NationStates Jolt Archive

Hub Thread (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?p=11691312&posted=1#post11691312)
Fredrick Ferguson observed the thick forest that was on both sides of the river. This would cause problems for development. He would need to chop the trees down in order to make room for a hut, and he would need a Magic-User to clear the stumps. The best he could do for now was build a camp and do some fishing the in lake and do some lumbering until he could get the message back to the town that he needed a wizard, a few horses or mules, or someone who was good with fire to remove the stumps to have enough room to build his hut. Dammed forest was always inefficient when it came to building stuff, but at least he had plenty of hunting grounds. He had heard, however, that some weird Bugger race had moved in the area recently. Not the most attractive thing when you were trying to start a new town.

Fred, himself, was a big, burly, hairy Mountain Man who did cartography and was a guide through the wilderness and for merchants for the Planties (Derogatory term for the Ku'Ru'Tai). Planties. He didn't like that word, but it was easier to say than Ku'Ru'Tai. Fred wasn't the stereotypical Mountain Man, though. He was generally kind, intelligent, and knew what he was doing most of the time. Guarding fat merchants from one town to the next, however, wasn't what he had in mind when he learned this trade. Frontiers work...That was a career worth pursuing. The Ku'Ru'Tai in Parliament and the King wanted to claim the whole Great Lily Valley, and the best way to do that was build towns and settlements along them. Of course, settlements didn't build themselves, so the Royal Charter Company hired Fred and a few other Rangers to start a few outposts so they could grow. The worst thing they had to worry about were the wilds and the mysterious Buggers that had recently moved into the area. Fred had done a thorough scouting of the area, though. He felt he was safe in this area. It was a nice little forest that was on the way to where a few of the other Mountain Men had decided to settle. Fred thought that, once he had his hut built, he would build a dock or something here, do some fishing, and he would probably have a nice business here once things got settled. He looked down at his breech-loader gun and his revolver, then to the river. He decided that the woods weren't so bad. He never liked cities.
"I like it like this," he said aloud, "Nobody else will move in here. These woods are mine."
Satisfied that the Gods had heard him, he walked up to the river, took a long, flexible stick, tied some string at one end, tied a wooden hook on the other, caught a worm, tied the worm to the hook, and tossed the bait into the river and fished for a while before he began work on his camp. Soon, he caught a rather large fish and cleaned it out. He made a fire ring, started the fire, and cooked his fish. As Fred ate the fish, he looked up and noticed the sun was starting to set!
"Aw, shit."
He looked about and didn't really see anything useful about to make a less temporary camp. He sighed and looked at his tent. It was starting to wear, but he wouldn't mind sleeping in it one more night. He wished that he had a magic-user here now to conjure up some sort of comfortable room, even if it was just a small bed with a roof. It looked like it was going to rain tonight. He looked towards the north, where his fellow rangers were settling and wondered how they were faring. He took out some rope and poles and set up his tent. He caught another fish, ate it, and then brought in more firewood for the fire and looked for more stuff to build a shelter unsuccessfully. He didn't want to have to borrow stuff from Roddy McGristle...That man smelled funny and was always bragging about his dogs, not to mention the fact he had the charm of a constipated orc. Eventually it got too dark and he let the fire burn out before going to sleep.

The next morning, he found out that it hadn't rained and the wildlife here was abundant. A bear had wandered in, smelling the fish, and had taken away the skeletons and heads. How could he be so foolish? Nothing major happened, but it was still a bad idea...That bear might decide Fred looked tasty or was a reliable source of food. Then he heard engines. Up here? How? He looked to the river and spotted a steamboat cruising up the river. He watched as one of the crewmen dumping their waste overboard.
"HEY!" he shouted, "What the hell are you doing?" One of the crewmen spotted him and waved, then went about his business. He recognized it was one of the boats owned by the company that hired him. They must be getting worried or, more likely, impatient. He shook his head. Towns took time...
He didn't know that those men didn't have a lot of time left.

Chatter. Chatterchatter.

The Hive contained many, many Tya'norians. And now there was something floating past. It was... strange. The synapses of the hive mind lit up, and identified it.

Waste. Badness. Notuseful. Anger? Anger!

