I feel blessed to have posted ten minutes before the update about being hyped for the update. I am the Bringer of Xantalos. Fear my arcane power.
The pair proceeded into a wide chamber that was bereft of any furnishing save for a gargantuan piece of stone in the center that resembled nothing so much as a box that was open at the top, situated directly underneath a hole in the ceiling of the same size.
Is this a sunlight thing or...
Tza-ini's hand stopped short just before it could touch the artifact, and the power in his soul was effortlessly dissipated as a voice echoed into his mind. That would be dangerous, emissary. He was treated to the sensation of his limb retracting on its own, his body standing and shifting independently of his will as his slann master occupied the controlling space of his consciousness. He could feel the shifting of his master's mind against his own, the inscrutable machinations of the slann's mind seeming like the shifting cogs of some vast machine.
I like to think there was some sentiment in that. There probably wasn't, but I'm leaning towards people rather than monsters. I want my Saurus warrior poets singing songs of battle as they hew their foes, damn it.
All I can say is that I'm surprised I've not seen this one before.
Before him there was something quite spectacular - a column of lava, constrained by magic to be perfectly square, extended up from the stone artifact, up through the hole in the ceiling to the next floor. It lit the room up with a gently fluctuating reddish glow, and waves of heat rippled outward from it.
Oh. Right. Not a sunlight thing. A minecraft thing.
B'b turned to face him, the light from the column silhouetting the kroxigor and casting his shadow over half the room. "Tza-ini," he rumbled, his voice inscrutable.
"Yes?"
B'b motioned to the lava. "Not a ward."
I mean you could probably make "summon lava" into a ward if you tried hard enough.
Snakes shed their skin because the serpent god used his own as a decoy to fool a daemon.
....
*hastily scrolls down worldbuilding idea for own use*
It was these three principles, the Reason, Way, and Being, that the slann teased from the library of stories surrounding and making up Sotek.
Sounds like some kind of zen thing.
They convened in a temple in Itza that had once belonged to a member of the First Generation. There, awake and aware as they had not been able to be for uncounted years, they shared stories with each other. Initially they were exacting, matter-of-fact recollections of events they had witnessed - a slann would relay the account of how a skink priest serving him had taken Sotek as a god and changed as a result, sharing data on how the skink's soul had fluctuated and grown, showing the progression of the serpent god's blessings in minute detail. Others shared analysis of various jungle species, or of the progress of the newest temple-city's construction. They relayed the bulk of these accounts telepathically, for speaking the details aloud simply generated moving images of the events in question, a waste of magical energy.
Slann are memetically awful storytellers who should, by right of being oral and visual in one organic package, be great storytellers. Another reason for people. I want poetry that literally shapes the world. Spells cast in haikus, GO!
"Lord Blotbova saved my life during the Catastrophe," he began, and his voice conjured up the image of himself as he had been those ten thousand years ago - physically much the same, but with a spirit that any of them could see was immature and meek compared to his current state. The Krepacl simulacrum sat on his palanquin next to many other junior slann, gazing up at a slann that was far larger and wiser-seeming than them.
"The polar gates had collapsed, and much of the Web with them. The world outside of the temple-cities was so suffused with warp essence that we were confined to our Star Chambers for our own safety, and daemons assailed the walls constantly." The miniature slann were divided into stone boxes inside a rough representation of a temple-city, which was then attacked by a writhing tide of monsters, looming creatures with exaggerated features and long, lanky shadows.
"None of our generation knew what to do - we had been spawned only a few centuries before, and there was no precedent for an incident of this scale."
"But Blotbova did."
The large slann in the image reached out with ropes of scintillating light to each of the junior slann, binding them together in a miniature communion. From their chambers they pooled their powers and struck back against the daemon hordes, blasting them again and again with bolts of incandescent power. It was a devastating display of arcane might, but the shadowy monsters kept coming in greater numbers, and soon neared the point of overwhelming the city.
