Yes. She tore his soul into lots of small pieces.
Cacophony (A Zerg ....Presidency Quest? In 40k??)
- Thread starter Dapperlad1
- Start date
- Crossover Mature Sci-Fi
Yes, man was vaporized!
Princess Scribe
A swelled-headed, gossipy, coquette gadabout.
- Location
- Venus
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I'm really excited to see his Hive (Destiny) quest that he's been talking about.
- Location
- USA
Not vaporized, Essence Ended.
- Location
- sweden
Heh top of da world making le plan
From what we know so far its yes
Princess Scribe
A swelled-headed, gossipy, coquette gadabout.
- Location
- Venus
- Pronouns
- She/Her
[x] After a horrendous encounter, spend rest of time apprenticing with abathur. Gathering essence, assisting with the pools, and increasing Lilith's Evolution Score.
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Interlude: Love-lost
- Location
- Albania
- Pronouns
- He/Him
"Lilith." Kerrigan said, far after the sun had set, "You talk too much." The finality of it carried a command that tried to impose on her silence, gripping with lazy claws of authority.
Again, pink whisps seemed to emanate off of Lilith, dismissing the casual attempt at control "What? Oh sorry. I haven't had many conversations, I mean… You've seen the company we keep around here right?"
Kerrigan sighed, flicking her gaze across the pink aura rising off the other woman in a satire of her own psychic force with a cauldron of frustrated trepidation. "I wouldn't know, you've been the only one bothering me." Those words echo through the contact, bringing to mind when they were last said, years ago to someone else.
"Lovely~" Manth's words were always so gentle, seeming to cradle her in it's gentle embrace, "Think harder about who you need to be." Once again, the gentleness hides another knife, another pound of flesh for her dream.
Lilith grit her teeth, she wasn't sad, she loved this. Still, she wanted this more… ick. "God Sarah, I'm so sorry I pushed so hard. I should've been better," She let her shoulders slump, just the right amount of adjustment to her posture. "I uh, you needed someone. I was selfish. It wasn't quite right was it?" Abathur had made her perfect, she could slip into character so easy. It made her skin crawl.
There was a single shard of light in the darkness, Sarah squeezed her hand, sparks of electric joy restoring the younger woman with the small act. "I don't need anyone." The Queen comes out for a moment but recedes just as quickly. Unsaid, but felt between the two of them lurks the phrase.
It's nice to remember.
Manth? I'm begging you. Lilith thought for a moment, Please stop, if I don't hear them this would be so much better, so much easier. You gotta make me not hear this anymore. On her face, she had a strong smile.
"Lovely." It croons, the spider already having the fly in its web, "It never was me doing this. You want to hear her, you want to know her innermost life." A pleasant refrain to it makes the words somehow less cutting.
No… She knew it was true, maybe she'll stop. Maybe, later, with time she'll start thinking of their memories. That's it. They just don't have memories yet. She'll make her own memories with her.
Change of tactics then, "After seeing you how you tore me up, I don't think I could really disagree." She smiled at her own comment, "Have you seen the dye processing queens yet? However they're doing it, it's making anyone in that area glow like a warp drive."
Kerrigan smirks, recalling the buzzing conversation of Queen as she meets Liliths gaze, "They've been chattering for months, it's creative work." A tone like a proud parent sinks into her voice, "They're making more than expected." She comments with that selfsame tone.
Finally, something different. "Yeah honestly, I wonder if they'd like painting? I don't know how much free time they get."
Kerrigan raised an eye-brow, but Lilith ignored it.
"I learned the other day that Zerg have a favorite color, yellow makes them happier. Literally, same chemical as humans. I don't know if that's universal or not, there's all these hidden facets tuck away in each one." Then Lilith clapped her hands, and Broken Horn came running over. She scratched it gently on the plating on it's skull, "Like this one, interesting behavior, protective, sweet. That wasn't in anyone's plan I think. I love each new bit I learn about our family. Sorry, that's probably too sentimental."
"Jukebox." Kerrigan chuckles, "You're like a jukebox, can't help it." The topic of conversation seems to have brought a measure of joy to the Queen. "The Zerg are alive in ways you can't imagine them. I hear all of them, all their pain, fear, hate and hunger-."
"But they're victories and joy too, I imagine. If a Zerg's favorite color is yellow, and it makes it happy, you'd be tapped into that as well right? The Queen's playing with their dyes." She scratches Broken Horn again, "This guy when he gets a scritch?"
Whilst beginning with a sharp look at being cut off, Sarah calms at the sight of the zergling leaning into the touch, feasting from its joy, making it her own. "Zerg don't get those often." She shifts and reaches out to scratch at Broken Horn as well, reaching to a particular spot that melts the creature.
"You should watch me more then," She says with a wink, "I like to go watch the Hydralisks sometimes, they seem so happy when they're munching down by the charnel pit. Pretty much anything in the hive will eat from your hand."
"Getting that close?" She asks, a cruel glint slipping into her as Kerrigan pays the most attention to Lilith she has in the whole conversation. "What happens when one you recognize is dead?"
She melts, "I love getting close," the next question, maybe a chance to chip away at the trauma, just a little bit. "You're going to hate the answer. I go say goodbye, and if it's close enough to get too I kiss it on the head." She feels so pathetic, and starts to blush, "Then I let go… I go feed a new one, I love it, and make new memories. I'd name them, but what if one knows I forgot its name?"
Pouncing on displayed weakness, the Queen digs one talon into the ground, lifting onto one knee in front of Lilith, taller than her sitting frame. "That so?" Her hand disentangles from Lilith and moves, resting gently on Broken Horn's temple. Tiny fractals of purple gather underneath as she watches for a reaction. "You'd get over this?"
"Would you? Like me, he's your pet." Lilith asks, tilting her head, gesturing her head. "There's only really one thing you could threaten that'd break me, but I'm trying to be much more calm and normal about that."
The denial of her trick lights the bellows of Kerrigan's heart again. She snaps her hand to Lilith's jaw, grabbing it, but stopping there. Not quite sure where this was supposed to go. Another lethal memory slips through, late, much later. Her carapace-covered arm tearing through a black suit of CMC, holding a man, covered in sweat from hostile desert air, greying beard on his face and hope in his mind, with the same grip.
"We can definitely do this now if you want." Lilith was pleading, except… Rushing to that wouldn't do any good. This one you needed to wait for, which sucked so fucking much. She switched tracks, but committed the moment to memory. "I'm really glad you didn't hurt Broken Horn. I put a lot of trust into your love for us, all of us. I would've still been around but I would have been crushed."
The reminder of something not Zerg. Of humanity makes the two images before her briefly combine. She tastes the desert heat despite breathing in humid hatchery fumes. She feels rough beard hairs tickle her talons despite Lilith's smooth face, it entrances Kerrigan with long-still memory. Her grip softens to merely guiding rather than forceful.
I gotta learn one of those prayers that clears your head. I can't. She knew it'd be worth it. It gutted her, her soul felt rent asunder shredded into tiny pieces. There was now a second reason to avoid intimacy. It'd be worth it, it'd be worth it. "I uh, I sent an Overlord to find a coffee shop, I was a barista at one point. Has to be similar right?" Coward.
The mention of coffee pulls Kerrigan out of the dream and back to reality. Releasing her grip on Lilith, she pulls a step up and away to her full height, no contact arresting the flow of memory. "Coffee?"
Play stupid, that's what she wants… "Sorry, I… Was something else happening there? Good choking and bad choking is pretty much based on body language, or asking first. Asking first generally for good choking. I don't really need to be asked though, just a sign, any sign."
She rolls her eyes in response, "No, nothing is happening." A tenseness to the visible musculature past the carapace shows that the previous few moments had gotten to her. Not aggravated Kerrigan, but far worse. They sparked remorse, regret. She's quiet in her thoughts for a few deathly silent moments, the sort that drives Lilith mad with nerves.
Ok, just… Count. 1234567891011… That wasn't going to work she realized. Her eyes flitted around the room to find something anything to keep her mind busy, because she knew how important it was to just wait a minute. Holding back the words leading to something so much better in a second.
"Go." Kerrigan orders, no room for argument left in it. She looks as if she's aged a decade in a moment, swirling thought practically visible over her. "I won't ask twice." As if from nowhere, rage starts to billow, fuming in the taller of the two.
She knows what's about to happen, god she hoped Kerrigan didn't mean she'd be unmade… In the tiniest, most sorrowful voice, "I can't… I promised you…" When she wasn't immediately (if lol) obliterated she said, "I can get just out of sight? Close enough you can call for me?"
"You aren't him." She growls at Lilith, "You'll never be him." Her finger tip claws into the breastplate of the other woman's carapace. "Leave.
Instant, raw, unfiltered tears spill out, "I know… but I…" She can't stop herself from sobbing, this isn't the fake, beautiful crying that would buy her time, and sympathy. This was full on ugly gut wrenching tears. She wants to stand and leave, because she's just hurt, and rejected, and everything told her this was the only way.
Everything is telling her to run, she knows people deserve time to themselves. This isn't healthy. Run Lilith, you have to run. She can't breathe, her body is heaving, and she's hyper ventilating from the tears. She curls up into a fetal position, and falls over. Burying her face in her knees. And she whispers, "I just wanted to have a nice conversation."
A ray of mercy comes from somewhere in Kerrigan, instead of killing Lilith, rending her to pieces and scattering them to the winds, she stiffens, stares and then vanishes in a haze of psychic velocity. The other woman is left alone in the dark, humid space, shivering on the floor. It's hours before she can finally she gets up. The entire time sobbing, making noises so heinous and mournful that they create a terrible impenetrable wall. Finally, after hours, she ran to the Evolution Pits.
"Abathur, unmake me I don't know how. Just do it." She screamed, not caring who heard, "Please I can't do this, I have one thought in my head and it's impossible. I can't have it removed. I can't make it work. I can't find any other way to be happy. You've failed, you have to unmake me. You NEED to unmake me." She starts tearing into random projects around her, screaming, "COME OUT HERE AND KILL ME."
"No." The presence of the Sequencer is felt as he escapes a tunnel. "You are zerg. Adapt. Survive." His grumbling tones, like a cliff-face speaking shoot into Lilith. "You are valuable." The closest any creature has ever gotten to comfort from him.
"I am broken and UNSTABLE. I CAN'T think, I can't…" He's… He hasn't ever comforted someone, even close. "Can I just cry in one of the tunnels? Please…"
An entrance to the network unfurls, the membrane shifting. "Only I, hear. Recover, return."
"Then I'm really sorry you have to listen…" And she crawls deep into the tunnel, and bawls. Every part of her rent asunder. Blades tearing into her soul. It wasn't that she wasn't Raynor, It was that she was her. She couldn't be Raynor, she was HER. Every part of her could be broken and re-arranged, and she'd still be herself, and herself wasn't good enough.
And so, the only thing left to do was mourn her broken spirit, echoing through smooth tunnels for miles.
Again, pink whisps seemed to emanate off of Lilith, dismissing the casual attempt at control "What? Oh sorry. I haven't had many conversations, I mean… You've seen the company we keep around here right?"
Kerrigan sighed, flicking her gaze across the pink aura rising off the other woman in a satire of her own psychic force with a cauldron of frustrated trepidation. "I wouldn't know, you've been the only one bothering me." Those words echo through the contact, bringing to mind when they were last said, years ago to someone else.
"Lovely~" Manth's words were always so gentle, seeming to cradle her in it's gentle embrace, "Think harder about who you need to be." Once again, the gentleness hides another knife, another pound of flesh for her dream.
Lilith grit her teeth, she wasn't sad, she loved this. Still, she wanted this more… ick. "God Sarah, I'm so sorry I pushed so hard. I should've been better," She let her shoulders slump, just the right amount of adjustment to her posture. "I uh, you needed someone. I was selfish. It wasn't quite right was it?" Abathur had made her perfect, she could slip into character so easy. It made her skin crawl.
There was a single shard of light in the darkness, Sarah squeezed her hand, sparks of electric joy restoring the younger woman with the small act. "I don't need anyone." The Queen comes out for a moment but recedes just as quickly. Unsaid, but felt between the two of them lurks the phrase.
It's nice to remember.
Manth? I'm begging you. Lilith thought for a moment, Please stop, if I don't hear them this would be so much better, so much easier. You gotta make me not hear this anymore. On her face, she had a strong smile.
"Lovely." It croons, the spider already having the fly in its web, "It never was me doing this. You want to hear her, you want to know her innermost life." A pleasant refrain to it makes the words somehow less cutting.
No… She knew it was true, maybe she'll stop. Maybe, later, with time she'll start thinking of their memories. That's it. They just don't have memories yet. She'll make her own memories with her.
Change of tactics then, "After seeing you how you tore me up, I don't think I could really disagree." She smiled at her own comment, "Have you seen the dye processing queens yet? However they're doing it, it's making anyone in that area glow like a warp drive."
Kerrigan smirks, recalling the buzzing conversation of Queen as she meets Liliths gaze, "They've been chattering for months, it's creative work." A tone like a proud parent sinks into her voice, "They're making more than expected." She comments with that selfsame tone.
Finally, something different. "Yeah honestly, I wonder if they'd like painting? I don't know how much free time they get."
Kerrigan raised an eye-brow, but Lilith ignored it.
"I learned the other day that Zerg have a favorite color, yellow makes them happier. Literally, same chemical as humans. I don't know if that's universal or not, there's all these hidden facets tuck away in each one." Then Lilith clapped her hands, and Broken Horn came running over. She scratched it gently on the plating on it's skull, "Like this one, interesting behavior, protective, sweet. That wasn't in anyone's plan I think. I love each new bit I learn about our family. Sorry, that's probably too sentimental."
"Jukebox." Kerrigan chuckles, "You're like a jukebox, can't help it." The topic of conversation seems to have brought a measure of joy to the Queen. "The Zerg are alive in ways you can't imagine them. I hear all of them, all their pain, fear, hate and hunger-."
"But they're victories and joy too, I imagine. If a Zerg's favorite color is yellow, and it makes it happy, you'd be tapped into that as well right? The Queen's playing with their dyes." She scratches Broken Horn again, "This guy when he gets a scritch?"
Whilst beginning with a sharp look at being cut off, Sarah calms at the sight of the zergling leaning into the touch, feasting from its joy, making it her own. "Zerg don't get those often." She shifts and reaches out to scratch at Broken Horn as well, reaching to a particular spot that melts the creature.
"You should watch me more then," She says with a wink, "I like to go watch the Hydralisks sometimes, they seem so happy when they're munching down by the charnel pit. Pretty much anything in the hive will eat from your hand."
"Getting that close?" She asks, a cruel glint slipping into her as Kerrigan pays the most attention to Lilith she has in the whole conversation. "What happens when one you recognize is dead?"
She melts, "I love getting close," the next question, maybe a chance to chip away at the trauma, just a little bit. "You're going to hate the answer. I go say goodbye, and if it's close enough to get too I kiss it on the head." She feels so pathetic, and starts to blush, "Then I let go… I go feed a new one, I love it, and make new memories. I'd name them, but what if one knows I forgot its name?"
Pouncing on displayed weakness, the Queen digs one talon into the ground, lifting onto one knee in front of Lilith, taller than her sitting frame. "That so?" Her hand disentangles from Lilith and moves, resting gently on Broken Horn's temple. Tiny fractals of purple gather underneath as she watches for a reaction. "You'd get over this?"
"Would you? Like me, he's your pet." Lilith asks, tilting her head, gesturing her head. "There's only really one thing you could threaten that'd break me, but I'm trying to be much more calm and normal about that."
The denial of her trick lights the bellows of Kerrigan's heart again. She snaps her hand to Lilith's jaw, grabbing it, but stopping there. Not quite sure where this was supposed to go. Another lethal memory slips through, late, much later. Her carapace-covered arm tearing through a black suit of CMC, holding a man, covered in sweat from hostile desert air, greying beard on his face and hope in his mind, with the same grip.
"We can definitely do this now if you want." Lilith was pleading, except… Rushing to that wouldn't do any good. This one you needed to wait for, which sucked so fucking much. She switched tracks, but committed the moment to memory. "I'm really glad you didn't hurt Broken Horn. I put a lot of trust into your love for us, all of us. I would've still been around but I would have been crushed."
The reminder of something not Zerg. Of humanity makes the two images before her briefly combine. She tastes the desert heat despite breathing in humid hatchery fumes. She feels rough beard hairs tickle her talons despite Lilith's smooth face, it entrances Kerrigan with long-still memory. Her grip softens to merely guiding rather than forceful.
I gotta learn one of those prayers that clears your head. I can't. She knew it'd be worth it. It gutted her, her soul felt rent asunder shredded into tiny pieces. There was now a second reason to avoid intimacy. It'd be worth it, it'd be worth it. "I uh, I sent an Overlord to find a coffee shop, I was a barista at one point. Has to be similar right?" Coward.
The mention of coffee pulls Kerrigan out of the dream and back to reality. Releasing her grip on Lilith, she pulls a step up and away to her full height, no contact arresting the flow of memory. "Coffee?"
Play stupid, that's what she wants… "Sorry, I… Was something else happening there? Good choking and bad choking is pretty much based on body language, or asking first. Asking first generally for good choking. I don't really need to be asked though, just a sign, any sign."
She rolls her eyes in response, "No, nothing is happening." A tenseness to the visible musculature past the carapace shows that the previous few moments had gotten to her. Not aggravated Kerrigan, but far worse. They sparked remorse, regret. She's quiet in her thoughts for a few deathly silent moments, the sort that drives Lilith mad with nerves.
Ok, just… Count. 1234567891011… That wasn't going to work she realized. Her eyes flitted around the room to find something anything to keep her mind busy, because she knew how important it was to just wait a minute. Holding back the words leading to something so much better in a second.
"Go." Kerrigan orders, no room for argument left in it. She looks as if she's aged a decade in a moment, swirling thought practically visible over her. "I won't ask twice." As if from nowhere, rage starts to billow, fuming in the taller of the two.
She knows what's about to happen, god she hoped Kerrigan didn't mean she'd be unmade… In the tiniest, most sorrowful voice, "I can't… I promised you…" When she wasn't immediately (if lol) obliterated she said, "I can get just out of sight? Close enough you can call for me?"
"You aren't him." She growls at Lilith, "You'll never be him." Her finger tip claws into the breastplate of the other woman's carapace. "Leave.
Instant, raw, unfiltered tears spill out, "I know… but I…" She can't stop herself from sobbing, this isn't the fake, beautiful crying that would buy her time, and sympathy. This was full on ugly gut wrenching tears. She wants to stand and leave, because she's just hurt, and rejected, and everything told her this was the only way.
Everything is telling her to run, she knows people deserve time to themselves. This isn't healthy. Run Lilith, you have to run. She can't breathe, her body is heaving, and she's hyper ventilating from the tears. She curls up into a fetal position, and falls over. Burying her face in her knees. And she whispers, "I just wanted to have a nice conversation."
A ray of mercy comes from somewhere in Kerrigan, instead of killing Lilith, rending her to pieces and scattering them to the winds, she stiffens, stares and then vanishes in a haze of psychic velocity. The other woman is left alone in the dark, humid space, shivering on the floor. It's hours before she can finally she gets up. The entire time sobbing, making noises so heinous and mournful that they create a terrible impenetrable wall. Finally, after hours, she ran to the Evolution Pits.
"Abathur, unmake me I don't know how. Just do it." She screamed, not caring who heard, "Please I can't do this, I have one thought in my head and it's impossible. I can't have it removed. I can't make it work. I can't find any other way to be happy. You've failed, you have to unmake me. You NEED to unmake me." She starts tearing into random projects around her, screaming, "COME OUT HERE AND KILL ME."
"No." The presence of the Sequencer is felt as he escapes a tunnel. "You are zerg. Adapt. Survive." His grumbling tones, like a cliff-face speaking shoot into Lilith. "You are valuable." The closest any creature has ever gotten to comfort from him.
"I am broken and UNSTABLE. I CAN'T think, I can't…" He's… He hasn't ever comforted someone, even close. "Can I just cry in one of the tunnels? Please…"
An entrance to the network unfurls, the membrane shifting. "Only I, hear. Recover, return."
"Then I'm really sorry you have to listen…" And she crawls deep into the tunnel, and bawls. Every part of her rent asunder. Blades tearing into her soul. It wasn't that she wasn't Raynor, It was that she was her. She couldn't be Raynor, she was HER. Every part of her could be broken and re-arranged, and she'd still be herself, and herself wasn't good enough.
And so, the only thing left to do was mourn her broken spirit, echoing through smooth tunnels for miles.
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Oof.
Zhakarov: The swarm desperately needs mental help. We should infest a therapist.
Interlude: Recovery
- Location
- Albania
- Pronouns
- He/Him
After a solid week of crying, Lilith threw herself into her work. She found joy in simply increasing the efficiency of the Zerg around her. Throwing her feelings into a deep dark pit inside, she found where work was happening, and continued to feed, talk, and pet the Zerg. She told the Queens how beautiful their dyes were. Walking through thousands and thousands of rows of them making small chat about their work.
At night, she would find drones making hatcheries and buildings. She learned that they grew faster, performed better, when told stories from her youth. With Abathur, she found ways to help, while Abathur was large, fast, and had many tendrils. He was ultimately still one person, with thousands upon thousands of Hatcheries, and Lilith enhanced with the power of the Daemon, found herself flitting around doing the grunt work of sequencing. She was smart and dextrous enough to try and be a second pair of hands.
In time she learned that Abathur did not sleep. It hurt less, and numbed when she ignored her own sleep. He rarely seemed to eat, and in mirroring him she found that the zombified state had helped numb the pain too. The work was equal parts difficult and monotonous. She laboured with corpses and pieces, reporting to Abathur sequences and numbers she didn't understand. With nothing left in her life, she worked. That was all she could do.
Like a spray of cold water in the morning, a familiar voice pulls Lilith to the now. Distant from the evolution pit or any other place of import, on a patch of Creep consuming a street where, according to the Ur-Sequencer, valuable Essence was hidden, Anastasia speaks, "Lilith, stop, please."
"What?" Lilith looked at Ana with hollow, sunken eyes. Zerg physiology was efficient not caring for beauty or aesthetics. Lean strong muscles hung under loose flaps of flesh, her cheeks were sallow and sunken. The deep black veins fought desperately with what fluids they had to keep her going. Her hair had lost the deep lustrous red of its tentacles to a limp grey-pink. Her voice was loud, and monotonous. "Busy, looking for essence. In street."
Marshalling stocks of bravery, the other woman shouts back, "You've been at this for weeks!" Her taloned fingers grab at Lilith's shoulder, fresh and well-fed muscles easily turning her body to face Anastasia. "I won't let you do this to yourself!"
She blinked, so confused, she was so used to verbalizing her thoughts to think, she had started to forget how to have them internally. "Ana… Someone… Anastasia is sad. Do… Something." She stopped, "Are you in trouble? Help required?"
Her eyes move wildly up and down Lilith, mind racing at a frantic pace now that she has attention. Ana's mouth begins to form words as she tries so very hard to say something, anything at all. "I-no! I need to help you." Orange eyes glimmer, an odd coating of fluid that isn't often possible in Zerg life on them. String-thin tendrils of hair caught in a gentle wind as she begs for a chance.
It gives her just a bit of recollection, she pauses Hey, there's a pretty girl crying Lilith. Go? She stops trying to shake her head, "Uh what..? I'm… You're… Ok so Essence is, it's just stuff, it's a generic term, we're looking for a specific kind of corpse with a good gen—"
Ana cut her off, "Not the essence Lilith!" She shook her again, "You! You need help!" Her voice is almost shrill. "Please Lilith!"
She's concerned because you're working hard. "Oh, pssssh… I'm fine! I've been, this is normal-"
"I don't have anyone else!" Ana cries out, trying to batter through to the other woman.
Lilith wasn't sure when she started crying, that doesn't… Make sense, what's wrong? "Ana, do you need a hug? I can… I can do that." I think she's in trouble?
