those on Xandal (since the Gusb name for it is indecipherable by the human tongue). This mineral, which goes far beyond the old Earth period table, produces a more violent and far more intense reaction when enriched and used to create a far more advanced and potent fusion reaction. Little else is known or understood about it, save that it isn’t used on Xandal and the Gusb use it to create ‘batteries’ that are used to power their tech on the small scale and to make ‘reactors’ that power larger-scale tech such as their battleships and cities back home.

***Basic Translator Technology - Basic translation technology developed within the last 100 years after the advent of “The Seven Years Tragedy”. Gusb immigrants usually equip themselves with these for an ease of communication, though more have begun to learn the human tongue and some humans have learned to speak what of the Gusb tongue they can pronounce. Mostly acts as a basis for more advanced translation technology for the Republic post-Gateway-opening at some point.

Military Overview:

***Planetary-Level Combat - On-planet battles are predominantly divided into Land, Air, and Sea divisions.

Land Divisions are initially begun by deploying Xandalian Mechs, who take territory and handle enemy entrenchments/fortresses along the way. They are the vanguard of the Xandalian military, and generally will soften up areas and handle larger-scale threats, large enough warforms, and larger enemy numbers. Infantry equipped with protective insulated Thalarite-polymer armor and effective Thalarite laser weapons, brought in by and working alongside hover-tanks, hover artillery, and armored/armed hover APCs that can move over virtually any terrain (and all have rather limited ‘flight’ capability), will swiftly move in to secure and then hold the taken ground and clear out smaller threats left over. Infantry use their armor and Thalarite weapons alongside things such as portable shield generators to secure camps and deployable scouting drones as well as specialized deployable antennas attached to stronger portable scanning modules to thoroughly scan the area and search for holdouts or hidden traps and so forth as they more greatly secure the foothold on the area.

Air Divisions are usually composed of Jet-Glider-using Mechs that will provide land support by taking down anti-air emplacements by swiftly entering the area and rushing those positions. Massive armored airships will fly in and generally utilize high firepower and high defense to lay down fire on enemy positions on land or otherwise, even being able to safely fire smart torpedoes into oceans from high up in the air, and can deploy from its own hangars smaller helicopter-like aircraft with two rotating wings and two powerful jet engine-esque propellers on them for rather rapid acceleration and movement speeds. Such smaller craft are “Reliants” that can lift off from a stationary position and swiftly move about akin to a Jet airplane in the air as well. Each Reliant has four missiles or rockets on the underside to fire, dual-gatling-style Thalarite guns that can lay down high rates of fire, and can carry a small amount of infantry or other personnel to drop off to help secure points or board similar large enemy aircraft if such a thing is needed or frankly possible. The Reliants are employed as anti-small aircraft and ground-securing or boarding/transport measures, whilst the main Airship also has anti-smaller-craft measures installed alongside its array of bigger guns.

Sea Divisions are usually composed of advanced craft called “Maru” that can hover to the correct positions and submerge into the water from there to navigate the seas. These craft are basically super-sci fi submarines, and usually are only deployed on-world when submersible craft are needed for a given operation. They can then leave the water and hover back to their carrier after operations, or if their hover capabilities were damaged the carriers (called “Crane-Frame Carriers” can hover over the location of these craft and pull them up into themselves for storage and repair. At times the Maru can also carry and deploy a number of Version 2.0. upgraded “Deep Sea” model Mechs, which are akin to the old version but with improved systems and equipment and such all-round.

***Space Combat - Xandalian Mechs dominate the smaller-craft level battles of space, having incredible maneuverability and enough defenses and loadouts to take on that they can cut down smaller craft and assault larger ones in a combat role. These possess point-defense and defenses that make ships smaller than them generally a moot point, and they are supported by smaller, sleeker ships that usually sport high speed and run interference or harry enemy craft or even intercept small automated craft/drones/ships in combat as well. Destroyers are the first real ‘larger’ ship used beyond this, containing high defenses and firepower to lay into the enemy fleet with distinctly less speed but exceptionally good range ranging from close to long range capabilities at maximum. These Destroyers usually have the smaller sleeker craft, dubbed “Corvettes”, with them in some numbers.

Larger Carriers come after this, carrying large numbers of Xandalian Mechs and very high defenses in exchange for rather limited firepower and greater carrying capacity. These deploy their Mechs and receive them back after battle (or during battle if injured need to retreat), as well as designate a portion of their mechs as reserves that are saved for use when or where such reserves are needed. Some also carry even larger amounts of Corvettes to bolster those numbers in battle.

Beyond this, grand Battleships also carry their own contingents of Xandalian Mechs and are escorted by a couple of Destroyers, as well as the Destroyers’ accompanying swarms of Corvettes, and a couple of Carriers as well. These ships are far larger in scale than the rest of the ships previously mentioned, boasting a titanic size, high defenses, and even higher offensive capabilities and weapons that can be fired into the enemy from super-long-range (or other weapons for closer ranges) as the situation demands. These are usually the flagships, the ships on which the commanders from the Republic are placed in order to direct the battle, and as such these ships have the most robust and potent comms arrays that keep the fleet interconnected. Taking out the Battleship is the best way to weaken a Republic fleet, though is tough to do, though as an aside comms between their other ships will still be generally possible without the Battleship...just not as smooth as the chain of command rather ‘suddenly’ shifts to backup and ultimately emergency measures.

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Additional Info:

***Important Note 1: The military is only at 25% deployment currently, aka: the peacetime level of deployment that takes care of smaller issues during peace and maintains anti-piracy activity and such. The full military isn't currently active. Do not worry.

Through the Gateways: Humanity [Closed] [Soon to be Concluded]

@Tortoise No problem! And if I need to fix anything, just say the word and it will be done! :P

Through the Gateways: Humanity [Closed] [Soon to be Concluded]

@Tortoise

Xandalian Republic

Nation Name: The Xandalian Republic

Government Form: Unitary Democratic Republic

Demographics:

***Humans (Homo sapiens sapiens fotis) - The humans of the Xandalian Republic, looking the same outwardly save for their notably improved physiological capabilities and denser bodily tissues (see the first part of the “History” section for further details). Can interbreed with other humans who haven’t been too varied from the standard, generally passing on a few improvements to the children in the process, but are incompatible with wholly-changed humans or those whose genetics are too twisted to pair with theirs.

***Gusb - Sentient and sapient silicon-based life forms that originated from the planet of Karag in the same home system as Xandal. Their bodies might be silicon-based, but are hardy and can subsist on even carbon-based worlds due to generations of evolutionary adaptation (and some gene therapy) and the odd way their homeworld evolved to sustain life. Their race eventually became advanced, and detected human technology from afar...yet thought it was another sentient species itself. They thus arrived at Xandal, but were unable to recognize humanity as a sentient species and the machines as just tools at first and engaged in a war until the truth was discovered. Feed on electrical impulses and silicon-based foods primarily back home, but on carbon-based worlds their cells utilize a form of Cellular Nuclear Transmutation to form the needed silicon from carbon and so forth with other materials for their nutritional needs.

They do have a division of sexes, though in total there are 3. “Sex A” and “Sex B” can both mate with C and give birth to young, but note mate with each other. A only produces young of the C sex, and B only produces A and B young.

Gusb Example

Population: 3.2 Billion (3.1 Billion Humans, 0.1 Billion Gusb)

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Planet Name and Description: Xandal - A beautiful, flourishing planet the literal size of Jupiter, with wide temperate zones in the north between the large equatorial/tropical lands and the rather large northern pole (near which are terrains such as taiga and such things). In the south below the equator there are areas of desert and savannah and such dryer lands, but as one approaches the south pole things become rapidly cold and many icebergs can be found in seas near the southern pole. The spread of climes and types of wildlife is generally analogous to Earth, but the wider equatorial area and far colder/large poles have led to some interesting species evolving.

(A very barebones description added real fast because brain hurts and most of this was made super late the night of the 28th of May. XD)

History:

Long History

When colonists in three of the larger colony ships first emerged from the wormhole, they got their first look upon the world of Xandal. The literal size of Jupiter, the planet’s surface was from space visibly covered in flourishing climates and oceans and fauna untold. A total of 62% of the planet’s surface was composed of sprawling oceans and two massive frozen North/South poles, as the colony ships’ sensors read to their respective captains, and the other 38% that was pure landmass. The landmass alone was equal to the landmass of Earth several times over, though the atmosphere of the planet had more of a peculiar mix of gases in it alongside the usual three (the ‘usual three’ in this case being: oxygen, nitrogen, and argon). The gravity was 25% greater than that of Earth to boot. Even so, at the first of the three landing sites in the planet’s northern hemisphere the first impression was that the world would provide a most splendid home to settle upon. The air was ‘breathable enough’, though initial settlers would post-settlement be eventually exposed to extensive genetic therapy to ‘adjust’ them as physiological issues like respiratory illnesses and effects of the increased gravity began to become more and more apparent post-colonization.

Such ‘adjustments’ were simply an increase in bodily resilience, body density, and enhanced respiratory and circulatory system capabilities to properly make use of the alien air with immune adjustments to compensate for the new internal chemistry. The treatments would take several years to be fully completed and then distributed fully all by the end of Year 10. In this case the genetic therapy used here had originated from a once highly experimental therapy from Japan back on the original Earth some decades ago, whose data was on the colony ships' databanks as part of their 'cargo' from Earth, and as the personnel both medical and scientific searched the databanks on the colony ships they found the data about this treatment. From here they would apply the more advanced technology they now had, very much so compared to back then when the treatment was originally conceived very long ago, and would ultimately return to it to 'tweak' it and develop it finally into a stable and frankly useful option. Considered a ‘blanket’ option to cover the myriad potential issues the planet’s climate and gravity would pose, and a faster and more cost-effective in the long run option than things like extensive artificial gravity generators and such to alleviate some of the risks, the long-term side effects were distinctly less understood for subsequent generations but were at least proven through testing to be safe for same-generation treatment and adaptation.

For the most part the lingering side effects of the gene therapy would remain unknown for a few generations, until scientists discovered that the descendants of the original gene-modded settlers had developed well beyond in comparison. The humans’ skeletons became notably denser, their tissues and organs become more potent and far more resilient to disease, their respiratory system and circulatory systems became superhumanly good at adapting on the fly to where they could even breathe fine in the thin gases in space (though the lack of gravity there would still mean their lungs don’t function without a pressurized suit), and their other bodily tissues like muscles had become likewise much denser and stronger. Yet the people simply took it as fact, as by then people and civilization had all become passively acclimated to how things were and what they could do, and society in everything from building to individual workloads and the like had already been adjusted to it.

However, the settlers and their myriad descendants would also discover, and then make use of respectively, a unique mineral on the world that came to be called “Thalarite”. This mineral, named after the scientist who first made the breakthrough of its uses (that being one ‘Thatcher Larsson’), had little known about its properties once it was first dug up in the 3rd year after the colonists settled. Many thought it to have been ionized by natural deep underground radioactivity, as being a decaying nuclear byproduct of some kind from some long lost ancient civilization or former settlers on the planet that left, or even as being the leftovers of ancient fossilized life. The theories would greatly abound until Thatcher discovered the mineral’s true nature: It was at base a simple mineral with many potent, versatile properties. The more it was refined the more energistic it became, and likewise the more compressed it was the more exponentially dense (and more energized in this case too if refined enough) it became, making it perfect for powering machines and vehicles and reactors and forming metal plates and such out of in the long term. The molecular structure was able to be compressed with minimal-to-low levels of refinement to create a passively semi-charged metal that could be used for military armor and so forth, as well as making civilian things such as dense metal sheets whose semi-charge would be able to be transmitted to weak electronics designed to take in that passive charge. Thalarite could also be turned into liquid fuel through much processing, though the mineral with low-to-moderate refinement was proven to make better quality and longer-lasting fuel than the unrefined mineral.

Transmitting the energy of the Thalarite was also found to be possible, albeit only some time later, making wireless power transmission and wireless charging and so forth rather viable. All of this combined pushed the colonists into a frenzy of development and expansion on Xandal, and technological development as well as the population afterwards began to greatly boom. New roads, new towns, new settlements, all of it began to spring up at an accelerating speed. Whilst this led to population super-booms and the various towns and cities growing in size and scale, this boom in everything in turn led to occasional ‘civil wars’ and various conflicts as the lure of power became apparent and the governmental apparatus was overstretched and had issues to cope with the sudden boom in technology and population. This whole 100-year period of technology/population boom and the wars and conflicts that ravaged it from Year 25 to roughly Year 125, as it started as things began to snowball hard a few years after the Thalarite breakthrough in Year 21, became known as “The Thalarite Century”. By the end of this century the planet had been brought under heel once more, emerging as the government finally caught up with the times and order was re-established as the many settled areas of the planet united bit by biu by the end of the Thalarite Century. Cities and towns were destroyed and rebuilt, governments of various kinds arose, but from this point progress and order would return as the “Golden Boom of 25” (as the century’s start is referred to) finally simmed out.

For the next sixty years Xandal would settle down into a measure of calm, with highway systems and business and advancement in civilian and military matters moving along. Nothing is of much note from this sixty-year-period aside from the world healing from the scars of the Thalarite Century and general progress in the technological field regarding Thalarite and its technologies being pushed further. Humans returned to space after a dark period of being kept planetside, and space stations began to pop up as citizens also moved to settle the two large and habitable moons moving about Xandal: “Hiron” and “Thalyssra”.