"We could not hold forever, and there was no way to stop the influx of daemons. So Blotbova taught us the means of self-relocation through the ethereal planes, and told us to evacuate to Xlanhuapec. He would hold the warp-hosts off long enough for us to make the transition safely. We refused, because as a member of the First, his life was worth more than all of ours. But he judged otherwise."
The large slann gestured, and his juniors vanished, their own energies unwillingly redirected into casting the teleportation spell. With them gone, the tide of daemons closed in on Blotbova, who closed his eyes serenely as his aura began to charge up with a terrifying glow. The image dispersed in a cloud of glowing particulate, and Krepacl looked up at his brethren.
He's probably objectively right, too. Blotbova is one slann. He saved a hundred, who would all eventually grow enough in power and knowledge so as to make the proportionate difference between them individually vastly less important than numbers. But you could also interpret it as an act of heroism, supported by the short-term reasoning being against him. His teaching them right beforehand supports that he knew they'd live to grow. But we'll never know. A good story almost always has room for alternate interpretations instead of an ironclad truth. This was a well-written section, Xantalos. I especially liked it. It's not the Lizardmen being stupidly OP or being amazingly Lizardman-y, but it's really nice. And kind of sad. The Slann, and the Lizardmen as a whole, have clearly never really reflected on what they've lost or gained in any way other than as a metaphorical spreadsheet before. It's just not who they are to do so, yet. They're a breathless and relentless juggernaut grinding along, made so from the molecules up.
They relayed these snippets of their lives to each other, and as they grew more skilled at conveying what had meaning, their voices sculpted the tales into self-sustaining enchantments
Yeees, become the Campfire Storyteller Gods you were always meant to be.
Many of their host bodies were a species that were born in the water, and spent their first years as a stingray-like creature that used its flippers and long, spider-like legs to maneuver around the root networks on the shoreline. As they matured, their legs thickened and grew claws. They then clambered out of the water to become a more tree-dwelling species of arachnid crab-clawed creatures that held a potent venom in their stingers and could crack stone with their mandibles.
I want. I want
badly.
The large amounts of dead corpses attracted many scavengers to the outskirts of the city, including a curious species of snakelike creatures that produced a potent venom and grew to reach formidable lengths. Many theological debates were produced as a result of the significance many priests attributed to the presence of the creatures, but all agreed that it was a good omen for the Cult and Qotlpetl.
*desire to tame increases*
Skink zealots. Riding big snakes. A priest standing on the head, lashing out as the snake does and exhorting the ground troops to greater savagery.
God, it's like fucking Pokemon.
WANT.
it soon became a common occurrence for stray jungle creatures that had the misfortune to wander into Xlanhuapec's vicinity to become irrevocably lost, often stumbling around in a circle until they dropped dead, all the while thinking they were wandering endlessly through an unending plane of fog.
Aww, that's kind of a sha—
It made gathering food an easier task.
PFFTHAAAAHAHAHAHA
It was an aberration, a grand cosmic mistake for all that it had been crafted by the hands of daemon lords.
The slann had been made to correct the mistakes of the natural order.
Is that the Slann equivalent of a dramatic one-liner? "I'm here to correct cosmic mistakes in the natural order and chew bubblegum. And my supply of bubblegum has been exhausted."
Standing atop all of it was a colossal tentacled spider
aaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
KILL IT
KILL IT DEAD
The fourth generation spoke a word and the lightning solidified and stretched out
In lieu of specification, I choose to believe this word was "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious".
And the slann were not the only threat the fog daemon had to contend with.
Good old Sotek. I still can't not think of him as a walking crocodile, even if he's the snake god.
Sotek responded in kind, shedding thousands of his scales in an elegant twist, and as he continued to assault the main body of the daemon, these shed scales morphed into angry figures, skink-like humanoids that wielded two bright red fangs as swords and chittered constantly in shrill, agitated voices.
Hmm... kinda want to be able to summon these as anti-daemons. That'd be a cool shock unit.