The waste was swept away, and was gone. But the thought was still there. A single Gantae, a simple beast-warrior, and two Tya'norians, began running, not that Tya'norians often walked. Their legs clattered along the stone-and-crystal street as they did so, hurrying out of the city, along the bank. As they ran, a crystal cracked. They did so, sometimes. The knowledge of the crystal collapsing ran along the hivemind, and, within a few seconds, a Tya'norian crystalworker was sent to repair it. Such was the nature of the Hives. Huge, powerful, and efficient, they were the driving force of Tya'norian society. And yet the streets were never crowded, every Tya'norian moved according to what it knew, (Very few Tya'norians are male, although males are not only breeders, as most Tya'norians are sexless, only those with certain traits maturing into a certain sex) and, thus, the hive was a city of perfection, every being in its place.

This, at the very least, made it easy to leave. The Gantae, the six-legged giant beetle skittered ahead, moving at speeds which would stagger a horse, the two Tya'norians threading their way up the riverbanks. Few could fly, and so most had to scramble along, moving quickly, but with difficulty over more rugged terrain.

They ran, endlessly on, for hours. And then more. For almost half a day, they ran. And ran. And ran. And then they saw it. A wooden-island. A being of wood, and metal, that floated in the river. And they saw it dump something into the river. Waste. It was the same as before. Greyish, blackish in parts, but essentially the same stuff. It was floating close to the shore.

The Gantae watched it. And through the distant hivemind, it called. Enemiesmakewaste, hive suffers. Bring Ysll-flyers.. And the call was out. Sixty of the Ysll, the tiny flying warriors, would come. They would fly up the river. And when they found the ship, they would kill everyone aboard... the hivemind was not known for its good temper.

"What the hell is that?" one of the crewmen asked as he watched the Gantae rush along side the boat on the land.
"I dunno what it is. Must be one of dem buggers," another one replied, raising his rifle, "But I don't wat to know if it has wings." He followed the creature a bit, only to see sixty bat-sized inects fly over the trees.
"Tymora's will protect us..." the first crewmen muttered as spits of acid began to eat away at the ship. There were many screams as some of the acid landed on the crewmen themselves. Most of the humans onbaord, however, simply jumped overboard and swam to the shore, only to come face-to-face with the Gantae.

Amusedlaughter. Killchatter

The acid sprayed liberally across the boat, eating holes through the wood, the metal, and the humans aboard. The stuff was deadly poison, not only eating away flesh, but even a dash of it enough to send most men into a fitful fever.

The humans dived for the shore - the Gantae merely stepped back. The beetlelike creature was wary of water, after all, it had no way of swimming - it was immensely heavy, and its legs, although wiry and strong, were too thin to properly propel it through the water.

It scuttered back, the wet, and scared humans clambering ashore. A chitter of laughter emerged from its pedipalps, and it raised its bladed pincers. The last of the humans was now on the shore. They were staring at it apprehensively.. and with good reason.

The Gantae darted forward, its pincers crushing a human skull, the insides exploding as if the head were a ripe melon. Bladed, elongated forearms saw an arm neatly sliced off, and another died within a second. To human eyes, it blurred, moving quickly, slamming into the survivors, cutting them, attacking endlessly. In but a few seconds, the unsuspecting humans had died. With the exception of one. He had just clambered onto the shore. The Gantae grinned inwardly, and prepared to strike.

Leavebeing! Warnotherbeings. River ours.

The Gantae leapt foward, its pincers snickering around the man's neck, the blades stopping a tiny moment before it would've killed him. A solitary drop of blood ran down the man's neck, as the blades slowly withdrew inside the pincers, The Gantae stepped back, and let the man go. The two Tya'dorians nearby looked worriedly at the man. But they had heard the message. And one was a Speaker, a Tya'dorian who could form the strange sounds that the humans made.

"You no.. go here. Ours. Leave. Tell you others not come. Not come back. Go. We... kill if come again. "

The speech was slow, and halting, and underlaid with the sound of chittering, but it was comprehensible enough. The Gantae scuttled back, leaving a path for the human to walk. The humans would learn to keep their mess to themselves, one way or another..