Yet in the year 186, something else came to loom over the world of Xandal. A massive ship of an unknown origin, from seemingly farther away in the Xandalians’ home system, approached the planet. It blared no signal, nor spoke a word at first, and then after a few weeks of this they simply began to fire. It then launched a bombardment of stone-like monoliths down upon the surface of the planet, which began to emit alien organic-tissue-decaying toxins, even as smaller ships emerged from the ship’s massive bays on its sides to attack. The oddest thing was that mechanical things were left alone, but any humans were targeted with anything organic in the environment being generally just collateral. Thalarite technology and pressing needs for bigger military advancements allowed humanity to respond without being utterly devastated, but it would take another five years of struggle and battling before humanity would develop a sufficient space military to go from the defensive to the offensive by Year 192. In this year the first major space retaliation against the unknown attackers began, launching an assault on one of their carriers that used Thalarite-Uridium bombs to blast holes in their dense metal hulls.

War would continue for two more years after this, with humans trying to find any way to understand the seemingly silent enemy comms...until in late 194 ‘something’ would be intercepted. A clear signal from an alien ship, faint but coming from inside. The first to be properly identified, after it was found to be using a frequency far higher on the electromagnetic spectrum than anything humanity had ever known before. From here it took only two more months to decode the language spoken in the message. Yet...what the humans heard once they could understand it was something entirely different than they had expected.

“Our sensors indicate other lifeforms upon this planet’s surface. Do you read? Repeat, do you read? We detected your electronic life-signals from afar, and we have come to speak.”

“...Blast, more silence. They seem to be mindless drones, just as Command feared. Primitive electromagnetic communications, focused on inputs and outputs and simple calculations. You think with destroying those strange parasites in them that they’d be able to respond...but perhaps it is too late?”

“Don’t give up, Comms Officer [indiscernible alien name inserted here]. Even if their race, as peculiarly varied as they are, does not respond...we shall ensure the odd carbon-based infestation that took them down will be stopped at least. As sentients it is our duty to ensure we figure out what is going on, and those Deterioration Bombs should be doing the trick.

Tch.

To figure a pest-control measure would be used on a planet here though...it is strange. As strange as these lifeforms akin to us living upon a mostly carbon-based world.”

“But it makes me wonder if there’s something we’re missing here? If these are carbon-based parasites without sentience, aren’t they just doing what their instincts indicate?”

[A brief but somber silence over the line]

“I pray there isn’t anything we are missing, but let me reiterate the situation for you, Officer, and the others I know are listening to the general comms line here.

These things have seemingly infested a whole race of silicates akin to ourselves in some fashion. It is unsettling at best with disturbing implications if anything else like this exists in the system and could reach our people. We even on arrival sent the greeting signal for days, as the diplomats on-board desired, but no response came from the life forms below. We did all the scans, found the seeming problem after much debate, and then tried to see what freeing some of them from infestation would do. Then still nothing.

Carbon-based life doesn’t have the capacity for sentience as we do, at least as far as our science has been able to indicate thus far. We are far from home as well, and we have had to harvest materials from the local moons and corpses of the fallen infested. It is unseemly, but it is all we have had to defend ourselves against this threat.

Even long-distance comms back home have been telling us to do our best to survive until the infestation is lessened. Then perhaps they’ll let off long enough to engage a retreat to home.

So hold strong, [indiscernible word here], we shall endure to the end! For our people!”

[a general repeating of ‘For our people’ echoes over the line in a myriad of voices]

The aliens...had no idea they were sentient. Most had thought even the enemy were robotic or were simply engineered organisms sent to assail a world, or perhaps some non-sentient hive wanting to harvest them in turn, but the discovery of this key message opened up the serious issue at the core of all of the conflict thus far. Upon reversing the process of decoding to encode a message, humanity would quickly work to figure out their own response. On one hand the war had been going on so long that there was no easy way to make up for it, scars had been left and devastation made manifest, and yet at the same time it was all some great misunderstanding that had to be rectified. Either way they chose to go about it, something had to be done.

Thus eventually, the top officials of the government would decide to send a message as soon as possible to the alien ship in hopes of getting them to talk, and two weeks later the humans sent this message:

“This is a message from planetside. Repeat. This is a message from planetside. Repeat.

We are not parasites. I repeat, we are not parasites.

We are humans, sentient carbon-based life-forms who settled here almost two centuries ago from a dying world. We created complex tools we call ‘machines’ out of metals and other minerals to form powerful tools of no sentience, ones that we use to maintain our civilization. I repeat, these are not sentient mechanical or silicate forms or husks of former sentient life, but are wholly mindless machines built as tools for a sentient and civilized society.

We’ve no idea how you read our technology as sentient life, but we are very much alive and sentient. We did not have the technology to understand your initial messages or notice them, but all of this has been a grave misunderstanding.

We do not wish for war. I repeat, we do not wish for war. We did not know you were sentient either, and thought you were drones or engineered organisms sent to conquer us or kill us. Your ‘pest control’ weapons have been killing our people and any living carbon-based matter around them en-masse. Our grasp of your language is poor at the moment, and we have sent this message as soon as we could after finally decoding a conversation from your mothership.

Please, cease combat operations. I repeat, please cease combat operations. If you cease operations, we shall as well. I repeat, if you cease combat operations we shall as well. Let us stop this bloodshed.”

A set of two comms would be heard that were coming from the main alien ship soon after. The first read as followed:

“...S-Sir! We have received comms from planetside!”

“What?!”

“It is a communication from...it seems...the parasites. It didn’t come from one of our own regardless. It is rough, very rough, but it seems to get across a clear message from initial analysis.”

“T-T-The parasites?! Are you sure???”

“Yes, that word is clear so far from what I can translate, but the rest of it is worded very rough in our language. Very rough. I can make out a few words right now, but that’s it.”

“Then tell me what you can, Comms Officer! If not that, then the gist if you must!

Meanwhile, from the rest of you I want every damn hand on this right now...and someone get the diplomats and scientists to the bridge immediately! As in NOW!!!”

[echoes of orders being quickly and calmly confirmed by other comms officers on supposedly the alien ship’s bridge]”

This was followed by a second comms conversation a bit later, much more clear this time and far more widely broadcast even as far as the moons:

“Everyone I have opened the general comms link for the rest of the ship. We are opening channels to the battle fleets and other operations in this as well. This is a fleet-wide order, of the utmost urgency, so all of you need to listen.”

[the tone matching what is assumed to be the ship’s commander seems considerably more...shaky, as if he’s just seen a ghost or a terrible fright]

“...Ahem. Several hours ago we received a message from planetside, the first message we’ve been able to decode. A copy has been sent homeside by our ambassadors.

Our initial determination of the ‘parasites’ infesting the world below have been proven...incorrect. Gravely incorrect, all after these past few years. What we thought to be non-sentient parasites, potentially working in a planetary hive, are not the animals we assumed. I repeat, these are...we’ve been...the creatures are sentient organisms. Analysis of the message and so forth has made this most grim fact clear now.

As such I am ordering all hands, all personnel deployed beyond the Carrier, to return to base right now and leave behind all materials and resources you might have. Right. Now/

Any who do not obey this order will be court-martialed on sight, and those who return promptly will not receive punishment. I will only say this only once.

For those in the weapon bays: Do not continue deployment of Orbital Sprayers or other assault activities. I repeat, cease all offensive activities. Maintain the defensive shields instead.

As of this moment, we are to cease operations post-haste and wait for a return message from homeside.”

And so the war came to an end. And as a phrase coined about the war, officially called on both worlds “The Seven Years Tragedy”, and its tragic futility in later years would go: “No victory, no glory, but simply survivors”.

Even so, in the aftermath it was a more welcome thing for both sides to sign a proper peace. Likewise in the following century there were attempts at reparations, as well as the budding of interplanetary trade within the same system the two worlds shared. Inter-cultural exchanges, as well as even some immigration, would occur as the two worlds, two nations, and two species attempted to learn and coexist together in the wake of newborn understanding.

In this new era there was a boom in the technology sector for the people of Xandal, as well as those from the now-identified “Greater Union of Grusbrakg” the silicates came from, though the inevitable emergence of silicate and human space piracy would come as the two worlds figured out the interplanetary trade. Militaries in space and on-worlds would continue to advance, even as the march of time and civilian technologies would continue down their own path of advancement.

Peace in enough of a sense would reign as the humans of Xandal recovered and blossomed once more, but soon even this peace and stability would be eclipsed by a new event…

...what would happen after the Gateways opened up once more? What would happen once the humans were exposed to their long-lost kin, and a world long left in ruin?

Only time will tell.

Culture and Society: Xandalian Society is one that generally embraces the efficient and latest in advancements, emphasizing a preparedness for bad events and sustaining the freedoms of its citizen species. Citizens as a general body enjoy the latest in civilian products and technologies made possible by continued advancements in Thalarite and its studies, ranging from clean energy producing miniaturized Thalarite-Engine vehicles to appliances that generally make daily life easier to manage for busy citizens. They are generally an industrious and resilient bunch, generally respect their elders, enjoy anime (the original colonists took to it and evolved it on their own), and who will on one hand work their hardest to accomplish their goals but also raise up arms to shoot anything that threatens their home with a zeal.

Whilst not unfriendly to outsiders, and even adaptable as immigrant species might come into their fold and are welcome to, they are also stalwart about being able to live their own way of life freely and frankly are stubborn about it. For others to force that on them is a terrible thing to do, but ironically likewise can relate to getting involved in things for their own interests. The desire to rehabilitate or at least study the old Earth of their ancestors is a matter that has floated about in the public eye at some point, and with the opening of the Gateway things have become even more interesting as unknown empires or friends or nasty things lurk beyond.

---

Governance and Politics: Governance of the Xandalian Republic takes the form of simpler but more efficient unitary models at the local and district and regional levels. Excessive amounts of staff and overcomplicated bureaucracy are avoided, and as such the elections for these positions are usually big turnouts and a major deal.

Above this there is the simple and full power of the Central Government. The Central Government takes the form of the neatly organized Senate, which represents the various groups and constituencies of the republic and is elected from all over, but which has the ultimate power. This body of the Senate controls the legislation, appointing by two-thirds majority an Executive Officer who is fully answerable to the Senate and executes the law and leads the military as the Head of the Military by the Senate’s permission. The Senate also appoints the Head Judge, who presides over a council of 7 judges they appoint and that the Senate approves and confirms.

Being a Unitary state the Central Government has the power, and has delegated power to the elected lower authorities to maintain over a given area (but with these lesser authorities still being answerable to the Central Government). As the Senators of the Senate represent the will of the people from all over the nation, they seek to reflect that lest they not be able to be re-elected to their Senatorial office. Functions of the various levels of government are kept streamlined and effective, from the judges to the legislation, and whilst the Central Government is given full political power it is also legally formed by the will of the people (thereby keeping it in-check from going full-tyrant).

The system can respond to threats and other actions with great speed, maintains a consistent system of communication on all governmental levels, and is ultimately the final form of governance formed during the Xandalian Republic’s history.

Technology Overview:

***Thalarite Technology -

(A) unique mineral on the world that came to be called “Thalarite”. This mineral, named after the scientist who first made the breakthrough of its uses (that being one ‘Thatcher Larsson’), had little known about its properties once it was first dug up in the 3rd year after the colonists settled. Many thought it to have been ionized by natural deep underground radioactivity, as being a decaying nuclear byproduct of some kind from some long lost ancient civilization or former settlers on the planet that left, or even as being the leftovers of ancient fossilized life. The theories would greatly abound until Thatcher discovered the mineral’s true nature: It was at base a simple mineral with many potent, versatile properties. The more it was refined the more energistic it became, and likewise the more compressed it was the more exponentially dense (and more energized in this case too if refined enough) it became, making it perfect for powering machines and vehicles and reactors and forming metal plates and such out of in the long term. The molecular structure was able to be compressed with minimal-to-low levels of refinement to create a passively semi-charged metal that could be used for military armor and so forth, as well as making civilian things such as dense metal sheets whose semi-charge would be able to be transmitted to weak electronics designed to take in that passive charge. Thalarite could also be turned into liquid fuel through much processing, though the mineral with low-to-moderate refinement was proven to make better quality and longer-lasting fuel than the unrefined mineral.

Transmitting the energy of the Thalarite was also found to be possible, albeit only some time later, making wireless power transmission and wireless charging and so forth rather viable.

About Thalarite

A unique mineral of Xandal that, by current times, is both mined and synthesized to power the nation’s technology and fulfill other uses. When mined it looks like a silvery-gray rock that can’t be seen into (much less seen through), but as it is refined and purified it becomes a silvery/dark purple colored mineral. The more refined it is the more crystal-like its appearance and structure becomes, and the most highly purified Thalarite looks like a stunning pure light purple (as the coloration gets lighter and the faint silveriness is lost the more it is refined) cluster of crystals that is actively glowing said color and has raw energy literally crackling over its surface constantly and is too dangerous to not be contained within proper measures.

The uses of this mineral are incredibly diverse, ranging from fuel to engines to reactors to bombs and powering mechs and appliances to being used as armor and even medical applications and so forth. It is what revolutionized Xandalian technology the most of all things that have been found or developed there over the last three centuries. Also due to this revolution of technology, citizens are not rather used to non-Thalarite technology and its operation...though contact with the Gusb has mitigated this issue ever so slightly over the last century. Historians have records about non-Thalarite tech, as do the archives of the old former colony ships that remain public displays and are well-maintained as national history/planetary history exhibits. There are also a few major museums that display Thalarite artifacts and teach about the origins of Thalarite and the time period of “The Thalarite Century”.

(Aside: Was inspired by Ragnite and Ragnite-applicable tech from the “Valkyria Chronicles” game series.)

***Xandalian Mechs - A technological innovation whose roots began within The Thalarite Century, their idea beginning in the form of worker-piloted Labor-Frames (as the tech was called at the time) that used a humanoid designs scheme. When Labor-Frames were often weaponized for their use in revolts and various conflicts, those with humanoid frames were found to be more versatile in application. By the end of The Thalarite Century, many of these had been built or converted into military-style bots to be used alongside standard types of military vehicles or cobbled-together ones that so colored that time period, and came to become the blueprints for the Central Government that emerged from the end of that time period.