Above the spiritual mirror of Itza's mountainous center did the slann gather themselves and let their souls shine brightly, focusing the luminescence of their being directly towards the senses of the fog daemon. It came, as it inevitably would, an immense thunderclouds of mist drifting in from the horizon, coiling tendrils reaching out towards them to draw them in, seeking to add them to the collection of glowing lights at its core. They were just shy of touching the defenseless slann when the Web pulsed with an immense surge of power, and a cataclysmic boom echoed out through the Immaterium. A wall of force surged out from Hexoatl, ramming directly into the daemon's form and shearing into its being with enough force to scatter it into many small pieces. As the daemon wailed in continued frustration, the slann vanished from the spirit realm, their task done.
Ballsy.
The heads of the shamans had an impressively common tendency to explode when the orks drew too deep upon their psychic field. So much so that a weirdboy's head simply exploding out of the blue was not seen as an eye-raising occurrence by anyone. This made the task of concealing their presence much easier for the slann, who were simply able to burst the head of a shaman asunder if they happened to become too aware of their presence.
I... yeah, fair enough.
The Warboss was a fearsome individual - standing nearly three meters tall and almost as wide in the shoulder, so heavy that he shook the ground with his stride and so strong that he could crumble rock with his bare hands.
And yet
it was evident that while a saurus scar-veteran might struggle against him due to the equipment disadvantage, any oldblood would trivially dispatch him.
Man, sometimes you forget Saurus are meant to be nine feet tall, AKA actually the height of this Warboss. Saurus be beefy.
He was called Wurkaz Slashytoof, so named because he had cheated the primitive economic system of the orks by pulling out all his natural teeth and shoving small daggers into his gums in their place, thus ensuring that any ork who attempted to take his teeth would only cut their hands.
This was regarded as a move of great cunning by his subordinates, who often wondered aloud how he had gotten his teeth to grow into knives.
That's beautifully orky. It'd probably suck for talking though. Eh, who am I kidding, Orks wouldn't give a shit and just talk anyway.
Mebbe dey'z just called Ork when it'z da two uv dem?
Dude has a point.
Anyway, I was munchin on da hoof when da godz came to me and smacked me right on da noggin and told me, 'Oi Squinty! Derez uvver fings on da planet ta fight! Dey'd give da orks a real good scrap for sure!' And I thought dat wuz real exciting, so I came runnin up 'ere ta tell ya."
Uh oh.
Wurkaz sighed, shook his head, put a paternal hand on Squinty's shoulder while rubbing his amulet with the other one, then cracked his Warphead with a mighty slap across the face, sending the smaller ork flying. "I keep tellin ya, Squinty, da Sameboyz has so many different boyz wif dem dat dey'z really more like 'undreds of different types uv gits, only dey all fight da same. Dats why dey're called da Sameboyz. Da godz wuz tellin ya dat becuz you forget it all da time."
Oh. Good thing Orks can't reason for shit.
He emerged onto a rickety metal balcony 50 meters off the ground and gazed out at his city of Smashyshinybuildyplace.
That well-known centre of culture and learning.
It was truly a sight for ork eyes.
I mean, you're seeing it, so I guess that's true.
He grunted in discontent and found himself pondering Squinty's words, something that he usually made a point of avoiding. "Sumfing else ta fight..." he mumbled, gazing across his domain. While he had been having the time of his life fighting against the sameboyz with millions of orks at his beck and call, the prospect did have a certain appeal to it. He knew just as well as any ork on Mochantia did that the only things to fight on the planet were other orks and the sameboyz, and even then a boss only managed to round up enough boyz to both fight and win against the sameboyz every once in a while. The idea of fighting, waging war against something else, something new, appealed to him in the very deepest part of his orky gut.
Oop, might be catching on.
He snorted and shook his head. "Yooze getting too thinky, Wurkaz," he chided himself. "An ork not liking 'aving all da fights 'e could want, all da time? Dat's krazy talk."
Only an Ork could consider intelligence a negative trait in a leader. The Orks are comedy gold.
The other chameleon skinks that had infiltrated his fortress hefted his gun between ten of them and fired it into his back, knocking the warboss even further off balance.