The man was terrified as the monsters told him and the other humans to leave the river, but he was too terrified to actually pay attention. Fred, however, saw the whole thing and waited for the bugs to be well out of visual and audible range before swimming across the river to the man. Fred heard the sound of baying hounds and a few gunshots and he sighed. Roddy McGristle, the trigger-Happy Mountain Man that gives other Mountain men a bad name. Fred noticed that the man slipped into unconsiousness as the firing stopped. He dragged the man to a tree and laid him down in a comfortable spot. He looked up to see a rather large Hound dog liking his face.
"Fisher, stop dat!" a deep, gruff voice said, and teh dog scampered away. Fred sighed.
"So did you get lucky and actually hit something this time, Roddy?" he asked. Roddy laughed.
"More'n you got! Look at this bug!"
A rather large insect landed mear the man from the boat. It oozed acid and green blood, which began to eat away at the ground beneath.
"Wow, something small. I figured you downed a tree with that oversized shotgun of yours," Fred retorted, tossing teh carcass several feet away.
"Bleeder's big, dudn't make it inaccurate."
"I wasn't blaming the shotgun."
Appareantly Roddy didn't get this last insult, and only grunted in reply. He looked towards where the insects had run off to.
"I'd bet there's a whole hive of them, with an army an' everything."
"If you knew anything about the Tya'Norians, you'd know that there probably is if they're protecting the river, although I doubt they have a sizable force here."
Roddy scowled.
"Well, I don't care how many are there, I'm callin' in the Calvary and having the Planties take care of 'em for killin' those men like that."
Freed sighed again.
"If you knew anything about the Tya'Norians at ALL, you'd know they hold beauty above all else. These men were dumping their waste in the river."
"So do bears."
"Bears don't dump excess sulfur off of their ugly steamships, now do they?" Fred said, nearing the top of his lungs.
"Those men didn't do anything to make the river ugly! It'd just wash away!"
"Then they probably saw YOUR ugly FACE!"
At this Roddy swung at Fred, but the amn wasn't as old, graceful, experienced, or intelligent as Fred, so it was an easy dodge. Fred returned with a jab to the stomach and then a blow to the head, which laid down Roddy. Fred spat on Roddy's unconscious body. His dogs ran up to Roddy and licked him, and then stopped that quickly. Fred picked up the unconscious sailor and walked upstream, finding a shallower spot to cross. Why did he get the feeling that he just started something that would end in a lot of pain and death?

((Don't kill Roddy, either, and only one of his dogs. But you can take off one leg off of the other, just to keep things somewhat faithful to original character.

Oh, and take his ear and make him uglier^^))

Pain! Gonekillrevengehate!

The tiny Ysll had even weaker minds than the Gantae. They were simplistic in nature, designed to kill, and not much else. They had no combat finesse, and, as such, were easy to kill if surprised.

The beetle-like Gantae drone chittered. It saw the man. Legs blurred into action, and it sped forward, preparing to attack. But there were.. conflicting orders. Leave the human alone? Was it the same human? It didn't know. They all looked so alike.. and Gantae didn't have a long attention span.

It had to kill humans, but.. was this the human it had to kill? It didn't know. Still, it.. could've been. There were two.. three humans. Which one to attack? Which one to kill? The decision was made for it, as a deep growling came from the throat of a nearby animal. It almost sounded like proper speech, but the Gantae knew it wasn't.

The dog leapt. A second later, the body lay in two halves on the ground, blood gushing out with willful abandon. A second dog was there, however.. The Gantae didn't bother with killing it - a single blow from a pincer left its leg broken, and, as the blade retreated, a smaller flap of flesh from the head was sliced off. The two Tya'norian hiveworkers were following along behind it, it knew. The man there.. could've been the man it needed to leave alive... It could've been.

The Gantae scuttled foward, slicing through bushes and branches alike as it did so, as it saw the man. It paused. The other man was probably the one that needed to live. But the pause was enough. The man, who was carrying the other man saw him. Another pause. The process of thought was hard, this far from the hivemind. It was a little more than a second, and then the Gantae bent its legs back, and prepared to leap...

OOC: An escape through the river sound good? After all, Tya'norians can't swim..