Sixty years of peace would allow for a semi-active development of these in order to raise effectiveness and hold them to a higher standard. In this vein the “Military-Frame Type 1” would emerge as the first ‘proper’ humanoid mech unit, and at first was mostly used in ground operations. It sported a wide base variety of equipment that it could both carry and have attached to it, but lacked the sophistication and fine-tuning of much later models. Whilst this would be the primary line that was used and upgraded, later experimental sub-types would emerge including (but not limited to):

-The “Military-Frame Type 2: Underwater Model” initially emerged as a design for deep sea operations and underwater combat, using long-reach melee weapons like harpoon-tipped spears, ranged components such as sophisticated torpedo launchers, advanced propeller technology for swift movement and evasive potential, and having both a far denser armor and an ‘Antique Diving Helmet’ style look around the cockpits for pilot protection/insulation. These units proved to be rather poor in effect when trying to move on land, making the design not good for amphibious assaults as the designers had hoped for, leading to the creation of the more successful “Military-Frame Underwater Type 2.5: Deep Sea Model” that abandoned the legs altogether, increased propulsion power, increased torpedo armaments, and kept the arms as the design became more compressed and crab-like aside from the head that sat on-top. These would be held underneath naval vessels, or dropped from the air, entering the water to perform operations.

-There was also the “Military-Frame Type 3: Paratroop”, which initially used a glider-style design and took on the role of a paratrooper-style mech dropped into combat zones by larger aircraft. Armor was lightened for carrying purposes, and their weapons standardized and lightened for swift and versatile use in the field, but proved to be ill-effective against heavily-fortified or highly-entrenched positions unless paired with a proper ground assault. In this manner they were successful, but ultimately led to improvements in aircraft and glider technologies that culminated in the making of the “Military Frame Attachment Line: Aviator” line of equipment that allowed standard ground mechs with better armor and far greater speed to deploy in the air for a limited time and land behind enemy lines.

Ultimately, the development of Xandalian mechs would close in on its speak during the shorter but far more intense fighting of “The Seven Years Tragedy”. Here the mechs would finally take on a space-variant simply dubbed the “Military-Frame Type 4: Exocombat Model”, which would prove effective at moving through space and landing on either of the two moons of Xandal (whose atmospheres were not as intense as that of Xandal itself). By the end of the war, the mechs received significant upgrades, mostly as an all-purpose unit was desired for the various theaters of war, and thus was born the “Military-Frame Version 2.0.”, which took the best from different models and past instances and data from the war to create a highly-advanced warform that could go underwater, fight in space, fight on the ground, and could make use of hard-mounted specialized loadouts (ones that admittedly had to be changed prior to deployment) to take on various types of missions from the same base frame. Versatile carried equipment that could be carried was also still made available, though it was far from the main emphasis now, which could act as Supplementary Equipment for units in the field depending on one’s tastes or the given operation/situation at hand.

This version of the mech could also undergo atmosphere re-entry, and exit with rocket assistance, directly. They could withstand the vacuum of space and the farthest of underwater depths, and utilize attachments updated for them to get behind enemy lines in planetary engagements. Omni-Adaptive Thruster technology made maneuverability in space or underwater much easier at that! Thalarite Armor and use of alien-inspired Thalarite energy shielding technology, the latter of which plays into atmospheric re-entry and exit capabilities directly, would give suitable versatile defensive capabilities for the Military-Frame Version 2.0. as well.

By current times, the design of the latest version has been ongoing, already seeing another generation of the Military-Frames pass on to the distinctly better “3.0.” version in regards to armaments and attachments and even the base mechs in full. Currently there are highly experimental but even more advanced “4.0.” versions, but none have been deployed into the field yet beyond limited experimental test runs thus far. Rumors say some of these fourth-generation Military-Frames themselves wield even more incredible highly experimental technology, ranging from micro-thrusters with manyfold the output of current standard ones...to even incredibly miniaturized supercomputers that analyze the battlefields the pilot is one, learn from them, and beam predictive battle info directly into the pilot’s mind for moment-to-moment battle adaptation capabilities (better and better so the more the mech is used in battle against various types of foes and strategies).

In the end, the Xandalian Mech is a technology that is no slouch when put to proper use.

(Aside: Was inspired by Gundams, because I thought that was cool. Experimental 4th generation models are highly experimental for a reason too, but still cool Gundams. Yeah!)

***Gusb Technology - Some of this has been imported alongside immigrants, but most of it has been adapted or converted to Thalarite power sources or is in its ‘true’ form only ever kept in scientific labs for study and research. This tech originated by the Gusb species works originally off of electrical/unidentified-alien-gas hybrid form of power created from a form of advanced-fusion energy tech. This Gusb energy tech utilizes a naturally-occurring and distinctly radioactive (by old Earth radiation detector measurements at least) alien mineral nicknamed “Gusbite” by those on Xandal (since the Gusb name for it is indecipherable by the human tongue). This mineral, which goes far beyond the old Earth period table, produces a more violent and far more intense reaction when enriched and used to create a far more advanced and potent fusion reaction. Little else is known or understood about it, save that it isn’t used on Xandal and the Gusb use it to create ‘batteries’ that are used to power their tech on the small scale and to make ‘reactors’ that power larger-scale tech such as their battleships and cities back home.

***Basic Translator Technology - Basic translation technology developed within the last 100 years after the advent of “The Seven Years Tragedy”. Gusb immigrants usually equip themselves with these for an ease of communication, though more have begun to learn the human tongue and some humans have learned to speak what of the Gusb tongue they can pronounce. Mostly acts as a basis for more advanced translation technology for the Republic post-Gateway-opening at some point.

Military Overview:

***Planetary-Level Combat - On-planet battles are predominantly divided into Land, Air, and Sea divisions.

Land Divisions are initially begun by deploying Xandalian Mechs, who take territory and handle enemy entrenchments/fortresses along the way. They are the vanguard of the Xandalian military, and generally will soften up areas and handle larger-scale threats, large enough warforms, and larger enemy numbers. Infantry equipped with protective insulated Thalarite-polymer armor and effective Thalarite laser weapons, brought in by and working alongside hover-tanks, hover artillery, and armored/armed hover APCs that can move over virtually any terrain (and all have rather limited ‘flight’ capability), will swiftly move in to secure and then hold the taken ground and clear out smaller threats left over. Infantry use their armor and Thalarite weapons alongside things such as portable shield generators to secure camps and deployable scouting drones as well as specialized deployable antennas attached to stronger portable scanning modules to thoroughly scan the area and search for holdouts or hidden traps and so forth as they more greatly secure the foothold on the area.

Air Divisions are usually composed of Jet-Glider-using Mechs that will provide land support by taking down anti-air emplacements by swiftly entering the area and rushing those positions. Massive armored airships will fly in and generally utilize high firepower and high defense to lay down fire on enemy positions on land or otherwise, even being able to safely fire smart torpedoes into oceans from high up in the air, and can deploy from its own hangars smaller helicopter-like aircraft with two rotating wings and two powerful jet engine-esque propellers on them for rather rapid acceleration and movement speeds. Such smaller craft are “Reliants” that can lift off from a stationary position and swiftly move about akin to a Jet airplane in the air as well. Each Reliant has four missiles or rockets on the underside to fire, dual-gatling-style Thalarite guns that can lay down high rates of fire, and can carry a small amount of infantry or other personnel to drop off to help secure points or board similar large enemy aircraft if such a thing is needed or frankly possible. The Reliants are employed as anti-small aircraft and ground-securing or boarding/transport measures, whilst the main Airship also has anti-smaller-craft measures installed alongside its array of bigger guns.

Sea Divisions are usually composed of advanced craft called “Maru” that can hover to the correct positions and submerge into the water from there to navigate the seas. These craft are basically super-sci fi submarines, and usually are only deployed on-world when submersible craft are needed for a given operation. They can then leave the water and hover back to their carrier after operations, or if their hover capabilities were damaged the carriers (called “Crane-Frame Carriers” can hover over the location of these craft and pull them up into themselves for storage and repair. At times the Maru can also carry and deploy a number of Version 2.0. upgraded “Deep Sea” model Mechs, which are akin to the old version but with improved systems and equipment and such all-round.

***Space Combat - Xandalian Mechs dominate the smaller-craft level battles of space, having incredible maneuverability and enough defenses and loadouts to take on that they can cut down smaller craft and assault larger ones in a combat role. These possess point-defense and defenses that make ships smaller than them generally a moot point, and they are supported by smaller, sleeker ships that usually sport high speed and run interference or harry enemy craft or even intercept small automated craft/drones/ships in combat as well. Destroyers are the first real ‘larger’ ship used beyond this, containing high defenses and firepower to lay into the enemy fleet with distinctly less speed but exceptionally good range ranging from close to long range capabilities at maximum. These Destroyers usually have the smaller sleeker craft, dubbed “Corvettes”, with them in some numbers.

Larger Carriers come after this, carrying large numbers of Xandalian Mechs and very high defenses in exchange for rather limited firepower and carrying capacity. These deploy their Mechs and receive them back after battle (or during battle if injured need to retreat), as well as designate a portion of their mechs as reserves that are saved for use when or where such reserves are needed. Some also carry even larger amounts of Corvettes to bolster those numbers in battle.

Beyond this, grand Battleships also carry their own contingents of Xandalian Mechs and are escorted by a couple of Destroyers, as well as the Destroyers’ accompanying swarms of Corvettes, and a couple of Carriers as well. These ships are far larger in scale than the rest of the ships previously mentioned, boasting a titanic size, high defenses, and even higher offensive capabilities and weapons that can be fired into the enemy from super-long-range (or other weapons for closer ranges) as the situation demands. These are usually the flagships, the ships on which the commanders from the Republic are placed in order to direct the battle, and as such these ships have the most robust and potent comms arrays that keep the fleet interconnected. Taking out the Battleship is the best way to weaken a Republic fleet, though is tough to do, though as an aside comms between their other ships will still be generally possible without the Battleship...just not as smooth as the chain of command rather ‘suddenly’ shifts to backup and ultimately emergency measures.

---

Additional Info:

***Important Note 1: The military is only at 25% deployment currently, aka: the peacetime level of deployment that takes care of smaller issues during peace and maintains anti-piracy activity and such. The full military isn't currently active. Do not worry.

Through the Gateways: Humanity [Closed] [Soon to be Concluded]

...The premise is making me curious about this place. Also see a few familiar faces. XD

o/

Divinus: The Deity Roleplay, Mk. V

&

Arira - Goddess of Cycles

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Recap

Wyn met Astella and made her Embassy at the divine city while Arira set her pain free and forevermore set the cycles and the world by extension, right.

Upon the balcony of her making, the goddess of beauty did lounge. Upon a large purple pillow, she lay in blissful peace. Her eyes were shut, her limbs outstretched and all was well within Wyn’s home. She had lost track of the time since when she had come to the mountain. It could have been two days or two weeks, nothing very exciting had happened of note to make her keep track. In fact, she hadn’t even left her embassy at all, thus she had never seen Astella or any others who might have come. Honestly, it would be their fault if they missed the shining jewel she had made to help uplift the squalor around it. Those humans were far too engrossed in their own work, or scared by the majesty of the building to dare approach. Not that she wanted that, anyways. These ones were dirty and unrefined. Let them waste their lives away through work.

No, the only company she had was the small cat from time to time.

It was scarred and ugly, yes, but Wyn had a suspicious feeling it belonged to, if not Astella, then another god. Her paranoia of the fact the thing could be spying on her prevented her from acting towards it. Or perhaps she just enjoyed the fact that it only slept and did not bother her. She didn’t really care at the moment to find out which mattered more to her. Now was a time for peace, for rel-

A woman’s voice boomed above her, shattering that peace and startling her. Wyn grumpled and opened her eyes. Whoever it was droned on and on about the seasons and bla bla bla. She couldn’t even make out what it was only that their divinity shined like a beacon. Sighing angrily, Wyn got to her feet, disappointed that her relaxation had been interrupted. She gripped the stone railing and watched the sky above like a hawk, still not really understanding what was going on or the intentions behind those words. The only thing she knew at that moment was that it aggravated her. Then the voice began to scream about shutting something, or just the word shut. She scoffed, wishing the voice would shut up instead.

And, to her great surprise, the voice went silent after letting out a final, if not annoying, scream. What a horrendous sound! But, it was over and Wyn could get back to resting in quiet contemplation. Her shoulders relaxed and she was about to look away when something caught her eye. She stared for several seconds, making out that it was a figure she saw, falling without control. Was that the Goddess who had made such a racket? Did she pass out?

Wyn frowned, perhaps it was a time of saving instead of relaxing.

She took off towards the figure in a blink. Much as she wanted the god to fall for being too loud, she knew this was a moment of opportunity. To be the dashing hero that saved the damsel in distress. To earn a little favor. It was a delicious thought, but Wyn pushed it from her mind. She needed to catch the god first.

She got herself underneath the general area the goddess was falling and then flew up to meet her. As she neared, Wyn could make out it was indeed a Goddess. One of a smaller frame, with long hair and a flowing dress that clung to her limp form. Wyn got into position, outstretching her arms and bracing herself and then she waited for the goddess to hit her.

Their bodies collided with a soft thump, and Wyn wrapped her arms around the Goddess as the force sent them tumbling. She quickly got control and not a moment too soon before a jagged peak would have met them. Ugh, to think of all that rock and dirt clinging to her… She shivered just thinking about it and then cradled her fellow divine in her arms, taking a good look at her. The pointy ears stood out to her the most, but other than that, she was about as good looking as Ze’kelia… Maybe about even. She had a certain womanly charm about her that Wyn did approve of, however. She could tell.