That's a great mental image. It's like something out of Toy Story.
When he landed, it was not solely on the ground, however - the skinks had set up a great spear by taking a felled tree, sharpening the end into a point, and slathering it with even more of their venom, going so far as to congeal it into pastes and powders.
How in Sotek's name...
a team of assassins was prepared
All of this information was conveyed to a contingent of chameleon skinks who had spent the last seven years refreshing their ork-hunting techniques and retuning their venom to become lethal to the greenskins. The location and layout of Wurkaz's ramshackle city he had built on his landing site, everything regarding his usual habits, the amount of security in his fortress, and his favorite things to kill and eat were all noted down diligently by the color-changing assassins.
"The war-leader's death is paramount," intoned the skink attendant of the fifth generation Qonzlatl. "But this amulet of his is also of great interest to the lord slann. Consider recovering it for study your second priority, even should a portion of your lives need to be sacrificed for it."
The leader of the chameleon skinks merely blinked in response before his scales shifted and he seemed to vanish from the temple chambers. His voice was the last thing to leave, and then he was gone.
"Acknowledged."
A dart silently hissed out of the shadows and pierced into the back of his open mouth, extracting a startled gurgle from the warboss. Then four more.
There was nothing there that he could see, just the opening onto his balcony - no, there was something fading in out of thin air. Some twiggy scaly git, with twitchy eyes and color-changing skin. It was holding a blowpipe and looking at him all funny-like. "'neakhy ghit," he slurred, growling in irritation as he felt the wooziness penetrate into his skull. Then the scaly thing raised its pipe and blew a dart directly into his eye, and he bellowed in rage. "AHN 'ONNA KHILL OO," he yelled, and charged headlong at the twiggy sneaky thing. He could feel his balance degrading as he moved and his motor control lessening, but he still had enough fight in him to crush and stomp the lizard git to death.
The chameleon skink vanished from Wurkaz's view just before he could get within arm's reach of it.
Wurkaz crossed the threshold of the balcony and his feet became tangled up in the tripwires the assassins had set up and slathered with more of their toxins.
Wurkaz was impaled directly through the chest on the way down, landing with a great crunching thump that shook the earth. Bleary-eyed, he looked around with his last remaining bit of vision, looking for his bodyguard boyz. He'd tasked some of his best nobs with making sure no unwanted gits got inside his fortress, so where were they now? Zoggin' gits better not 'ave wandered off ter have a pint of grog.
He blinked in recognition as he saw one of the nobs slumped down against the gates, covered in a torrent of blood coming from his slashed throat. Dat explains dat, I guess.
Chameleon Skinks are underrated Hollywood action stars and total badasses. This thing reads like the synopsis of a plot of the Expendables mixed with Ocean's Eleven, but with Chameleon Skinks and Orks.
Big Mek Orkfred Nobel's Big Project, Northern Continent
With a name like that, we're lucky he didn't try to core out the world with explosives or something.
Big Quick-Buildy Flying Trukk Faktory
Well, at least it's not destroying the world or trying to smash one world into another. Looking at you,
Planetary Annihilation.
"It's bad, boss, it's real bad!" One of the shamans yelled, though he couldn't pick out which one since they wouldn't stop moving. "It's about ta happen!"
Well that'd be a downright unsettling thing to hear with no context.
He was interrupted as the earth groaned, a deep bass that was lower than hearing, something that shook the bones and rattled the brains. The shamans wailed as a great pressure descended upon them from some nebulous source, bursting their skulls and showering Orkfred in blood and gore. He was thrown off his feet as the earth split open and an invisible wall of force slammed down on the factory, shattering it with a titanic thundering. A cloud of ash and dust billowed out from the impact point, blocking the sun and obscuring all vision. Many nearby orks were caught by large pieces of shrapnel, impaled and sent flying by the sheer force of the debris.
You know you're fucked when the earth starts
groaning.
Christ, it's like an Act of God.
"Well, least I don't 'ave ta tell him da projekt failed."
That's... yeah that's a silver lining. I admire his optimism.
