AW What a soul is worth

[Universe]

Imported post - by Whisper​

In the outskirts of the Tahlula Expanse lies a planet known as Archios. Its extensive land masses were once nothing but dense jungles and thick forests, but had been slowly replaced with signs of civilization over the millennia as the local apex species had grown in intelligence and capability. Now its dark side shined with specks of light, like a star field unto itself.

Above it, a rectangular box about sixty feet in length sat in orbit. The box was richly decorated with cathedral motifs and even seemed to have intricate stained glass windows. It had no visible propulsion systems, cockpit, or anything of the sort. Aboard it were three individuals, each wearing white robes with orange trim. One had a dominant, commanding personality as they spoke - the two listeners paled in comparison, but held their ground regardless.

"Below us is a world called 'Archios' by its natives. Its peoples have reached a sufficient level of development that they now possess fragments of the dying light."

The two listeners nodded respectfully.

"Additionally, the planet's population has grown enough to warrant our interest. Losing the planet would not harm our goals significantly, so it is a prime opportunity for the two of you to prove yourselves and grow in strength."

One of them lifted a hand. This one had an angelic appearance, with wings and everything. "You wish for us to capture this world, Speaker Riverst 9?"

The Riverst nodded. "I do. Properly cultivated, this world could provide us with a reliable source of fragments for some centuries to come. The specifics of

*how*

you capture this world have been left up to you. The only restriction placed upon you, as always, is that you do not harm the Chorus' image in the event that you are discovered."

"Yes, Speaker," they both replied. As members of the Hymnal Choir, they were firmly in the camp of maintaining a good impression on others. To do otherwise would make it that much harder to achieve their purpose. With an undertaking as large, and important, as the one that the Chorus was involved in - well, it wouldn't do to make it

*harder*

.

"Good," the Speaker replied.

- **

It had been nearly two weeks since the two choirmen went planetside. During that time, things had not gone exactly as expected - but they were recovering.

The first challenge had been the locals. In a sector that seemed to be predominantly full of human-like creatures, they were.. well,

*not*

. One of the two had made a joke about them being quite curvy the first time they'd seen one. Which was true. In fact, they were mostly curves. The Archiosi, as they called themselves, were somewhere between a jellyfish and a caterpillar in appearance. Their blobby bodies produced pseudopod-like protrusions whenever they needed them, which gave them surprising dexterity. Even stranger was the tank-like fashion that they walked in, for their bodies seemed to stay still while a conveyor belt of small legs appeared, moved down the length of their body, and then were reabsorbed as they moved around.

To say that their beautiful angelic forms were ill suited to the task at hand was an understatement. The Archiosi found them positively grotesque.

But they still persevered. They had a mission and, with the right plan in place, were still confident that they could generate results.

Čehrāzād awoke from the long, dreamless slumber. Pieces of that vision returned to her, sensations sounds and images thick as chains weighted around her neck. As if a noose had been placed around it. The in-between, the world between worlds. Of the waking and the dreamer. The twilight the false awakening. Her mind, dead, black, the little death of being frozen for decades. The process of awakening, of neurons, firing and the heart begins to pump blood which had been replaced with a foreign cocktail within her veins to prevent cell death.

She had been so very afraid... her life had been in the hands of the Creator. Those she had loved had been reduced to but two. Clinging to her in desperation while ascending to the stars, the waiting ark in orbit. Terror, sweat, and sobbing had made the air rank with the ash of the dead, dust from crumbling works once standing proud. And on the horizon of their world, the land had glowed. Not with the lights of cities, of civilization. But the open wounds of a world dying. Its children ripping into it in a mad frenzy of greed, lust, and desire for power. Once white clouds replaced with ink stains that had marred the skies. An orange fire raged across their continent and beyond. Once blue seas seemingly dead.

And then on that mockery of a view a detonation. Bright fire, a small star in the distance. Blue fire pushing back the clouds, the fire, and likely the masses that fought over the remains, the scraps left behind in the exodus. It had been a detonation. Pure energy is released as a ball of cleansing fire. Bellowing forth it had cracked the land, visible even so far away that distance had not mattered. Even to her eyes. It had been her city. Her home. Hidden away from the vulgarities of those other nations. Protected by a skin of thick stone, composites, and bones cast from titanium. A city built within the earth itself.

