NationStates Jolt Archive

OOC: Last time I tried to get into FT, it was isolationist fish people. Apparently isolationism is bad for one's RP. Or maybe it was becoming allied to a faction that was on a campaign of genocide against anthropes. Let's see how the reverse works.

IC:

Near the border of the galactic core of the Milky Way galaxy, civilizations struggled to develop. However, an isolated race of tauric reptiles was reaching the peak of its industrial age with the development of advanced long-range communication technology. A few weeks later, the following message was transmitted across the stars near the planet's binary star system, cycling over and over:

We are under attack. Please help. We are not food.

-OOC-
And suddenly, the statement of not being food disappoints the Mekantans, until they decide to challenge that assessment with a statement that they're being cooked wrong. ^_^

-IC-
The Galactic Hegemony prided itself on the might of its military. Despite the perpetual state of civil war within Hegemony space, even the most suicidal Warlord refused to pick a fight with the Hegemony government.

One of the reasons was the existence of the Darkships (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v384/MachinaKyrios/Third-Generation%20Renders/NeoMekanta/Darkship1.jpg). Massive warships capable of destroying entire star systems and obliterating whole armadas. The Darkships represented the might of the Hegemony.

It was one such Darkship, the Koral'ze Korul (Death's Harvest) that was near the galactic core when it received the panicked transmission. A single thought crossed its commander's mind upon hearing it.

"Doe'keh'ta ryah'zjeseth'ta mato'soh'za..." ("They sound delicious...")

Deep within the huge warship, sitting on a throne within its command core, sat a humanoid woman. Her hair, white as freshly fallen snow, didn't do much to identify her as non-human. It was the blue-green streaks running down her cheeks, and the glow both they and her blue eyes held, that identified her. She was Mekantan, and her position on that throne identified her as Kaerii toth Matha, commander of the Death's Harvest.

Amused by her statement, the ship issued a deep, booming response in a thousand voices at once. "Jyh'ta unza'ta ezat'kya'za'nlya? Nlya'kya'reh." ("You didn't eat again, did you? Stupid girl.")

Kaerii just glared at the ceiling of the warship's command chamber, suppressing her amusement at the warship's teasing. "Doe'keh'ze myeh'ta kir'tih. Jeh'se'ta ezat'sah'chya'tih." ("Let's go to their location. We'll look around.")

"Tza'to." ("Affermative.")


It didn't take long for the Death's Harvest to enter the system in a manner any way but stealthily. A massive burst of light, heat, and radiation, along with large gravitational distortions, heralded the hellish entry of the Death's Harvest into the system. Energy crackled between its spines as it swept out with its wide array of scanners. The motto of the Darkships translated to "Omniscience, Omnipotence, Malevolence" and the Death's Harvest was no stranger to the first.

As the massive warship's senses swept the system, Kaerii waited, looking about. "... Jeh'ta zat'kya'zjeseth'za..." ("I'm hungry..."

The massive warship arrived to a scene it would probably have expected to have commited had it arrived itself, and thrown discipline to the wind in favor of ravenous greed. Thousands of ships, ranging in size from heavy fightercraft and support corvettes to carrier cruisers that surpassed the Death's Harvest in raw mass. Where most races would invade a world with an arm of their military, these attackers were striking their their entire species.

Readings showed the echoes of a rather simple attack: Launch meteors at military targets from orbit while launching OAS transports to the surface, unleashing hordes of... whatever the invading race was, it had a high tolerance for radiation, because the trails of their infantry patterns could be picked up beelining for population centers and feasting.

As for the fleet formation, it was creating a convoluted maze of scrapheap vessels, a new -osphere around the planet. The transmission continued from the planet's surface, and the ships facing the new arrival pivoted to face the Death's Harvest. They received a hail for a holographic projection communication, although they were transmitting on a loop themselves in the local system.

Kill. Eat. Breed.

(OOC Note: It's actually very hard to outmass a Darkship. Planets are incapable of it. But it's very easy to ICly mistake the mass of one, since they a) render all scans of them completely useless and b) negate gravity around themselves.)

The Death's Harvest simply looked at the other vessels a moment, quickly calculating attack vectors for every craft in the dense cloud and firing solutions that would enable it to most efficiently annihilate the swarm before the swarm had sent its hail. If Kaerii gave the word, the system-destroying warship would begin the bloody work of sterilizing the area.