She let out a soft sigh. ”Hmmm, whatever shall I do with you? All tuckered out from whatever you did up there. In times such as this the best one can do is take a nap, I think.” Wyn began to float towards her embassy, even from her view it’s beauty stood out to her like a beacon. ”Would you like that, my dearest falling angel?” she spoke softly to the god, not expecting a response. It wouldn’t be long before they arrived at the embassy and oh, how she had questions.

---

...As the Goddess of Cycles began to awake once more, her dainty eyelids began to flutter a bit before they would open proper. For a moment she did not notice a thing, though as soon as she rubbed her eyes and began to sleepily look about the room-

“...What?”

-...she would rapidly notice the fact she wasn’t shattered upon a mountainside at the moment. Far from it, actually, she was lying in a grand, soft, beautiful bed that seemed to be comfier than any she’d felt before. Lovely paintings on the walls, beautiful carpet on each side of the bed, a vase of the loveliest flowers on the bedside table, and even the windows were extraordinarily beautiful indeed. She could have gone on and on about it all, but ultimately she could tell rather quickly that she was on Mount Divinus proper still. Even a quick conjuration of a magical map for just a second would corroborate that.

There came two quick knocks to her right. "I was wondering when you would wake." came a sweet, honeyed voice from the room's doorway. There, leaning up against the stone frame was a pale goddess, clad in nothing but a robe of white, which was left open down the middle, leaving little to the imagination. She had a soft smile on her lips as she played with a long strand of her hair, twirling it with a finger as she looked towards Arira. "It isn't everyday I find a fellow divine falling from the sky, in need of rescue but here we are. How are you feeling?"

The Goddess of Cycles would blush for a second, rushing in pulling up the bedsheet to semi-cover herself in embarrassment before gently lowering it once more. Her face was still a tad red, but even so she seemed to work to try to regain her composure and stature rather quickly.

“I-I-I a-am f-fine…did y-you...did you save me from my fall?”

The goddess seemed unphased and strode in, hands behind her back. ”Oh yes, that was me.” she giggled. ”And what a fall it was!” she mused coming to stop at the foot of the bed. She sat down, placing one slender leg upon the bed as she turned her head to Arira. ”I’m Wyn, by the way. What’s your name, angel?” she smiled, flashing pearly whites.

...So much for trying to regain her composure proper, if at all.

As the astonishingly beautiful Wyn spoke to her, calling her ‘angel’, and sat upon the bed with a lovely smile, Arira’s face turned beet red. Really it was darker than that, perhaps some untold ‘embarrassed deep red’ unknown to mortals and divines like? Her soft blue-ish grey eyes couldn’t peel themselves from the features of the deity before her, and a small high-pitched sound could be heard coming the goddess’ closed mouth as she slammed her face into the sheets she still held in her clenched hands.

For a good few seconds she seemed to embarrassedly squeal into the sheets before very hesitantly lowering the sheet where her eyes could see over it and look upon Wyn once more. Even so, it was like a cute puppy looking over at the Goddess of Beauty, lingering red still on the bit of her face that the other goddess could see.

“A-A-A-A...Arira, G-G-Goddess of C-Cycles. A p-p-pleasure t-to meet you, oh b-beautiful Wyn.”

As she spoke, Arira tried to lower the sheet back down to her lap more, even trying to control her breathing and focus once more at that.

At the sight of her Wyn’s smile seemed to grow. ”Ah and I didn’t even tell you my domain but you guessed it all the same. Your clever Arira but,” she clapped her hands and the robe around her changed into that of an ornate, low cut black dress. It contrasted her skin and made the paleness pop while covering most of her revealing parts. ”We can’t be having you all out of sorts, now can we?” she repositioned her leg, folding it in and laying, instead, a hand on the bed. ”So, Goddess of Cycles, what does that mean and why on this good greening earth were you falling in the first place?”

“M-My thanks…I-I am unused to s-s-such incredible beauty before me...even as a goddess,” Arira said in return, halfway not thinking about her words as she averted her eyes for only a moment as Wyn changed the clothes. She then took some more deep breaths before looking back up at Wyn’s face with a bit more composure, holding her back up straight even, and seemed to be at least better off than before despite the light pink left in her own lovely cheeks, “I had gone to help fix this world, b-but I overexerted. The seasons, the proper climates cycles, weather cycles, reproduction cycles, life cycles, and so forth needed to be set in their places....for since I came forth from the divinity that bore me, they have cried to me ceaselessly and endlessly. It has caused me great pains, wracking my form with the anguish of the world as it pleaded for relief and stability.

Thus I sought to end this pain once and for all, for both the world and mineself, I moved to the highest point of this world, and took upon the coil of my True Form. However, even for a goddess I seem to have gone a tad too far. Even so...the pain has ceased. The world must yet be repaired as others do their work, but a good deal of major things have been fixed and bound to mine existence to keep them rooted and stable henceforth.”

One of the Cycle Goddess’ hands began to lightly play with the gold-ornament-decorated part of her silky-soft tan hair, specifically the bit of hair hanging near the right side of her face. Yet her other hand that gripped the sheets gripped them even tighter than before as she talked about the pain itself. To admit she had overexerted and so forth, it was something that got under her skin a tad. Even so she owned up to it plainly nonetheless.

Wyn tilted her head with a gentle expression. She spoke next, her words but a soft whisper. ”You are very brave, Lady Arira and from what I can already tell, you have a pure heart and sound mind. Full of compassion and empathy. Though you were beset by such pain, you never faltered. You did not succumb and instead you rose to meet the challenge and fix what you could. An angel, battling her demons so that the world might live on and thrive as the cycles intended. As you intend.” Wyn looked upon her and smiled. ”I find that… Inspiring. Truly.” Wyn let out a soft sigh and scooted herself further up on the bed, changing her position to fully face Arira. She sat on her knees and folded her hands over them. "Attractive even. To put one's own wellbeing before others? It would make any fair maiden swoon.” Wyn smiled playfully.

The red in Arira’s face seemed to return to some extent as the beauty goddess layered on the compliments, and a very light ‘meep’ escaped the cycle goddess’ own lips in turn. The one hand holding the sheets pulled up just a little, reflexively wanting to hide her face again, but Arira forced it to stay down this time with what willpower she had left for that. No one had ever...she’d never seen before...waahh.

“I-I-It is n-nothing, I s-simply acted w-with the desire to h-h-help. I c-c-could not bear to see and f-fell the world in such p-pains…”

She semi-struggled to meet Wyn’s eyes regardless, her hands playing with her own hair and gripping the sheet even more than before now.

”So humble too! You truly are an angel, Lady Arira.” Wyn said, scooting herself closer. ”Oh! You mentioned something earlier that intrigued me. You said you were born from divinity? What does that mean exactly, If I might ask?”

The Goddess of Cycles looked back at Wyn, who she now noticed was even closer to her. Still, doing her best to hold what bit of her composure she had ‘locked down’ at the moment, she nodded her head at the other goddess’ question, “Y-Yes. I am the firstborn daughter of the divinity ‘Chakravarti’, divine of Families. A v-v-very excitable and overbearing sort to be born to, I-I’m afraid, but when Chakravarti was traveling they came across mortals in some ruins. Here t-the mortals mistook them for a demon, and...after hearing them swear to avenge each other in perpetuity if one of their own was slain….my parent was aroused. Horribly aroused...”

Arira buried her face in the sheet at the mention, embarrassment overriding her other feelings for a moment before she would eventually lower the sheet down hesitantly once more.

“From thus I was b-born on the spot...a most embarrassing o-o-origin indeed.

Yet still, I took the humans there i-i-into my c-care and dedicated m-my birthplace as a sacred paradise. Such i-it remains as even n-now.”

The goddess squirmed where she was sitting up in the bed a little as she spoke, almost like a nervous child admitting some dark and embarrassing secret to a rather lovely new friend…

Wyn seemed engrossed in the story that she told. ”Interesting!” she exclaimed at last, smiling warmly at her. The goddess then sat cross legged before Arira, an arms length away. ”Your mother? Father? They seem… Very... Exciting! No need to be embarrassed, Lady Arira. In fact there is nothing to be alarmed about here. Relax, I insist and tell me more about your Paradise and what a God of families even does?”

The Cyclical Goddess seemed to perk back up a little, relaxing slightly more as Wyn seemed to be genuinely interested in her Paradise and Parent. Perhaps the latter was more awkward than anything to talk about, poor Ossurman, but the former was far less so. Far from it actually!

“O-Oh! Well, my parent...oh dear. From what I’ve ever known of them, they aren’t male nor female. More like ‘everything’. Literally. Which is nothing of a problem at all, but their behavior is rather dramatic and eccentric and far more problematic.

To be frank, as the God of Families they would likely preside over things such as tracing back the bloodlines of families, watching over them, strengthening the bonds of families or watching over their homes, forming them-...”

Oh her gut feeling was kicking her hard for this one, but the realization dawning on her was far from unfeasible by any measure of the imagination.

“...and on that last note I hath had a most worrying suspicion form in mine mind. With how my parent is, behaves, and so forth, they might very well be doing something as peculiar or wholly embarrassing as proposing marriage to every single divine being they meet in this world. Aaaah…”

Another small, puppy-like whimper and brief instance of hiding her face in the sheets again, though this time Wyn wasn’t the cause as much as Arira’s anxious suspicion was. Still, after lowering the sheet once more the goddess tried to breathe and calm herself a bit more. It didn’t make everything suddenly better, but it did help a little at the very least.

“But my paradise! A-Ah, y-y-yes! It is a land that flows with all the resources of the world at one’s disposal, a place of plenty wherein those that have known naught but suffering may find rest. A place consecrated by mineself, as it is where I was born, and that has become an extension of me in the process. It hath been hidden from the world to secure it most ardently and thoroughly in turn.

Originally its inhabitants were only ever the humans who once lived in that area, but as I hath gone about performing acts of creation roundabout the Paradise and upon the land...I hath added more to live there of other races I hath made by mine hands. Indeed, they are a curious variety and yet are mine beloved children nonetheless whom are all represented within mine Paradise as is most fitting.

I hath taken up teaching those who lived within mine Paradise, and have given permission and invitation to the Goddess of Dreams to do so as well after the two of us met, to guide them and teach them and examine the long-term nature of their existences as the fruit of the land there shall begin to change and shape them all over time. Naught any form of vile or evil being done, of course, but I cannot deny that as they live and grow and so forth there that they shall accrue the touch of mine Paradise within and be thus changed forevermore in time.

Of course I cannot extend such graces to all mortals, as to learn and grow and live in the imperfect world is best. To coddle them such they rely on mineself for all things, to become lax and lazy and undisciplined even, such is what I seek to avoid really. Yet those in mine paradise shall become better than that, very much so...beyond such I hath not had much of a plan for the far future to be most frank about the matter. Yet such a plan hath not been needed thus far either, not as divinity hath sought to restore this Shard of Creation, this Shard of Galbar, to a liveable and stable state.”

Beyond this, Arira seemed to become more excited and happy as she got to the topic of her Paradise. It brought out a somewhat more confident side of her, her blush fading as she began to get into the details and speak about the features and locations there and so forth. Ultimately she would settle back down again, though, taking a few deep breaths...and a light pink forming in her cheeks as she realized she got on a ramble.

Wyn had followed along, giving nods and raised eyebrows. When Arira had finished, the Goddess took on a thoughtful look and spoke, ”Such passion my lady, it does me good to see it bloom within a fellow divine and her own creations. To be inspired… To have a muse… How wonderful indeed. I would seek out this place one day, if not to see it with my own eyes but to cherish it as I cherish this moment. I imagine it is far more beautiful than this Mount, besides my own keep of course.” Her voice grew lower next. ”Yet, I cannot stop my thoughts from wandering to your parent and what you said. If they intend to marry all the gods… Who or what would that leave you with? Now, I don’t mean to presume but surely a family god would want their own daughter to marry?” Wyn began to twirl her hair again.

“Hmm...If such a trend was happening, for I know not if it or any other has been, I-I...I w-w-would need to seek m-m-m-m-m-m-arriage somewhat soon t-to avoid being alone...,” the cycles goddess said, a less pink and more deeper red flush beginning to come to her cheeks as she pondered it all, “N-N-Not all would h-have perhaps agreed...b-but my p-p-parent is rather d-determined...s-s-still, I-I would think t-that they would want m-me to m..m...m-marry, y-yes. P-P-Perhaps pester m-me over eventually t-t-to do even.”

It felt like a right assumption based on her parent’s character and behaviors. Images of three deities she’d met so far flashed through her mind as she spoke of the matter, Wyn among those, seemed to bubble up in her mind at that. It was all so sudden though! H-How would she ever find someone if her parent ever DID something like that?! She would have to send out something to investigate for herself, or perhaps pay a visit to Chakravarti and sweet little Ossurman after this.

“B-But who? W-W-Who...w-who would ever desire m-mineself as a b-b-bride? I...I am not a great g-goddess...s-simply one t-that has sought to make things better is a-all...”

Arira seemed to get a bit disheartened as the matter and its panic began to assail her mind more strongly now.

She’d only met Algrim briefly, and though their brief time together had been enjoyable she’d simply promised they’d meet again to celebrate once the pillars were made. Likewise being around I’Iro had been a great blessing to her to talk with another intellectual, and one who seemed to help believe in her at that, indeed. Both had left a good impression on her in some fashion, and she hoped to talk to each of them more yet, but ultimately to impose such a major thing on either would be ever so impolite and embarrassing and out of the blue! She did not want to act so desperate! It was an unsavory thing. Those two were friends!

But to not marry eventually would be...oh heavens, she would one day never hear the end of it would she? The idea of being married sounded ever so lovely, and felt like something she genuinely wanted, but at the same time she had no idea who in this world could ever love such a strange goddess as she. She was not much, simply one who sought good despite the presence of the chaos otherwise. She wasn’t so naive as to think evil didn’t exist or never had its time, but all the same she had just passed out from something some greater divinity could have perhaps done so easily. What was she compared to the others out there?