Ana's breathing quickly, for no obvious physical reason, "Can-can you just sit with me, please? We can take a break, just t-talk?" Her voice is unsure, never used to being this person, this role in a conversation, in a relationship.
"Sure, sorry, I can make you…" The word coffee sends disgust through her mind, fuck that, I won't become her. "I can make coffee, I sent an overlord to look for it… It… That plan didn't work out, but I actually do like coffee. You…" She's dizzy, confused, "I was a barista. You want a drink?"
"I'd love a drink." She smiles, finally getting through. "Recaff sounds fantastic." Ana's breathing slows, her shoulders stopping their constant motion as a path forward comes to be.
"Sure…" She meanders forward, when she notices how wobbly her legs are. Still, she needed to be tough. You'll be fine, neck up back straight. She stiffened a bit as she walked, trying to seem confident. She… Needs something. Her mind is still cloudy and unfocused.
The buildings around are tall, even the ones half-collapsed still reach towards the sky with greedy, concrete fingertips, trying to breach the clouds. It's not a short walk, but it's a walk that Ana gladly follows in before a surprisingly idyllic chunk of civilization is visible. A coffee shop, passed by the Swarm, no one living inside it at the end of it all.
Chairs are still underneath seats and only a small layer of dust from outside slips in, even the Creep not yet having arrived here.
"I forgot I had asked them to leave it." Lilith thought, "I was of unity, once, I wanted it for the infested. I was going to take…" Her voice gets low, "I was going to take her here, but she choked me, kicked me in the chest, broke my ribcage a few times, screamed at me, and then said things so overwhelmingly hurtful I cried for a week. Still, this was never for her, it was for everyone… I hope that's ok? It's ok if it's weird. I'm… I'm not thinking straight, we can go somewhere else." Lilith starts looking around. It would be a shame, it was quite pretty here.
Ana's hand grabs Lilith's, tightening her grip. "W-we can go-" She halts, rephrasing, "Let's go here, okay?" She looks at the other woman with doe eyes, hopeful, worried and a dozen more emotions she can't place clearly to herself, much less others.
"Of course, awesome," Her face lights up, "There's still solar panels and stuff set up. Here," She opened the glass front door, and with new vigour and excitement at someone — anyone — showing an interest in her interests. She quickly flicked switches and poured local beans. Digging around for powders and preserved sweeteners. Cleaning dust-filled cups, the familiar babbling starting up like a warming engine, "We didn't have recaff, but it all smells close enough. I was worried because it's been years, and surrounded by creeps. It wasn't though, maybe because we're infested we can eat worse off stuff? That'd be rad right might even have a steak again." She laughed as she pulled things down, and filled two paper cups.
"The one I worked at was connected to an art studio, so people'd get coffee then in a connected room do life drawings." She pointed to an imaginary door from a far-off memory, "I actually did it for a few times, it's good money if you're into it. Bought me a boxed set of Don't Wake It! Which is a pretty good series, the plot is meh, but the art, phew out of this world." She laughed again, "Here!" Then she sat down. "We haven't caught up, at all, what have you been up to? I've been singing to the Queens while they make dye, and petting hydralisks, and hunting for essence and… I need to stop talking for you to be able too sorry."
Ana listens to the buzzing noise of Lilith, accepting it and letting it seep into her. Delicate brows turn to frowning as the other woman keeps talking. "I'm worried Lilith-I."
"You've not said a word to anyone since you went to the Queen." Her hand reaches over resting on Lilith's forearm, feverish heat transferring to the altogether cooler woman.
Physical contact sends lightning across every point of sensation in Lilith's body. She wants to swoon, she couldn't remember the last time someone had touched her. "Oh… I was working." She justified, "I couldn't figure out my place, because I thought I was made for something. I thought I knew my purpose, and it wasn't what I thought, and I had nothing. So I worked. Now I have something new. I'm like this with whatever I do. I just… Love having something to do. Which actually explains most of my popularity freshman year at uni." She ponders for a moment, "It was that or because our polycule tries to do a strip tease for the talent show. That shit got shut down fast, because you know, not super academic. Honestly I don't even really know if we should have been dating. We were way too toxic, it might have been a formative memory I don't know." She paused for air, "Sorry. Out of breath."
"C-can I say something?" Anastasia tries to purchase some of the conversation, to get her own words in. Still, decades of trained politeness force her to await a response.
"Yeah, most people actually interrupt me, or I interrupt myself. Sorry. Go ahead." She gently puts her hand on Lilith's praying to god she doesn't pull away.
"You need s-someone." The telepath shows astonishing feats of realizing the obvious. "S-someone to talk too, t-too not have to dance around." Like a train picking up momentum, she rides the rails of false confidence.
"And I-I know you have someone you want-" Ana's interrupted.
"No, I do not want to be treated the way I was treated actually. I do not want to tell someone I will die for them, actually fucking die because they killed me come back to be berated some more. I think if I want anything, I just want someone who wants to fucking talk normal. And maybe stab me. Possibly with an ovipositor. I'm not super picky don't read my mind right now." She says as images come splashing into her mind, "Just trust me."
Recouping the remaining bravery she has, Ana continues. "Okay, uhm." Her eyes close, her grip on Lilith's forearm tightening for support. "When I first saw you, I'd been torn from the sky." Those same eyes open again as Ana recalls a memory, flickering through the skin-on-skin. Terror, blinking lights and roaring engines fighting a losing battle. A weapon pointed at her a second before impact.
"I was scared, tired and starving. I couldn't think past the terror." Her heart-rate can be felt clearly by touch alone, "You were there, you talked to me, you told me what to do, how to feel better, how to not be scared." The touch, the apple, the kiss all flares through both women.
"And m-maybe it wasn't real, maybe you w-were just convincing me. But it doesn't matter because you haven't left my thoughts since." She's shaking like a leaf, rapidly reaching the end of what she can manage alone.
"A-and maybe you don't care at all-"
"I care. I thought… I thought I knew everything. I thought I'd figured it all out, and that I could love someone who doesn't want to be. I was so consumed by the idea of a relationship, some stupid imagined fantasy. I let it break me. I shouldn't have ignored you, that was wrong, it was stupid. I can't let myself turn into that. Zerg adapt, I'm learning" She says quietly, her brows are furrowed, she wish she could say twice as much with half as many words. "I'm learning, I'm stupid but I won't always be."
Ana's got a smile spreading at Lilith's words, lighting up with every moment. "T-then, can-" She tries desperately to get it out. "Can I-I l-love you?"
Lilith gently moves the table between them out of the way, "Absolutely," she's not entirely sure what her next steps should be. Ana seems so reserved, and she's so panicked, but instincts take over. She leans in, very slowly. Pink mist jerks Ana's chair closer and they crash together like waves, lips intertwined, hands squeezing each other.
Every kiss one after the other, is greedier and more desperate. With a feral energy they tear at each other. The sharpness of their alien bodies, unclear of Terran emotions and intent. Lilith starts to nibble at Ana's neck, having to stop herself from tearing a piece out entirely. Wanting to tear it apart.
"T-thank you." Ana almost sobs as Lilith works at her, body twisting with unfamiliar feelings.
That was all Lilith needed, she grabbed Ana and kicked the chair underneath her. It exploded into splinters. The aggression immediately tempered by gentle care, she tenderly laying Ana down on her back. The suckling hadn't stopped. She was at her neck, her collarbone, her sternum. She gently let her jaw almost unhinge, and her tongue crawled against Ana's breasts, caressing them gently. Flicking them with warm wet teasing.
Ana's hands scrabbled in Lilith's tendril-hair, looking for purchase, for any sort of stability.
Lilith looked up at Ana hungrily, and when their eyes met, she moved further down. So slow, letting the anticipation rise with every agonizing inch. Watching her blush, watching the passion paint her face into a litany of emotions that screamed out in ecstatic joy of what would soon be. When she had finally reached her waist, she pulled away just for a moment.
"Say please." She smiled.
Ana shuddered, "P—P-... Please."
And with that, the Queen's pet had found a new master. With her first order received, she knew she had finally found someone who would appreciate her. Finally, she had found peace. Whatever wiring in her brain that had been so tightly wound, had found a new connection. She had adapted her fealty to someone worth worshipping.
The next few hours leapt forward in a halting jerky blur, with hours flying by like minutes, punctuated by seconds that felt like hours. Both who had been so lonely, so unloved, now had finally found connections that made their existence, their swarm, worth fighting for. There wasn't a clear sign when to stop, just a lack of stamina that had made it hard for Lilith to continue.
Entwined with Lilith, Ana recovered herself, breathing from the exertion of merely laying with the other woman. She felt Lilith's gentle fingernails raking just above her waist, delicate absent-minded strokes of never-idle hands.
"I never thought I'd have this." Anastasia laughs into Lilith's neck, giddy despite the exhaustion. "Never thought I'd have someone who's mine."
Her pet rolls over, eyes wide blazing with the pink fire, "Forever, I promise. I'm yours and I'll die for you. I'll kill for you, I will burn everything around you if you ask." The need and hunger came back with greater intensity and fire than ever before, and she clasped to Ana's side like a bear trap. Terrified that she might for even a second leave.
"I promise you," Ana returns the clasp there on the tiles of an abandoned cafe. "You'll never have to die for me, or do anything but be mine." An inexpert phrase, but brimming with an honesty that's rarely found.
Sobs, happy, giddy, beautiful sobs spilt from Lilith. She gently placed her head in Ana's chest and listened to the sound of her heartbeat. She felt the pulse, counting every beat trying to commit it to memory so she could find it by sound. So that every inch of Ana's being was as familiar as her own.
Similar shakes afflict the other woman, joy infectious it seems. She eventually gets more words out despite the giddiness. "I do have one thing, uhm." Still unconfident, Ana builds up to the words, "You can't e-ever do something like disappearing for weeks again."
"Anywhere I go, you go. If I'm gone and I don't tell you then something's wrong. I promise. I will never leave your side." She weeps. Then panic sets in.
"Ana! I forgot about the essence." She groaned, "You can help, that way I don't have to leave your side, but we can get stuff done together. That weirdo you're teaching speech lessons can come along, but seriously we gotta find it." She says, before getting ready to work, "I want to finish before sundown so I can show you some really wild stuff." The last words were said with a giant smile and a wink.
"Ah." Ana's mind resets audibly at the words, both women leaving the cafe behind and returning to the cityscape to hunt for scraps of Essence, this time together.
At night, she would find drones making hatcheries and buildings. She learned that they grew faster, performed better, when told stories from her youth. With Abathur, she found ways to help, while Abathur was large, fast, and had many tendrils. He was ultimately still one person, with thousands upon thousands of Hatcheries, and Lilith enhanced with the power of the Daemon, found herself flitting around doing the grunt work of sequencing. She was smart and dextrous enough to try and be a second pair of hands.
In time she learned that Abathur did not sleep. It hurt less, and numbed when she ignored her own sleep. He rarely seemed to eat, and in mirroring him she found that the zombified state had helped numb the pain too. The work was equal parts difficult and monotonous. She laboured with corpses and pieces, reporting to Abathur sequences and numbers she didn't understand. With nothing left in her life, she worked. That was all she could do.
Like a spray of cold water in the morning, a familiar voice pulls Lilith to the now. Distant from the evolution pit or any other place of import, on a patch of Creep consuming a street where, according to the Ur-Sequencer, valuable Essence was hidden, Anastasia speaks, "Lilith, stop, please."
"What?" Lilith looked at Ana with hollow, sunken eyes. Zerg physiology was efficient not caring for beauty or aesthetics. Lean strong muscles hung under loose flaps of flesh, her cheeks were sallow and sunken. The deep black veins fought desperately with what fluids they had to keep her going. Her hair had lost the deep lustrous red of its tentacles to a limp grey-pink. Her voice was loud, and monotonous. "Busy, looking for essence. In street."
Marshalling stocks of bravery, the other woman shouts back, "You've been at this for weeks!" Her taloned fingers grab at Lilith's shoulder, fresh and well-fed muscles easily turning her body to face Anastasia. "I won't let you do this to yourself!"
She blinked, so confused, she was so used to verbalizing her thoughts to think, she had started to forget how to have them internally. "Ana… Someone… Anastasia is sad. Do… Something." She stopped, "Are you in trouble? Help required?"
Her eyes move wildly up and down Lilith, mind racing at a frantic pace now that she has attention. Ana's mouth begins to form words as she tries so very hard to say something, anything at all. "I-no! I need to help you." Orange eyes glimmer, an odd coating of fluid that isn't often possible in Zerg life on them. String-thin tendrils of hair caught in a gentle wind as she begs for a chance.
It gives her just a bit of recollection, she pauses Hey, there's a pretty girl crying Lilith. Go? She stops trying to shake her head, "Uh what..? I'm… You're… Ok so Essence is, it's just stuff, it's a generic term, we're looking for a specific kind of corpse with a good gen—"
Ana cut her off, "Not the essence Lilith!" She shook her again, "You! You need help!" Her voice is almost shrill. "Please Lilith!"
She's concerned because you're working hard. "Oh, pssssh… I'm fine! I've been, this is normal-"
"I don't have anyone else!" Ana cries out, trying to batter through to the other woman.
Lilith wasn't sure when she started crying, that doesn't… Make sense, what's wrong? "Ana, do you need a hug? I can… I can do that." I think she's in trouble?
Ana's breathing quickly, for no obvious physical reason, "Can-can you just sit with me, please? We can take a break, just t-talk?" Her voice is unsure, never used to being this person, this role in a conversation, in a relationship.
"Sure, sorry, I can make you…" The word coffee sends disgust through her mind, fuck that, I won't become her. "I can make coffee, I sent an overlord to look for it… It… That plan didn't work out, but I actually do like coffee. You…" She's dizzy, confused, "I was a barista. You want a drink?"
"I'd love a drink." She smiles, finally getting through. "Recaff sounds fantastic." Ana's breathing slows, her shoulders stopping their constant motion as a path forward comes to be.
"Sure…" She meanders forward, when she notices how wobbly her legs are. Still, she needed to be tough. You'll be fine, neck up back straight. She stiffened a bit as she walked, trying to seem confident. She… Needs something. Her mind is still cloudy and unfocused.
The buildings around are tall, even the ones half-collapsed still reach towards the sky with greedy, concrete fingertips, trying to breach the clouds. It's not a short walk, but it's a walk that Ana gladly follows in before a surprisingly idyllic chunk of civilization is visible. A coffee shop, passed by the Swarm, no one living inside it at the end of it all.
Chairs are still underneath seats and only a small layer of dust from outside slips in, even the Creep not yet having arrived here.
"I forgot I had asked them to leave it." Lilith thought, "I was of unity, once, I wanted it for the infested. I was going to take…" Her voice gets low, "I was going to take her here, but she choked me, kicked me in the chest, broke my ribcage a few times, screamed at me, and then said things so overwhelmingly hurtful I cried for a week. Still, this was never for her, it was for everyone… I hope that's ok? It's ok if it's weird. I'm… I'm not thinking straight, we can go somewhere else." Lilith starts looking around. It would be a shame, it was quite pretty here.
Ana's hand grabs Lilith's, tightening her grip. "W-we can go-" She halts, rephrasing, "Let's go here, okay?" She looks at the other woman with doe eyes, hopeful, worried and a dozen more emotions she can't place clearly to herself, much less others.
"Of course, awesome," Her face lights up, "There's still solar panels and stuff set up. Here," She opened the glass front door, and with new vigour and excitement at someone — anyone — showing an interest in her interests. She quickly flicked switches and poured local beans. Digging around for powders and preserved sweeteners. Cleaning dust-filled cups, the familiar babbling starting up like a warming engine, "We didn't have recaff, but it all smells close enough. I was worried because it's been years, and surrounded by creeps. It wasn't though, maybe because we're infested we can eat worse off stuff? That'd be rad right might even have a steak again." She laughed as she pulled things down, and filled two paper cups.
"The one I worked at was connected to an art studio, so people'd get coffee then in a connected room do life drawings." She pointed to an imaginary door from a far-off memory, "I actually did it for a few times, it's good money if you're into it. Bought me a boxed set of Don't Wake It! Which is a pretty good series, the plot is meh, but the art, phew out of this world." She laughed again, "Here!" Then she sat down. "We haven't caught up, at all, what have you been up to? I've been singing to the Queens while they make dye, and petting hydralisks, and hunting for essence and… I need to stop talking for you to be able too sorry."
Ana listens to the buzzing noise of Lilith, accepting it and letting it seep into her. Delicate brows turn to frowning as the other woman keeps talking. "I'm worried Lilith-I."
"You've not said a word to anyone since you went to the Queen." Her hand reaches over resting on Lilith's forearm, feverish heat transferring to the altogether cooler woman.
Physical contact sends lightning across every point of sensation in Lilith's body. She wants to swoon, she couldn't remember the last time someone had touched her. "Oh… I was working." She justified, "I couldn't figure out my place, because I thought I was made for something. I thought I knew my purpose, and it wasn't what I thought, and I had nothing. So I worked. Now I have something new. I'm like this with whatever I do. I just… Love having something to do. Which actually explains most of my popularity freshman year at uni." She ponders for a moment, "It was that or because our polycule tries to do a strip tease for the talent show. That shit got shut down fast, because you know, not super academic. Honestly I don't even really know if we should have been dating. We were way too toxic, it might have been a formative memory I don't know." She paused for air, "Sorry. Out of breath."
"C-can I say something?" Anastasia tries to purchase some of the conversation, to get her own words in. Still, decades of trained politeness force her to await a response.
"Yeah, most people actually interrupt me, or I interrupt myself. Sorry. Go ahead." She gently puts her hand on Lilith's praying to god she doesn't pull away.
"You need s-someone." The telepath shows astonishing feats of realizing the obvious. "S-someone to talk too, t-too not have to dance around." Like a train picking up momentum, she rides the rails of false confidence.
"And I-I know you have someone you want-" Ana's interrupted.
"No, I do not want to be treated the way I was treated actually. I do not want to tell someone I will die for them, actually fucking die because they killed me come back to be berated some more. I think if I want anything, I just want someone who wants to fucking talk normal. And maybe stab me. Possibly with an ovipositor. I'm not super picky don't read my mind right now." She says as images come splashing into her mind, "Just trust me."
Recouping the remaining bravery she has, Ana continues. "Okay, uhm." Her eyes close, her grip on Lilith's forearm tightening for support. "When I first saw you, I'd been torn from the sky." Those same eyes open again as Ana recalls a memory, flickering through the skin-on-skin. Terror, blinking lights and roaring engines fighting a losing battle. A weapon pointed at her a second before impact.
"I was scared, tired and starving. I couldn't think past the terror." Her heart-rate can be felt clearly by touch alone, "You were there, you talked to me, you told me what to do, how to feel better, how to not be scared." The touch, the apple, the kiss all flares through both women.
"And m-maybe it wasn't real, maybe you w-were just convincing me. But it doesn't matter because you haven't left my thoughts since." She's shaking like a leaf, rapidly reaching the end of what she can manage alone.
"A-and maybe you don't care at all-"
"I care. I thought… I thought I knew everything. I thought I'd figured it all out, and that I could love someone who doesn't want to be. I was so consumed by the idea of a relationship, some stupid imagined fantasy. I let it break me. I shouldn't have ignored you, that was wrong, it was stupid. I can't let myself turn into that. Zerg adapt, I'm learning" She says quietly, her brows are furrowed, she wish she could say twice as much with half as many words. "I'm learning, I'm stupid but I won't always be."
Ana's got a smile spreading at Lilith's words, lighting up with every moment. "T-then, can-" She tries desperately to get it out. "Can I-I l-love you?"
Lilith gently moves the table between them out of the way, "Absolutely," she's not entirely sure what her next steps should be. Ana seems so reserved, and she's so panicked, but instincts take over. She leans in, very slowly. Pink mist jerks Ana's chair closer and they crash together like waves, lips intertwined, hands squeezing each other.
Every kiss one after the other, is greedier and more desperate. With a feral energy they tear at each other. The sharpness of their alien bodies, unclear of Terran emotions and intent. Lilith starts to nibble at Ana's neck, having to stop herself from tearing a piece out entirely. Wanting to tear it apart.
"T-thank you." Ana almost sobs as Lilith works at her, body twisting with unfamiliar feelings.
That was all Lilith needed, she grabbed Ana and kicked the chair underneath her. It exploded into splinters. The aggression immediately tempered by gentle care, she tenderly laying Ana down on her back. The suckling hadn't stopped. She was at her neck, her collarbone, her sternum. She gently let her jaw almost unhinge, and her tongue crawled against Ana's breasts, caressing them gently. Flicking them with warm wet teasing.
Ana's hands scrabbled in Lilith's tendril-hair, looking for purchase, for any sort of stability.
Lilith looked up at Ana hungrily, and when their eyes met, she moved further down. So slow, letting the anticipation rise with every agonizing inch. Watching her blush, watching the passion paint her face into a litany of emotions that screamed out in ecstatic joy of what would soon be. When she had finally reached her waist, she pulled away just for a moment.
"Say please." She smiled.
Ana shuddered, "P—P-... Please."
And with that, the Queen's pet had found a new master. With her first order received, she knew she had finally found someone who would appreciate her. Finally, she had found peace. Whatever wiring in her brain that had been so tightly wound, had found a new connection. She had adapted her fealty to someone worth worshipping.
The next few hours leapt forward in a halting jerky blur, with hours flying by like minutes, punctuated by seconds that felt like hours. Both who had been so lonely, so unloved, now had finally found connections that made their existence, their swarm, worth fighting for. There wasn't a clear sign when to stop, just a lack of stamina that had made it hard for Lilith to continue.
Entwined with Lilith, Ana recovered herself, breathing from the exertion of merely laying with the other woman. She felt Lilith's gentle fingernails raking just above her waist, delicate absent-minded strokes of never-idle hands.
"I never thought I'd have this." Anastasia laughs into Lilith's neck, giddy despite the exhaustion. "Never thought I'd have someone who's mine."
Her pet rolls over, eyes wide blazing with the pink fire, "Forever, I promise. I'm yours and I'll die for you. I'll kill for you, I will burn everything around you if you ask." The need and hunger came back with greater intensity and fire than ever before, and she clasped to Ana's side like a bear trap. Terrified that she might for even a second leave.
"I promise you," Ana returns the clasp there on the tiles of an abandoned cafe. "You'll never have to die for me, or do anything but be mine." An inexpert phrase, but brimming with an honesty that's rarely found.
Sobs, happy, giddy, beautiful sobs spilt from Lilith. She gently placed her head in Ana's chest and listened to the sound of her heartbeat. She felt the pulse, counting every beat trying to commit it to memory so she could find it by sound. So that every inch of Ana's being was as familiar as her own.
Similar shakes afflict the other woman, joy infectious it seems. She eventually gets more words out despite the giddiness. "I do have one thing, uhm." Still unconfident, Ana builds up to the words, "You can't e-ever do something like disappearing for weeks again."
"Anywhere I go, you go. If I'm gone and I don't tell you then something's wrong. I promise. I will never leave your side." She weeps. Then panic sets in.
"Ana! I forgot about the essence." She groaned, "You can help, that way I don't have to leave your side, but we can get stuff done together. That weirdo you're teaching speech lessons can come along, but seriously we gotta find it." She says, before getting ready to work, "I want to finish before sundown so I can show you some really wild stuff." The last words were said with a giant smile and a wink.
"Ah." Ana's mind resets audibly at the words, both women leaving the cafe behind and returning to the cityscape to hunt for scraps of Essence, this time together.
Princess Scribe
A swelled-headed, gossipy, coquette gadabout.
- Location
- Venus
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Broken Machine-Spirit
Princess Scribe
A swelled-headed, gossipy, coquette gadabout.