The reactor had been an achievement. A breakthrough in clean energy using fuel readily abundant and distilled from the waters now choked with radioactive fallout and who knew what else. The fractional might of a star, fusion energy brief and beautiful and the death knell of those that had remained. They had done it. They had killed themselves. Taking the accumulated knowledge of generations with them in that brief flare of defiance. That final stand and gesture to a world on its knees. Her people would not go quietly. A bold statement was made. And rendered. To see such a thing again as her mind came to life. The dream, the memory ending in confusion as she lurched forward from the pod.

Hands had grasped her, words fallen on deaf ears as she keened. Towering over some, Čehrāzād felt weak but strong enough to have shoved one of those monotoned drones aside in her confusion.

Her arm was afire from where an injector site had drawn the substance out, and blood flowed in. Warmth had returned. And it had felt like that star on the horizon. Bright and furious. Something had come up, something they had given her. Made her drink. Even for her palette, it had been the vilest thing she had tasted. And now it coated the interior of her mouth, tasting as if it had curdled in the desert sun for a season or more. But it went back down even as she felt that hunger begin to cause a fierce pain in her stomach.

Dressed now, a line moving slowly, Sherry felt dead inside. Even with food before her, familiar yet so very foreign she simply stared at it. Hands in her lap as her mind turned over just how everything had turned out so wrong. Why the world had turned on itself. Foreign power against a foreign power. The ancient tale of a titan, a being of colossal power feasting on its children out of fear of what was to come to pass. And for an unceasing hunger threatening to consume the titan lest they continue.

And then as quick as her modified form allowed, a copper-skinned fist slammed into the table out of frustration and hurt. Her tray emitted a little rattle as the utensils clattered against it. Why had things turned out as they had?

"Hayawan!" she cursed in her native tongue. Thick with hate. Animals she had said. For those that had bothered to ever learn her language. Now endangered to extinction for the ignorance and avarice that had held a world in thrall causing it to end.

 

[Universe]

The achiosi were a species that to the ZRS were best described as "unintentionally appetizing". It wasn't hard to see why one might think that if they were a segmented vrexul or an anguilid gealtirocht. They were soft creatures, slimy and blubbery with an appearance that seemed just a few bumps or wrinkles away from a gastropod but whose skin was soft. The sort of softness that begged for serrated mandibles or curving fangs to rend, tear, and feast - prey items destined for savage maws and gnashing flesh-lust, tendrils with which to ineffectually struggle against jagged carapace and grasping claws, mouths with which to scream for a mercy that would never be understood, legs with which to run and stumble before organisms evolved for barbarity unparalleled.

Imported post - adornedinwrath​

That was of course, just a joke told by some of the vrexul and gealtirocht, soldiers typically from the frontlines forged from a mixture of revolutionary will and home-grown hatred for fleshier species that once stood dominant over them. A politically sensitive bit of information, one that of course would never be recorded or recited anywhere near even whatever would be the lower class of these otherwise ambling, unthreatening organisms. Perhaps that's why it was not a lumbering mass of biomechanical chitin and upscaled power tool limbs or a digitigrade-looming predatory eel-creature encased in armour that was on the more sensitive ends of this mission.


Tarrhaidim after all did not need to eat. They had the mouths for such, filled with jagged stalactite/stalagmite like formations and looking more like a cavern of teeth subsequently. Yet it was probably for the better these more upsetting features were obscured behind a turban-esque cloth of nano-mycelial make; they would only be subject to a face bereft of eyes or nose and instead what appeared to be a sort of hardened fleshy material in the shape of a dome that stretched across the upper half of the cranium. Like many tarrhaidim, reddish colouration like clasping veins crept up the sides of his dome-skull and a closer look revealed a partial transparency with bubble like membranous-shapes visible within the faded grey-white.