In the end, the goddess pulled up her own hands and let go of the sheets, placing one hand on either side of her own face and trying to calm herself down from that bit of panic.

Wyn drew in close, her sweet scent washing over Arira. The Goddess of Beauty then reached out with a slender hand and with her fingers she caressed Arira's chin then guided it up to look at her. Wyn's face was serene in the light and she looked upon her with a charming smile. "I can see my words have given you a great deal of panic. Put fear from your heart, my lady. There could be many Gods and Goddesses out there waiting, untouched by your parent's lust." she dipped her head down to be eye level with Arira and stroked her chin with her thumb. "But there's also nothing wrong with being single for a time. It gives one the option of testing the waters, per say. Gives us options… Oh my lady." she whispered longingly. "I have given you much distress today…" Wyn began to lean her head in closer as her hand moved to Arira's cheek, underneath the Cycle Goddess' own. "Let me make it up to you?" she asked with a whisper that dripped with silk, moving her lips even closer.

If there was one way to get the Cycles Goddess to cease her panic about marriage and her parent for the moment, then what Wyn was doing had just stopped that train of thought in a literal heartbeat.

It didn’t take much to gently take Arira’s chin with those slender fingers, and move her face to look into that of the Goddess of Beauty’s. As rather flustered as the action made Arira, it felt to her like much of her strength had suddenly left her as she looked into Wyn’s lovely eyes and that charming smile in turn. A deep red settled in the daughter of Chakravarti’s cheeks as Wyn’s thumb softly touched her chin, and the longing tone seemed to rouse something strong within her she had never...really ever...felt before...things just like Wyn in that other attire had made her feel. By the time Wyn placed a hand underneath Arira’s own and caressed her cheek, the poor deity was basically, if not literally, a weak and red-flushed mess of putty in Wyn’s hands.

“Y-Y-Y-You m-m-m-may…,” she very weakly said, her breaths more labored as her face drew gently closer to Wyn’s...as if it was being pulled by some unseen force. The anticipation became palpable but as Wyn’s eyes fluttered shut, their lips did meet with a burning passion unleashed. It was a beautiful cycle…

Song To Carry Into The “Fade To Black”, Gotta Keep Things Kosher Folks

---

MA

None

Summary

Wyn is lounging about up on the Mount and then she hears this screaming and gets all upset her mood is ruined. It finally gets quiet but she sees someone falling from where the shouting had been coming from. Oh no! Wyn being Wyn and thinking about what she could get out of saving someone, goes and rescues Arira after the poor little goddess tuckered herself out. She then takes Arira home and the PoV switches to the Cycle Goddess. Arira and Wyn then meet and boy does she get flustered by the Beauty God, who has to tone it down (wear actual clothing) to have a conversation with her. They chat and get to know one another but not really cause Wyn asks Arira about stuff then eventually seduces her and things fade to black.

Divinus: The Deity Roleplay, Mk. V

Arira - Goddess of Cycles

When The World Needed Her Most...She Did Not Vanish!!!

---

...Did she mourn that the third race of her children had become so divided? Indeed. Such a thing weighed upon her heart, and yet at the same time her resolve was not broken nor shattered. The Erimav remained among her children, and a few had come to live within her Paradise like a similar amount of Ketto and Brynlic had before. These would, in the coming centuries, be transformed by the nature of the Ariran Paradise and the sustenance there just like the humans who were living there would be as well. More so, from the Erimav had come thoughts of just how to make things better for the region.

But before she exerted her might to a great extent on this Shard of Creation, this very Shard of Galbar, she would have to make one more civilization. One more race to create that would be numbered among her children, who would live upon the land and help make it great in their own ways in due time. She had even been going around giving the races she had already made, and the humans and other lingering survivor groups who now lived in the region, some amount of guidance and direction to set them on their own paths and away from a world of apocalypse.

And this time, she knew what she would need to do this time around for this race.

To this end the goddess flew herself over to the south of the small Freshwater Sea, all the way down to the Land Between Two Rivers...also known as the ‘Land of The Two Rivers’ or most importantly as “Aimatoposem”. In a good spot of land in this area, a flat place where there was room to grow and build and so forth, Arira would once again raise her arms as her now solemn visage looked upon the area. For a moment she mumbled a near-silent prayer under her breath, to whom or what or where none else would ever know, and then closed her eyes once more.

To them would be given civilization and order, but not as strict and peculiar as the Erimav had.

To them would be given strength and stamina, but not as much as the Ketto had.

To them would be given magic and mirth, but not as much as the Brynlic held.

To them would be given the spark of strong will and desire to learn, but not leaving the accidental empty spaces and erroneous things otherwise that had resulted eventually in the twisted Erimyr by mistake.

To them would be given great strength of spirit and hearty souls, like unto the survivors of the apocalypse...who had weathered so much but clung on through even the most godless of days to survive.

To them she would grant a form mostly like that of humans and elves and such folk, with only very slightly pointed ears to boot and fitting physiology of the canine teeth for their potential to drink blood as an alternate food source from animals or such. No power to turn things into their own kind like the Erimav did though.

To this end she would form them, without as much pomp and circumstance. They were able to feed upon the blood to survive, but also to eat all the other mortal foods that the world would have to offer. Civilized and orderly, yet mirthful and full of life.

“Rise, oh the last of the mortal races born into this world as mine children...rise, oh Dirham!”

After she cried aloud, the goddess lowered her arms one last time and opened her eyes as she began to float down to the ground. Below her, a great number of the Dirham lay upon the ground, male and female alike, with gothic attire and soft skin and lovely eyes that began to flutter open as they awoke. They lacked the inherent beauty of the Erimav, yet were a touch above regular humans and the like. Intelligent of mind, strong of spirit, able to fight the darkness within themselves and in the world about them as well as enjoy the light.

These numbered many more than the other races had in their initial creation batch, and as they rose they began to look at each other and speak with one another. Some were happy, others confused, and others seemingly grumpy at having woken upon the ground. Good. Ultimately, however, the people would begin to shuffle forward to where Arira had stopped her descent only some feet above the ground. To see the great throng of the people looking upon her, it made Arira smile as she looked into each of their eyes and upon their curious and mixed gazes.

It all felt...right. Yes. None of the others before were mistakes, as varied and individual as any other race, and they were all beloved even as these were. But this felt as if it just ‘clicked’ within her with a sense of finality and pride, as if she knew within her that this was the final major people to be born of her in this manner of creation during this time period. Like this creation was good, and none other like it was needed for this region at this time.

“Welcome to this world, oh last of mine mortal children made directly by mine hands. I am the beginning and the end. I am the seasons and the climes. I am the winter and spring, the summer and the fall.

I am Arira, Goddess of Cycles, and I have madest all of thee in the image of my mind...and of the cloth woven by thine cousins who also till this land and a place very far off from here. Therefore bend thine ears to my voice, and listen. Heed my call, and come forth to me. Be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed that thou seest me here.

I am thine mother and maker, wherefore I invite thee to come near to me and take comfort. Speak thine minds as well, for I wish to hear thee with my own two ears.”

“Why did you make us?”

“Where are we?”

“Could you have made us not on a patch of itchy grass?”

“Could use something to eat really.”

“Wait, why do only I have both-, oww! Somebody hit me!”

The goddess chuckled as the sounds of various voices entered her ears, questions sensible and otherwise taken into consideration. For a time she would begin to give some answers, at least, until the time for initial questions had gone on long enough. Gently she then waved her hands down, shushing them eventually once more.

“I shall answer more in time, oh Dirham, oh the lastborn of the mortal races that are mine children due to being made by mine hand.

I must first finish a great work, one which all of thee shalt be witness to along with the rest of this Shard of Creation, this world known as the Shard of Galbar.”

Then one last voice spoke up as the goddess looked over at the woman who was shouting up to her, the woman donning a long masculine Victorian coat and gloves as she gave a fanged grin.

“Well then? Get going! We’ve got to start getting things set up for when you get back then! So shoo, go do your god thing and we’ll be over here!”

A few chuckles and groans came from the throng of Dirham, but Arira’s smile did widen at the words as she let out a light peal of genuine laughter for the first time in her life thus far. Where some might have seen it as insolence, however, she could feel the gusto of the mortals’ spirits shine!

Love and laughter. Groans and complaints. Struggle ahead and yet the spirit to overcome it all in the end. It was beautiful. Simply beautiful.

This was what was so transcendent about mortals, at least in the goddess’ mind. Their lives were so very short compared to her immortal nature, and yet they sought to pursue the impossible that lay beyond the eternal horizon. They sought to conquer what challenges lay before them, and even with the good and the bad and so forth among them they never ceased to push themselves further and further.

Where divinity might stagnate or sit idly by with time, an eternity of memories possessed and so forth, to see that burning light of the flame of mortal life so brilliant in these was a sight like none other.

“Well then! My children seem to be adamant about watching their mother’s work! Then be off, begin to cut the wood and work out your homes! I will return to help afterward!”

And with that, the goddess would begin to rise again, voices beginning to bark out as the people began to try to organize themselves to start the work of making homes and so forth. Of course...they and their seed would have plenty of time for that. More than enough over the ages to come.

As for herself, however, she had one last set of things to do for this world. Indeed, these things had been long overdue, though I’Iro’s work and ironically her Paradise had made it all finally possible at this point in time.

---

Higher and higher she climbed, higher into the atmosphere.

Faster and faster she would move, seeking to reach the highest point in the atmosphere that was far above the perfect center of the world.

From Mount Divinus, a divine being’ senses would allow them to know she was far above there.

Far above the cloud whales and flying krill, far above the tallest mountains and greatest of lands she would fly up to, and standing at the edge of the atmosphere and void beyond she protected herself with a thin barrier of still-potent divine power.

Inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale. Control your breathing.

Yes. The Goddess of Cycles would begin to control her breathing, channeling all of her focus and divine power as it began to ripple throughout her. This would be an exertion far from the vulnerable mortal eyes that might be scarred or slain by seeing this, and to the gods a sign that she was serious in this work of hers. Arira’s flesh would begin to glow, and soon it began to shift as it changed at this spot far above and away from the eyes of all. Yet even if it was not directly seen, this would all be felt....especially by the rest of the gods.

‘My tiny brother, give me strength...yet keep safe and far from my true form! Oh mother, grant me boon and watch upon me from afar as my form shakes the very heavens themselves! Oh mortals, look upon me and know hope!!!’

Such were her thoughts, such were the desires shouted silently into the aether and void and heavens by her very immortal soul.

Still faster and faster and faster the flesh of her would shift and continue to move, all as great and blinding eyes appeared on her that would madden mortals if she were closer to the ground. So blindingly radiant was the divine light emitted from Arira, though, that all those below would see would be a radiant light high in the heavens...a strange one, yet its light was warm and eerie at the same time. Though even as her flesh moved and shifted, rings of spinning divine flesh and form and power were forming.

It was the beginning and the end. The start and the finish. A light that would gleam with raw divinity and magnificence and unimaginable incredibility, such that was untold magnitudes beyond her ‘base’ form.

Indeed, she would in the end become Cycles Incarnate for what she would be doing next.

Cycles Incarnate

And thus after, the sound of uncountable voices speaking in perfect unison would begin to ring throughout the air of the world...even as it touched upon all the land of creation. It came with the loudness of a burst of thunder, the swiftness of lightning, the glory of the sun, and the mightiness of Domain made manifest.

“Let the chaos be bidden: Come, Come, Come!

Come into my being and be consumed in thine End, yet be the fuel of the Beginning that shall come to the world anew. Burn, Burn, Burn!

Swell, oh Dominion of Cycles, and encompass all in thine eternal embrace! May the eyes watch over them and see it all through, yea let the rings bind them that the balance shall be constrained. Swell, Swell, Swell!

Rise, oh Jewel of Silence and freeze of Winter, be taken as part of mine being forever more. Make thine cold be the season’s sweet solace, may thine sobering touch cling to all as much as the icy winds cling to all the lands in thine domain, and may thou embrace the still silence at the end and beginning of all years to come!

Rise, oh sweltering Summer heat, burn forth from me forever and radiate like the heat of the sun and the burning fires of youth and growth and raw passions made manifest. Do this upon all creation to stir it forth to action, that none may sit idle as thine waves wash over them like waves upon the ocean shores!

Rise, oh cool winds of Fall, let thine decline and autumn colors show forth the softer brilliance of nature and beauty that comes in even with death! Become the comfort to all that rest and life so too, yea become the gentle chillwind that soothes the soul and ushers forth the coming cold to be!

Rise, oh lovely warmth of Spring, let thine sweetest caress and gentle rains bring forth new life and sounds of joy where once was death and silence! Manifest thyself as the rebirth of all creation, that cometh during its time to bring back vibrance and loveliness anew!

Oh climes and times of year, cling thee to all places of existence as thou fittest and form-est upon all creation and life therein! Let all life know the seasons and understand without words! Let all climes have their times and seasons thus, all being anchored upon mineself and mineself alone always, and manifest forth properly upon this Shard of Galbar, this Shard of Creation, and all land seeded and made before and now and forevermore!

Let mine existence be the essence of all this, and make mine existence the eternal foundation for all these! So it is decreed, so it is made immutable by being tied to my being forever! Let the gates of destruction and instability of these things be shut!

Shut!

Shut!

SHUT!!!”

So the voices would speaketh, at the end an almighty scream…

...Thus it was done.

The Seasons would be born into creation by the might of the Domain of Cycles now incarnated. Yea natural and normal clouds to bring forth rains and snows and storms and so forth would return and encompass the Shard of Creation alongside the cloud whales and such creatures, that the seasons might occur with the right weathers. Each biome of the world, those created before now and ever so after even, would now possess their fitting weather and climates and seasons thus...now and forever.