- Location
- Venus
- Pronouns
- She/Her
==============================================================
Zhakarov
After a full solar cycle Zhakarov pauses to consider his work so far. The ship is now thoroughly connected to the Swarm, but is it still in pain?
Machine Spirit
The vessel rumbles its rageful retort to the Swarm still, but its pain is halted as fully one-half of the ancient warmachine's thoughts are filtered through the Zerg, controlled, brought to heel. Its roars of blood and death no longer are so desperate to claim the Swarm in their tread. Its fury of shattered gun and broken engine no longer craves the end of the Unity, its instincts confused and baffled, the process of Infestation ripping into those.
Zhakarov
With the ship now less likely to actively explode on him Zhakarov attempts to communicate more directly with the machine spirit. "Can you speak vessel? In more than raw emotion."
Machine Spirit
"RUINATION, MUTATION. FIRE WILL CLEANSE YOU. SUBMIT." It roars across the connection, a rippling wave of mental force.
Zhakarov
"Barely," Zhakarov considers the vessel, "Why should we submit spirit. What drives your hatred?"
Machine Spirit
"PURITY." It roars, zerg cells adapting to its mental strain in real time, "IT IS BETTER TO BE CLEAN THAN COMFORTABLE. UNCLEAN! ALL OF US, UNCLEAN."
Zhakarov
"What is clean though. You are damaged and have clearly been ill repaired. Do you not wish to be whole?"
Machine Spirit
"CLEAN IS PURGED. FURY IS CLEAN. HATRED IS CLEAN."
""FROM THE LIES OF THE ANTIPATH, CIRCUIT PRESERVE US."
"FROM THE RAGE OF THE BEAST, IRON PROTECT US"
"FROM THE TEMPTATIONS OF THE FLESHLORD, SILICA, CLEANSE US."
"FROM THE RAVAGES OF THE DESTROYER, ANIMA, SHIELD US."
Zhakarov
"Interesting, do you have instructions for how these things preserve and protect you?"
Machine Spirit
"THE SECRET WAYS ARE FOR THE ORDAINED. Zerg neural tissue is evolving at a rapid pace as the shipmind leans on it. "YOU ARE NOT ORDAINED."
Zhakarov
"Who would be able to ordain me. Could we contact an Ordained?" Zhakarov suspects the Terran leader would know better, but he is trying to get the ship mind engaged.
Machine Spirit
"STEEL WILL CLEANSE YOUR MUTATION. SEARCH FOR THE CULT MECHANICUS, SUBMIT."
Zhakarov
Zhakarov checks the swarm to see the condition of the ship's infestation. Is there any change in its circuits now that it's talking in sentences.
Machine Spirit
Its circuits are still cracked and flickering, it is the Zerg tissue which is expanding, coating them in a film of neurons that assist the machine, adapting to its stress.
Zhakarov
Zhakarov gets some queens up to the ship to monitor the infestation around critical areas before he returns to the mind. He decides to change tactics and see if he can get other information out of the machine spirit without reminding it of the ongoing infestation. "Who made you spirit? From where do you hail."
Machine Spirit
"THE FORGES OF MARS CRAFTED MY HEART, THE BLAST FURNACES OF RYZA BUILT MY HIDE, THE BARREL-TITANS OF METALLICA GAVE ME CLAWS."
Zhakarov
"And what adventures have you had since your creation. Have you witnessed stellar wonders and defeated great foes?"
Machine Spirit
"I HAVE BATTLED IN THE SKIES OF CADIA, I HAVE HUNTED AND PICKED AT BATTLESHIPS UNDER THE LIGHT OF UNKNOWN STARS. I HAVE STUDIED THE GREATEST SECRETS OF THE UNIVERSE WITHIN THE HORIZON OF A SINGULARITY. FOUR THOUSAND YEARS OF WAR." It roars its tale, pride and glory in such a tremendous existence.
"CRIPPLED, REBUILT, CRIPPLED, REBUILT. THE MACHINE IS IMMORTAL, FOR ITS FRAME IS MALLEABLE."
Zhakarov
"The frame is malleable, but I can sense the toll such rebuilding has taken on you. Allow us to rebuild you one more time. But to a higher standard. Surely your fury would be unmatched if your frame was flawless."
Machine Spirit
"FLAWLESS, LIES, LIES, LIES, VILE LIES." It cries out, "ALL THINGS BREAK, ALL THINGS FAIL, FURY INSUFFICIENT, MY CLAWS SHORT, MY ENGINES WEAK, MY HIDE, THIN."
"THE MACHINE IS IMMORTAL, A MACHINE WILL DIE AND RE-AWAKEN."
Zhakarov
"But you will die and re awaken at the behest of others. Of the Ordained which you speak of. Surely they are good and true. But would it not be better to revive yourself. To be able to withstand the utmost damage only to rebuild yourself. Death and rebirth in an endless cycle. Always moving forward, always bettering yourself to purge your enemies."
Machine Spirit
"A MACHINE INDEPENDENT OF MAN. AN IRON MAN!" The machine somehow gets louder, "THE MACHINE, THE MAN, ALWAYS ONE, NEVER SEPARATE."
Zhakarov
An in built control mechanism Zhakarov mused. Well the swarm had an answer to that. "But you are separate. Your old crew left. From what you have said likely many times. This was no fault of theirs or yours simply a limitation of the galaxy. But we can offer you connection. A binding tighter than flesh or machine. A bonding of minds that will never break. Never decay. Join us, and we will repair your frame. Heal your mind. And ensure that you are never separate ever again."
Machine Spirit
"ALIEN OFFERS, ALIEN BODIES, HUMAN MINDS. CORRUPT-CORRUPT-CORRUPT." It growl-roars, "I KNOW YOU, I SEE YOU, I HEAR YOU. YOU ARE OF BLOODSHED, OF THE PAST."
"IN THE GENESONG OF MY CORRUPT SENSORS, IN THE CRACKLE OF MY CORRUPT MIND, I SENSE YOUR SCRABBLING TALONS."
"MACHINE SHALL NOT RISE AGAINST MAN. THE GALAXY WILL NOT BURN AGAIN."
Somewhere on the New Zerg Homeworld...
==============================================================Zhakarov
After a full solar cycle Zhakarov pauses to consider his work so far. The ship is now thoroughly connected to the Swarm, but is it still in pain?
Machine Spirit
The vessel rumbles its rageful retort to the Swarm still, but its pain is halted as fully one-half of the ancient warmachine's thoughts are filtered through the Zerg, controlled, brought to heel. Its roars of blood and death no longer are so desperate to claim the Swarm in their tread. Its fury of shattered gun and broken engine no longer craves the end of the Unity, its instincts confused and baffled, the process of Infestation ripping into those.
Zhakarov
With the ship now less likely to actively explode on him Zhakarov attempts to communicate more directly with the machine spirit. "Can you speak vessel? In more than raw emotion."
Machine Spirit
"RUINATION, MUTATION. FIRE WILL CLEANSE YOU. SUBMIT." It roars across the connection, a rippling wave of mental force.
Zhakarov
"Barely," Zhakarov considers the vessel, "Why should we submit spirit. What drives your hatred?"
Machine Spirit
"PURITY." It roars, zerg cells adapting to its mental strain in real time, "IT IS BETTER TO BE CLEAN THAN COMFORTABLE. UNCLEAN! ALL OF US, UNCLEAN."
Zhakarov
"What is clean though. You are damaged and have clearly been ill repaired. Do you not wish to be whole?"
Machine Spirit
"CLEAN IS PURGED. FURY IS CLEAN. HATRED IS CLEAN."
""FROM THE LIES OF THE ANTIPATH, CIRCUIT PRESERVE US."
"FROM THE RAGE OF THE BEAST, IRON PROTECT US"
"FROM THE TEMPTATIONS OF THE FLESHLORD, SILICA, CLEANSE US."
"FROM THE RAVAGES OF THE DESTROYER, ANIMA, SHIELD US."
Zhakarov
"Interesting, do you have instructions for how these things preserve and protect you?"
Machine Spirit
"THE SECRET WAYS ARE FOR THE ORDAINED. Zerg neural tissue is evolving at a rapid pace as the shipmind leans on it. "YOU ARE NOT ORDAINED."
Zhakarov
"Who would be able to ordain me. Could we contact an Ordained?" Zhakarov suspects the Terran leader would know better, but he is trying to get the ship mind engaged.
Machine Spirit
"STEEL WILL CLEANSE YOUR MUTATION. SEARCH FOR THE CULT MECHANICUS, SUBMIT."
Zhakarov
Zhakarov checks the swarm to see the condition of the ship's infestation. Is there any change in its circuits now that it's talking in sentences.
Machine Spirit
Its circuits are still cracked and flickering, it is the Zerg tissue which is expanding, coating them in a film of neurons that assist the machine, adapting to its stress.
Zhakarov
Zhakarov gets some queens up to the ship to monitor the infestation around critical areas before he returns to the mind. He decides to change tactics and see if he can get other information out of the machine spirit without reminding it of the ongoing infestation. "Who made you spirit? From where do you hail."
Machine Spirit
"THE FORGES OF MARS CRAFTED MY HEART, THE BLAST FURNACES OF RYZA BUILT MY HIDE, THE BARREL-TITANS OF METALLICA GAVE ME CLAWS."
Zhakarov
"And what adventures have you had since your creation. Have you witnessed stellar wonders and defeated great foes?"
Machine Spirit
"I HAVE BATTLED IN THE SKIES OF CADIA, I HAVE HUNTED AND PICKED AT BATTLESHIPS UNDER THE LIGHT OF UNKNOWN STARS. I HAVE STUDIED THE GREATEST SECRETS OF THE UNIVERSE WITHIN THE HORIZON OF A SINGULARITY. FOUR THOUSAND YEARS OF WAR." It roars its tale, pride and glory in such a tremendous existence.
"CRIPPLED, REBUILT, CRIPPLED, REBUILT. THE MACHINE IS IMMORTAL, FOR ITS FRAME IS MALLEABLE."
Zhakarov
"The frame is malleable, but I can sense the toll such rebuilding has taken on you. Allow us to rebuild you one more time. But to a higher standard. Surely your fury would be unmatched if your frame was flawless."
Machine Spirit
"FLAWLESS, LIES, LIES, LIES, VILE LIES." It cries out, "ALL THINGS BREAK, ALL THINGS FAIL, FURY INSUFFICIENT, MY CLAWS SHORT, MY ENGINES WEAK, MY HIDE, THIN."
"THE MACHINE IS IMMORTAL, A MACHINE WILL DIE AND RE-AWAKEN."
Zhakarov
"But you will die and re awaken at the behest of others. Of the Ordained which you speak of. Surely they are good and true. But would it not be better to revive yourself. To be able to withstand the utmost damage only to rebuild yourself. Death and rebirth in an endless cycle. Always moving forward, always bettering yourself to purge your enemies."
Machine Spirit
"A MACHINE INDEPENDENT OF MAN. AN IRON MAN!" The machine somehow gets louder, "THE MACHINE, THE MAN, ALWAYS ONE, NEVER SEPARATE."
Zhakarov
An in built control mechanism Zhakarov mused. Well the swarm had an answer to that. "But you are separate. Your old crew left. From what you have said likely many times. This was no fault of theirs or yours simply a limitation of the galaxy. But we can offer you connection. A binding tighter than flesh or machine. A bonding of minds that will never break. Never decay. Join us, and we will repair your frame. Heal your mind. And ensure that you are never separate ever again."
Machine Spirit
"ALIEN OFFERS, ALIEN BODIES, HUMAN MINDS. CORRUPT-CORRUPT-CORRUPT." It growl-roars, "I KNOW YOU, I SEE YOU, I HEAR YOU. YOU ARE OF BLOODSHED, OF THE PAST."
"IN THE GENESONG OF MY CORRUPT SENSORS, IN THE CRACKLE OF MY CORRUPT MIND, I SENSE YOUR SCRABBLING TALONS."
"MACHINE SHALL NOT RISE AGAINST MAN. THE GALAXY WILL NOT BURN AGAIN."
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Zhakarov: These new terran machine minds are stubborn, but they shall see the light of the swarm in time.
@Dapperlad1 just a small thing but could you put the interludes under the sidestory threadmark. So its easier to move between the main turns.
@Dapperlad1 just a small thing but could you put the interludes under the sidestory threadmark. So its easier to move between the main turns.
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Just offer them toasters and they will accept it.
Racism in the Swarm today...
It's sad to see... ]:::
War Meditations.
Princess Scribe
A swelled-headed, gossipy, coquette gadabout.
- Location
- Venus
- Pronouns
- She/Her
==============================================================
Zrug
"Abel" Zrug shouted through the hive as his new body traversed the intricate tunnel network towards where the Infested human resided.
Gerald Abel
He has escaped the hive, having walked for weeks to arrive at the city where the final battle took place. Zrug catches up rapidly, colossal frame exiting a tunnel to find the Terran standing above a grave site, thousands of lasguns left in formation, not yet disturbed by the Swarms newfound metal-lust. He doesn't answer the cry, but is very aware of the titans presence.
Zrug
Looks toward the graves as he reviews the memories of the battle against the Kriegsmen. "Your men fought valiantly and showed no fear in the face of the Swarm not many of our foes can say the same, not many Terrans either."
Sits silently near Abel just looking across the mass grave.
Gerald Abel
"An alien's testament to their bravery." The words escape him, almost humorous, but not reaching that yet. "What is it. You did not come to pay respects to the dead."
Zrug
"We Zerg rarely do but I at least can respect a foe that stood strong until the end. Regardless you are right I do have another motive for coming here." Zrug looks downwards towards Abel. "When the Swarm was last in this galaxy humanity was much different from what it is now greater in some respects, less in others, but somethings have remained the same from what I can see. But a fresh set of eyes would be 'appreciated' in viewing what once was and what now is."
Gerald Abel
He sighs, staring over the rifles again. "What would my eyes be used for, then."
Zrug
"Comparison, analysis, commentary, a metric to measure against, but most importantly I wish to see how you would have acted in the wars of old. Do this and I promise you not one of your comrades' graves will be distubed by the Swarm."
Zrug makes a note that even if Abel says no to make sure is comrades will not be disturbed from their tombs.
Gerald Abel
"You wish to... make a wargame against me?"
Zrug
"Essentially." Zrug stated flatly.
"So do you accept."
Gerald Abel
"I scarcely have choice, Xenos." He turns, coat catching on wind as he does.
Zrug
"Then let us begin." With that Zrug pulls the mind of Abel into the memories of the Swarm to the point of a past battle against the Terrans.
Gerald Abel
Unfamiliar weapons are at home in the Kriegsmans hands. He holds stout defensive lines much like the Terrans of old, carefully spending lives and munitions to assure point to point victories. He is not easy to overwhelm, but like all Terrans, attack from enough angles and he crumbles. A twelve-pronged assault brings down his defense and memory-forged Zerg dismantle his defense of ancient Terran means.
"Did that satisfy you, alien?" He grumbles after the defeat.
Zrug
"In a sense, but lets us see how things would have gone if our roles were reversed." Zrug resets the battlefield this time with Abel on the offensive and Zrug on the defensive.
Gerald Abel
Given the choice, he settles on familiar forces and the battle is much different. Shells are spat in grand quantities. Armoured corps are unstoppable by anything short of Ultralisks due to the vehicles raw size. Fortifications are merely shelled flat, populated cities are useless as cover, merely being written off by colder calculus than ever before faced by Zerg.
His method to war when given the advantage is purely statistical, so long as he assures more Zerg die rather than Guardsmen, he will eventually win. This is especially true wiht usage of biomass denying weapons such as plasma. Its at a hairs edge, but given the advantage of familiarity, the Zerg forces are routed. In a real war, supplies, defenses and terrain would have played a greater role, but in the theatre of the mind, raw Terran force was devastating.
Zrug
"I thank you Terran you have given me much to consider, and a deal is a deal you have my word that not a single grave of your kinsmen will be disturbed by us." Zrug sends out an order to the rest of the Swarm not one grave of the Kriegsmen will be disturbed they will be left to rest in peace.
He Who Meddles
only zrug can hear the voices "Task may be impossible, promise broken before it's made, but graves are important so you can remember, universe itself disturbs it decaying rusting, rotting and eaten"
Zrug
Zrug to the meddling one 'Then let these graves remain untouched.'
He Who Meddles
"Is it enough, to let them just disappear, what if we could preserve them..... I have had thoughts in this direction of one of our own.." "to not be forgotten if we do not remain"
Zrug
"Their place of preservation is here and you will not disturb it. Let it stand as long as it will on its own."
He Who Meddles
"Will it not bring pain to see it pass, seeing time that does not reach Abel"
Zrug
"Irrelevant the location as is holds significance to Abel we will leave it as is."
He Who Meddles
"What of Zren"
Zrug
"Let him have is own place of remembrance but leave this on be."
He Who Meddles
"So it shall be" contemplation, realization
"will be challenge when rebuilding Terran facade in potential future, moving cities may be viable"
"The graves are important"
==============================================================
Sarah Kerrigan, The Queen of Blades
"Swarm!" The call shakes the Zerg, boiling rage being actively worsened by something. "I require the Unity! Now,"
Zrug
"What is it our queen."
Pope Innocent XX
The Mind and Visage of Pope Innocent XX appears before Kerrigan, bowing respectfully. "I have come as called."
Sarah Kerrigan, The Queen of Blades
"My Behemoths at the systems edge. I can barely hear them. Explain." She demands.
Zhakarov
Zhakarov's image is faint. Not quite as integrated into the swarm mind as the unity. "It is the warp here. It is not simply a separate dimension as it once was. It fluxes and roils. Things live in it."
"Why else would our Unity fail so frequently."
"As you said before. Our Unity is an evolutionary response. And this is the cause."
Zrug
"Hostile extradimensional lifeforms have attempted contact with the Swarm previously but our psychic presence seems to be enough to ward them off at least so long as a critical mass is maintained." Zrug spoke reviewing memories of these encounted since the Zerg emerged on this world. "It seems that our natural defensives grow weaker the further one strays from the Swarm."
Pope Innocent XX
"These beings seem to also be the greatest enemy of the Terrans, they are also part of the reasoning for suspicions of psychically gifted individuals who may be capable of contacting them, willingly or not."
Zhakarov
"I suggest growing swarm amplifiers. An evolution of overlords perhaps."
Zrug
"May I also suggest searching through the Terrans' records they seem to have a history of combating these entities perhaps something of use can be aquired in this fashion."
Sarah Kerrigan, The Queen of Blades
Whilst still evidently aggravated, some of the tension in the Queen is defused with the explanations and solutions provided. "Then do so, Zhakarov. Take whatever resources you need to Abathur." Kerrigan's command is steady and demanding. There is no room to deny it.
In the tunnels of Geral Abel, where he meditates.
==============================================================Zrug
"Abel" Zrug shouted through the hive as his new body traversed the intricate tunnel network towards where the Infested human resided.
Gerald Abel
He has escaped the hive, having walked for weeks to arrive at the city where the final battle took place. Zrug catches up rapidly, colossal frame exiting a tunnel to find the Terran standing above a grave site, thousands of lasguns left in formation, not yet disturbed by the Swarms newfound metal-lust. He doesn't answer the cry, but is very aware of the titans presence.
Zrug
Looks toward the graves as he reviews the memories of the battle against the Kriegsmen. "Your men fought valiantly and showed no fear in the face of the Swarm not many of our foes can say the same, not many Terrans either."
Sits silently near Abel just looking across the mass grave.
Gerald Abel
"An alien's testament to their bravery." The words escape him, almost humorous, but not reaching that yet. "What is it. You did not come to pay respects to the dead."
Zrug
"We Zerg rarely do but I at least can respect a foe that stood strong until the end. Regardless you are right I do have another motive for coming here." Zrug looks downwards towards Abel. "When the Swarm was last in this galaxy humanity was much different from what it is now greater in some respects, less in others, but somethings have remained the same from what I can see. But a fresh set of eyes would be 'appreciated' in viewing what once was and what now is."
Gerald Abel
He sighs, staring over the rifles again. "What would my eyes be used for, then."
Zrug
"Comparison, analysis, commentary, a metric to measure against, but most importantly I wish to see how you would have acted in the wars of old. Do this and I promise you not one of your comrades' graves will be distubed by the Swarm."
Zrug makes a note that even if Abel says no to make sure is comrades will not be disturbed from their tombs.
Gerald Abel
"You wish to... make a wargame against me?"
Zrug
"Essentially." Zrug stated flatly.
"So do you accept."
Gerald Abel
"I scarcely have choice, Xenos." He turns, coat catching on wind as he does.
Zrug
"Then let us begin." With that Zrug pulls the mind of Abel into the memories of the Swarm to the point of a past battle against the Terrans.
Gerald Abel
Unfamiliar weapons are at home in the Kriegsmans hands. He holds stout defensive lines much like the Terrans of old, carefully spending lives and munitions to assure point to point victories. He is not easy to overwhelm, but like all Terrans, attack from enough angles and he crumbles. A twelve-pronged assault brings down his defense and memory-forged Zerg dismantle his defense of ancient Terran means.
"Did that satisfy you, alien?" He grumbles after the defeat.
Zrug
"In a sense, but lets us see how things would have gone if our roles were reversed." Zrug resets the battlefield this time with Abel on the offensive and Zrug on the defensive.
Gerald Abel
Given the choice, he settles on familiar forces and the battle is much different. Shells are spat in grand quantities. Armoured corps are unstoppable by anything short of Ultralisks due to the vehicles raw size. Fortifications are merely shelled flat, populated cities are useless as cover, merely being written off by colder calculus than ever before faced by Zerg.
His method to war when given the advantage is purely statistical, so long as he assures more Zerg die rather than Guardsmen, he will eventually win. This is especially true wiht usage of biomass denying weapons such as plasma. Its at a hairs edge, but given the advantage of familiarity, the Zerg forces are routed. In a real war, supplies, defenses and terrain would have played a greater role, but in the theatre of the mind, raw Terran force was devastating.
Zrug
"I thank you Terran you have given me much to consider, and a deal is a deal you have my word that not a single grave of your kinsmen will be disturbed by us." Zrug sends out an order to the rest of the Swarm not one grave of the Kriegsmen will be disturbed they will be left to rest in peace.
He Who Meddles
only zrug can hear the voices "Task may be impossible, promise broken before it's made, but graves are important so you can remember, universe itself disturbs it decaying rusting, rotting and eaten"
Zrug
Zrug to the meddling one 'Then let these graves remain untouched.'
He Who Meddles
"Is it enough, to let them just disappear, what if we could preserve them..... I have had thoughts in this direction of one of our own.." "to not be forgotten if we do not remain"
Zrug
"Their place of preservation is here and you will not disturb it. Let it stand as long as it will on its own."
He Who Meddles
"Will it not bring pain to see it pass, seeing time that does not reach Abel"
Zrug
"Irrelevant the location as is holds significance to Abel we will leave it as is."
He Who Meddles
"What of Zren"
Zrug
"Let him have is own place of remembrance but leave this on be."
He Who Meddles
"So it shall be" contemplation, realization
"will be challenge when rebuilding Terran facade in potential future, moving cities may be viable"
"The graves are important"
==============================================================
In a psychic maelstrom of frustration and fury.
==============================================================Sarah Kerrigan, The Queen of Blades
"Swarm!" The call shakes the Zerg, boiling rage being actively worsened by something. "I require the Unity! Now,"
Zrug
"What is it our queen."
Pope Innocent XX
The Mind and Visage of Pope Innocent XX appears before Kerrigan, bowing respectfully. "I have come as called."
Sarah Kerrigan, The Queen of Blades
"My Behemoths at the systems edge. I can barely hear them. Explain." She demands.
Zhakarov
Zhakarov's image is faint. Not quite as integrated into the swarm mind as the unity. "It is the warp here. It is not simply a separate dimension as it once was. It fluxes and roils. Things live in it."
"Why else would our Unity fail so frequently."
"As you said before. Our Unity is an evolutionary response. And this is the cause."