A fungoid-like species, the tarrhaidim were the least physically imposing of the Zralovradian Revolutionary Sect's three main species with their forms closest to those of humans and subsequently Maharzwan Alrantahir found themself received moderately warmly. He had not been alone; an envoy of sorts at first then a small embaassy had sprung up in the strange habitations the achoisi slid and crawled about it in. Their faces were not any harder to read than a vrexul but Maharzwan had slowly gotten the hang of these organisms as some might say; the subtle shifts in colouration, texture, and posture that just like his more arthropod compatriots had a reason and rhyme to it. It was enough that he could say he was mostly fluent in their language but it was nothing that the help of a pair of translators, curious of the new fungoid entitiy and his strange companions, could not solve.


Of course, they were not merely translators. He was not merely a diplomat. His companions were not simply office workers.


More importantly, they were achiosi who could be thought of as watchful, knowledgeable, and for their kind, cunning. Achiosi with an eye for future possibilities and who were not blind to the machinations of the Sector. A future was being forged from an empire pulling itself out of the carcass of its oppressors and for the one passing him a data tablet into the gnarled root-like hands of Marhzwan, it was a future they had a keen interest in. Did they have the concept of nations, statehood, power and its application, a people and their liberation?


Perhaps, perhaps not. But they were not alone here; there was another presence on this world. One which the Sector intelligence agent was carefully reading on in the privacy of a private habitation. There was work to be done and it required certain obstacles to be accounted for; someone else here had their eyes on the possiblities of the achiosi and for the Sector, that would not do.

 

[Universe]

Imported post - by Whisper​

The achiosi that the Chorus missionary was speaking to was skeptical.

"So you're saying that there is a life after this life," it said. Of course, it didn't actually speak trade, but language was rarely a challenge for the missionaries. What it had actually said was a series of spits, whoops, and surprisingly pleasant musical tones that could have come from a trombone. Emphasis and emotion were expressed through changes in body shape or color - this was harder for the missionaries to interpret, but they were slowly getting used to it.

"In a manner of speaking!" the missionary replied, enthusiastically. "We believe that everyone has something called a "fragment". You can't see it or touch it, but it is something unique to sentients. None of the baser creatures possess one. It is this fragment that persists after your death. The fragments of our faithful are gathered together into the Dying God's warm embrace, where your consciousness will persist, free of the pains and troubles of your physical life."

The achiosi tilted its bulbous head from side to the other. Its face looked like a hamster's, if a hamster was a caterpillar. "And all we need to do to earn this life after life is.. say some words?"

"And mean them, yes," the missionary smiled back, deific.

"Sounds like a scam," replied the achiosi.

The missionary's shoulders drooped. The achiosi had been exceptionally resistant to the concepts of religion thus far. The two missionaries were trying to decide if they needed to try a different approach. Faith simply wasn't a thing the achiosi seemed to care about. Many sentients searched for some higher meaning - they didn't.

"We don't ask for money or service. Some of our faithful choose to do works for the Chorus and find fulfillment doing so, but none are forced."

The creature squinted, still suspicious. Achiosi squinted with their entire faces, as though some giant hand had lightly pinched their heads. The intention easily crossed the species border. "Then why do you care if I join?"

"Adding more members to the ranks of the faithful is its own reward. Its rewarding for our members, as well. Those who are particularly devout sometimes find themselves healthier and more successful - some, like my fellow missionary and I, have powers beyond what can be explained by your science."

The achiosi squinted harder. "I'll ... think about it."

And then it scooted off.

The other missionary walked up. "I'm not sure if a simple outreach program will do for these people, Elysi. We may need to shift tactics. Perhaps shows of power or offers of gifts?"

Elysi, who was still gathering herself back up after the latest failure to convert the achiosi, sighed. "Maybe. Those ways are harder to sustain. Besides, I worry that the gifts they'd ask for might be destructive."

"They do seem like the sort," the other missionary agreed. "Surprisingly violent, considering their anatomy."

"Mm. Well, hopefully there aren't any other complications. The achiosi are obstinate enough as-is."