All of it was bound to the existence of the Goddess Arira, never to be rent in twain again unless she ceased to exist. It was her, her will, her extension, her life, her very being now. The Cycles of the Seasons, the Cycles of Life growing and dying and reproducing and resting, and the fitting Climate Cycles of all the lands and terrain and so forth, all were ushered in. All were a part of Arira now. They were her, and yet not her. They had beginnings, and they had ends. They had starts, and they had stopping points.

Yet not all was well in this aftermath.

For even as all the other gods and lands would find themselves stable and organized in ways prior untouched or unfinished or absent, the Goddess of Cycles would rapidly shift back to her Base Form.

Rapidly, Arira’s body would limply begin to fall from the heavens.

Oh save her, gods of the world, that she be not broken upon Mount Divinus itself!

Summary

Arira made the Dirham race, and this time her creation process went without flair and any sort of pomp and circumstance. More or less she took this most seriously as her last Post 0 race-making shenanigan/action, using all she had learned thus far in making races and seeing things in order to craft the Dirham as perhaps the most ‘balanced’ race of all.

She then was encouraged by them to quit waiting about and to go finish her work, to which she took joy and went off to perform a great miracle. She then went to the center of the world, Mount Divinus, and went high up into the atmosphere and such from there...and from the center of the world went into her True Form. In this she created the Seasons, set forth all needed cycles of the world across all of it, and exerted herself so much she basically got exhausted and passed out from all the MA power-spam.

Mind this was all just done after asking the GMs, as well as that it is basically a one-off instance of this insane divine power use to help us get past the Post-0 time period (finally).

She also kinda passed out and is falling rapidly from the sky down toward Mount Divinus in her Base Form (which she reverted to upon passing out) once more, so can someone please save her from this literal fall? (lol)

MA Summary

1 MA (0 from Apocalypse) - Arira created the Dirham, making more of them at their inception and taking into their creation all she has learned from making other races so far. It is the final race she will be making at all during this Post-0 time period.

1 MA (0 from Apocalypse) - Arira went full True Form, far away from hurt-able mortal eyes but rather readily able to be sensed by the other gods all over the Shard of Creation/Galbar as a result.

Several MA (0 from Apocalypse) - Arira exerted her full power in her True Form to create the Seasons, proper Climates and Climate Cycles, created normal clouds again which will create proper weather as part of the proper weather/other cycles of the world (even though Cloud Whales and such exist and weren’t harmed in this), and set the cycles of reproduction and so forth into their correct placements and manners and so forth.

In other words, she set the climate stuff and cycles stuff in order all at once in a mass exertion which will honestly never happen again because this is Post-0 times and Arira just wanted to help get things in order so we can move on forward with things on Thursday. XD

Divinus: The Deity Roleplay, Mk. V

Arira - Goddess of Cycles

The Southern Pole...and its Consequences

---

It had only been a short time since she received the letter from I’Iro, and not long since she had taught the Ketto and Brynlic races some things to get them started as civilizations.

Perhaps she’d eventually set up schools or such one day, but today wasn’t that time for them yet. Truth be told, she’d even gone round about the area and helped begin to organize some of the lingering humans and other races that had been survivors on the land when she terraformed it. There would be a long time before things got back to normal, or at least what normal this region now had as it moved forward, but all the same it was something on the mortals’ part to work on.

She didn’t want to be over-involved, but more or less would give teachings and help them organize at least. Monster/Demon hunters that would be necessary from now on, villages and towns and such forming, and the introduction of a fitting technological level would be trickled in over the centuries to keep the layout and progress of civilization organic for the races of the region. Etc.

But all the same she’d decided to head down to the place I’Iro had talked about, passing over the newer temperate-to-taiga land to the direct south of her region and taking check of it along the way. To this area I’Iro had ultimately created by consequence she gave the name “The Winter Lands”...hmm, no. How about “The Pale Lands'' instead? That sounded about right. Chilly enough, but not bad. There was also the new ‘Ghost Sea’, another something of note, which she further approved of the name of herself. Still, finding a segment of some odd vine-root-like tendril stuff along the way...she curiously picked a section of it to take with her. Maybe she could make use of it? Or she was just getting too curious.

Eventually she would, however, arrive at the small temple that the Dream Goddess had made, which-...hmm. The style was rather peculiar indeed, like it had all been carved out of a single large piece of stone. At least it looked so in appearance. But that wasn’t going to be a terrible matter either. With her divine power, Arira began to carve her symbols and so forth into the temple, tweaking it into a blend of styles between her fortress-temple and how I’Iro had made it. A fitting blend, though her holy symbols and other things would fill it and decorate it all wholly and entirely now. Of course she tosses in some depictions so I’Iro was given due credit as well. She wasn’t going to leave out the intelligent yet cute dream goddess who had

To cap it off, the goddess exerted herself to consecrate the area. Her very power was imbibed into every bit of the temple and icy grounds it was upon, even the Jewel of Silence and its containment measures within, transforming the area into an extension of herself. Perhaps it was a tad rude to the goddess who had made this place first, but doing this would allow Arira herself to keep better track and care of the place as a result. Especially when protecting it. Still, as she finished that work the goddess would throw on some grandiose and very heavy stone front doors to the temple, as well as tossed in a further-protecting and cold-balancing small divine-power forcefield around the alien-metal orb that contained the crystal, and let out a large sigh of relief.

Walking outside, she would take the strange oily-filled tendril piece she took with her power as she examined it more curiously...before tossing the segment onto the ground outside the small temple-shrine. It would glow for a second with her power, before its exterior gained a strange metal sheen and it began to dig into the ice and grow. It would bend and twine, forming a winding, twisted, intricate wall of metallic vines around the outside of the temple-shrine with a woven grand entranceway leading into the temple-shrine. Likewise they would form a large field of such around this grand wall. These strange vines had a very tough exterior, as tough as the toughest metals, covered in finely razor-sharp thorns as well...yet internally filled with a new, circulating, and strange dark blue oily substance within. They would even dig deep beneath the ice to root this ‘South Pole’ into the ocean floor and keep it very firmly attached to this Shard of Creation...this chunk of Galbar as it were. Likewise it all imposed a great defensive spread before anything that sought to get to the temple-shrine at all.

This creation she would call “I’Irian Vines” in honor of herself and I’Iro, vines whose oily inner substance was circulated as a means of keeping the ‘plant’ alive as it derived what little to no nutrition it needed from the cold ocean water far underneath the dense ice of the South Pole. Its internal ‘juice’ was very flammable naturally, but the vines could very quickly use autotomy to ‘separate’ and remove such segments rapidly to avoid body-wide burning or a chain-reaction or so forth if it was set on fire internally somehow. Externally it wouldn’t exactly burn at all for the most part, but under an intense enough heat (rather intense enough for sure that is) the metal-like exterior could be melted down to make things. Durable, yet practical. She’d take a sample to test later back at the Ariran Paradise to boot.

Yet...it all still felt somewhat incomplete. Like even with the I’Irian Vine field and specially-woven dense wall of them around the temple-shrine, something needed to care for the place really. It would be frozen cold up here, and despite the vines protecting from the elements well enough things weren’t perfect. Even if she could keep an eye on here, it was not like she wanted to leave the spot empty either...ah!

Something simple would have to do the trick. A race that needed minimal requirements, but had something to sustain them located in the temple to keep them loyal there.

There was one biological mechanic she was tempted to make use of for it, since it would at least function for those needs she had of a race in this location, so perhaps it would work? Blood-sucking that was. It was macabre, but also a part of the cycle of life for some things regardless. It wouldn’t require too much work to make by using humans as a base for this race, but unlike when she made the Ketto she wanted to make sure to focus this time. They would need to be a distinctly more orderly bunch here, disciplined really, to not go too far with things. Yes! That would work nicely...well, after she did one more small task.

Arira would create a pale white bird, a Dovling she would call it, on the spur of the moment. Into it she sent a message for I’Iro about what she had done, and would be doing, before it flew off like a streak of light from her hands in haste. Once it simply touched the other goddess, Arira’s message would transfer into I’Iro’s mind from the bird itself safely and fully. It was also perhaps an experimental means of communication, but...eh, it would work.

The goddess would then re-enter the temple, standing in the now larger entrance room just beyond the doors, and extending her hands with her palms out and having closed her eyes once more.

The base form of the beings to be made would be taken from humans, but given the climate and very minimal sunlight here they wouldn’t need that much resistance to it. Incredibly pale and ash-pale skin would be perfect in this case for them, without much thought having to be given save for them getting sunburns more easily than any others.

Make just the upper canine teeth more pronounced, enough to break the skin of prey on the ice or otherwise to drink their blood. Would be mostly meant as a supplementary measure, but would work still as a backup for them to use for eating. Plenty of life would grow and rise up upon the ice, she’d take care of that on her way out. Hardy enough to live there, populous enough on the barren icy sheet to rely on the ocean for food, etc.

Then make them very orderly, enough to keep the temple in good shape and not be inclined to abandon it or frankly ‘take over’ among other grueling possibilities. Well, free will wasn’t going to be taken from them though. Hmm. Still, it all worked out as she hoped for the most part. Had to leave that wiggle room.

Could devour and subsist entirely on blood, that she already knew she was going to put in. Regular food they’d not really be able to digest at all, though, since they didn’t need it. Also made designing them more simple by adding enhanced senses into the mix.

Superior night vision, heightened reflexes and durability and strength lesser than Ketto but more than other mortal races, and an instinct for organizing around hierarchies all were good things to toss in perhaps. Yes.

Also clothes this time. That was rather important. Maybe that would be something they could make use of animals for as well, though at the same time she would give them the tools to weave and make finer clothes for themselves over time.

They had a division of the sexes as well, this time at least, and could reproduce normally or by...hmm. Well if anyone wandered in foolish enough to try to raid the temple, they’d be able to be bitten by these creatures and turned into one of them by force. That would ensure trespassers would not step foot inside! Hopefully. It was also another layer of defense for the temple-shrine really. Biting foes and using claws instead of normal fingernails would also be a deadly touch.

Not that this didn’t mean they couldn’t still be rather beautiful in their own right perhaps. Like a lovely face in the moonlight, though even if the sun was far from desirable and they hated it at least they wouldn’t instantly catch on fire underneath it. The death or destruction of their heart? Decapitation? Excessive Starvation? All would be enough to really kill them despite their inherently very hardy bodies and so forth. A part of them none of their kind would be able to ‘shake’ off.

As the goddess opened her eyes this time, finishing up the process and lowering her arms, she caused a fountain to sprout up in the middle of the large entrance-way as well. Designs of balance, of the vines and so forth, and of the crystal at that, would cover it, and immediately the fountain began to spit out its infinite fountain of non-freezing and nutritious blood. Macabre, really, but fitting for the landscape all the same.

Before her, the human-like beings in rather neat and high-class gothic attire began to stir, their gold and silver and precious-metal-colored eyes reflecting the dimmer magical lights that lit up the temple within. Their skin was so pale they almost looked like corpses in that vague sense, but as most awoke they walked or pulled or crawled over to the fountain to drink heartily of its contents. One male, in particular, would stand, dusting himself off and walking over to her before giving a very deep and fanciful bow as his handsome visage smiled at her.

Well, at least this time things felt more ‘on-point’ than last time!

“Milady! It is but a humble abode thou hast given us, yet even so I am most pleased to meet you and witness your divine beauty that has blessed our presence most graciously!

Still, I believe we must ask thee for something, I pray. A name, and why we are here, would be most welcome to know indeed.”

Arira gave a small smile in return, noting this one’s strength in not immediately giving into the slaking of his natural thirst, even as those drinking from the fountain would drink up and begin to stand about her.

“The pleasure is mine, my children. Where there is light, darkness also. Where there is a beginning, there is an end. I am Arira, the Goddess of Cycles, and thine kind hath been made to bear up this place and protect it from thieves and ill forces and so forth. For this is mine consecrated ground as well, a place wherein the might of cold is eternally enshrined in my name and due to the help of a friend.

Thine thirst is for what thou drinkest, blood, that which flows through all living things and only else from this eternal fountain beside thee. The light of the sun is loathe to thee, and yet in the dark thou hast no equal among the civilized races of the world. Magic can be used by thee, as well as martial tools and fang and claws where fingernails would hath been on others.

Thou are order, civilized, and yet bring this to the barren wasteland roundabout. I shall assist in making a great cavern below this temple, hidden beneath the ice, where thine kind can liveth and rest under mine blessing.

Thine race shall be the Erimav. Proud and unaging after maturity, yet not indestructible nor immutable. A loveliness and strength beyond many, but not all, mortal races, yet a nature that shall teach thee to know discipline and struggle and sacrifice and come to understand this world.”

Yet...hmm. She could see it in their eyes. She could tell their nature in ways that hadn’t been decided outright by her, but came as a result of them themselves. Intriguing. Very intriguing.

The goddess then seemed to have a sudden twinkle in her eye of...something else. Something gratingly different than she had ever been like before. It was alien, and sent a shudder through the most weak-willed of the folk before her, but a message to the unflinching strong nonetheless. Still, the smile of the one who first spoke to her did not break before her gaze...though he seemed to get the point.

“But bewarest thou, thine power and might is not the be of all and end of all. Thou shalt stop aging after some time of maturity, that thou might gainest wisdom, but know that thine lives hang as frail in the balance as that of any other mortal race.

For themselves thou shalt be able to choose, as like any other, to follow thine purpose or not. Still, those who live here shall abide by mine rules, lest if they seek to turn on this place in evil or ill deeds then they shall be smitten into naught but dust in an instant.

Ist’ this understood by thee, oh my Children of the Night?

And what about thee...oh Drakenvald, First among the Erimav?”

The lead one took another deep bow as he was spoken to directly, being given a name at that, and most of the others did so after him.