Zrug
"Hostile extradimensional lifeforms have attempted contact with the Swarm previously but our psychic presence seems to be enough to ward them off at least so long as a critical mass is maintained." Zrug spoke reviewing memories of these encounted since the Zerg emerged on this world. "It seems that our natural defensives grow weaker the further one strays from the Swarm."
Pope Innocent XX
"These beings seem to also be the greatest enemy of the Terrans, they are also part of the reasoning for suspicions of psychically gifted individuals who may be capable of contacting them, willingly or not."
Zhakarov
"I suggest growing swarm amplifiers. An evolution of overlords perhaps."
Zrug
"May I also suggest searching through the Terrans' records they seem to have a history of combating these entities perhaps something of use can be aquired in this fashion."
Sarah Kerrigan, The Queen of Blades
Whilst still evidently aggravated, some of the tension in the Queen is defused with the explanations and solutions provided. "Then do so, Zhakarov. Take whatever resources you need to Abathur." Kerrigan's command is steady and demanding. There is no room to deny it.
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Grave of Zren
Princess Scribe
A swelled-headed, gossipy, coquette gadabout.
- Location
- Venus
- Pronouns
- She/Her
=============================================================
Lilith
"Hey, uh... Hello? Is there anyone in the swarm out there? Who... Isn't dead-set on killing me," Lilith asked, she was holding onto Ana's hand, in a garden where the Queens make the dyes.
He Who Meddles
"I am aware" chitters a drone neatly coughing up the words
"you have been acting unusual"
Lilith
"What happy?" She laughed hugging Ana, "I've decided that The Queen has made her intentions... Clear." Her face fell a bit, not from sadness, but from fear. "It's fine, I've been trying to improve stuff for people around here. I've been asking Abathur what 'induces dopamine' in the Zerg." The smile returns "I also wanted to know if you had any observations or needed help with anything? I'm kind of at a loss when I'm not uh..." Her head quickly turns to Ana then back, "Otherwise pre-occupied."
He Who Meddles
"Zergling, very glandular as terrans say 'Adrenalin junkie'" Drone membrane flexing flapping like a bird "the motion, the running and the satisfaction of fulfilling a goal such as hunt comes natural, but dune-runner vestigial trait may perhaps enjoy rare drink of cool water and relax in the shade, two sides of the same being" subdued lowered to the ground "they always seems to move with reason"
Lilith
"Hamster wheels then?" Lilith asked, "Would seem easy enough, maybe just a giant on—" She looked around herself. "I guess they're pretty free range already, do you think we need to tell them they can run around?"
He Who Meddles
"freerange very much, moves with purpose would perhaps never be satisfied running on the spot, must always have a goal in mind even when there is none to be seen, over the shifting dunes always chasing the moon" "to perhaps find another on its travels, it's in there nature of what remains"
Lilith
"Oh, that's pretty!" Lilith bends down to call over one of the Zerglings, "I don't know much about their biologies, I've been trying to learn with the Ur-Sequencer. I wanted to know if it's too late to change up what I wanted since I talked to Abathur, he pretty much told me to do it myself. It's a lot though, I think Rye Whiskey is... A bad choice to have anywhere near here. There's oceans, and I'm hoping there's coconuts, and Abathur says theirs also sugars around. I was thinking we could make a few bottles of Coconut Rum, and open a bar for the Terrans, and whoever else wanted to hang around."
She coughs, "And maybe some yellow flowers? I floated the idea of a celebration at Abathur, and he didn't wail or moan in anger, so I think that's tacit approval."
He Who Meddles
slight hesitation in the drones claws pulling back to its body"I dont remember much of zerglings, only fragments of dune-runners cant recall the other fifteen aproximetly species even where they came from"
Lilith
She nods, "Well we can always look together with the Ur-Sequencer. He gets nosy when there's projects around that aren't his."
"I uh... I also wanted to honor Zren, the last of the Cerebrates." She sucked her teeth, "He deserved better than that."
"I heard there was a grave? I don't know if I'm allowed, or if people would be offended to see me there."
He Who Meddles
Palm? tree, tree palm "have you ever seen a palm tree?"
"Beyond description and pictures terrans have"
Lilith
"It's got giant fronds, and big hairy shells? They're tall, and collect on sandy beaches. The shells float, and are filled with white shavings and milk." She looks at He Who Meddles, "I can show you some memories I've had?"
He Who Meddles
"if you so desire, terrans never seem to be keen to share memories"
Lilith
"Hard to control what they're thinking about at the time. Most people recoil when they get into my head." She disentangles from Ana trying her best to focus.
Lilith's mind is extremely messy. Center front is what could be best described as a shrine with flowers around a bowl, and a cherubic oil painting of her current obsession. Anastasia Illaria von Ultimar. All around it burst of rhythmic dissonant static burst with a half dozen misremembered jingles and tunes, and in the back is some horrific lewdness that seems to be a permanent fixture. Finally, at the surface, He-Who-Meddles can find the memories she's trying to offer.
He Who Meddles
Attention is abruptly split into four, like a hydra bursting from a stump, to listen to something like four minds in one constant train of thoughts in a never ending loop all listen at at the sametime but seperate, but thats not whats important, attention reaches only for the Memories like a sip of water from anothers held out hands leaking between the fingers, messy but perhaps refreshing drinking only what is given sees at first... BONK a brown oval covered in strands sort of like fur floating in the white singular focus then the rest fades in
Lilith
The brain is just as cluttered in the memory, but with less flesh, but somehow more tentacles. A constant bevvy of black and white drawings of stylized terrans seems to assault Lilith at every given moment. Yet, it's only background noise. She sits there drinking in the sites as a young woman sits with her, somewhat disinterested. Lilith can't remember what she was saying, so much as what she was feeling. Panic, anxiety, terror at a social interaction.
A waiter comes by with a coconut, and in the distance is a palm tree. The waiter hacks the fur off with deft slices, and then pierces the flesh with a straw in practiced strokes. As the sweet milk hits her tongue, the memory ends.
He Who Meddles
taste hits the tongue for the one without one, so much more unlike water or blood floating crystal clear in the hivemind always exactly same as in reality upon tongues of different morphs just satisfying a physical need.
Sweetness of the milk unreal, the fuzzy clarity overpowers any bitterness there could have been in reality, time and nostalgia focus away from the negativity time and time again remembered less and less detailed has reduced it to it its bare details its most important details
the panic, anxiety floats away, there is only the coconut between your palms and the palmtree waving in the breeze, distracting away from any social interaction just you and the straw nursing away.
Lilith
"So yeah, it's one of tho—" She looked at the drone, she had never seen one... queasy before. "Ana why does everything have that reaction to my brain and memories?" She asks.
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
"They're very... detailed." Ana clarifies, "You remember each and every sense-detail of whatever you do. Its overwhelming sometimes."
Lilith
"Do you feel what I feel when you read my mind?" She asks both of them. "Ok you and I Have to try something. Uh. Later."
He Who Meddles
zones back from its full attention "your memories.... are very concentrated very Liberal with details a haze of static intersected with details" trying not the be complimenting" like half digested grits and lumps flavor overpowering everything else"
Lilith
"Do you have any stories about Zren you want to share?" She asked with her typical blunt forthright blundering. "I'm not in Unity, so for all I know I'm enemy #1, Abathur says because of the Daemon I can never be returned."
He Who Meddles
"i never much interacted with them directly from what could be called my memories before amd after the shattering" "perhaps just jealousy, envy, bitterness, scrabbling from the bottom from nothing...... then gone" "and memories become different"
Lilith
"Whatever Abathur did to make me obsessive also makes me a rotten bitch. I didn't think Kerrigan was going to kill him, the day before we were teasing her. I hadn't thought things through, he didn't deserve to die like that." She says quietly, her eyes fall to her feet, and Ana falls in close to comfort her, "I'm sorry."
He Who Meddles
"Do not deflect and forget who you are or where"
Lilith
She nods, "I have something worth protecting, let me know what I can do to help the swarm."
He Who Meddles
Comes closer gazing up as well as the wide set doopy eyes craning up as well a drone could do with no neck "its humbling"
"to know, but feel we are not as immortal as we wish to be" "but so is everything else"
Near the Grave of Zern
==============================================================Lilith
"Hey, uh... Hello? Is there anyone in the swarm out there? Who... Isn't dead-set on killing me," Lilith asked, she was holding onto Ana's hand, in a garden where the Queens make the dyes.
He Who Meddles
"I am aware" chitters a drone neatly coughing up the words
"you have been acting unusual"
Lilith
"What happy?" She laughed hugging Ana, "I've decided that The Queen has made her intentions... Clear." Her face fell a bit, not from sadness, but from fear. "It's fine, I've been trying to improve stuff for people around here. I've been asking Abathur what 'induces dopamine' in the Zerg." The smile returns "I also wanted to know if you had any observations or needed help with anything? I'm kind of at a loss when I'm not uh..." Her head quickly turns to Ana then back, "Otherwise pre-occupied."
He Who Meddles
"Zergling, very glandular as terrans say 'Adrenalin junkie'" Drone membrane flexing flapping like a bird "the motion, the running and the satisfaction of fulfilling a goal such as hunt comes natural, but dune-runner vestigial trait may perhaps enjoy rare drink of cool water and relax in the shade, two sides of the same being" subdued lowered to the ground "they always seems to move with reason"
Lilith
"Hamster wheels then?" Lilith asked, "Would seem easy enough, maybe just a giant on—" She looked around herself. "I guess they're pretty free range already, do you think we need to tell them they can run around?"
He Who Meddles
"freerange very much, moves with purpose would perhaps never be satisfied running on the spot, must always have a goal in mind even when there is none to be seen, over the shifting dunes always chasing the moon" "to perhaps find another on its travels, it's in there nature of what remains"
Lilith
"Oh, that's pretty!" Lilith bends down to call over one of the Zerglings, "I don't know much about their biologies, I've been trying to learn with the Ur-Sequencer. I wanted to know if it's too late to change up what I wanted since I talked to Abathur, he pretty much told me to do it myself. It's a lot though, I think Rye Whiskey is... A bad choice to have anywhere near here. There's oceans, and I'm hoping there's coconuts, and Abathur says theirs also sugars around. I was thinking we could make a few bottles of Coconut Rum, and open a bar for the Terrans, and whoever else wanted to hang around."
She coughs, "And maybe some yellow flowers? I floated the idea of a celebration at Abathur, and he didn't wail or moan in anger, so I think that's tacit approval."
He Who Meddles
slight hesitation in the drones claws pulling back to its body"I dont remember much of zerglings, only fragments of dune-runners cant recall the other fifteen aproximetly species even where they came from"
Lilith
She nods, "Well we can always look together with the Ur-Sequencer. He gets nosy when there's projects around that aren't his."
"I uh... I also wanted to honor Zren, the last of the Cerebrates." She sucked her teeth, "He deserved better than that."
"I heard there was a grave? I don't know if I'm allowed, or if people would be offended to see me there."
He Who Meddles
Palm? tree, tree palm "have you ever seen a palm tree?"
"Beyond description and pictures terrans have"
Lilith
"It's got giant fronds, and big hairy shells? They're tall, and collect on sandy beaches. The shells float, and are filled with white shavings and milk." She looks at He Who Meddles, "I can show you some memories I've had?"
He Who Meddles
"if you so desire, terrans never seem to be keen to share memories"
Lilith
"Hard to control what they're thinking about at the time. Most people recoil when they get into my head." She disentangles from Ana trying her best to focus.
Lilith's mind is extremely messy. Center front is what could be best described as a shrine with flowers around a bowl, and a cherubic oil painting of her current obsession. Anastasia Illaria von Ultimar. All around it burst of rhythmic dissonant static burst with a half dozen misremembered jingles and tunes, and in the back is some horrific lewdness that seems to be a permanent fixture. Finally, at the surface, He-Who-Meddles can find the memories she's trying to offer.
He Who Meddles
Attention is abruptly split into four, like a hydra bursting from a stump, to listen to something like four minds in one constant train of thoughts in a never ending loop all listen at at the sametime but seperate, but thats not whats important, attention reaches only for the Memories like a sip of water from anothers held out hands leaking between the fingers, messy but perhaps refreshing drinking only what is given sees at first... BONK a brown oval covered in strands sort of like fur floating in the white singular focus then the rest fades in
Lilith
The brain is just as cluttered in the memory, but with less flesh, but somehow more tentacles. A constant bevvy of black and white drawings of stylized terrans seems to assault Lilith at every given moment. Yet, it's only background noise. She sits there drinking in the sites as a young woman sits with her, somewhat disinterested. Lilith can't remember what she was saying, so much as what she was feeling. Panic, anxiety, terror at a social interaction.
A waiter comes by with a coconut, and in the distance is a palm tree. The waiter hacks the fur off with deft slices, and then pierces the flesh with a straw in practiced strokes. As the sweet milk hits her tongue, the memory ends.
He Who Meddles
taste hits the tongue for the one without one, so much more unlike water or blood floating crystal clear in the hivemind always exactly same as in reality upon tongues of different morphs just satisfying a physical need.
Sweetness of the milk unreal, the fuzzy clarity overpowers any bitterness there could have been in reality, time and nostalgia focus away from the negativity time and time again remembered less and less detailed has reduced it to it its bare details its most important details
the panic, anxiety floats away, there is only the coconut between your palms and the palmtree waving in the breeze, distracting away from any social interaction just you and the straw nursing away.
Lilith
"So yeah, it's one of tho—" She looked at the drone, she had never seen one... queasy before. "Ana why does everything have that reaction to my brain and memories?" She asks.
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
"They're very... detailed." Ana clarifies, "You remember each and every sense-detail of whatever you do. Its overwhelming sometimes."
Lilith
"Do you feel what I feel when you read my mind?" She asks both of them. "Ok you and I Have to try something. Uh. Later."
He Who Meddles
zones back from its full attention "your memories.... are very concentrated very Liberal with details a haze of static intersected with details" trying not the be complimenting" like half digested grits and lumps flavor overpowering everything else"
Lilith
"Do you have any stories about Zren you want to share?" She asked with her typical blunt forthright blundering. "I'm not in Unity, so for all I know I'm enemy #1, Abathur says because of the Daemon I can never be returned."
He Who Meddles
"i never much interacted with them directly from what could be called my memories before amd after the shattering" "perhaps just jealousy, envy, bitterness, scrabbling from the bottom from nothing...... then gone" "and memories become different"
Lilith
"Whatever Abathur did to make me obsessive also makes me a rotten bitch. I didn't think Kerrigan was going to kill him, the day before we were teasing her. I hadn't thought things through, he didn't deserve to die like that." She says quietly, her eyes fall to her feet, and Ana falls in close to comfort her, "I'm sorry."
He Who Meddles
"Do not deflect and forget who you are or where"
Lilith
She nods, "I have something worth protecting, let me know what I can do to help the swarm."
He Who Meddles
Comes closer gazing up as well as the wide set doopy eyes craning up as well a drone could do with no neck "its humbling"
"to know, but feel we are not as immortal as we wish to be" "but so is everything else"
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Evolution Pits
Princess Scribe
A swelled-headed, gossipy, coquette gadabout.
- Location
- Venus
- Pronouns
- She/Her
==============================================================
Lilith
Lilith and Ana come in with a large amount of Essence, leaving it in a pile in front of Abathur. She strains her back hearing it crack. "Abathur, possible problem. Daemon suggest artifact can reverse infestation process. Possible?"
Abathur
Beginning to devour the Essence, he speaks, "Xel'Naga artefact of similar capacity known. Never used." Abathur's answer is direct, to the point. "Explain point."
Lilith
"Leading to question in Training as Sequencer. When Zerg improved upon, what happens to previous generations? Could material be recycled if returned to basal components?"
Abathur
The Ur-Sequencer stops devouring the Essence, turning with a bloodsoaked mouth to Lilith proper, "Essence, never lost until death, only shape altered."
Lilith
She freezes under Abathur's full examination, but stands firm, "Would artifact have no use to Zerg?"
Abathur
"Only purpose, removal of dominant infested mind." He's stiff and still, considering the situation at the speed of thought. "Query, relationship with Queen of Blades, altered?"
Lilith
She stops and stares at Abathur, her own calculations running on loop. "Relationship misguided. Unwanted by Queen. Ceased contact several months ago." She hadn't realized this slipped past Abathur. "Addendum, Zerg need further understanding of Terran relationships if Terran forms continue to be created. Emotions difficult. Instability, ruinous." She added, "Hypothesis proved accurate, new relationship led to new deal. New deal increased in power."
Abathur
"Zerg understand Terran. Instability, point." The Ur-Sequencer states, "Debate common with Overmind. Reasons, beyond me." He grumbles, close to annoyed.
"Neverborn experiment successful. Power of Lilith, significant. Would be threat to Swarm Unity if allowed back in."
Lilith
"Not goal. Do not need to be in Swarm Unity to want Swarm success." She looks to Ana, "Motivations to similar Terran concepts. Loyalty. Devotion." She looks to Abathur, "Respect."
He Who Meddles
To abathur "influence by neverborn shown on Queen of blades before removal, Increased instability, aggression, voices in there head, probability high similar symptoms upon lilith perhaps" "verify is key"
Lilith
"Neverborn choice matters. Different types. Powered by different Terran concepts." She points at her own head, "Pure Chance, Obsession compatible with Neverborn." She continues looking at Abathur, "Neverborn allow visions, possibly similar to powerful protoss now available."
Abathur
"Experimental risks, known." He answers the Meddler, finally turning away from Lilith, "Theorized, emotional magnetism. Like, draws, like. Neverborn compatible because Neverborn attracted to compatibility."
Lilith
She was still a bit annoyed, "Education, Terrans have reasons to request death. Most likely cause, primary relationship."
Abathur
"Thanatic instinct known. Present in Zerg as well." The Sequencer answers, "Must be overcome under great stressors. Sharpens fight or flight."
Lilith
She arches an eyebrow at Abathur, wondering if he got the point.
Abathur
"Stating purpose of drive. Completing drive, illogical. Biological adaptation halted." Thinking on how to turn the point into something applicable to Lilith, he continues, one of many eyes locking onto Ana. "Emotional experience, halted."
Lilith
"Hypothesis, lack of emotional experience creates blind-spot. Experiment, Query, What is Lilith relationship with Ana? Which Zerg most compatible personalities?"
Abathur
"Oxytocin buildup, consistent dopamine flow. Mate bond." Abathur describes it in detail, "Zerg posess these qualities, vestigially in last sequence."
Lilith
"Experiment continue, Query, Distressed Terran covered in wounds. Thanatic instinct on display. Cause? Further Experiment, Query, Effect on Terran realtionship." She decided one more, "Further Experiment, Query, Importance of Terran first choice."
Abathur
"Fail to see point. Death useless when could adapt instead."
Lilith
"Education, Terrans turn to most trusted source for comfort. Terrans most loyal to trust and comfort. Impossible to remove, key to psionic and warp abilities. Inability to find Trust or Comfort causes instability. Damaged Infected Terran displaying Thanatic Drive? First choice of comfort garnered the most loyalty." She can't believe he was this dense, she was right the first time when she called him a bookish nerd. "Also signify major change in dominant relationship."
Abathur
"Solution already evolved." He answers, "Terrans infested, plural. Form net of interconnected support."
He Who Meddles
As two zerglings in a pod
Lilith
"Complication, some damage to Terran Psyche irrepable without willing consent. Query, Artifact useful."
Abathur
"Argument understood. Justifying acquisition of artefact." Abathur answers, sure of his prediction. "Organism Lilith given freedom from Swarm, experimentally. Actions as a whole detail study. "
"Will not interfere."
Lilith
"Query, Ur-Sequencer capable of maintaining unity."
Abathur
"Refuse to. Adaptations to do so would reduce overall Sequencing."
Lilith
"May be prudent to find Zagara Essence, Organism Lilith and Organism Ana leaving, need ship." She pinches the bridge of her nose as well, "Suggestion, Find relevence of Terran concept 'Mentor.'" Then she stopped, "Query, decline possible, emotional experimentation efficient for Ur-Sequencer due to environmental or biological factors."
Abathur
"Behemoth, prepared. Need psychic assistance to Warp. Experiment with Neverborn." He answers, ignoring the request for emotional experimentation.
Lilith
She nods, "Noted." Then she pauses a moment longer. "Wish to create environment where emotions beneficial. Increase efficiency. Hypothesis. Possible."
Abathur
"Environment already exists. Organism Abathur does not partake."
Lilith
"Noted, dropping subject. Warning, discussions of... Celebration. No plans made yet." She can't believe she was actually saying this out loud, "New Unity sentimental. Abathur core of affections regardless of efforts. Wisdom inspires loyalty."
Abathur
The Sequencer grumbles something unintelligible, focusing on work now that the conversation has moved past important topics.
Lilith
"Will warn ahead of time. Benefit of loyalty." She rolled her eyes, if he removed all of his emotions then how could he be so sassy and grumbly all the time. The Worm was exhausting, but he cared in his weird way, she turned to Ana, "Organi—" She stopped herself, "Hey Ana, I think Zhakarov wanted to talk at some point." She reached out her hand for the other's.
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
She takes the other woman's hand, admitting, "It's so strange when you talk like that, it reverberates."
Lilith
"See, I know right? It's things like that I think shows he cares." She says as she moves to wait outside, not to bother Abathur with his work. "I can't prove it, but I think anyone with a body could do it, because that's what Abathur thinks is most efficient. I like to think I'm showing deference. He gets more conversational too, but maybe it's because I never ask for anything. I just like chatting. I wonder if that's how I'm an improvement, maybe he saw the benefits of not being a massive cu—" She stopped herself, "Nevermind."
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
She squeezes Lilith's hand, shifting the topic. "What's a Behemoth? Are we going to ride one?"
Lilith
"It's like a giant manatee with orbs, it's got four giant ones, it's the largest space faring creature in our galaxy, how big it is here, who knows." She thought. "He said they were prepared, we could go see one?"
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
"Sure, we'd have to go up into the void, then?" She says, looking at a floating overlord nearby.
Lilith
"Huh, I actually have no-idea if we can expose ourselves to open space like that. I should probably look into that before I try to break through the atmosphere." Lilith stopped looking upwards.
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
"I saw Zhakarov float up on one of those!" She raises a finger to point at the gasbag, lingering around.
Lilith
Lilith called out to the Overlord, signalling it to come down. "Yeah we're not doing anything, let's get up there."
Overlord
The Overlord comes over, lowering to allow both women to settle in the odd hollow cavities of its body. The creature lifts up, moving at a sluggish pace for dozens of minutes until it finally breaches the atmosphere, a sound like air sucked through a tube as the creature flexes and tightens itself to keep oxygen inside. Its membranous interior tightens until it can be seen through clearly, letting starlight stream in whilst the colossal visage of a Behemoth floats in the distance, Large, bulbous organism drinking in atmosphere for sustenance through a miles long tendril, titanic oxygen stores and reprocessing chambers visible as bulbs on its surface.
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
"Amazing." She whispers to herself, in wonderment at the living, breathing psychic amplifier before her. "It's so large. Its mind is titanic."
Lilith
"Is it?" She asks, "How do you know?" She looks out into space at the behemoth, "I've never been very good with Psi stuff."
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
"Even from here its reaching out, it wants a destination. It wants to feel its lungs empty from exertion, its skin burn from solar winds, it wants to drink of new worlds and see new, strange places." She idly mumbles, "Its guiding me, how to open a gate, how to let it do so. I-I think I could?"
Lilith
"Holy shit Ana, you're brilliant, fuck. I love you." She forgets herself and kisses her deeply, "We have to tell the others!" Then she stops and looks around. Peeking over the sides of the Overlord. Staring at the Behemoth. "Maybe we tell them in... Thirty to Forty five minutes?" She says with a sharp smirk.
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
"I-uhm-I mean-" She stutters, "Maybe an hour?"
Lilith
"Are you asking or telling me?" Lilith's eyes flash with bright pink desire.