 

[Universe]

Imported post - adornedinwrath​

Tarrhaidim are not easy creatures to spot when they do not want be seen. As a bipedal entity amongst the otherwise low profiled tractor-like, bulbous creatures it was far from easy to conceal oneself but other forms of staying hidden were available beyond merely blending into the shambling crowds. The luminous poles that lit their habitations and the sloping passages of varying elevation were reminiscent of some strange scaled up representation of a root-ridden forest floor. They were also the perfect way with which Maharzwan could stay out of sight. He was not dressed in a way that would seem out of place for the other tarrhaidim here; beyond his turban-esque cloth were the layers of cloaks obscuring his body and a similar mottled, earthy, somewhat rotten sort of colour and texture as the surroundings. It was a common way for those from more agricultural, rural, or even backwater backgrounds to dress and more than a few had come with the promise of a new life after the shattering of their old ones.

The intended impression was that he would look no dissimilar and with most of his facial features already difficult to read for most sapients (with the lack of conventional lips, eyes, or "skin") and as such, appeared to be another migrant who happened to be passing by where a certain skeptical achiosi was walking away from a pair of foreign missionaries with a focused, deeply pensive expression on its un-face. He hadn't made out all of the conversation in spite of the turban containing advanced sensory systems. They weren't fully calibrated to the achiosi language and the ambient noise in the area wasn't harsh but it was layered with the abstract warbling of the annelid-like aliens. Still, he could tell by their voices that they were neither native to here nor were they apparently successful; phrases and wording became clearer as he neared, slowing his steps and hiding his limbs beneath the almost rag-like fabrics.

He was after all, for all intents and purposes, just some relocated migrant fresh out of a likely war ravaged warzone around the fringes of Sector space and walked with a kind of wary tension and subdued wonder. It was hard to see as imagined; where there were supposed to be eyes for the two chorus members to look at was instead a black veil with a faded greyish-white membrane covering behind it. A slow, gradual pause as he neared intentionally awkward and the fabric over his mouth moving as if to gawk.

Granted, they wouldn't be able to see the sensor equipment hidden in his craggy maw, taking a quick scan of the two. Wired directy into his body it worked like any other organ, gland, or appendage. Yet he needed to observe them closer and for that to be done, the illusion needed to continue.

Maharzwan spoke. Not in English or the tongue of the Achiosi, but that of his own. It was a series of gargles and frothings, through which the structure of language emerged veiled and obtuse. A few of the achiosi turned heads and sensor pseudopods at first; just as alien as their language was, the bubbling swamp murk speech of these flesh fungoids was not any less difficult to discern.

Translated, he had roughly said the following.

*"It is not often I see priests so lavish courting followers so lowly. Your pickings appear slim today."*

 

[Universe]

Imported post - whisper​

Elysi looked to the newcomer, wearing a look of mild surprise. It was rare for them to be approached. Her eyes became distant as she considered the newcomer, as though she were trying to remember something. Her lips moved and a quiet song, only barely audible, seemed to fill the area. The song ended and her eyes gained focus once more as she spoke.

"The Chorus accepts all those who would sing its song, friend. We are not so high-minded to think that greatness only comes from those who were born into it," she said with a beatific smile. It was the sort of smile that would steal the hearts of the masses were it presented to ever-present humanoids found in the other sub-sectors. Here, it was just another unfamiliar gesture.

The other member of the Chorus picked up a few of their things and put them into a bag. "The Achiosi are a skeptical people, unfamiliar with the concept of higher powers. They will learn, in time."

Elysi gave her fellow 'angel' a sideways glance, then turned her attention back to Maharzwan. She placed a hand to her chest and bowed gently. "I am Elysi. My grumpy friend here is Abrizel. We have the honor of bringing the joy that is faith in the Dying God to this world. And you are?"

While she spoke, Maharzwan's scan finished. They both appeared to be perfectly normal members of their species - a winged humanoid race. They had little to no technology on them, even in the bags that Abrizel was packing. For a brief moment, something about their blood would register as unusual, but just as soon a compulsion tried to root itself in Maharzwan's mind that it was nothing out of the ordinary. Indeed, they seemed to be perfectly harmless.