“My Lady! Oh what joy your words bring to my ears! It is a joyous thing to exist in this world, with the first name of my kind no less having been given me, knowing that our purpose is most clear and our nature allows us to choose thereof! I am sure we shall follow our duty most clearly...but if not the price is most easy to understand of course.”

...She hoped so.

---

Many, Many, Many Years And Generations Later...

[History of the Ararian Church or "Cyclican Church", Book 4, Chapter 4]

“…[and] the goddess would assist her newest children at this time in crafting that great underground habitation, but more and more she worried over the nature of these folk with exposure. Most seemed well, orderly enough even, and yet in the years after she left things would change most frighteningly. Whilst the most noble and just of the Erimav would remain at the temple and adhere to their duties and strength, including those few brought to her Paradise for study and to live in its bounty, in time there were those whose drive for order and strength did not hold true to some kind of balance.

Indeed some fled the rumored and legendary temple-shrine, and managed to reach the mainland of the Shard of Creation. These in time would come to be derided and feared and killed by the mortal races, becoming warped into monsters who dwelled in caves and castles and dark places as they sought dominion over the land and used magic to their own ends. It brought sorrow to the goddess, and yet they would not escape entirely free from the evil they would make wrought in centuries and more so to come.

‘Erimyr’, this derivative group of them would come to be called derisively by their original kin and mortals on the mainland alike, a corruption of the Erimav as this group warped themselves and became corrupted by their own hands and behaviors and the magic they came to use over time. The Erimyr had much the same raw strength, but now bore corrupted magics and weakness alongside. The Erimav’s original loathing of the sun would become lethal to these Erimyr, burning them like a curse and weakening them greatly in contact with it...even able to kill them and cause them to crumble to naught but lifeless dust with enough exposure. Fire too would become a weakness of them, even as they gained the power to shapeshift unlike the original Erimav.

Even so the Erimav would remain a purer race, an enmity between them and their ‘Erimyr’ cousins would become an eternal rivalry and hatred of each other down to their cores. Some Erimyr would perhaps find their way into the care or influence of other divinities, but no divine hand of others would be able to shake them of their weaknesses...such was the price they paid forevermore, the so-called ‘Curse of Arira’ upon their very flesh and souls by nature of them existing at all.

Indeed...they who had chosen such vile things would find only torment before them, even after death.”

Summary

Arira went to the new South Pole and basically consecrated the ground of the small temple I’Iro made, as well as adding her own touches and such too to make it the Southern Temple-Shrine of Arira and giving the crystal another divine defensive bubble about it to help regulate and such even more finely. She also created the I’Irian Vines at the location to protect it and root the South Pole to the bottom of the ocean for extra anchoring and safety, creating them anew from a small portion of the tendril stuff that got left behind (more than plenty left for the humans of the area to harvest later on) by I’Iro.

She then went about trying to create a race to care for and protect the place, fearful of outside forces or such trying to ruin the place or take the crystal within one day potentially, and through this made the noble and fancifully-dressed, orderly, and otherwise more highly civilized and blood-drinking Erimav race to care for the place and an infinite eternal nutritious-blood fountain for them at the location. But rather than make a big mistake in creating them, in this case Arira found that aspects of them she didn’t directly decide on had shaped into...equally bad and good potential in them indeed.

Despite having made her first intimidation in her life so far, mainly to test her newest ‘children’, an excerpt from a Cyclican History book from rather far in the future notes what happened in the many years and so forth following...that some of the Erimav fled to the mainland and became corrupted by their actions and use of corrupt magics and became more akin to traditional vampires. These became known, by all others, derisively as the Erimyr, gaining more potent weaknesses but also the power to shapeshift (all unlike their ‘pure’ relatives), and their drawbacks passed irreparable onto the Erimyr race as a result of their creation being called the Curse of Arira despite the goddess having no proper hand in it at all.

MA Summary

1 MA (0 from Apocalypse) - Arira consecrated and shaped stuff around the temple at the new South Pole, making it as much an extension of her and securely her domain as the Ariran Paradise is.

1 MA (0 from Apocalypse) - Arira created the Erimav race (whom from some would branch into the derivative ‘Erimyr’ race who became twisted as a race by their own hands and terrible actions), basically civilized and orderly ‘vampires’ of a sort who she helped carve a large hidden home underneath the temple and ice so they can grow and prosper.

Divinus: The Deity Roleplay, Mk. V

Arira - Goddess of Cycles

The Creation of the...Ketto? Oh Dear.

---

It had been some time since she’d used her power to ‘birth’ the Brynlic into the world, transforming the group of once-wandering Coilbrywen into a group she was proud to number among her children. They had been settled (with only a minute bit of help from her) within the northeast of the region, settled amidst the hills and small forests and to the southwest of that lake by which they’d been reborn. Plenty of room to grow, plenty of room to spread, and so forth. Yet all the same...they were but one race that would need to be placed onto the land to make use of it, to till it, and to work it well. She loved her new children dearly, all of them, and she’d even brought a few to her Paradise to grow and prosper there with the slowly-changing humans. They all would begin to change and be shaped by the magic of her Paradise and the fruits and materials it bore, as the place truly had all that was needed and then some, but all the same there was much to do if she was to make the most of this region and bring greater life to it.

To that end she had come to the area just south of the Ariran Paradise, placed directly between the great and unconquerable mountains hiding the paradise to the north and the mini-freshwater sea to the south. A place where forests and rugged mountain slopes and freshwater sea were the main borders, with room to grow westward most easily achieved. A good spot to allow her newest batch of ‘children’ to live and grow well, at least for some time without conflict with their siblings over living space she hoped.

Still, what was she to make of this second batch? What was she to make them like? This was the area her intuition had led her to when seeking a good spot, and even in her latest lectures back at the Paradise she’d brought up a map she’d made of the region’s landscape and allowed her students to ponder the matter alongside her somewhat. It was a good thought experiment, but the answers they’d given were so rather...varied. “They would need to be strong!”, “They would need to be giants!”, “They would need to be durable!”, “Why can’t they all just be cute?”, and more had been among their answers...

However, this did lead to an interesting mental image indeed-...wait! That was it! She had been pondering more and more so that the race needed to be strong, likely larger than the Brynlic, to have a balance. Why not use some of those traits to create a race that embodied several of those things best? Large, strong, durable folk who could labor in the land and fight back lingering demons better! It wasn’t as if the apocalyptic demons in the land weren’t weakened, at least those that had been in the region for the terraforming, but other things from outside were still an issue indeed. Even once the world was fixed, monsters and beasts and demons would likely remain a lingering problem anyways in some form or manner.

In fact, why not use one of the demons she’d seen thus far as a base? It would make the race look menacing, and even more fearsome to their enemies!

From where she sat upon a great boulder, a fist on her chin as she thought, the goddess smiled at her conclusion and stood up upon the great stone. Yes, it would do nicely! Surely they would be ‘some’ trouble in a sense, just as any mortal race with free will was apt to be, but not be so savage and barbaric as to try to destroy everything or so forth. Yes, she didn’t want to make mindless meat hunks. Practical enough they would be indeed!

Arira lifted her arms up, opening her hands and pointing her palms down as she extended them out to point them at the open space before her. It was dotted with rock jutting out in parts of this rare hilly space, but it would do for inspiration. So too she closed her eyes as she began to channel divine power, imagining the appearance of that humanoid demon she’d seen prior. Just to base the appearance on some, that is.

A pair of horns coming from the head-...hmm, in this case the forehead was going to be simpler than ram-like horns stretching forward from the sides of the head.

No wings, but the deep red skin was something that would strike an imposing appearance in part for sure! Make the horns the same color too, would be simpler that way.

Hair colors would vary, but perhaps better to keep them simple. White, black, grays, silver, gold...well, even ruby, sapphire, and emerald colored hair would be acceptable among their genes. It wasn’ too gaudy, just different!

There was also making them intelligent and civilized, yes. None of this wanton barbaric-ness that would tear her poor children apart over time!

Slightly pronounced lower AND upper canine teeth, nothing that would stick out of the mouth...but something that when they smiled or grinned would be visible and somewhat charming really. Perfect, when paired with tall, naturally muscular bodies with incredible strength and high metabolisms. Workers of the land would need that strength for the many tasks they had, but also the energy to sustain it. That and for battling demons and so forth, to strike fear into it! That would be good, yes.

Then what else? Well, she’d have to think back on the body of the demon. It had been rather ‘shapely’, ‘curvy’ even. Big chested, and a cute butt too...mmm...wasn’t it all-female as well? Or was it built to do both? Well-

Wait. Waitwaitwaitwaitwaitwait-!!!

Arira’s eyes swiftly popped open as she finished the creation process.

Uh Oh

...Uh Oh.

Uh Oh!

Uh Oh!

She’d let her mind wander as she wove the magic for a second there, a bit too long during the creation process, and swiftly she had opened her eyes in panic as she pulled her arms back down to her sides. Yet in the end, it was ultimately too late for her to...change what she’d just made. The process was done by the time she’d realized her mind was drifting off the correct train of thought just long enough to ‘botch’ things.

Before her a race of 7.4-8’2” tall, red-skinned, very muscled, forehead-horn-having, durable...and visibly all-female race was lying on the ground asleep. Well, they were all female looking at base, but she could tell from a very quick ‘scan’ of them with her divine power that when mating they were very capably hermaphroditic and could...oh my. Well, half-breeds were also possible as well as that it seemed.

What in the heavens had she done??? By Chakravarti’s fifth arm and her brother’s adorable baby face, what had she done to these poor creatures!? Sure reproduction wasn’t a problem, that much she was glad she hadn’t utterly botched, and they were all fully functional as living things and a sentient race..but she hadn’t even made it to dividing the sexes, giving them initial clothes, and finishing up with other touches like she’d wanted to! Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear! This was an embarrassment of the highest regard!

Even so, as the goddess visibly lightly panicked internally to herself as she stood on the stone, the beings in the area began to awaken. One by one the amazonian race stirred and began to stand up. They began to very curiously look at each other up and down, look up at the sky, and even around themselves at the terrain and ground. Some would thump each other on the back with a hearty laugh, a couple began to arm wrestle even, and so forth. Ultimately, however, their eyes and attention would turn up to look at the panicking, short (compared to them) goddess who was standing atop a great stone. In this vein, after a few more minutes one of them walked over to the stone to get her attention, lightly tapping it to snap her out of her current state.

“Are you the one that...ah...just kinda made us here? Or who are you? Not sure a place like this is a good place to panic, you know.”

Arira blinked slowly as she looked down at the one of her creations who had just ‘snapped her out of it’ and talked to her. Letting out another long, drawn sigh, she neatened herself up and gave a gentle nod to the individual before her.

“Y-Yes, my child, I did create you all...though I fear I may have let my mind wander as I did so. It is most embarrassing indeed.”

The individual raised an eyebrow, before she gave a simple shrug.

“I mean hey, we didn’t get to choose, so we don’t mind one bit! Honestly don’t mind how I am, unless anyone else has a problem here.”

In response, many of the others simply stared for a second before shrugging or simply brushing it off. Still, the one individual seemed to come right back at Arira with more.

“Well, not unless you think we’re a mistake or something. Not like I know! So just suck it up and deal with what you’ve done!”

The goddess paused for a moment at the rude, but perhaps much needed, exclamation to her face. Indeed, it made her chuckle for a second after the words sank in.

“No, none of thee are mistakes in my eyes nor in my mind. Thou art my children still, and as such I care for all of thee no matter what unintentionally happened during your creation,” she said putting a hand to her chest as she looked out at all the others as well, catching her breath a little still, “In truth I was’t rather panicked, and feared that there woulds’t be issues or true problems with thee or thine seed from mine mind wandering during creation. I dids’t not desire to do any ill to thee...but hath been worried in truth.”

The individual before her gave a wide, fanged grin and slapped the great stone the goddess stood on with gusto and a hearty laugh. Similarly the others behind her began to chuckle and laugh as well. Yet the blow to the stone nearly knocked the comparatively smaller goddess over for a second, which the one individual seemed to lightly panic at, as did the rest for a second, though once Arira got her balance back all seemed well once more.

“Well, ‘Mom’, you worry too much! We’re all fine I think! You did a damn good job crafting us as we are, so don’t sweat it! But ah…,” the individual trailed off as she looked back at the others before looking back at the goddess once more, “What are we? Might be a good place to start there.”

...Ok, so the race she had just created was rather ‘blunt’ in this sense. All the same, however, it was a very practical question that this one was getting at. Rather, she was very inquisitive in a practical sense for someone who had been created moments ago. Arira had wanted to make them like that, but to think it would come back to bit her somewhat! It was amusing in this case, rather than offensive, as she had panicked briefly there and needed the ‘snap’ back to reality.

But this race did need a name! A good one, really, that would encapsulate them best. The Brynlic had been easy enough to come to mind for her, but then again they had come into this world and been reborn rather than be ‘made from scratch’ as these were. It was all a tad strange in that regard.

Ah!

“How about...the Ketto? Thou are the second race I hath made, and though second among my children thou are beloved still. Would this suffice?”

There was a general murmuring as the giant amazonians turned to each other and began to discuss it. Some seemed to not like it very much, though others seemed to either shrug it off or look more positive about it at least. It was a few minutes before they seemed to come to some general consensus, with the one standing closest to Arira herself putting her hands on her hips and letting out a sigh. She then turned her head to look at the goddess, a proud grin on her face.

“Works for us then!”

Summary

Wanting to create another race to diversity the region she revitalized, after her touching time spent with the Brynlic, Arira pondered on the matter for a while. She would eventually think back on the issue some whilst sitting on a giant stone, and pondering on suggestions from her followers/students in the Ariran Paradise she came to a final idea that seemed like it would work! All she needed to do was take the desired traits, and then use a strange demon she saw before as a general way to help 'shape' those traits in her mind as she crafted the new race.