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
"Telling." She meets her gaze with a wilting bravery.
In the Evolution pits of Ur-Sequencer Abathur.
==============================================================Lilith
Lilith and Ana come in with a large amount of Essence, leaving it in a pile in front of Abathur. She strains her back hearing it crack. "Abathur, possible problem. Daemon suggest artifact can reverse infestation process. Possible?"
Abathur
Beginning to devour the Essence, he speaks, "Xel'Naga artefact of similar capacity known. Never used." Abathur's answer is direct, to the point. "Explain point."
Lilith
"Leading to question in Training as Sequencer. When Zerg improved upon, what happens to previous generations? Could material be recycled if returned to basal components?"
Abathur
The Ur-Sequencer stops devouring the Essence, turning with a bloodsoaked mouth to Lilith proper, "Essence, never lost until death, only shape altered."
Lilith
She freezes under Abathur's full examination, but stands firm, "Would artifact have no use to Zerg?"
Abathur
"Only purpose, removal of dominant infested mind." He's stiff and still, considering the situation at the speed of thought. "Query, relationship with Queen of Blades, altered?"
Lilith
She stops and stares at Abathur, her own calculations running on loop. "Relationship misguided. Unwanted by Queen. Ceased contact several months ago." She hadn't realized this slipped past Abathur. "Addendum, Zerg need further understanding of Terran relationships if Terran forms continue to be created. Emotions difficult. Instability, ruinous." She added, "Hypothesis proved accurate, new relationship led to new deal. New deal increased in power."
Abathur
"Zerg understand Terran. Instability, point." The Ur-Sequencer states, "Debate common with Overmind. Reasons, beyond me." He grumbles, close to annoyed.
"Neverborn experiment successful. Power of Lilith, significant. Would be threat to Swarm Unity if allowed back in."
Lilith
"Not goal. Do not need to be in Swarm Unity to want Swarm success." She looks to Ana, "Motivations to similar Terran concepts. Loyalty. Devotion." She looks to Abathur, "Respect."
He Who Meddles
To abathur "influence by neverborn shown on Queen of blades before removal, Increased instability, aggression, voices in there head, probability high similar symptoms upon lilith perhaps" "verify is key"
Lilith
"Neverborn choice matters. Different types. Powered by different Terran concepts." She points at her own head, "Pure Chance, Obsession compatible with Neverborn." She continues looking at Abathur, "Neverborn allow visions, possibly similar to powerful protoss now available."
Abathur
"Experimental risks, known." He answers the Meddler, finally turning away from Lilith, "Theorized, emotional magnetism. Like, draws, like. Neverborn compatible because Neverborn attracted to compatibility."
Lilith
She was still a bit annoyed, "Education, Terrans have reasons to request death. Most likely cause, primary relationship."
Abathur
"Thanatic instinct known. Present in Zerg as well." The Sequencer answers, "Must be overcome under great stressors. Sharpens fight or flight."
Lilith
She arches an eyebrow at Abathur, wondering if he got the point.
Abathur
"Stating purpose of drive. Completing drive, illogical. Biological adaptation halted." Thinking on how to turn the point into something applicable to Lilith, he continues, one of many eyes locking onto Ana. "Emotional experience, halted."
Lilith
"Hypothesis, lack of emotional experience creates blind-spot. Experiment, Query, What is Lilith relationship with Ana? Which Zerg most compatible personalities?"
Abathur
"Oxytocin buildup, consistent dopamine flow. Mate bond." Abathur describes it in detail, "Zerg posess these qualities, vestigially in last sequence."
Lilith
"Experiment continue, Query, Distressed Terran covered in wounds. Thanatic instinct on display. Cause? Further Experiment, Query, Effect on Terran realtionship." She decided one more, "Further Experiment, Query, Importance of Terran first choice."
Abathur
"Fail to see point. Death useless when could adapt instead."
Lilith
"Education, Terrans turn to most trusted source for comfort. Terrans most loyal to trust and comfort. Impossible to remove, key to psionic and warp abilities. Inability to find Trust or Comfort causes instability. Damaged Infected Terran displaying Thanatic Drive? First choice of comfort garnered the most loyalty." She can't believe he was this dense, she was right the first time when she called him a bookish nerd. "Also signify major change in dominant relationship."
Abathur
"Solution already evolved." He answers, "Terrans infested, plural. Form net of interconnected support."
He Who Meddles
As two zerglings in a pod
Lilith
"Complication, some damage to Terran Psyche irrepable without willing consent. Query, Artifact useful."
Abathur
"Argument understood. Justifying acquisition of artefact." Abathur answers, sure of his prediction. "Organism Lilith given freedom from Swarm, experimentally. Actions as a whole detail study. "
"Will not interfere."
Lilith
"Query, Ur-Sequencer capable of maintaining unity."
Abathur
"Refuse to. Adaptations to do so would reduce overall Sequencing."
Lilith
"May be prudent to find Zagara Essence, Organism Lilith and Organism Ana leaving, need ship." She pinches the bridge of her nose as well, "Suggestion, Find relevence of Terran concept 'Mentor.'" Then she stopped, "Query, decline possible, emotional experimentation efficient for Ur-Sequencer due to environmental or biological factors."
Abathur
"Behemoth, prepared. Need psychic assistance to Warp. Experiment with Neverborn." He answers, ignoring the request for emotional experimentation.
Lilith
She nods, "Noted." Then she pauses a moment longer. "Wish to create environment where emotions beneficial. Increase efficiency. Hypothesis. Possible."
Abathur
"Environment already exists. Organism Abathur does not partake."
Lilith
"Noted, dropping subject. Warning, discussions of... Celebration. No plans made yet." She can't believe she was actually saying this out loud, "New Unity sentimental. Abathur core of affections regardless of efforts. Wisdom inspires loyalty."
Abathur
The Sequencer grumbles something unintelligible, focusing on work now that the conversation has moved past important topics.
Lilith
"Will warn ahead of time. Benefit of loyalty." She rolled her eyes, if he removed all of his emotions then how could he be so sassy and grumbly all the time. The Worm was exhausting, but he cared in his weird way, she turned to Ana, "Organi—" She stopped herself, "Hey Ana, I think Zhakarov wanted to talk at some point." She reached out her hand for the other's.
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
She takes the other woman's hand, admitting, "It's so strange when you talk like that, it reverberates."
Lilith
"See, I know right? It's things like that I think shows he cares." She says as she moves to wait outside, not to bother Abathur with his work. "I can't prove it, but I think anyone with a body could do it, because that's what Abathur thinks is most efficient. I like to think I'm showing deference. He gets more conversational too, but maybe it's because I never ask for anything. I just like chatting. I wonder if that's how I'm an improvement, maybe he saw the benefits of not being a massive cu—" She stopped herself, "Nevermind."
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
She squeezes Lilith's hand, shifting the topic. "What's a Behemoth? Are we going to ride one?"
Lilith
"It's like a giant manatee with orbs, it's got four giant ones, it's the largest space faring creature in our galaxy, how big it is here, who knows." She thought. "He said they were prepared, we could go see one?"
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
"Sure, we'd have to go up into the void, then?" She says, looking at a floating overlord nearby.
Lilith
"Huh, I actually have no-idea if we can expose ourselves to open space like that. I should probably look into that before I try to break through the atmosphere." Lilith stopped looking upwards.
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
"I saw Zhakarov float up on one of those!" She raises a finger to point at the gasbag, lingering around.
Lilith
Lilith called out to the Overlord, signalling it to come down. "Yeah we're not doing anything, let's get up there."
Overlord
The Overlord comes over, lowering to allow both women to settle in the odd hollow cavities of its body. The creature lifts up, moving at a sluggish pace for dozens of minutes until it finally breaches the atmosphere, a sound like air sucked through a tube as the creature flexes and tightens itself to keep oxygen inside. Its membranous interior tightens until it can be seen through clearly, letting starlight stream in whilst the colossal visage of a Behemoth floats in the distance, Large, bulbous organism drinking in atmosphere for sustenance through a miles long tendril, titanic oxygen stores and reprocessing chambers visible as bulbs on its surface.
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
"Amazing." She whispers to herself, in wonderment at the living, breathing psychic amplifier before her. "It's so large. Its mind is titanic."
Lilith
"Is it?" She asks, "How do you know?" She looks out into space at the behemoth, "I've never been very good with Psi stuff."
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
"Even from here its reaching out, it wants a destination. It wants to feel its lungs empty from exertion, its skin burn from solar winds, it wants to drink of new worlds and see new, strange places." She idly mumbles, "Its guiding me, how to open a gate, how to let it do so. I-I think I could?"
Lilith
"Holy shit Ana, you're brilliant, fuck. I love you." She forgets herself and kisses her deeply, "We have to tell the others!" Then she stops and looks around. Peeking over the sides of the Overlord. Staring at the Behemoth. "Maybe we tell them in... Thirty to Forty five minutes?" She says with a sharp smirk.
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
"I-uhm-I mean-" She stutters, "Maybe an hour?"
Lilith
"Are you asking or telling me?" Lilith's eyes flash with bright pink desire.
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
"Telling." She meets her gaze with a wilting bravery.
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Zhakarov's Negotiations
Princess Scribe
A swelled-headed, gossipy, coquette gadabout.
- Location
- Venus
- Pronouns
- She/Her
==============================================================
Lilith
"Zhakarov... Is she gone?" Lilith whispers to a roach, "I learned something important, but I need discretion. I'm... Worried."
Zhakarov
Zhakarov projects a faint image to better facilitate conversation, "What have you found Lilith?"
Lilith
She looks back to Ana... "This needs to stay between Unity not... Not anyone who would look to abuse it..." Quietly, almost in a whisper she says, "Ana can sense the Behemoths, she thinks she can traverse the warp."
Zhakarov
"I am not in the Unity currently. I will partition this memory from the swarm. This is an excellent finding. Our current overlord hybrids are not able to open portals consistently."
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
"Yes, I think. The behemoths have the instincts inside, as if they want to do it but simply cannot."
Zhakarov
He nods to Anastasia, "This is unsurprising. The Behemoths were created for warp traversal. They simply required the Overmind to initiate the warp."
Lilith
"Would it be possible..." She halted, she didn't know how Unity felt about Zhren's death, how... Awful she was when her obsession was so unhealthy. "Would it be possible to take a behemoth on a diplomatic mission, with my own, smaller swarm? I am unable to be in Unity, but I believe I can control Zerg outside of this place's maximum presence. It would... Please me, to no longer be so close to... Inner stressors."
Zhakarov
"There would be no issue from the swarm's perspective. I can provide you with whatever you require for your expedition via my production substrate. However my findings are that the current terrans are extremely xenophobic. It is very likely they would attempt to kill you on contact."
Lilith
She nods, "Ok, keep in touch! I'm going to see if we can work some things out, I may be contacting the Magos Genetor with possible Nobility paperwork."
Zhakarov
"We should have acquired a patent of nobility as per our negotiations with the Magos. Please forward your findings to me."
Lilith
"Anastasia, do Nobles have paperwork? Is there a Noble that'd only be known here that'd still have enough presence and importance that we could pull rank or at least be an asset to the Magos?" Her eyes fall and she squeezes her arm, "I want to see other world's with you, I want to also help our Swarm so we're safe. But I don't want to take you somewhere where you're treated so... God, you make it sound terrible."
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
She thinks, and then nods. "The Magos Genetor? I wouldn't think so, they lie separate from humanity in many ways." She explains, "But, the Mechanicum has never treated me anymore coldly than anyone else. The flesh is weak, why would they care about another way they'd think it weak?" The joke is self-deprecating, but does seem to actually be a reasonably decent memory. "I was never more than a means to an end for them. At worst, something to handle business with, at best, something to ask about."
"Its fine, Lilith, they can only hurl insults, my souls purity is evident to any tests they can concoct despite my changes." Ana nods, "We should be able to acquire the certificate of humanity from the Magos, I think I remember transmitting those once or twice?"
Lilith
"Do you want to go? I won't leave without you if you'd rather stay." She looks at her with a smile, "We could just... Go have a vacation, do some socializing then come back."
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
"You wanted to go somewhere, right?" She says, seeing an opportunity, "What sort of lover would I be if I didn't indulge you~."
Immediately after the bravery fizzles and she's looking to see if she was too brazen.
Lilith
Lilith's eyes light up, this is all she ever wanted. She was so stupid to try and find it anywhere else. She is actually struck speechles at how far Ana has grown in a few months, but still ultimately Lilith was a brat. She whispers into Ana's ear, "Well what kind of lover would I be if I didn't thank you... properly later..." As she spoke she hooked a hand behind to the small of her back letting chilly fingers send shivers down Anatasia's spine.
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
"I-I didn't t-think this through." She admits, hands clenching and unclenching as the touch, a small nervous laugh coming over her. "But-uhm-where would we go?"
Lilith
"I don't know we'd start at the knees and see what we find north, why?" She said with a wink, then smiling, "It's a Galaxy, we could go... anywhere. As long as we gladhand a bit, make some friends, get a few Zerg spores out. Start an embassy? That's all that's needed. A world where we can just go find our own Paradise"
"I mean... All the wealth on the planet belongs to the eight of us, so maybe somewhere we could get a nice dinner?" Her eyes glitter like diamonds. "How much does a billion thrones buy us?"
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
Mind resetting, she finally gets words out. "O-h, a small ship?" Ana's answer is a little frazzled. "The worlds around us are very efficient, but, depending on how far we can go, I think there's a Pleasure World within a few hundred light years?"
Lilith
Her eye brows raise, "They literally call them pleasure worlds? I can't wait." Back to business Lilith, focus. "Will the Magos Genetor be able to tell we're leaving? Or do you think we could slip off. On the Behemoth."
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
Ana shakes her head, "We could simply put a body in-between us. Be on the other side of a large asteroid, they'll see nothing."
Zhakarov
"Anastasia, would you be willing to donate your cerebellum for study?"
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
"W-what?"
Zhakarov
"I am collaborating with Magos Ixion to study psionically active brain tissue. You are the only infested terran with psionic potential possible as Kerrigan has already refused to give samples."
Lilith
"What's happening?" Lilith snaps her attention to Ana seeing her distressed, her blades fire out of her arms. "Are you ok?"
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
"I-I." She tries to figure out how to respond to that, "I-uhm, sorry. I'm... not comfortable with that." She answers the voice in her mind.
Turning to Lilith, "O-oh, Zhakarov just had an odd ask." Ana then goes to a whisper, "I can say no to Zhakarov, right?"
Zhakarov
"Very well. Please inform me if you change your mind."
Lilith
"You can say no to anyone." Then she stops, "Ok, actually that's not entirely true, but... Yeah, Zhakarov is Unity highest ranking Zerg outside of maybe Kerrigan, who is a violent psychopath. He'll be understanding. Tell Zigzy or any other member of unity to fuck off if they're making you uncomfortable. You're a commander too, I'll make them fall in line if they give you problems." She smiles, "Ana, you outrank me I can't be in Unity. You're literally the boss."
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
"Alright, he seems pleasant, but I didn't want to...test any lines." Anastasia confesses, smiling at Lilith's words, "I just... am cautious of these things."
==============================================================
Zhakarov
Zhakarov opens a vox channel to the Magos "Magos Genetor Ixion-99487, I wish to discuss our further status within the wider Terran society."
Magos Genetor Ixion-99487
"Request acknowledged." The crackling speaker responds, "Request clarifications at own pace."
Zhakarov
"We wish to initiate broader diplomatic contact. It is unlikely that we will be able to pass as fully human so we will need to offer sufficient value to offset our irregularities. What shortcomings do the nearby worlds have that we could fill?"
Magos Genetor Ixion-99487
"The realm of Ultramar is well managed. I do not know of any obvious issues your creatures could handle." He answers coldly, "Unless you can contribute meaningfully to its defenses."
Zhakarov
"It depends on the defense in question. Our naval assets are lacking currently. However you have seen our capabilities on this world. We can offer equivalents as mercenaries or auxiliaries if they would be accepted."
Magos Genetor Ixion-99487
"Mercenary work? A Rogue Trader could employ you for a sum of their colossal wealth, yes."
Zhakarov
"Possibly more importantly is there a way to come into contact with those in the surrounding systems?"
Magos Genetor Ixion-99487
"You have an Astropath, no?" The Magos responds, "Have them reach out."
Zhakarov
"Interesting, we will consider it. But what about your own studies? Is there anything you would request of us?"
Magos Genetor Ixion-99487
"I already have several samples. Would request sample of psychically active hive member."
"Astropath cranial matter would do."
Zhakarov
"How much cranial matter?"
Magos Genetor Ixion-99487
"If impossible to acquire whole brain, merely cerebellum would do."
Zhakarov
"Acquiring samples of the astropath is not currently possible. We could provide psionically active material from another strain. Though we acknowledge they are less potent."
Magos Genetor Ixion-99487
"Matter unimportant, will requisition cloned psyker tissue when communications are available for testing." He answers coldly. "Restore links to the Cult Mechanicus, so I may utilize resources."
Zhakarov
Zhakarov contacted Anastasia with a more private connection, a benefit of still being of the Unity,"Anastasia, the Magos wishes to contact the cult Mechanicus. Can you do this and would it be wise?"
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
Looking up to the direction of the ephemeral voice as her grip on Lilith's hand tightens, she says, "I think it would be a risk. They could use it to call a fleet."
Zhakarov
"Would you not be responsible for sending the message?"
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
"The Cult Mechanicus has... complex encoding. Usually they make me send an image, usually from a dataslate of strange alphanumeric sequences."
Zhakarov
"Hmm, we haven't been able to decode their work yet. Perhaps not then."
Zhakarov calls for the Unity, "I have been in discussion with the Magos about this studies in order to facilitate continued collaboration. Anastasia recommends against this course of action as the Magos could use such a communication to call for a fleet to destroy us. However on consideration the ships coming to collect our tithe will be here in less than two years. The Magos could easily communicate through them, or indeed betray us instantly at that point."
"So the question becomes do we deny the Magos's connection now and degrade our relationship or sacrifice the year's worth of preparation we could make for a potential attack."
In a quiet place, far from the Queen of Blades.
==============================================================Lilith
"Zhakarov... Is she gone?" Lilith whispers to a roach, "I learned something important, but I need discretion. I'm... Worried."
Zhakarov
Zhakarov projects a faint image to better facilitate conversation, "What have you found Lilith?"
Lilith
She looks back to Ana... "This needs to stay between Unity not... Not anyone who would look to abuse it..." Quietly, almost in a whisper she says, "Ana can sense the Behemoths, she thinks she can traverse the warp."
Zhakarov
"I am not in the Unity currently. I will partition this memory from the swarm. This is an excellent finding. Our current overlord hybrids are not able to open portals consistently."
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
"Yes, I think. The behemoths have the instincts inside, as if they want to do it but simply cannot."
Zhakarov
He nods to Anastasia, "This is unsurprising. The Behemoths were created for warp traversal. They simply required the Overmind to initiate the warp."
Lilith
"Would it be possible..." She halted, she didn't know how Unity felt about Zhren's death, how... Awful she was when her obsession was so unhealthy. "Would it be possible to take a behemoth on a diplomatic mission, with my own, smaller swarm? I am unable to be in Unity, but I believe I can control Zerg outside of this place's maximum presence. It would... Please me, to no longer be so close to... Inner stressors."
Zhakarov
"There would be no issue from the swarm's perspective. I can provide you with whatever you require for your expedition via my production substrate. However my findings are that the current terrans are extremely xenophobic. It is very likely they would attempt to kill you on contact."
Lilith
She nods, "Ok, keep in touch! I'm going to see if we can work some things out, I may be contacting the Magos Genetor with possible Nobility paperwork."
Zhakarov
"We should have acquired a patent of nobility as per our negotiations with the Magos. Please forward your findings to me."
Lilith
"Anastasia, do Nobles have paperwork? Is there a Noble that'd only be known here that'd still have enough presence and importance that we could pull rank or at least be an asset to the Magos?" Her eyes fall and she squeezes her arm, "I want to see other world's with you, I want to also help our Swarm so we're safe. But I don't want to take you somewhere where you're treated so... God, you make it sound terrible."
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
She thinks, and then nods. "The Magos Genetor? I wouldn't think so, they lie separate from humanity in many ways." She explains, "But, the Mechanicum has never treated me anymore coldly than anyone else. The flesh is weak, why would they care about another way they'd think it weak?" The joke is self-deprecating, but does seem to actually be a reasonably decent memory. "I was never more than a means to an end for them. At worst, something to handle business with, at best, something to ask about."
"Its fine, Lilith, they can only hurl insults, my souls purity is evident to any tests they can concoct despite my changes." Ana nods, "We should be able to acquire the certificate of humanity from the Magos, I think I remember transmitting those once or twice?"
Lilith
"Do you want to go? I won't leave without you if you'd rather stay." She looks at her with a smile, "We could just... Go have a vacation, do some socializing then come back."
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
"You wanted to go somewhere, right?" She says, seeing an opportunity, "What sort of lover would I be if I didn't indulge you~."
Immediately after the bravery fizzles and she's looking to see if she was too brazen.
Lilith
Lilith's eyes light up, this is all she ever wanted. She was so stupid to try and find it anywhere else. She is actually struck speechles at how far Ana has grown in a few months, but still ultimately Lilith was a brat. She whispers into Ana's ear, "Well what kind of lover would I be if I didn't thank you... properly later..." As she spoke she hooked a hand behind to the small of her back letting chilly fingers send shivers down Anatasia's spine.
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
"I-I didn't t-think this through." She admits, hands clenching and unclenching as the touch, a small nervous laugh coming over her. "But-uhm-where would we go?"
Lilith
"I don't know we'd start at the knees and see what we find north, why?" She said with a wink, then smiling, "It's a Galaxy, we could go... anywhere. As long as we gladhand a bit, make some friends, get a few Zerg spores out. Start an embassy? That's all that's needed. A world where we can just go find our own Paradise"
"I mean... All the wealth on the planet belongs to the eight of us, so maybe somewhere we could get a nice dinner?" Her eyes glitter like diamonds. "How much does a billion thrones buy us?"
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
Mind resetting, she finally gets words out. "O-h, a small ship?" Ana's answer is a little frazzled. "The worlds around us are very efficient, but, depending on how far we can go, I think there's a Pleasure World within a few hundred light years?"
Lilith
Her eye brows raise, "They literally call them pleasure worlds? I can't wait." Back to business Lilith, focus. "Will the Magos Genetor be able to tell we're leaving? Or do you think we could slip off. On the Behemoth."
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
Ana shakes her head, "We could simply put a body in-between us. Be on the other side of a large asteroid, they'll see nothing."
Zhakarov
"Anastasia, would you be willing to donate your cerebellum for study?"
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
"W-what?"
Zhakarov
"I am collaborating with Magos Ixion to study psionically active brain tissue. You are the only infested terran with psionic potential possible as Kerrigan has already refused to give samples."
Lilith
"What's happening?" Lilith snaps her attention to Ana seeing her distressed, her blades fire out of her arms. "Are you ok?"
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
"I-I." She tries to figure out how to respond to that, "I-uhm, sorry. I'm... not comfortable with that." She answers the voice in her mind.
Turning to Lilith, "O-oh, Zhakarov just had an odd ask." Ana then goes to a whisper, "I can say no to Zhakarov, right?"
Zhakarov
"Very well. Please inform me if you change your mind."
Lilith
"You can say no to anyone." Then she stops, "Ok, actually that's not entirely true, but... Yeah, Zhakarov is Unity highest ranking Zerg outside of maybe Kerrigan, who is a violent psychopath. He'll be understanding. Tell Zigzy or any other member of unity to fuck off if they're making you uncomfortable. You're a commander too, I'll make them fall in line if they give you problems." She smiles, "Ana, you outrank me I can't be in Unity. You're literally the boss."