It was, however, the Death's Harvest, commanded by Kaerii toth Matha, one of the most irrational and unpredictable of the Hegemony's commanders, and it had millenia to get used to its commander.

"Doe'keh'ta koryash'ryah'tih." ("Open communications with them.") Kaerii leaned back in her throne, grinning. "Doe'keh'ta tyzinth'zjeseth'ta'za." ("These ones seem interesting.")

"Tza'to. Jeh'ta koryash'ryah'tih." ("Affermative. I am transmitting.")


The thousand booming voices of the Darkship's omnivoice was transmitted to the swarm of ships, interrupting them before they had the chance to speak.

Attention feeble lessers. This is the Darkship Death's Harvest of the Galactic Hegemony. Interest has been shown in this conflict by the commander of this vessel. Your viciousness is respectable in Mekantan eyes, if sloppy and imprecise. Speak your identity that we may communicate.

OOC: The Golugani are as tall as a human when on all fours, in which state they appear similiar to rats with prehensile tails. These ships are enough to house the entire populace.

The Death's Harvest would have no difficulty finding targets. All the ships were as irradiated as the soldiers, the mass of ships enough to house over four billion of these creatures.

When communications opened, a hologram was projected with it, both 2D and 3D as appropriate for the Death's Harvest's viewing systems. In the display was what looked like an upright standing rat, clad in scrap metal armor, munching on the back of one of the native's severed heads. It noticed something after a second, and clicked a button on the side of its helmet, bringing a mask down.

"Frickin' translator... Need to find a way to translate and eat at the same time. I'm Ganurath, Five Digit Father of the Clans and speaking on behalf of our race from the far side of the planet. Let's get this clear: First come, first serve. This meat's gonna feed a new generation. Now, what brings you to our latest stop?"

Kaerii smiled as the 3D hologram was projected inside the Death's Harvest's command chamber. She was right. This was an amusing trip.

"Koryash'ryah'ta hosh'tih..." ("Prepare to transmit...")


Another transmission, sound-only, was sent back. This time, it was not the Death's Harvest's booming omnivoice that spoke, but rather Kaerii's. She was one of the few Mekantans who could speak common languages well, without the usual grammatical errors and other problems Mekantans often had when speaking languages other than their own.

Attention hungry shoddy equipment people. My name is Kaerii toth Matha, commander of the [/I]Death's Harvest[I]. As my warship stated, we grew interested in this conflict. Tell me, Ganurath, do your people have trouble getting enough food? You seem rather... ravenous...

As the exchange continued, ships moved up and down between the fleet and the planet's surface, cycling the populace to the surface. Children were always a strong presence so that'd they'd get used to the hunt and be able to easily differentiate between ship parts, foodstuffs, and ground.

After receiving the transmission, Ganurath sent a new holomessage, this time pulling the helmet down right at the start. This time he seemed to be rocking back and forth in a rhythmic twitch, although it cut off at the waist.

"Just call us the Clans, save your breath on the extra syllables. We don't have trouble getting food, we haven't found a biological we couldn't digest, so long as it's ability to fight back doesn't exceed out ability to kill. The hard part is making the ships fast enough to house the growing populace and move on to the next lifebearing system."

Kaerii grinned to herself as she reviewed the information, preparing another message for the representative clans and ignoring what he was doing. Perhaps these creatures' habits could be quite useful to the Hegemony...

That would explain the questionable quality of your equipment and vessels. Would I be correct in assuming you sweep the planet of all edible life and material you can build a ship out of, then move on?

The Clanlord makes a sort of sideways figure-eight with his head, his race's equivolent to seesawing the palm. "The planets we raid inevitably have enough to feed us. Sometimes there's even a semblence of civilization when we leave. We take enough to tide us over for the next raid..." The rodent shudders at this point, and the twitching stops. "If there's life left when we leave, it just means it'll be sooner when we can come back. If the locals inflict notable casualties, though, we make sure they can't come back."

OOC: Back to usual melee of posts.

OOC- parts of my being scream for me to come in and try to save the people being eaten.... but at the same time... i dont feel like wasting my resources in a fight that i probably wouldnt win.

OOC: Please, try. I want to demonstrate the... unconvential military tactics of the Clans. Besides, it seems Mekanta has dropped out, or at least isn't noticing it.