A hatchery sprouts in the most defensible location we can find, pushing up against rock and stone, cooling itself with air and a local aquifer as it starts to sprout larvae in massive numbers. Drones spread for kilometres past the former barriers of our Terran oppressors. Creep swallows the earth further as we begin to run out of trees to hide under.
Across the planet, through our hive, a message sounds to the billions of parasites. "Infest." They multiply, releasing pathogens into their hosts all across the edges of the Terran positions. Tens of millions are activated as the first wave, bringing Guard attention to them. Without the normal Terran instinct to preserve property, it's a butchery. Infested rush lines and are torn to pieces by the bark of rocket-propelled shells and pinpoint charged laser bursts, proving their laser rifles to be of much higher quality and peak power than the ones we are familiar with.
Shells land like rain, a million used in just the initial campaign as they move, shattering whole cities in the process. Zren focuses on activating more infested in key locations. Industrial centres producing ammunition are sabotaged by infected suddenly turning in their workplaces, and the Terrans are spread desperately thin.
The violence acquires an ever more vicious character, the metallic humans refusing to provide a solution to the infected or even their detection, leading to any sign of illness being a marker for execution. Attention is split between maintaining their own positions and civilians as well as battling Infested. We use our drone tunnels to outmanoeuvre the enemy, spilling out from them in all cities we have such luxuries in.
A hundred million infested are used for the initial assault, forcing the Terrans to retreat continuously all the way back to their starport cities, holding high walls and keeping the streets clear with a genocidal focus. We lose a thousand infested for every one of them we kill, but the casualty rates are growing ever more lopsided as we strike their fortified positions.
Our proper warmorphs prepare to shatter the siege, lining up inside tunnels as Zren considers the best way to do this. Without mineral hardened carapace, Roaches cannot handle automatic rocket-propelled shells as displayed from Hoverwing observation and first-hand Infested Terran experience.
But ultimately, we cannot find a point in their scheme that would be worth attempting to breach, their interlocking fields of fire as effective as they always are with Terrans, and artillery more intense than even Terran norm. Our Drones cannot efficiently dig through their liquid stone to breach from behind in significant numbers, and we do not wish to test if they have tremor sensors like Terrans of Old.
As we think on the matter, the Terrans deploy a terrifyingly powerful chemical agent out of tracked vehicles. It impacts infested and reduces them to undifferentiated biomass that our cells have no time to adapt to, these chemical spills turn to gas and spread widely, cleansing millions in their green fog in months. They push the Infested out far, forcing Zren to adapt quickly, using Hoverwings to find out where the hunting vehicles are ranging from on Zhakarov's advice.
The underground chambers where they are repaired and maintained are located and we send wave after wave of Infested towards them, soaking up the filth of the chemical fog with their bodies as they eventually push on a pile of toxic sludge to the edges of the yards, forcing the toxin spitting vehicles to settle in defensive positions on the walls, unable to move without the equipment that maintained it outside of the walls of their final holding point.
Strangely enough, no aerospace assets are deployed at all, at odds with previous Terran displays of fighting prowess both here and long ago.
Our offence has halted, but with the tens of millions of dead Terrans and the ingenuity of Zren, with their wartime experience, we are richer in biomass than ever before, sprawling creep all along the city streets where the Guard was pushed back mercilessly by waves of millions of infested striking their lines over and over again, corpses being reprocessed by the creep itself and then transported along tunnels by furthermore creep carpets in a replica of Terran supply lines, but much better hidden.
We are sieging them with the Terrans we have turned, all one billion-or the seven hundred million that remain after the fighting slows, but they have successfully cleansed their central city of our infection using handheld scanners, showing technical advancement over our era of Terran. Despite the death of two-hundred thousand of them, the Infested simply are not a viable threat to entrenched Terrans as it stands.
At our hatcheries and evolution chambers, adaptation takes place.
Our Crotalid warp experiments expand in their breadth, dosing the creatures themselves after simple metabolic changes with Prometheum, inciting a violent reaction as we force the creature to activate its internal psychic organs. A warpspace anomaly forms, ripping open a portal in an evolution chamber of ours.