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
"Alright, he seems pleasant, but I didn't want to...test any lines." Anastasia confesses, smiling at Lilith's words, "I just... am cautious of these things."
==============================================================
At the Vox machinery, deep in the Zerg Hive
==============================================================Zhakarov
Zhakarov opens a vox channel to the Magos "Magos Genetor Ixion-99487, I wish to discuss our further status within the wider Terran society."
Magos Genetor Ixion-99487
"Request acknowledged." The crackling speaker responds, "Request clarifications at own pace."
Zhakarov
"We wish to initiate broader diplomatic contact. It is unlikely that we will be able to pass as fully human so we will need to offer sufficient value to offset our irregularities. What shortcomings do the nearby worlds have that we could fill?"
Magos Genetor Ixion-99487
"The realm of Ultramar is well managed. I do not know of any obvious issues your creatures could handle." He answers coldly, "Unless you can contribute meaningfully to its defenses."
Zhakarov
"It depends on the defense in question. Our naval assets are lacking currently. However you have seen our capabilities on this world. We can offer equivalents as mercenaries or auxiliaries if they would be accepted."
Magos Genetor Ixion-99487
"Mercenary work? A Rogue Trader could employ you for a sum of their colossal wealth, yes."
Zhakarov
"Possibly more importantly is there a way to come into contact with those in the surrounding systems?"
Magos Genetor Ixion-99487
"You have an Astropath, no?" The Magos responds, "Have them reach out."
Zhakarov
"Interesting, we will consider it. But what about your own studies? Is there anything you would request of us?"
Magos Genetor Ixion-99487
"I already have several samples. Would request sample of psychically active hive member."
"Astropath cranial matter would do."
Zhakarov
"How much cranial matter?"
Magos Genetor Ixion-99487
"If impossible to acquire whole brain, merely cerebellum would do."
Zhakarov
"Acquiring samples of the astropath is not currently possible. We could provide psionically active material from another strain. Though we acknowledge they are less potent."
Magos Genetor Ixion-99487
"Matter unimportant, will requisition cloned psyker tissue when communications are available for testing." He answers coldly. "Restore links to the Cult Mechanicus, so I may utilize resources."
Zhakarov
Zhakarov contacted Anastasia with a more private connection, a benefit of still being of the Unity,"Anastasia, the Magos wishes to contact the cult Mechanicus. Can you do this and would it be wise?"
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
Looking up to the direction of the ephemeral voice as her grip on Lilith's hand tightens, she says, "I think it would be a risk. They could use it to call a fleet."
Zhakarov
"Would you not be responsible for sending the message?"
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
"The Cult Mechanicus has... complex encoding. Usually they make me send an image, usually from a dataslate of strange alphanumeric sequences."
Zhakarov
"Hmm, we haven't been able to decode their work yet. Perhaps not then."
Zhakarov calls for the Unity, "I have been in discussion with the Magos about this studies in order to facilitate continued collaboration. Anastasia recommends against this course of action as the Magos could use such a communication to call for a fleet to destroy us. However on consideration the ships coming to collect our tithe will be here in less than two years. The Magos could easily communicate through them, or indeed betray us instantly at that point."
"So the question becomes do we deny the Magos's connection now and degrade our relationship or sacrifice the year's worth of preparation we could make for a potential attack."
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Zhakarov: "Anastasia isn't even willing to donate her brain for the swarm. So inconsiderate."
Queen of Blades-2
Princess Scribe
A swelled-headed, gossipy, coquette gadabout.
- Location
- Venus
- Pronouns
- She/Her
==============================================================
Seneschal Zhakarov
Zhakarov realizes that in the entire last year the brief conference was the full extent of the Queen of Blades interaction with the rest of the swarm. That feels anomalous to the infested terran. The Unity has been planning and organizing, but the Queen has not given any direction. So Zhakarov casts his mind into the hivemind looking to check on Kerrigan.
Sarah Kerrigan, The Queen of Blades
The Queen lingers on her throne, staring at a zergling with reduced fighting capacity. She continually taps her right hand on the edge of it and then stands, going to a specific portion of wall, taking a breath in, and then returning to the throne to continue her tapping. After hours of that, she walks among the dye fields, stares at the sky with disdain and audibly considers invading the nearest starsystem, before returning to breathe the air of that specific part of Hatchery again.
All in all, nothing out of the ordinary for the Queen of Blades.
Seneschal Zhakarov
"Are you bored my Queen?"
Sarah Kerrigan, The Queen of Blades
Her head snaps towards the ephemeral direction, "I can occupy myself, Zhakarov. Is there a matter that needs my attention."
Seneschal Zhakarov
"Perhaps not your attention, but your consideration. I wish to inform you of our current forecasts and plans for the Unity in case you wish to alter our direction. First we have collated information for the ruins of this planet on our current location." Zhakarov transmits the local starmap. "We appear to be in a considerably heavily fortified local Terran polity. My current simulations indicate that we would not survive a sustained planetary bombardment given that their vessels are in the intermediate range between old Terran and Protoss capabilities. As such since our ability to leave this system is currently constrained we plan to enact a two pronged approach."
"First as you ordered we are devoting most of the swarm's sequencers and evolutionary chambers to the problem of maintaining the Hivemind at interstellar distances. Second we are subsuming the identify of the previous ruling class on this planet. In order to do this we need to pay off the local tax collectors who will be arriving next year. The material side is trivial. The taxes the local terrans expect requires a mere fraction of a percent of our hive cluster's output. However there is the possibility that they may require diplomatic negotiations. Do you wish to be part of this or leave it to me and Pope?"
Sarah Kerrigan, The Queen of Blades
"I am the Queen, the Swarm will not be spoken to without me present." She barks, an immediate annoyance at the idea, "Our disadvantage in space, fix it. Whatever the cost, I will not be denied in the void or anywhere else."
Seneschal Zhakarov
"I will transfer what we have learned of the planetary nobles here then." Zhakarov pauses and sounds contrite, "As for the void difference we are trying my queen, but it is difficult. The terran energy generation capabilities match that of the Protoss and only their inferior weaponry makes a defense even possible. And we cannot rely on numbers. We estimate they out mass us by two to three orders of magnitude."
He pauses again and then grudgingly provides an answer, "It would harm our long term growth in this system, but I could expand our evolutionary capability by an order of magnitude to attempt to adapt to their warships."
Sarah Kerrigan, The Queen of Blades
She growls, eyebrow twitching. "I didn't ask if it was difficult, Zhakarov. Don't turn into Abathur on me, you aren't as tough."
"We must rely on inventiveness where our quality can't match. Compare their maneuverability, firing arcs, they have weaknesses, find them."
Seneschal Zhakarov
"I am reverse engineering the warship in orbit as we speak. Do you have experience in naval combat my queen? Do you wish to be part of this project?"
Sarah Kerrigan, The Queen of Blades
"I infested the Leviathan, Zhakarov." The Queen pridefully states, "I know spacecraft like the back of my hand."
She looks towards the grand Evolution Chambers in the distance, "Maybe I should solve the Swarm's problems, again."
Seneschal Zhakarov
"We would greatly benefit from your insights my queen. The swarm has evolved excellently under your guidance."
Sarah Kerrigan, The Queen of Blades
"Don't kiss my ass Zhakarov, I got enough of that."
Seneschal Zhakarov
"It is less flattery and more the fact that I greatly desire improved space capabilities. Even regaining the leviathans would help if you remember how to recreate their essence. The behemoths are inadequate for the resource transfers I wish to make. I do not like being stuck in one system my queen."
"Any assistance you can provide would be greatly appreciated," Zhakarov adds. He is now worried that he pushed too hard and Kerrigan will decide not to help.
Sarah Kerrigan, The Queen of Blades
"Tell me which of the Evolution chambers is working on this. I'll get to it when I get to it."
Seneschal Zhakarov
Zhakarov imparts the location of the ten million evolution chambers he has assigned to the project.
"Also on a personal note the Unity is planning to organize a party for Abathur as thanks for his many millions of years of service to the swarm. You are of course invited. Once we figure out how to make a cake."
Sarah Kerrigan, The Queen of Blades
She quirks an eyebrow, "How much Terran Essence have you forcefed Abathur that he agreed to that?"
Seneschal Zhakarov
"He hasn't agreed yet. We're working on it."
Sarah Kerrigan, The Queen of Blades
"What-the fucking hell was that!?" She shouts, telekinetically tearing a hole out of a boulder.
Seneschal Zhakarov
Zhakarov winces, "Zrug was interrogating the mind of the vessel in orbit. It appears to have countered with some form of corrupted data."
Sarah Kerrigan, The Queen of Blades
"Go handle it Zhakarov. Before it starts shooting or explodes" She dismisses Zhakarov entirely, marching towards the Evolution chambers.
Seneschal Zhakarov
Zhakarov's projection winks out has his attention returns to the ship.
In The Queen of Blades Throne Room
==============================================================Seneschal Zhakarov
Zhakarov realizes that in the entire last year the brief conference was the full extent of the Queen of Blades interaction with the rest of the swarm. That feels anomalous to the infested terran. The Unity has been planning and organizing, but the Queen has not given any direction. So Zhakarov casts his mind into the hivemind looking to check on Kerrigan.
Sarah Kerrigan, The Queen of Blades
The Queen lingers on her throne, staring at a zergling with reduced fighting capacity. She continually taps her right hand on the edge of it and then stands, going to a specific portion of wall, taking a breath in, and then returning to the throne to continue her tapping. After hours of that, she walks among the dye fields, stares at the sky with disdain and audibly considers invading the nearest starsystem, before returning to breathe the air of that specific part of Hatchery again.
All in all, nothing out of the ordinary for the Queen of Blades.
Seneschal Zhakarov
"Are you bored my Queen?"
Sarah Kerrigan, The Queen of Blades
Her head snaps towards the ephemeral direction, "I can occupy myself, Zhakarov. Is there a matter that needs my attention."
Seneschal Zhakarov
"Perhaps not your attention, but your consideration. I wish to inform you of our current forecasts and plans for the Unity in case you wish to alter our direction. First we have collated information for the ruins of this planet on our current location." Zhakarov transmits the local starmap. "We appear to be in a considerably heavily fortified local Terran polity. My current simulations indicate that we would not survive a sustained planetary bombardment given that their vessels are in the intermediate range between old Terran and Protoss capabilities. As such since our ability to leave this system is currently constrained we plan to enact a two pronged approach."
"First as you ordered we are devoting most of the swarm's sequencers and evolutionary chambers to the problem of maintaining the Hivemind at interstellar distances. Second we are subsuming the identify of the previous ruling class on this planet. In order to do this we need to pay off the local tax collectors who will be arriving next year. The material side is trivial. The taxes the local terrans expect requires a mere fraction of a percent of our hive cluster's output. However there is the possibility that they may require diplomatic negotiations. Do you wish to be part of this or leave it to me and Pope?"
Sarah Kerrigan, The Queen of Blades
"I am the Queen, the Swarm will not be spoken to without me present." She barks, an immediate annoyance at the idea, "Our disadvantage in space, fix it. Whatever the cost, I will not be denied in the void or anywhere else."
Seneschal Zhakarov
"I will transfer what we have learned of the planetary nobles here then." Zhakarov pauses and sounds contrite, "As for the void difference we are trying my queen, but it is difficult. The terran energy generation capabilities match that of the Protoss and only their inferior weaponry makes a defense even possible. And we cannot rely on numbers. We estimate they out mass us by two to three orders of magnitude."
He pauses again and then grudgingly provides an answer, "It would harm our long term growth in this system, but I could expand our evolutionary capability by an order of magnitude to attempt to adapt to their warships."
Sarah Kerrigan, The Queen of Blades
She growls, eyebrow twitching. "I didn't ask if it was difficult, Zhakarov. Don't turn into Abathur on me, you aren't as tough."
"We must rely on inventiveness where our quality can't match. Compare their maneuverability, firing arcs, they have weaknesses, find them."
Seneschal Zhakarov
"I am reverse engineering the warship in orbit as we speak. Do you have experience in naval combat my queen? Do you wish to be part of this project?"
Sarah Kerrigan, The Queen of Blades
"I infested the Leviathan, Zhakarov." The Queen pridefully states, "I know spacecraft like the back of my hand."
She looks towards the grand Evolution Chambers in the distance, "Maybe I should solve the Swarm's problems, again."
Seneschal Zhakarov
"We would greatly benefit from your insights my queen. The swarm has evolved excellently under your guidance."
Sarah Kerrigan, The Queen of Blades
"Don't kiss my ass Zhakarov, I got enough of that."
Seneschal Zhakarov
"It is less flattery and more the fact that I greatly desire improved space capabilities. Even regaining the leviathans would help if you remember how to recreate their essence. The behemoths are inadequate for the resource transfers I wish to make. I do not like being stuck in one system my queen."
"Any assistance you can provide would be greatly appreciated," Zhakarov adds. He is now worried that he pushed too hard and Kerrigan will decide not to help.
Sarah Kerrigan, The Queen of Blades
"Tell me which of the Evolution chambers is working on this. I'll get to it when I get to it."
Seneschal Zhakarov
Zhakarov imparts the location of the ten million evolution chambers he has assigned to the project.
"Also on a personal note the Unity is planning to organize a party for Abathur as thanks for his many millions of years of service to the swarm. You are of course invited. Once we figure out how to make a cake."
Sarah Kerrigan, The Queen of Blades
She quirks an eyebrow, "How much Terran Essence have you forcefed Abathur that he agreed to that?"
Seneschal Zhakarov
"He hasn't agreed yet. We're working on it."
Sarah Kerrigan, The Queen of Blades
"What-the fucking hell was that!?" She shouts, telekinetically tearing a hole out of a boulder.
Seneschal Zhakarov
Zhakarov winces, "Zrug was interrogating the mind of the vessel in orbit. It appears to have countered with some form of corrupted data."
Sarah Kerrigan, The Queen of Blades
"Go handle it Zhakarov. Before it starts shooting or explodes" She dismisses Zhakarov entirely, marching towards the Evolution chambers.
Seneschal Zhakarov
Zhakarov's projection winks out has his attention returns to the ship.
Last edited:
Courting the Magos
Princess Scribe
A swelled-headed, gossipy, coquette gadabout.
- Location
- Venus
- Pronouns
- She/Her
==============================================================
Lilith
"Hey Ana, I know you're really concerned, and I agree, but the problem is what we do with this Magos defines us. It decides who we were when we first had a chance at peace with the wider galaxy." She looks at the destroyed buildings, "Ermm... Ok, well second thing. The first thing was pretty bad. I can hear any concerns, and if you don't want to do it, that's completely up to you. I'm not forcing you. We can even talk it out a bit first."
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
"I'm just… scared." She confesses, "I've been looking into his mind, it's difficult, but ever since I changed I can hear people much further."
"He's so cold, and sometimes so fast, I can't predict or know what he will do because he's not human-not really."
Lilith
Lilith nods, "Maybe it's time I talk to him, there's more specific questions I'd like to ask, maybe if he hears someone more friendly and human that'll sound better! (You guys say human right, not Terran? Probably a good first step.) You'll be here to give me a read. Thumbs up if he likes something, thumbs down if he hates it."
Ana and Lilith walk over to the Vox and Lilith gives her a smile "Ok, so it's pronounced Magos Genetor Ixion-99487 right? Ok." She nods, and starts the call, "Hello <3~ Magos Genetor Ixion-99487, you've been talking to our more science minded types, but we're discussing matters of diplomacy. My name is Lilith, Lilith Von Illar, It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance, are you busy right now? Or should I call back later?"
Magos Genetor Ixion-99487
"New member of House Illar? Acknowledged." The droning voice of the Magos rumbles, "You do not distract me."
Lilith
"We wanted to let you make your call, we're trusting each other, we're helping each other. There's no reason to harm each other. You were of course, not the cause, or negligent, you were our savior, I wanted to work together how to pitch that. You mentioned a rogue trader earlier, and I wanted to know if there was anything we could say about you to make you look better." She tried to make her words smooth like honey, and slide like silk.
"Or not say even! If we work together, it'd be a boon to both of us, we owe much to you, and we haven't forgotten your importance. If any of your research lead to biological improvements or inspirations, could you send that down to us! Since the flesh is weak and worthless, giving your scraps you've learned so far to abhumans surely would be acceptable? Science leads to discoveries, worthless discoveries for one, but monumental for the other! Like making pennicilin from rubber."
Magos Genetor Ixion-99487
"Your swarm has evolved a negotiation organism, understood." The Magos answers in a robotic drone, "The science of mankind will not be willingly provided by me outside of rare exchanges. However." He stops, a rumble of electronic static sounding, "Once contact with the Cult Mechanicus is restored and the records of your abhumanity are in stone, I could be convinced to negotiate further."
Lilith
"Is it at all possible we have the meeting in such a way, where we can observe? Trust but verify is a big green flag for diplomacy."
Magos Genetor Ixion-99487
"If Astropath Illar is still living, their Warp-affliction would allow them to link my mind to a distant target."
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
She shakes her head, mentally bonding to Lilith and saying, "We would never even knoww their true conversation, it would be hidden in the lightspeed processing of their machine minds whilst we heard slow, idle chatter."
Lilith
"Magos Genetor," Lilith said cheerily, "Are you sure? or would we be hearing one thing, while you hear something else? Is there a way to guarantee that? It's fine if not, but if you used a form of communication that was clear I'd have even more reason to trust. And with greater trusts become greater deals. I heard you were looking for brains, we have an infested human born of the swarm with bright red hair. Low level Psi abilities as well, though not nearly as strong Astropath Illar. One of the only one's here as such, I could sweeten the pot after especially if that conversation were had at normal speeds."
Magos Genetor Ixion-99487
"Aggravatingly well informed." He states, "Conversation may take place in High Gothic... written High Gothic. Astropth Illar still has grasper appendages able to dictate mental imags, yes?"
Lilith
"Illar was that an insult? I didn't understand some of the words, he said do you have grasper appendages able to dictate mental images?"
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
"He's asking if I still have hands, I think he means to send letters out and have me write the responses down."
Lilith
"Why'd he say grasper appenda— ick. Ok," She turned back to the vox, "Yes, she is able to write, are you going to use a crazy printer to write them out at the speed of sound, or are you also going to use your grasper appendages?"
She continues, "Because the way I see this going, we open the connection, you show a film reel of images, get a film reel back, and we're still out of the loop."
Magos Genetor Ixion-99487
"I have two hundred and thirty seven grasper appendages, creature." A hint of pride shows through at that, "I will write with a biological limb, my sole remaining."
Lilith
He can be flattered... "I didn't know that was possible, I think the most appendages we have is... 8? I don't know if tentacles count." She twisted the vox cord around her finger, "I think one of those two-hundred and thirty-seven is fine, you worked hard and it would be insulting to not let you use such a great achievement."
Magos Genetor Ixion-99487
"Will this be arranged now or at another time." He ignores the compliments, focusing on his subject of interest."
Lilith
"We can do this now, or if you need time to prepare we're more then happy to accommodate." Lilith said, "Your choice."
Magos Genetor Ixion-99487
"Declare location."
Lilith
"We're at the Vox? Hold on, I'm not science-y." Lilith said, then looked at Ana, "What's our location?"
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
"Uhm, he should be able to triangulate it?"
Lilith
"Sorry, can you not triangulate our position?" Lilith asked, "I thought you could do that."
She looks to Ana, "You just winced really hard are you ok?"
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
She briefly goes distant, jack slacking for half a second before blinking, "I-I'm sorry? I didn't catch that."
Lilith
"Could you repeat Magos Genetor, someone dropped a bottle of rum and we didn't quite catch you." Lilith quickly said, trying to recover.
Magos Genetor Ixion-99487
"Did not realize this was the meeting point. I will arrive by shuttle in four hours." He says, already the noises of fuel pumps and crackling machinery on the other side of the Vox. The line cuts as he begins to prepare.
Lilith
"Oh." Lilith said suddenly. "Oooooh. Ana, please tell Unity. The queen's probably gonna show up, don't mention the marriage until we've had a ceremony and can send her an invitation. I think that's the best way to let her know. He gave us four hours. He's meeting us here. Don't tell them I'm the one who fucked this up."
"Can we blame Gerald? I don't think anyone likes him." Lilith is panicking a bit now. "Or is it Cain? It's something like that."
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
"U-uhm, could we just... not tell her?"
Lilith
"One of them might tell her... Zahk is keeping our secret... So it might be good not to fuck him over on this one?"
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
"She's-they're-oh they're very occupied." She mumbles, looking distant as the Swarm comes over her senses.
Lilith
Lilith ran to the Vox, "Wait, Magos? Magos! Hello?"
She turns to Ana, "What's wrong?"
Magos Genetor Ixion-99487
"Communication acknowledged."
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
"Something about the ship, its-Zhakarov and Zrug are focusing on it. And the Queen is keeping her senses upon it."
Lilith
"Hey, uh... Do we need any formal state of address, to show deference to you or the other side?" Then she quietly says to Ana, "Deadly? Problem? Or something they can just handle, can you ask?"
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
"I'm not sure, the Queen isn't worried-the creep just laughed?"
Magos Genetor Ixion-99487
"I will use any form of address provided. You may refer to me as any two parts of Magos Genetor Ixion-99487."
Lilith
She looks down, stalling a little longer, "Is Ixxion-99487 one parts or two? I didn't here you pause between the word and the number. What about the other side?" She mouthed to Ana what the fuck?
"Also when you said state location, I thought you meant where I was currently, not where we're meeting. We're meeting at a recaff shop in an old city." She looks to Anastasia, Give him the coordinates of our date spot. "We have recaff, but I get it if you're not interested."
Magos Genetor Ixion-99487
"Two, I do not pause. What other side?"
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
"U-uhm, they're calling for more forces." Is transmitted mentally before she refocuses, "Grid coordinate 8333779 Gregor, Magos Ixion." Her voice is very clear, almost like a radio operator when she starts talking pure information.
Lilith
"That was all, it's a lovely place, you'll have a blast." She looks to Ana, we can get there in four hours if we start running now right? And without waiting for an answer she books it, and Ana follows close behind.
At the Vox in the Zerg Hive
==============================================================Lilith
"Hey Ana, I know you're really concerned, and I agree, but the problem is what we do with this Magos defines us. It decides who we were when we first had a chance at peace with the wider galaxy." She looks at the destroyed buildings, "Ermm... Ok, well second thing. The first thing was pretty bad. I can hear any concerns, and if you don't want to do it, that's completely up to you. I'm not forcing you. We can even talk it out a bit first."
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
"I'm just… scared." She confesses, "I've been looking into his mind, it's difficult, but ever since I changed I can hear people much further."
"He's so cold, and sometimes so fast, I can't predict or know what he will do because he's not human-not really."
Lilith
Lilith nods, "Maybe it's time I talk to him, there's more specific questions I'd like to ask, maybe if he hears someone more friendly and human that'll sound better! (You guys say human right, not Terran? Probably a good first step.) You'll be here to give me a read. Thumbs up if he likes something, thumbs down if he hates it."
Ana and Lilith walk over to the Vox and Lilith gives her a smile "Ok, so it's pronounced Magos Genetor Ixion-99487 right? Ok." She nods, and starts the call, "Hello <3~ Magos Genetor Ixion-99487, you've been talking to our more science minded types, but we're discussing matters of diplomacy. My name is Lilith, Lilith Von Illar, It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance, are you busy right now? Or should I call back later?"
Magos Genetor Ixion-99487
"New member of House Illar? Acknowledged." The droning voice of the Magos rumbles, "You do not distract me."
Lilith
"We wanted to let you make your call, we're trusting each other, we're helping each other. There's no reason to harm each other. You were of course, not the cause, or negligent, you were our savior, I wanted to work together how to pitch that. You mentioned a rogue trader earlier, and I wanted to know if there was anything we could say about you to make you look better." She tried to make her words smooth like honey, and slide like silk.