All was starting well, though...her mind did manage to wander a little bit during the creation process. It led to a rather Amazonian and particular race emerging from the creation process. Fearing how embarrassing her fumble was, Arira was beside herself with panic until one of the new race walked over and bluntly snapped her out of it. From here the goddess came to terms with her fumble, and loving her new yet unique children all the same she bestowed upon them the race name of 'Ketto' (meaning 'two' in Hungarian I hope) in the end.

MA Summary

1 MA (0 from Apocalypse) - Arira created the Ketto, the second race she considers her 'children' but also the first she's made from relative scratch. She does desire to make one more to help seed the land with more sentient life, though has learned a bit of a lesson about the rather easy pitfalls of a goddess letting her mind wander during the process of creating new life...

The Epic of Beginnings - Fragments of a weathered scroll

Leannah

---

...This was concerning. It helped her keep evolving her theories, sure, but the test was concerning. Yet its similarity to some big puzzle-filled adventure-action game with a mute elf-eared guy pushing block and yelling 'HIYAH' was enough to put her at some minute sense of ease. Well, a minute bit more at ease was the better way to phrase it, really, as she was still dealing with a puzzle from a seemingly-mad God of Knowledge that she'd managed to get in am upbeat mood by suggesting a 'game'. Perhaps otherwise it was a bad idea in hindsight, but at the same time it was not as bad as other potential outcomes when she was having to ad-lib on the spot to keep her furry tail and hide intact.

Well, if Lazhira knew this temple well enough then perhaps she'd find where that crystal had been left. Not that it was connected to this place at all, if anywhere else was connected to this place at all beyond these rooms, but it'd be a hopeful sign that Leannah had been there and that something was 'up'. Hopefully Narkissa and the other guy were also ok for that matter, not that the latter had ever been introduced to her. Wait. She hadn't even asked him in the first place!

The catgirl slapped her forehead lightly with the palm of her right hand, before letting out a sigh and stretching her arms and legs. It was a moment or few to think for a second before acting this time.

'Well it seems I was wrong about his mother...Delphiti was his mother then? So the other 'goddess' is his 'Auntie' then perhaps? That would explain the moon thing when I first saw her, and the hooded person dropping the white-eyed child into the ocean.

Plus if that place was meant to lock her up, or whichever goddess of all things, then the whole cracking glass, moon turning red and all stuff when I first met her was maybe like some prison alarm going off or something? Maybe something Delphiti placed on her or did to keeps tabs on her?'

It was a another big leap to take, and like anything else prior was potentially far from being right (or alternately far from wrong) in some fashion or another.

But all the same she would walk over, putting the note on the operating table to be held in the picture book with the journal page in her 'inventory' as it were.

'Right...let's get started with this then!'

If the operating table was one clue, though, something was literally 'taken' from another, if 'Knowledge was birthed by The moons demand, but it was knowledge stolen' was any indication. So when the Illuminator mentioned his 'mother', did that mean his 'birth' mother or Delphiti taking him and acting as his 'mother'? The latter currently felt more likely, and if this god was indeed 'mad' enough then a lunar connection was perfect. 'Lunacy', after all, was tied to the moon and madness back in Earth mythology...at least somewhere or another.

It could also mean taking knowledge from the mortals races, or at the very least humanity, and coalescing it into a god perchance? Either that or Ms. Ocean was his Auntie who had some aspect of her stolen by Delphiti and used to make a god of knowledge. All incredibly rough and unrefined guesswork at best on the fly, but it was what she initially had to go on when working on her feet.

From here she would investigate the rest of the main room some more.

Around what seemed to be the door at the top of some stairs on a raised platform were four slots for some round spheres.

Yes, there were those slots on the door that seemed to be slots for some kind of orbs that would act as keys then. That was the most easy assumption to work from initially, so she'd do it. After this would come taking a doorway-side quick glance at each of those four rooms.

The northern room -

Seems to be a rather simple room. A large stream of water runs through the middle of it, and one of the aforementioned statues is submerged pretty far in the stream. The stream moves fairly slowly from one end of a wall to another - a grate at one end while there's one at the other end. You'd need to enter it to see more of it.

The southern room -

Seems to be a room without light, save for the orb in one of the statues on some sort of elevated platform. Hard to see anything else in here as of now.

The eastern room -

Seems to be a completely bare room, except for the statue which is being suspended above the floor by metal chains.

The western room -

Seems...completely out of place. Large glass cylinders line either side of the room with a large black slab of stone against the far wall that pulses slowly with blue energy. A statue sits in front of it. The room reminds you lightly of the prison and the cylinders the things Leannah and the others came out of.

Hmm...interesting.

Notably, you can see what is likely the objective. Various statuettes holding several spheres. The statues also have distinguishing features - one has extremely long, gangly arms. One is standing on some rather tall, slender legs, another has a head with horns similar to the motifs you've seen through the temple, and the fourth has a torso with a large hole in it.

Ok, context clues here were going to be key to figure it out correctly. Likewise the correspondence of the orb-holding statue in each room in turn to something back in the Library puzzle was especially useful. Would she overthink it? Likely. But having solved the Library puzzle she knew this:

The stone necklace upon the vase holding the statue. The crystal sphere on the outstretched hand. The Crystal necklace on the hooded figure's neck. Immediately upon placing the last object upon where it last rested, there was an audible click.

Yes. Ok. So she had some stuff to put together first so she could build her knowledge base, then she could try to apply what she'd learned thus far to the room with some context clues and so forth.

One-

A statue of what seems to be a woman in a flowing robe. She is holding a vase in her hands, and is sitting upon some sort of pillar. Water flows from the vase into a cistern below. The statue smirks knowingly. Its centered at the back of the room against the wall. Bookshelves flank either side of it.

“Thus, the exodus was made. The beloved Sage led from the place of birth, the heretics cursed to remain. The moon wept once more, the cistern overflowing, and brought life back to the land. This, would in turn give birth to Knowledge, which in turn gave birth to the desire for the secrets of the Oceans. Desire turned into actuality, and thus a seal was made by their accord.”

-...this was the statue with a 'knowing' smirk and inscription back in the Library. Aka: The Smirking Statue. It got the heavy carved necklace upon its neck, which came from the Hooded Figure.

A robed statue is kneeling at the other end. Their face is covered by a hood, arms outstretched towards a carving in the wall. The carving is of a crescent moon, a star situated in the empty part of it. Tears seem to flow down its face into a basin below, where the water collects and flows away under the front wall. Upon their neck is a carved necklace that seems to detach from the statue.

Said Carved Necklace was far heavier than it should have been. Like a great burden, and if the crying part of the Hooded Figure was right then it was a burden like unto mourning and crying or guilt or such. Like something had been lost. This burden was then removed from the crying Hooded Figure, being placed on the Smirking Statue who had been holding the vase that had the Crystal Orb in it.

This led to the Crystal Orb's end location, as it was taken from the Smirking Statue and given to-

Another statue is tucked away on the wall opposite to the door you had walked in. A rather macabre thing this one is. A two faced bust statue that seems somewhat to resemble a pair of theater masks, split down the middle of an old man angrily shouting and a woman laughing manically. Atop the head, some sort of claw is reaching up, many tentacles and appendages reaching for the ceiling as though its trying to grab something.

...The Two-Faced Bust, which had a hand reaching up for something.

She still assumed this one was The Illuminator. A two-faced mad god, at one time happy and jovial and at others full of anger and hatred. Just like he'd been in front of her in their short experience around each other. If not that, then Delphiti herself was the mad goddess, given the associations of the moon with lunacy or madness.

Right or wrong, the hand had received the Crystal Orb, which if it was the "Secrets of the Oceans" in any capacity was so desired by the hand. So whoever it was had wanted to get those secrets, whichever deity it was anyways, and had achieved this somehow.

Then the final object: The Crystal Necklace.

A final statue, this time on the same wall as the one you walked in on. Rather than a person, it seems to be some sort of carving. Of a tower. You might vaguely recall the same tower you saw off in the distance in the prison you woke up in. Seems as though it might be hollow.

Said necklace came from the Hollow Tower, which had been a prison for the Illuminator's 'Auntie' if he was to be believed. This had been placed on the Hooded Figure statue.

So what did this all mean in the end? What did it translate to, which might help her in this new puzzle about The Illuminator's origins and history?

The Smirking Statue was holding a vase that contained what could be the "Secrets of the Oceans" in it, which was to be given to the hand reaching out from the Two-Faced Bust.

The Hooded Figure bore a great burden, in the form of the heavier-than-it-seemed Carved Necklace, which was given to the Smirking Statue and ultimately put into the vase it held.

The Hollow Tower contained the Crystal Necklace, which was given to the Hooded Figure after breaking open the Tower.

Ok. Now to try to make a story out of it.

The Prison she and the others were formed in was made to contain a goddess, The Illuminator's "Auntie" as it were. Likewise he had noted he helped his 'mother' make herself and the other world-jumping peoples' bodies, and he knew they were reincarnates. A crescent moon was on the dark pillar that 'sealed the way' to the prison. Also 'Knowledge was birthed by The moons demand, but it was knowledge stolen'. Like it was 'foolish mortal pride' that maybe led that...'thing' in the prison to be that way.

“The old tower...the old Lab...it was before my time, but she lets me play with the inmates every now and then. Really, poor sods the lot of them. All because they wanted to lock auntie up. Ah well, mortals will be prideful and foolish mortals...that’s what makes them fun.”

Yes. That as well.

Time to theory-test then.

A goddess, Delphiti, made the lab to create life, but eventually most of the humans she made there left. The remaining humans wanted to do something horrible, aka: lock The Illuminator's aunt. A goddess. Delphiti mourned this, as well as how those that remained sought to chain up a goddess...her sister...potentially an Ocean Goddess. So for this they were punished, doomed to be eternal toys for The Illuminator and his mother's permission Likewise that statue golem killing machine thing was put there to prevent them from escaping. That lattermost bit was the small part that made a lot of sense and seemed more grounded. Foolish mortal pride, thinking they could contain if not chain-up a goddess on a goddess' turf no less.

If running the place was the 'burden' that the Carved Necklace represented, then Delphiti handed off the 'Warden' position there to The Illuminator's Aunt. It was a great weight to her to bear all the crap from there thus far, so she simply handed it off without giving up dominion of the place itself. After all, The Illuminator had noted that he'd helped his mother make her and the others' bodies, as well as being allowed to toy with the 'inmates' there. But why hand off Warden-ship to the goddess who others were trying to lock up in there? That was a big question.

Still, the Crystal Necklace had gone to the Hooded Figure she had assumed was Delphiti in the Library puzzle. So did the mantle of Ocean Goddess get taken by Delphiti in exchange for making her sister the warden of the prison? Either way Delphiti was, if Lazhira's tale about the legend was true it meant Delphiti owned the oceans and manifested life from them after that. It 'brought life back to the land', and she had abandoned the use of the now-prison. This also led to the birth of The Illuminator himself, whose existence led to a desire for the 'Secrets of the Oceans' or what potentially was analogous to 'how to create life'.

If Delphiti, his mother, held these secrets and power, then she'd likely stolen it or the secrets of how to create life from her Ocean Goddess sister in their 'trade', forcing her burden on her and using those Secrets of the Oceans to birth new life from the Ocean. Maybe she even made the lab with her sister's help, before or after stealing that knowledge. Regardless, in turn The Illuminator desired this knowledge from his mother. So she gave it to him, the "Secrets of the Oceans" as it were, but this deal was a pact to hand over this knowledge in return for sealing away the prison complex forever. And even if the sister goddess wasn't a 'Warden', per-say, the 'Secrets of the Oceans' were stolen from her.

In other words, Delphiti made a lab to create humans with or without the help of a potential sister Ocean Goddess. In time a division of opinion happened among the humans, and most left whilst the 'heretics' stayed to try to lock up her sister...also a goddess. This failed terribly, resulting in Delphiti mourning not only being abandoned by her creations but also how some of them turned on the gods in their vanity and 'foolish pride'.

Having had enough of the crap, Delphiti took the "Secrets of the Oceans" represented by the Crystal Necklace and left. She took this knowledge from her sister, who the 'inmates' had attempted to lock up, and used it to take control fully over the oceans and birth new life into the world. Thus 'The moon wept once more, the cistern overflowing, and brought life back to the land' made perfect sense, as once again life returned to the lands of the world by her actions. This making of life by Delphiti would lead to the birth of The Illuminator, her 'son', who would in time desire the 'Secrets of the Oceans' for himself. So Delphiti made a deal with him, a pact as it were, to satiate his desire for this knowledge but also clean up her 'old messes' in the process. He helped her seal away the 'old lab' in return for the knowledge he so greatly desired, which he so desperately wanted. In that sense Delphiti and The Illuminator were kind of 'Wardens' of that prison then, not another goddess.

Then, however many centuries or millennia later, a goddess had gotten ahold of the souls of herself and several others from Earth. Either it was a facet or side of Delphiti, that Ocean Goddess sister theory proved true, or someone else. Had Delphiti snapped and split herself into two goddesses, by thus making a hot mess of things? But that goddess made the bodies, and The Illuminator had helped her by his own words...as well as calling her 'mother'. Then, in essence, was Delphiti a damaged, broken goddess who had lost herself in making life, stealing the secrets to create it and not being in a rather good spot?

Ugh. She was making her own brain hurt. For a second, then, the catgirl lied down on the operating table to rest her head. Whilst she did she'd look for anything suspicious or so forth, if it didn't clamp on her like some trap, and whether something was found or not she'd ultimately get off of the operating table.

From here Leannah would scour the main room, from the door the the operating table to anything else in there as closely and as detailed as she could in a similar process. Ceiling, floor, slots, weak tiles, breakable things, inscriptions, etc. Anything she could get. Yet whether anything was gained or not from the efforts she would eventually wrap up her investigation and enter the Western Room...the one that looked like the prison complex she and the others had escaped from.