The portal is large, large enough to fit the whole Crotalid if desired, but filled with dangers on the other side. The Crotalid eventually falls exhausted after two minutes of keeping it open, body nearly falling into neural shock as we heal it with infusions of biomass from the presiding queen. Its size is the issue, the Crotalid is nowhere near big enough to provide the impetus to open a portal, however, if we alter its physiology too harshly, we may lose the psychic impulse that allows it to do so.
Our Evolution Chambers force generational evolution by making graspers interact with ever-smaller objects. We don't quite get the atomic precision, no possible evolutionary result with current means and Queen-driven direct Essence shaping giving us the most precise limbs, but we can work easily enough with what Terrans call "molecules".
In our experiments to reproduce Overlords, we begin by simply exposing larvae that display higher neural densities to a vacuum, but that doesn't result in much except larvae having wholly too much fun spinning. But a clever idea from Zigzy sees the experiment turn a tad darker. The Evolution Chamber is morphed to be completely black on the interior, with bioluminescent lights used to replicate stars, and then the larvae is blinded and thrown into the dark.
As it starves and experiences stress after regrowing its visual organs, the larva begins to panic, six days later and many larvae afterwards, we acquire the missing link. Cutting the larvae off from the hive with a psychic effort, its isolation eventually causes a sudden evolution inside the Chamber
The larva grows into its cocoon, balloons to large size and, minutes later, spills forth an Overlord, the first in years for the Swarm. As we re-establish contact, the creature is starved, terrified and desperate, taking many minutes of soothing to bring its mind back to a loyal calm.
As it settles, we feel its psychic will stretching over a portion of the Swarm, leaving matters of industry to the Queen as it analyzes our frontline and tactical opportunities within it, wishing to leave and observe it first-hand at the earliest opportunity.
Whilst that experiment takes place, another larvae is placed in an environment full of noise, light and sensory input. The Larvae grow stressed, angry and then attempt to bite every thing it can reach. The fury grows and, on a quick whim, we infuse the larvae with a jolt of Promethium. The larvae explode.
Trying it again with a much smaller amount of Promethium, the larvae grows aggressive, violent and then detonate into a cocoon that's immediately getting pushed from the inside by a growing creature. The Mutalisk forces out of the cocoon, bites its way out of the Evolution Chamber and only is wrangled by the psychic grip of the overlord wrestling its fury to a crawl and breaking its will immediately.
Our final project is the Terrans, rather, the infested Terrans. We cannot meaningfully improve the Terran structure. It is too flawed, bipedalism itself is terrible. But, a Queen instils an innate mutability in our Terrans, allowing them to experience horrific battlefield mutations as they are exposed to stress. This limits their long-term survivability once adaptation begins, but leads to adhoc field warforms, sudden armour and weapon growth as well as healing, greatly increasing the danger they pose to enemies of the Swarm.
We roll this change out to our current Terrans rapidly, hoping to break the siege soon.
The Terrans are locked into their city and the Tech Priest is now hovering in orbit, infested Terrans of the motile stripe in Protoss-esque stasis chambers unable to move or react, whilst others are held in holding cells and continually torn apart and re-assembled to satiate his curiosity.
Zrug focuses less on doing and more on learning. Leading small assaults on the Terrans and observing the breadth of the battlefield, he internalizes lessons, irons out faults in his psyche as well as tactics and prepares to wage war anew for the swarm.
Our hive struggles under the psychic weight of four consciousnesses, but holds for now. The Old Triat remains in control.
War Roll: Zren: "Infestation Scheme"=3d6 (5, 4, 3)
War Roll: Zren: "Overwhelm Them"=3d6 (4, 4, 6)
Diplomacy Roll: Zhakarov: "Terran Weakness"=3d6 (3, 1, 6)
Evolution Roll: Zigzy: "Crotalid Warping"=3d6 (3, 1, 5)
Evolution Roll: Zigzy: "The Smallest Mote"=3d6 (1, 3, 1)
Evolution Roll: Zigzy: "Overlord Salvage"=3d6 (4, 6, 6)
Evolution Roll: Zigzy: "Mutalisk Salvage"=3d6 ( 1, 6, 4)
Evolution Roll: Zigzy: "Terran Infested Improvement"=3d6 (3, 3, 2)
Control Roll
Must Exceed 4
D8=5
The Old Triat remains.