"Or not say even! If we work together, it'd be a boon to both of us, we owe much to you, and we haven't forgotten your importance. If any of your research lead to biological improvements or inspirations, could you send that down to us! Since the flesh is weak and worthless, giving your scraps you've learned so far to abhumans surely would be acceptable? Science leads to discoveries, worthless discoveries for one, but monumental for the other! Like making pennicilin from rubber."
Magos Genetor Ixion-99487
"Your swarm has evolved a negotiation organism, understood." The Magos answers in a robotic drone, "The science of mankind will not be willingly provided by me outside of rare exchanges. However." He stops, a rumble of electronic static sounding, "Once contact with the Cult Mechanicus is restored and the records of your abhumanity are in stone, I could be convinced to negotiate further."
Lilith
"Is it at all possible we have the meeting in such a way, where we can observe? Trust but verify is a big green flag for diplomacy."
Magos Genetor Ixion-99487
"If Astropath Illar is still living, their Warp-affliction would allow them to link my mind to a distant target."
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
She shakes her head, mentally bonding to Lilith and saying, "We would never even knoww their true conversation, it would be hidden in the lightspeed processing of their machine minds whilst we heard slow, idle chatter."
Lilith
"Magos Genetor," Lilith said cheerily, "Are you sure? or would we be hearing one thing, while you hear something else? Is there a way to guarantee that? It's fine if not, but if you used a form of communication that was clear I'd have even more reason to trust. And with greater trusts become greater deals. I heard you were looking for brains, we have an infested human born of the swarm with bright red hair. Low level Psi abilities as well, though not nearly as strong Astropath Illar. One of the only one's here as such, I could sweeten the pot after especially if that conversation were had at normal speeds."
Magos Genetor Ixion-99487
"Aggravatingly well informed." He states, "Conversation may take place in High Gothic... written High Gothic. Astropth Illar still has grasper appendages able to dictate mental imags, yes?"
Lilith
"Illar was that an insult? I didn't understand some of the words, he said do you have grasper appendages able to dictate mental images?"
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
"He's asking if I still have hands, I think he means to send letters out and have me write the responses down."
Lilith
"Why'd he say grasper appenda— ick. Ok," She turned back to the vox, "Yes, she is able to write, are you going to use a crazy printer to write them out at the speed of sound, or are you also going to use your grasper appendages?"
She continues, "Because the way I see this going, we open the connection, you show a film reel of images, get a film reel back, and we're still out of the loop."
Magos Genetor Ixion-99487
"I have two hundred and thirty seven grasper appendages, creature." A hint of pride shows through at that, "I will write with a biological limb, my sole remaining."
Lilith
He can be flattered... "I didn't know that was possible, I think the most appendages we have is... 8? I don't know if tentacles count." She twisted the vox cord around her finger, "I think one of those two-hundred and thirty-seven is fine, you worked hard and it would be insulting to not let you use such a great achievement."
Magos Genetor Ixion-99487
"Will this be arranged now or at another time." He ignores the compliments, focusing on his subject of interest."
Lilith
"We can do this now, or if you need time to prepare we're more then happy to accommodate." Lilith said, "Your choice."
Magos Genetor Ixion-99487
"Declare location."
Lilith
"We're at the Vox? Hold on, I'm not science-y." Lilith said, then looked at Ana, "What's our location?"
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
"Uhm, he should be able to triangulate it?"
Lilith
"Sorry, can you not triangulate our position?" Lilith asked, "I thought you could do that."
She looks to Ana, "You just winced really hard are you ok?"
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
She briefly goes distant, jack slacking for half a second before blinking, "I-I'm sorry? I didn't catch that."
Lilith
"Could you repeat Magos Genetor, someone dropped a bottle of rum and we didn't quite catch you." Lilith quickly said, trying to recover.
Magos Genetor Ixion-99487
"Did not realize this was the meeting point. I will arrive by shuttle in four hours." He says, already the noises of fuel pumps and crackling machinery on the other side of the Vox. The line cuts as he begins to prepare.
Lilith
"Oh." Lilith said suddenly. "Oooooh. Ana, please tell Unity. The queen's probably gonna show up, don't mention the marriage until we've had a ceremony and can send her an invitation. I think that's the best way to let her know. He gave us four hours. He's meeting us here. Don't tell them I'm the one who fucked this up."
"Can we blame Gerald? I don't think anyone likes him." Lilith is panicking a bit now. "Or is it Cain? It's something like that."
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
"U-uhm, could we just... not tell her?"
Lilith
"One of them might tell her... Zahk is keeping our secret... So it might be good not to fuck him over on this one?"
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
"She's-they're-oh they're very occupied." She mumbles, looking distant as the Swarm comes over her senses.
Lilith
Lilith ran to the Vox, "Wait, Magos? Magos! Hello?"
She turns to Ana, "What's wrong?"
Magos Genetor Ixion-99487
"Communication acknowledged."
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
"Something about the ship, its-Zhakarov and Zrug are focusing on it. And the Queen is keeping her senses upon it."
Lilith
"Hey, uh... Do we need any formal state of address, to show deference to you or the other side?" Then she quietly says to Ana, "Deadly? Problem? Or something they can just handle, can you ask?"
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
"I'm not sure, the Queen isn't worried-the creep just laughed?"
Magos Genetor Ixion-99487
"I will use any form of address provided. You may refer to me as any two parts of Magos Genetor Ixion-99487."
Lilith
She looks down, stalling a little longer, "Is Ixxion-99487 one parts or two? I didn't here you pause between the word and the number. What about the other side?" She mouthed to Ana what the fuck?
"Also when you said state location, I thought you meant where I was currently, not where we're meeting. We're meeting at a recaff shop in an old city." She looks to Anastasia, Give him the coordinates of our date spot. "We have recaff, but I get it if you're not interested."
Magos Genetor Ixion-99487
"Two, I do not pause. What other side?"
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
"U-uhm, they're calling for more forces." Is transmitted mentally before she refocuses, "Grid coordinate 8333779 Gregor, Magos Ixion." Her voice is very clear, almost like a radio operator when she starts talking pure information.
Lilith
"That was all, it's a lovely place, you'll have a blast." She looks to Ana, we can get there in four hours if we start running now right? And without waiting for an answer she books it, and Ana follows close behind.
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Where it all went down
Princess Scribe
A swelled-headed, gossipy, coquette gadabout.
- Location
- Venus
- Pronouns
- She/Her
==============================================================
Zrug
Zrug's mind reaches out to the infested material within the orbiting starship seeking out the mind that resides within.
"Machine Spirit I know you can hear me. I seek knowledge of your past battles and glories."
Machine Spirit
"ALIEN, MONSTER, BE PURGED." The Machine Spirit roars, utterly insensate at the contact.
Zrug
"Maybe one day but not this day Machine. I come with questions of your past and you will answer them."
Machine Spirit
The commanding blow against its consciousness causes dozens of aneurysms to spread across zerg neural matter, "CORRUPT-CORRUPT-CORRUPTOR-."
Zrug
Zrug pushes his advantage spreading his will his essence into the zerg neural matter. He is no Sequencer but he knows a battle and he knows how to win one.
Machine Spirit
The interior of the starship heats up as the Machine roils to life, bucking against hostile influence with millenium of utter hatred. Cold steel and furious cogitator are contested by Zerg neurons trying to instill peace. Boiling heat forces the nerves to adapt, the reactor beginning to stress with power flow. "PAST-KILL-memory-" The stress on the ship is significant as memories unfurl at the demand of the Swarm, yet still the machine resists.
What does Zrug search for?
Zrug
Zrug searches for memories of war and battle of commands of past captains and admirals. He seeks all this ship knows of war in the void of strengths of weaknesses of its allies and foes.
Machine Spirit
A thousand battles rattle into Zrug forcefully, of hull-breaking, of worlds burning in the defilades of fleets, of holy crusades of billions. Metal to metal exchanges, grotesque brawls at close range, hours long exchanges at distances so far light is useless to aim with. Everything flows before, suddenly, horridly a scream passes through the Swarm as something so horrid is seen that million year old instincts activate and excise it's existence.
Zrug
The war mind is pulled out of the ships memories by the thing. Growling in anger but refusing to surrender so easily Zrug pushes himself back in giving commmands to the infestation to keep the Spirit calm and spread further imprinting parts of his will into the neural tissue.
Machine Spirit
The ship is unresponsive, neural tissue in some sort of evolutionary race against an internal threat of an unknown variety.
Seneschal Zhakarov
"What's going on Zrug?" Zhakarov begins analyzing what is happening with the ship and lending his expertise to the counter evolution process.
Zrug
Zrug looks upon the infestation and takes control to guide it in this battle for in his eyes a war is a war no matter what form it may take.
"Unknown threat currently attempting counter attack your assistance will be appreciated."
Seneschal Zhakarov
"An evolutionary threat would benefit from a sequencer as well." Zhakarov pings the swarm calling for Abathur and Zizgy.
Machine Spirit
The chunk of neural tissue laughs into the Swarm, a raucous evolution wholly out of hand with standard evolutions. "CORRUPTION, CORRUPTION, CORRUPTION."
Zrug
Zrug sends and order to begin ferrying fresh biomass to the ship for reinforcements. He sends another message to have his physical body brought to the ship along side several units for if the evolutionary battle cannot be won then they will cut out this infection at the source.
Seneschal Zhakarov
Zhakarov retrieves one of the Terrans handy scanners to see if it can tell him anything about the corrupted tissue.
Machine Spirit
The scanner rumbles, reporting "Corruption: Recommendation, Purge." as flesh is forged into weapons inside the ship, hydralisks moving to occupy the vast hallways.
A pile of neural matter turns to a whip, cruel and barbed jolts at Zhakarov, a Hydralisk interposing itself and being cleanly split by its edge , organs and blood spilling out, its carapace almost worthless against the impact. Mouth's form on the attached creep, crying out, "DIE, FIGHT, DIE, FIGHT, DIE."
Zrug
Zrug give another order for the ship hatcheries to begin spawning Zerglings to attack the infected flesh.
Seneschal Zhakarov
"Get roaches up here."
The Zizgy One
"Zizgy One here, what has happened?"
Zrug
"In transit with reinforcements including Roaches arrival imminent."
Seneschal Zhakarov
"The ship has unleashed an evolutionary countermeasure. It is evolving defenses out of its own neural matter."
Zrug
"Seek shelter to guide the evolutionary battle until I arrive."
Machine Spirit
Inside the bowels, neural matter begins to disgorge, shaping oddly as chunks of the Swarm's influence go missing inside it. Biomorphs of various types are directed by Zrug as they come into contact with literal, fire spitting, blade wielding demons of ancient myth. They catch Zerglings mid leap, take Hydralisk spines without slowing down and can jab their infernal, flaming blades through bulkheads, much less Roaches.
We place their number at fifty from sight, but they've already slain several hundred zerg.
Zrug
"Warp entities sighted seeking counter measures." Zrug said while positioning Roaches and Hydralisks to continue firing without stop even as waves of Zerglings and other melee units charge in. For Zrug himself he leads a charge of Ultralisks directly into the demons.
Seneschal Zhakarov
Zhakarov moves to shelter and orders corruptors to move into position in case they need to carve that section of the ship out.
Zhakarov also sees if he can activate the ship's anti warp countermeasures.
Machine Spirit
The monsters rush, meeting the waves, ignoring the ranged attacks as if immune to them. The slaughter is immense, zerglings fall like wheat to a scythe, splitting into halves before the creature's blade was even perceived as moving. Crotalids are ripped in twain and even Ultralisks are brought to heel, guts spillt as the monsters move through the horde like more lethal Protoss Zealots.
Zrug lands between them, occupying five that begin to climb atop him whilst tides of zerg slowly pile upon the rest, a corpse pile ten feet tall forming.
Zhakarov attempts to look through the ships systems, but is too unfamiliar to manage much quickly.
Zrug
"Ranged fire is ineffective focus all spawning and evolutionary efforts on close range units." As he sends this order he lashes out with his blades striking at the demons climbing upon his frame spiting acid all the while. He goes as far as to order other Zerglings to jump upon him to distract the creatures.
The Zizgy One
"the emotional concentration must have given them a way to shape the biomatter into morphs!", he says based on whatever scraps of memory he has at his disposal. "What did you do to trigger this?"
Zrug
Sparing the barest thought to Zizgy. "Busy."
Abathur
"Recover living subject. Essence fades after death!"
Seneschal Zhakarov
Zhakarov orders the growth of a mega crotalid with mineral infused hide. Then he contacts the machine spirit and tries to convince it to help activate whatever anti warp defenses it has.
Machine Spirit
More zerglings fall upon them as they start to flag, laughing uproariously and without fear even if they are being gutted and torn apart. It takes nearly half an hour of fighting and thousands of Zerg to push them into a spot where Zrug, wounded and healing from the burning blades touch, surrounded by two corpses and the others having fought in a retreat.
Finally, the Mega Crotalid rushes in, nearly a hundred metre long, it follows Zrugs commands and crashes through bulkheads, eating a dozen of them in an instant. In that chamber, zerglings pile in like a wall, in so many direction even the peerless parrying capacity of the Demons can't keep up. In another half an hour, only three of them remain and the Mega Crotalid has died from internal stabbing injuries.
Two more are killed, their flagging essence fading and, finally, Zrug engages the last one in claw to blade, struggling to put himself in a position where his strength can overwhelm its peerless skill. Finally, he forces it against a wall, locking its blade to a wall, jabbing a Kaiser blade through the centre of it.
It rattles, small, just a small bit larger than a human yet able to shake the massive frame of Zrug even a milimetre as he holds it against the wall.
Seneschal Zhakarov
"Abathur, one Neverborn captured. Recommendations for containment?"
Abathur
"Physical restraint. Will arrive, relatively soon." His avoidance of a specific timeframe is worrying.
Seneschal Zhakarov
Zhakarov examines the areas that the daemons emerged from.
Zrug
Zrug looks at the demon struggling in his grasp analyzing it. "I truly do not understand what Abathur finds interesting with you creatures."
Seneschal Zhakarov
"Truly? Besides the fact 50 of them slaughtered an entire assault force of zerg."
Machine Spirit
The neural matter they escaped is tangled with strange symbols whilst the monster struggles.
Corpses begin to be dragged back for reuse whilst the monster laughs, still struggling.
Seneschal Zhakarov
"Worse than zealots."
Zrug
"No matter whatever use that can be had of your kind will be found and exploited. And when we clash a second time it won't be so easy."
The Zizgy One
"psionically empowered physicality is not new concept. Way neverborn achieve this, is."
Bloodletter
"I'll see you in the next battlefield beast."
Zrug
"And I will feed you your own horns next time."
Abathur
A Behemoth docks with the ship and the twenty foot long wyrm of the Swarm crawls into the vessel, scrabbling through bulkheads and maintenance vaults before he crawls out of a ceiling duct, hypodermic fingers jabbing into the creature. It screams as he drags it up and into the ventilations.
Zrug
"Have fun little demon."
Zrug leaves the now empty hallway sending orders to have the hatcheries replace the lost units, and a special command to have the restored Ultralisks sent to him it seems he has gained an appreciation for what the Imperials call an honor guard.
Seneschal Zhakarov
Zhakarov carefully cuts the symbols apart. Noting which section goes next to each, but making sure they do are not even close to each other when he preserves the samples.
On Magos Genetor Ixion-99487's Previous Warship
==============================================================Zrug
Zrug's mind reaches out to the infested material within the orbiting starship seeking out the mind that resides within.
"Machine Spirit I know you can hear me. I seek knowledge of your past battles and glories."
Machine Spirit
"ALIEN, MONSTER, BE PURGED." The Machine Spirit roars, utterly insensate at the contact.
Zrug
"Maybe one day but not this day Machine. I come with questions of your past and you will answer them."
Machine Spirit
The commanding blow against its consciousness causes dozens of aneurysms to spread across zerg neural matter, "CORRUPT-CORRUPT-CORRUPTOR-."
Zrug
Zrug pushes his advantage spreading his will his essence into the zerg neural matter. He is no Sequencer but he knows a battle and he knows how to win one.
Machine Spirit
The interior of the starship heats up as the Machine roils to life, bucking against hostile influence with millenium of utter hatred. Cold steel and furious cogitator are contested by Zerg neurons trying to instill peace. Boiling heat forces the nerves to adapt, the reactor beginning to stress with power flow. "PAST-KILL-memory-" The stress on the ship is significant as memories unfurl at the demand of the Swarm, yet still the machine resists.
What does Zrug search for?
Zrug
Zrug searches for memories of war and battle of commands of past captains and admirals. He seeks all this ship knows of war in the void of strengths of weaknesses of its allies and foes.
Machine Spirit
A thousand battles rattle into Zrug forcefully, of hull-breaking, of worlds burning in the defilades of fleets, of holy crusades of billions. Metal to metal exchanges, grotesque brawls at close range, hours long exchanges at distances so far light is useless to aim with. Everything flows before, suddenly, horridly a scream passes through the Swarm as something so horrid is seen that million year old instincts activate and excise it's existence.
Zrug
The war mind is pulled out of the ships memories by the thing. Growling in anger but refusing to surrender so easily Zrug pushes himself back in giving commmands to the infestation to keep the Spirit calm and spread further imprinting parts of his will into the neural tissue.
Machine Spirit
The ship is unresponsive, neural tissue in some sort of evolutionary race against an internal threat of an unknown variety.
Seneschal Zhakarov
"What's going on Zrug?" Zhakarov begins analyzing what is happening with the ship and lending his expertise to the counter evolution process.
Zrug
Zrug looks upon the infestation and takes control to guide it in this battle for in his eyes a war is a war no matter what form it may take.
"Unknown threat currently attempting counter attack your assistance will be appreciated."
Seneschal Zhakarov
"An evolutionary threat would benefit from a sequencer as well." Zhakarov pings the swarm calling for Abathur and Zizgy.
Machine Spirit
The chunk of neural tissue laughs into the Swarm, a raucous evolution wholly out of hand with standard evolutions. "CORRUPTION, CORRUPTION, CORRUPTION."
Zrug
Zrug sends and order to begin ferrying fresh biomass to the ship for reinforcements. He sends another message to have his physical body brought to the ship along side several units for if the evolutionary battle cannot be won then they will cut out this infection at the source.
Seneschal Zhakarov
Zhakarov retrieves one of the Terrans handy scanners to see if it can tell him anything about the corrupted tissue.
Machine Spirit
The scanner rumbles, reporting "Corruption: Recommendation, Purge." as flesh is forged into weapons inside the ship, hydralisks moving to occupy the vast hallways.
A pile of neural matter turns to a whip, cruel and barbed jolts at Zhakarov, a Hydralisk interposing itself and being cleanly split by its edge , organs and blood spilling out, its carapace almost worthless against the impact. Mouth's form on the attached creep, crying out, "DIE, FIGHT, DIE, FIGHT, DIE."
Zrug
Zrug give another order for the ship hatcheries to begin spawning Zerglings to attack the infected flesh.
Seneschal Zhakarov
"Get roaches up here."
The Zizgy One
"Zizgy One here, what has happened?"
Zrug
"In transit with reinforcements including Roaches arrival imminent."
Seneschal Zhakarov
"The ship has unleashed an evolutionary countermeasure. It is evolving defenses out of its own neural matter."
Zrug
"Seek shelter to guide the evolutionary battle until I arrive."
Machine Spirit
Inside the bowels, neural matter begins to disgorge, shaping oddly as chunks of the Swarm's influence go missing inside it. Biomorphs of various types are directed by Zrug as they come into contact with literal, fire spitting, blade wielding demons of ancient myth. They catch Zerglings mid leap, take Hydralisk spines without slowing down and can jab their infernal, flaming blades through bulkheads, much less Roaches.
We place their number at fifty from sight, but they've already slain several hundred zerg.
Zrug
"Warp entities sighted seeking counter measures." Zrug said while positioning Roaches and Hydralisks to continue firing without stop even as waves of Zerglings and other melee units charge in. For Zrug himself he leads a charge of Ultralisks directly into the demons.
Seneschal Zhakarov
Zhakarov moves to shelter and orders corruptors to move into position in case they need to carve that section of the ship out.
Zhakarov also sees if he can activate the ship's anti warp countermeasures.
Machine Spirit
The monsters rush, meeting the waves, ignoring the ranged attacks as if immune to them. The slaughter is immense, zerglings fall like wheat to a scythe, splitting into halves before the creature's blade was even perceived as moving. Crotalids are ripped in twain and even Ultralisks are brought to heel, guts spillt as the monsters move through the horde like more lethal Protoss Zealots.
Zrug lands between them, occupying five that begin to climb atop him whilst tides of zerg slowly pile upon the rest, a corpse pile ten feet tall forming.
Zhakarov attempts to look through the ships systems, but is too unfamiliar to manage much quickly.
Zrug
"Ranged fire is ineffective focus all spawning and evolutionary efforts on close range units." As he sends this order he lashes out with his blades striking at the demons climbing upon his frame spiting acid all the while. He goes as far as to order other Zerglings to jump upon him to distract the creatures.
The Zizgy One
"the emotional concentration must have given them a way to shape the biomatter into morphs!", he says based on whatever scraps of memory he has at his disposal. "What did you do to trigger this?"
Zrug
Sparing the barest thought to Zizgy. "Busy."
Abathur
"Recover living subject. Essence fades after death!"
Seneschal Zhakarov
Zhakarov orders the growth of a mega crotalid with mineral infused hide. Then he contacts the machine spirit and tries to convince it to help activate whatever anti warp defenses it has.
Machine Spirit
More zerglings fall upon them as they start to flag, laughing uproariously and without fear even if they are being gutted and torn apart. It takes nearly half an hour of fighting and thousands of Zerg to push them into a spot where Zrug, wounded and healing from the burning blades touch, surrounded by two corpses and the others having fought in a retreat.
Finally, the Mega Crotalid rushes in, nearly a hundred metre long, it follows Zrugs commands and crashes through bulkheads, eating a dozen of them in an instant. In that chamber, zerglings pile in like a wall, in so many direction even the peerless parrying capacity of the Demons can't keep up. In another half an hour, only three of them remain and the Mega Crotalid has died from internal stabbing injuries.
Two more are killed, their flagging essence fading and, finally, Zrug engages the last one in claw to blade, struggling to put himself in a position where his strength can overwhelm its peerless skill. Finally, he forces it against a wall, locking its blade to a wall, jabbing a Kaiser blade through the centre of it.
It rattles, small, just a small bit larger than a human yet able to shake the massive frame of Zrug even a milimetre as he holds it against the wall.
Seneschal Zhakarov
"Abathur, one Neverborn captured. Recommendations for containment?"
Abathur
"Physical restraint. Will arrive, relatively soon." His avoidance of a specific timeframe is worrying.
Seneschal Zhakarov
Zhakarov examines the areas that the daemons emerged from.
Zrug
Zrug looks at the demon struggling in his grasp analyzing it. "I truly do not understand what Abathur finds interesting with you creatures."
Seneschal Zhakarov
"Truly? Besides the fact 50 of them slaughtered an entire assault force of zerg."
Machine Spirit
The neural matter they escaped is tangled with strange symbols whilst the monster struggles.
Corpses begin to be dragged back for reuse whilst the monster laughs, still struggling.
Seneschal Zhakarov
"Worse than zealots."
Zrug
"No matter whatever use that can be had of your kind will be found and exploited. And when we clash a second time it won't be so easy."
The Zizgy One
"psionically empowered physicality is not new concept. Way neverborn achieve this, is."
Bloodletter
"I'll see you in the next battlefield beast."
Zrug
"And I will feed you your own horns next time."
Abathur
A Behemoth docks with the ship and the twenty foot long wyrm of the Swarm crawls into the vessel, scrabbling through bulkheads and maintenance vaults before he crawls out of a ceiling duct, hypodermic fingers jabbing into the creature. It screams as he drags it up and into the ventilations.
Zrug
"Have fun little demon."
Zrug leaves the now empty hallway sending orders to have the hatcheries replace the lost units, and a special command to have the restored Ultralisks sent to him it seems he has gained an appreciation for what the Imperials call an honor guard.
Seneschal Zhakarov
Zhakarov carefully cuts the symbols apart. Noting which section goes next to each, but making sure they do are not even close to each other when he preserves the samples.
Last edited:
Zerg Diplomatic Center
Princess Scribe
A swelled-headed, gossipy, coquette gadabout.
- Location
- Venus
- Pronouns
- She/Her
==============================================================
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
"T-they fought things, the Swarm w-won." She catches herself on a nearby wall as her lungs catch up. "I think its fine up there?"
Lilith
"Of course they did. We rule. Go swarm, praise the Emperor." She says nudging her with her elbow.
"How many Hydralisks did it take, like ten? twelve?"
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
"I think I counted thousands." The Astropath shakily says, "The monsters were... dangerous."
Lilith
"How many monsters?!" Lilith asked, "Wait, what kind of monsters? Big ones? Like see them from a shuttle craft big?"
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
"They were Daemons, Lilith. Just fifty of them...of the lesser type."
Lilith
"So... five-zero fifty lesser Daemons, took on thousands of Zerg. Is that right?" She stops, "So they weren't good ones like Manth?"
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
"None of them are... good." Ana states with some will behind it, "They are bound to their base natures, they must follow them."
Lilith
"But what if they're base nature is charity?" Lilith asks quizzically. "Or small acts of kindness?"
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
She shakes her head, "Such things don't exist, there is precious little charity in the galaxy, and far more greed."
Lilith
Her eyes glowed with pink, "Well, there is now."
"Oh, wait, we gotta smooth out so we look more present— If we smooth out we're naked. Do you see a clothing shop?"
"And did you tell them about the Magic Genie, the Magus Genos."
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
"They'd have been sitting there for years." She smiles, the situation defused by Lilith's words, "Magos Genetor, love."
Lilith
"I do better under pressure to be fair. Is it better to be wearing bone-kini's or dirty clothes?"
Manth... Can you clean... Clothes? To court a Magos Genetor
Manth
"You'd be best off being more mechanical for that. Approach them honestly, the more broad they make your abhuman label, the more you can corrupt the innocence of those puritans."
Lilith
She nods.
"Ask Zhak if he wants to be here for the Magos Genetor transmission. I doubt he could get here in an hour, but you know."
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
"Zhakarov, uhm, the Magos is landing soon, would you like for me to relay for you?" @Arcane (Shava/Explain Bot)
Lilith
"Make it sound like this wasn't my fuckup."
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
She smiles slightly, "There's a lesson I've learnt, sometimes you simply ask for forgiveness if they find out."
Seneschal Zhakarov
"I am paying attention."
Magos Genetor Ixion-99487
A shuttle falls into the atmosphere on fusion blooms, solar-heat blasted downwards to slow its starfall and as it rapidly drops. It comes to a nearby clearing where buildings once stood, fusion thrusters turning stone to glass as they land, landing legs groaning with the stress of operation. The rear ramp falls open and Magos Ixion strides forth at his astounding nine feet tall of steel and mechanism.
He strides fearlessly, red robes ensconced on his mechanical frame, a single bone-pale limb peeking out as the enfleshed portion remaining clearly visible. It strides to the coffee shop with long steps, coming to a halt before it. Rather than the crackling of a vox, you instead get a rumbling mechanical tone, as if they are speaking from the inside of a grand mechanism.
"I am here, Lilith Von Illar." He declares, "Speak."
Lilith
"Greetings Genetor 99487," Appeal to the machine side maybe? "You've come a long way, and I appreciate your time so I won't mince words. We do have Recaff. We grow it ourselves!" She is lifting herself tall and proud, with her arms open fingers touching, "Though, you look like a man who has precisely calibrated his chems, but it's polite to offer." She waits for a breath, "Assuming No, I want to give you the opportunity to make your phone call. Since you said Speak, I'll just keep going. We'd like any research you've found in your studies that you found irrelevant but felt could be useful to us. We are also Nobles of Von Illar and would like an 'in' with a mid-to-high ranking noble house. Invite to a party, get us into somewhere where they hang out that we can make ourselves known."
She takes a breath, "We also need to know what you want us to say when we talk about our home world. Advice that allows us to lift each other up. Possibly cooperation with your scientists, and quite frankly the option for one of our abhumans to join the mechanicum as an intern of some kind. I know a lot of these may be deal breakers, but I wanted to see how we're feeling and what's on the market."
Magos Genetor Ixion-99487
"My social drivers have been reloaded, Ladies Von Illar." The priest walks into the shop, "They inform me that accepting this Recaff is the optimal decision." He awaits that whilst affecting an almost-natural rise and fall of shoulders.
"Go to any world and you will find nobles titilated by the idea of foreigners. That is not a task worthy of my time." He rumbles after having receives the Recaff, lifting it up to his mechanical maw, letting it split slightly to drink. "I am planning to take credit for your existence to further my political career. As far as my fellows will be aware, you are a slave-servitor species grown during the Dark Age of Technology."
"You bond with humans, affecting genetic changes to allow them to control the servitor organisms."
Lilith
Lilith takes another two cups, placing one on the table, giving Ana a look Don't reach until I see how he reacts, and then holds the third. "Do we have a scientific name yet? And what will our status be in general as slave-servitors, it doesn't have a great ring to it to start."
Magos Genetor Ixion-99487
"Homo Sapiens Sapiens Parmenio was the working title." He answers with an incline of the head, "You are not the slave servitor, Lady." His glimmering red cybernetic eyes cleave across the horizon, "They are."
In the distance can be seen flying mutalisks, circling a spire.
Lilith
"Apologies," She says looking over her shoulder, "I like it! Is there any significance to the two Sapiens? Are you reporting by which mechanism this genetic affectation happens? Are you suggesting it may be proximity? Touch? Psyke? I'd like to not enter the galaxy a pariah."
Sorry Ana, it seems like he didn't take the bait on the coffee. You can drink.
Magos Genetor Ixion-99487
"We are removed from the ancient Terran progenitor by a space of millennia, it is merely proper description. Parmenio is your region of origin. I have placed no more import into your name." His answers are far more descriptive in person as it turns out, "I am clearing your path, I realize this. The Imperium crumbles, even now war shakes its bastions of power. Fleet battles rage in stars uncounted, worlds burn by the dozens and trillions die every month."
"There is no hope remaining in what is now." Ixion's descriptions are carried heavily by the mechanical trod of his speech, unrelenting in its advance.
"It is no longer an age of Men, Lilith Von Illar. I merely intend to position myself to win this new future."
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
She sips at the recaff, frowning at his speech.
Lilith
She lowers her voice a half octave, and let's her smile drop, adjusting to seem more visibly relaxed, "Oh, it seems we could have met on better terms then we did. I'm sorry that we didn't. If we speak plainly, then that's probably for the best. I don't want people out there thinking we're hijacking their minds when or if they accept our gene mutations to get their own cute pets. When they come to our Safari's to hunt game."
She takes a sip of coffee "We're thinking big picture here as well. If this is all doomed to come crashing down, then I'd like to have a place set-up for our leader where people can feel safe for a little bit. We can't really do that if everyone is scared of us, more scared of us then they already are with this abhuman label. Is the phone call really all you want? You never know what you can get if you don't ask."
Seneschal Zhakarov
"This seems at odds with his previous position refusing to share information based on our xenological status. Ask him if he is willing to share a way to integrate his former ship into the swarm."
Magos Genetor Ixion-99487
"What you wish to offer is assimilation. I reject this. My mind is my own, it has been for three centuries." Ixion's boundary is placed firmly, "Death will claim me before that changes."
"I must know of the situation. I must learn what has taken place in my absence." To Lilith's unnatural senses, there's a tinge of mechanical anxiousness to him. "I must know if Cadia stands."
Lilith
"I wasn't offering that to you, actually" Lilith said with a frown, "You're not compatible, and we're actually a bit picky. Not only that they have to consent. So you may be under the wrong impression entirely about this. I'll tell you what I know about Cadia, because I have learned a bit about the Krieg, and the people here watching interactions. If you help us, even just a small tip, on how to integrate your former ship into the swarm."
She looks at Magos, trying her best to seem honest as possible, "We don't want your mind, as far as I can tell we couldn't have it to begin with. Even if you agreed you'd still be you, just being able to talk to other people in the network."
"I'm still me, Ana is still Ana." She gestures.
Magos Genetor Ixion-99487
"I doubt this, but cannot prove either perspective." The Magos answers, "You ask me to sin greatly, though you know it not." The grumble of mechanism briefly halts, letting a very human voice out for a sentence, "But my Journey demands sacrifice."
"The override command for the Command Throne, it is Alpha, Victory, Marker, Zero, Seven, Four. With your infestation, this should be sufficient."
Lilith
Manth, do you know?
Manth
It laughs quietly, "Cadia is ablaze, I can hear the worlds death-rattle from here. They still fight upon it, but the battle is lost."
Lilith
Her face fell, "Oh," She coughs, "Cadia still stands, but it burns. The battle is lost. The world is in it's final moments." She says solemnly. "Do you need a moment? I'm sorry...." Lilith is moved, and she feels awful. She may not know the proper nouns, but she knows what it means when a place stands, or falls, and what the tone of voice means when someone is begging to know the truth.
"I didn't ask our network until now, in case you could read our mind. I'm sorry."
Magos Genetor Ixion-99487
"Difficult to accept. Yet your truth coefficient is high." The Magos says, "Your collective psychic abilities are significant if scrying that distance is possible."
"Then, we must prepare for the consequences of such a thing." Ixion, the man rather than the machine speaks, "The tithe will be my sign. If it arrives intact and undamaged, Ultramar stands. If not, I fear I must sin again to assure my survival."
Lilith
She nods, "That was callous, I'm sorry. That wasn't right." She's a bit shaken, "You can make your call."
A little bit sadder, "I thought the answer would be different."
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
Anastasia is shaken by the new information, but looks towards the Magos and awaits his communications.
Magos Genetor Ixion-99487
He begins to write on paper that unfolds from his robe, long cursive streaks, communicating a morass of questions to whomever is on the other side.
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
After he finishes, she reads it and then closes her eyes as a glint of power flares through her eye lids. A minute later, she begins writing on another piece of paper, the response to his dozens of questions, most of them marked "Do Not Know".
Lilith
For once Lilith is silent, as she watches a man desperately needing answers, and the only one she could provide being heartbreaking.
Magos Genetor Ixion-99487
His eyes crawl across the page of answers, Battlefleet Gothic-Lost, Battlefleet Cadia-Lost, Battlefleet Corona-Lost. Mechanical tendrils begin to buzz in stress, but his voice is still even. "I thank you for this opportunity. The situation is dire, and progressing into worse rapidly."
Lilith
"I... We've worked together now, so if things get desperate enough, we're not bad people. We're still people. So if you ever need help... You know, like I said you never know what you can get if you don't ask." She smiles weakly.
Magos Genetor Ixion-99487
Mechanical eyes lock back onto Lilith, observing in all stretches of radiation. "I recommend not being emotionally involved. In a century, we may be enemies."
Lilith
The smile is even sadder, more distraught, "Sounds like if I do I'll have a friend for a century. Though, I'll admit, I'm starting to think I'm not going to do well here."
Magos Genetor Ixion-99487
He turns and starts walking away, "The tithe fleet will inform my future. We will speak again in a Terran years time."
Lilith
"Alright!" She says as he leaves, "I don't know what Magos Genetors say for good luck, so... You know, Good luck!"
Magos Genetor Ixion-99487
The fusion torches of the shuttle rumble it into the air on wings of fire, forcing it high above, flying by force, not lift. It turns into a shooting star, breaching the atmosphere and vanishing into the distance.
Lilith
"Oh my god Ana, that was the saddest fucking thing I've ever seen." Lilith's voice is a extremely strained. "Oh my god. Is everyone going to be like that?"
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
"Its not uncommon to have a difficult life." She claps hands with her love, "But that was...a lot."
Lilith
"I think he liked me, but like begrudgingly in a dark mysterious way." She smiles wiping her eyes, "Oh my god, I was losing it,"
"Let's wait until later for that other thing."
Zerg Diplomatic Center - Pete's Recaf Supply
==============================================================Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
"T-they fought things, the Swarm w-won." She catches herself on a nearby wall as her lungs catch up. "I think its fine up there?"
Lilith
"Of course they did. We rule. Go swarm, praise the Emperor." She says nudging her with her elbow.
"How many Hydralisks did it take, like ten? twelve?"
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
"I think I counted thousands." The Astropath shakily says, "The monsters were... dangerous."
Lilith
"How many monsters?!" Lilith asked, "Wait, what kind of monsters? Big ones? Like see them from a shuttle craft big?"
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
"They were Daemons, Lilith. Just fifty of them...of the lesser type."
Lilith
"So... five-zero fifty lesser Daemons, took on thousands of Zerg. Is that right?" She stops, "So they weren't good ones like Manth?"
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
"None of them are... good." Ana states with some will behind it, "They are bound to their base natures, they must follow them."
Lilith
"But what if they're base nature is charity?" Lilith asks quizzically. "Or small acts of kindness?"
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
She shakes her head, "Such things don't exist, there is precious little charity in the galaxy, and far more greed."
Lilith
Her eyes glowed with pink, "Well, there is now."
"Oh, wait, we gotta smooth out so we look more present— If we smooth out we're naked. Do you see a clothing shop?"
"And did you tell them about the Magic Genie, the Magus Genos."
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
"They'd have been sitting there for years." She smiles, the situation defused by Lilith's words, "Magos Genetor, love."
Lilith
"I do better under pressure to be fair. Is it better to be wearing bone-kini's or dirty clothes?"
Manth... Can you clean... Clothes? To court a Magos Genetor
Manth
"You'd be best off being more mechanical for that. Approach them honestly, the more broad they make your abhuman label, the more you can corrupt the innocence of those puritans."
Lilith
She nods.
"Ask Zhak if he wants to be here for the Magos Genetor transmission. I doubt he could get here in an hour, but you know."
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
"Zhakarov, uhm, the Magos is landing soon, would you like for me to relay for you?" @Arcane (Shava/Explain Bot)
Lilith
"Make it sound like this wasn't my fuckup."
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
She smiles slightly, "There's a lesson I've learnt, sometimes you simply ask for forgiveness if they find out."
Seneschal Zhakarov
"I am paying attention."
Magos Genetor Ixion-99487
A shuttle falls into the atmosphere on fusion blooms, solar-heat blasted downwards to slow its starfall and as it rapidly drops. It comes to a nearby clearing where buildings once stood, fusion thrusters turning stone to glass as they land, landing legs groaning with the stress of operation. The rear ramp falls open and Magos Ixion strides forth at his astounding nine feet tall of steel and mechanism.
He strides fearlessly, red robes ensconced on his mechanical frame, a single bone-pale limb peeking out as the enfleshed portion remaining clearly visible. It strides to the coffee shop with long steps, coming to a halt before it. Rather than the crackling of a vox, you instead get a rumbling mechanical tone, as if they are speaking from the inside of a grand mechanism.
"I am here, Lilith Von Illar." He declares, "Speak."
Lilith
"Greetings Genetor 99487," Appeal to the machine side maybe? "You've come a long way, and I appreciate your time so I won't mince words. We do have Recaff. We grow it ourselves!" She is lifting herself tall and proud, with her arms open fingers touching, "Though, you look like a man who has precisely calibrated his chems, but it's polite to offer." She waits for a breath, "Assuming No, I want to give you the opportunity to make your phone call. Since you said Speak, I'll just keep going. We'd like any research you've found in your studies that you found irrelevant but felt could be useful to us. We are also Nobles of Von Illar and would like an 'in' with a mid-to-high ranking noble house. Invite to a party, get us into somewhere where they hang out that we can make ourselves known."
She takes a breath, "We also need to know what you want us to say when we talk about our home world. Advice that allows us to lift each other up. Possibly cooperation with your scientists, and quite frankly the option for one of our abhumans to join the mechanicum as an intern of some kind. I know a lot of these may be deal breakers, but I wanted to see how we're feeling and what's on the market."
Magos Genetor Ixion-99487
"My social drivers have been reloaded, Ladies Von Illar." The priest walks into the shop, "They inform me that accepting this Recaff is the optimal decision." He awaits that whilst affecting an almost-natural rise and fall of shoulders.
"Go to any world and you will find nobles titilated by the idea of foreigners. That is not a task worthy of my time." He rumbles after having receives the Recaff, lifting it up to his mechanical maw, letting it split slightly to drink. "I am planning to take credit for your existence to further my political career. As far as my fellows will be aware, you are a slave-servitor species grown during the Dark Age of Technology."
"You bond with humans, affecting genetic changes to allow them to control the servitor organisms."
Lilith
Lilith takes another two cups, placing one on the table, giving Ana a look Don't reach until I see how he reacts, and then holds the third. "Do we have a scientific name yet? And what will our status be in general as slave-servitors, it doesn't have a great ring to it to start."
Magos Genetor Ixion-99487
"Homo Sapiens Sapiens Parmenio was the working title." He answers with an incline of the head, "You are not the slave servitor, Lady." His glimmering red cybernetic eyes cleave across the horizon, "They are."
In the distance can be seen flying mutalisks, circling a spire.
Lilith
"Apologies," She says looking over her shoulder, "I like it! Is there any significance to the two Sapiens? Are you reporting by which mechanism this genetic affectation happens? Are you suggesting it may be proximity? Touch? Psyke? I'd like to not enter the galaxy a pariah."
Sorry Ana, it seems like he didn't take the bait on the coffee. You can drink.
Magos Genetor Ixion-99487
"We are removed from the ancient Terran progenitor by a space of millennia, it is merely proper description. Parmenio is your region of origin. I have placed no more import into your name." His answers are far more descriptive in person as it turns out, "I am clearing your path, I realize this. The Imperium crumbles, even now war shakes its bastions of power. Fleet battles rage in stars uncounted, worlds burn by the dozens and trillions die every month."
"There is no hope remaining in what is now." Ixion's descriptions are carried heavily by the mechanical trod of his speech, unrelenting in its advance.
"It is no longer an age of Men, Lilith Von Illar. I merely intend to position myself to win this new future."
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
She sips at the recaff, frowning at his speech.
Lilith
She lowers her voice a half octave, and let's her smile drop, adjusting to seem more visibly relaxed, "Oh, it seems we could have met on better terms then we did. I'm sorry that we didn't. If we speak plainly, then that's probably for the best. I don't want people out there thinking we're hijacking their minds when or if they accept our gene mutations to get their own cute pets. When they come to our Safari's to hunt game."
She takes a sip of coffee "We're thinking big picture here as well. If this is all doomed to come crashing down, then I'd like to have a place set-up for our leader where people can feel safe for a little bit. We can't really do that if everyone is scared of us, more scared of us then they already are with this abhuman label. Is the phone call really all you want? You never know what you can get if you don't ask."
Seneschal Zhakarov
"This seems at odds with his previous position refusing to share information based on our xenological status. Ask him if he is willing to share a way to integrate his former ship into the swarm."
Magos Genetor Ixion-99487
"What you wish to offer is assimilation. I reject this. My mind is my own, it has been for three centuries." Ixion's boundary is placed firmly, "Death will claim me before that changes."
"I must know of the situation. I must learn what has taken place in my absence." To Lilith's unnatural senses, there's a tinge of mechanical anxiousness to him. "I must know if Cadia stands."
Lilith
"I wasn't offering that to you, actually" Lilith said with a frown, "You're not compatible, and we're actually a bit picky. Not only that they have to consent. So you may be under the wrong impression entirely about this. I'll tell you what I know about Cadia, because I have learned a bit about the Krieg, and the people here watching interactions. If you help us, even just a small tip, on how to integrate your former ship into the swarm."
She looks at Magos, trying her best to seem honest as possible, "We don't want your mind, as far as I can tell we couldn't have it to begin with. Even if you agreed you'd still be you, just being able to talk to other people in the network."
"I'm still me, Ana is still Ana." She gestures.
Magos Genetor Ixion-99487
"I doubt this, but cannot prove either perspective." The Magos answers, "You ask me to sin greatly, though you know it not." The grumble of mechanism briefly halts, letting a very human voice out for a sentence, "But my Journey demands sacrifice."
"The override command for the Command Throne, it is Alpha, Victory, Marker, Zero, Seven, Four. With your infestation, this should be sufficient."
Lilith
Manth, do you know?
Manth
It laughs quietly, "Cadia is ablaze, I can hear the worlds death-rattle from here. They still fight upon it, but the battle is lost."
Lilith
Her face fell, "Oh," She coughs, "Cadia still stands, but it burns. The battle is lost. The world is in it's final moments." She says solemnly. "Do you need a moment? I'm sorry...." Lilith is moved, and she feels awful. She may not know the proper nouns, but she knows what it means when a place stands, or falls, and what the tone of voice means when someone is begging to know the truth.
"I didn't ask our network until now, in case you could read our mind. I'm sorry."
Magos Genetor Ixion-99487
"Difficult to accept. Yet your truth coefficient is high." The Magos says, "Your collective psychic abilities are significant if scrying that distance is possible."
"Then, we must prepare for the consequences of such a thing." Ixion, the man rather than the machine speaks, "The tithe will be my sign. If it arrives intact and undamaged, Ultramar stands. If not, I fear I must sin again to assure my survival."
Lilith
She nods, "That was callous, I'm sorry. That wasn't right." She's a bit shaken, "You can make your call."
A little bit sadder, "I thought the answer would be different."
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
Anastasia is shaken by the new information, but looks towards the Magos and awaits his communications.
Magos Genetor Ixion-99487
He begins to write on paper that unfolds from his robe, long cursive streaks, communicating a morass of questions to whomever is on the other side.
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
After he finishes, she reads it and then closes her eyes as a glint of power flares through her eye lids. A minute later, she begins writing on another piece of paper, the response to his dozens of questions, most of them marked "Do Not Know".
Lilith
For once Lilith is silent, as she watches a man desperately needing answers, and the only one she could provide being heartbreaking.
Magos Genetor Ixion-99487
His eyes crawl across the page of answers, Battlefleet Gothic-Lost, Battlefleet Cadia-Lost, Battlefleet Corona-Lost. Mechanical tendrils begin to buzz in stress, but his voice is still even. "I thank you for this opportunity. The situation is dire, and progressing into worse rapidly."
Lilith
"I... We've worked together now, so if things get desperate enough, we're not bad people. We're still people. So if you ever need help... You know, like I said you never know what you can get if you don't ask." She smiles weakly.
Magos Genetor Ixion-99487
Mechanical eyes lock back onto Lilith, observing in all stretches of radiation. "I recommend not being emotionally involved. In a century, we may be enemies."
Lilith
The smile is even sadder, more distraught, "Sounds like if I do I'll have a friend for a century. Though, I'll admit, I'm starting to think I'm not going to do well here."
Magos Genetor Ixion-99487
He turns and starts walking away, "The tithe fleet will inform my future. We will speak again in a Terran years time."
Lilith
"Alright!" She says as he leaves, "I don't know what Magos Genetors say for good luck, so... You know, Good luck!"
Magos Genetor Ixion-99487
The fusion torches of the shuttle rumble it into the air on wings of fire, forcing it high above, flying by force, not lift. It turns into a shooting star, breaching the atmosphere and vanishing into the distance.
Lilith
"Oh my god Ana, that was the saddest fucking thing I've ever seen." Lilith's voice is a extremely strained. "Oh my god. Is everyone going to be like that?"
Anastasia Von Illar nee Ultramar
"Its not uncommon to have a difficult life." She claps hands with her love, "But that was...a lot."
Lilith
"I think he liked me, but like begrudgingly in a dark mysterious way." She smiles wiping her eyes, "Oh my god, I was losing it,"
"Let's wait until later for that other thing."
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Missing the demon picture here.