OOC: Yeah.
IC
Fred stared at the Gantae as it sat there, and then at the man slung over his shoulder. The Gantae rustled its rump, and then leaped towards Fred. Fred dove into the water and let teh crrent take him, holding the man closely while steering them both. He resurfaced a hundred yards downriver as the Gantae searched for the two men. He breathed a sigh of relief when it gave up in frustration and left in teh other direction. Fred swam to the shore and quickly found his camp and removed his clothes and teh clothes from the sailor. The sailor woke up about fifteen minutes later, surprised to be naked and wrapped in a blanket in a camp. Fred had an extra pair of clothes with him and was putting on his left sock.
"What happened?" the sailor asked.
"Tya'norians attacked your ship," Fred replied. The sailor's expression became confused.
"Why did they attack us? We were just scouting for the woodsmen to see their progres..."
"Some of your men were dumping over wastes, some toxic, I believe. I saw yellow. Were you carrying sulfur?"
"We had a wizard on board who was experimenting. I didn't know anything about it."
Fred handed him some tea and a lizard-on-a-stick, which he accepted.
"What's your name, son?"
"Sam. Sam Gilgamesh."
"Fred Fearguson. I'm one of teh mountain men you werre looking for. Welcome to my humble home."
Sam looked around. Fred had a half-finished shelter made from sticks and logs, an area where he stored food, a clothing line, even a compost pile that had been broken into by some wild animals.
"The bugs told me to warn the others not to come here...They claim the river's theirs...I don't think we should be here..."
"Nonsense," Fred said to Sam, "We have every right to be here."
Fred sipped his tea.
"The thing is, so do they. The Ku'Ru'Tai believe them to be things of Nature and of beauty. We can still expand into the tributaries. It's the Planties' ancestral homes. But we've no right to kick out the Tya'Norians, which I fear Roddy McGristle-"
As if on cue, a shotgun blast was heard in the distance.
"-And that would be him, being pissed off at the fact I knocked him out. Roddy's a mean one. He'll probably convince one of our employers thgat the Tya'Norians are viscious killing machines. A single ranking Plantie War-Druid would settle peace with them, so we're going to make it back to the city before-"
They heard screams, barking, and another shotgun blast.
"Roddy does and convinces the Army to step in and kill off the Tya'Norians here. Their hive can't be that old, or large. A single Division, hell, a well-armed, well-supported Regiment, could wipe them out. It would also spark a nasty war with the rest of their Hives."
"So when do we go?" Sam asked.
"When your clothes dry. Drink some more tea and finish your lizard. I'm going to talk to a friend."

The Gantae had escaped, several bullets glancing off its hard carapace - two penetrating it. It would die, it knew. The Tya'norians were not built to repair their bodies in any major, they grew, and then they died - they were numerous, it was true, but, in war, lifespans were very short.

The beetle ran away from the enemy, connecting with the hivemind briefly. Attacked. Pain. Send many. If they come, we kill.. Synapses within the massive groupmind flared, and the request was accepted. The Eighth Hive was a small hive - a mere five hundred thousand Tya'norians, which, from a human point of view, was a massive city. Since Tya'norian cities were generally not visible, being mostly beneath the ground, and since the waste, and the luxuries needed were minimal, a Tya'norian might take up a tenth, or even a hundredth of the space a normal human would.

There was, however, a nearby Warrior-Hive. Four thousand Gantae could be called within a few minutes, rushing to the aid of the city. A few hundred were rousted, and were prepared to give battle - any threat to the hive must be met with force. The southern border was guarded by Hive-Forts, but they were manned for the safety of the Realm. Nonetheless, the risk was there. The humans had never done such things before - and attacking was not a desirable option; then again, neither was death.

Wings of Ysll were commanded, thousands of the tiny air-warriors prepared to give their lives for the Hive. If the enemy attacked, they would be ready. The Eighth Hive scrambled into motion, the delicate buttresses of the Hive soaring into the air, the constructions of natural-like towers pleasing to the eye. They had none of the strength of the fortresslike underground, and fire, and gunpowder were the worst enemies of the above-ground part of the hive...

The Mountain Men were either killed off or had fled the area when the Eighth Hive began to attack the humans. It seemed they had won the skirmish and two weeks of quiet soothed the forest. But on the third week, five steamboats landed on the banks where Fred had made camp and over two hundred soldiers, mostly Ku'Ru'Tai, but commanded by humans and has a significant number of them, loaded onto the bank, clutching their rifles and their swords. The place that Fred had built a small shelter became a Command tent and the company was soon ready for a fight. Druids soon walked out of the trees themselves and joined the group of Ku'Ru'Tai and humans in their plans, telling of where they thought the Eighth Hive was.

Captain Shades had fought Tya'Norians before when he was a young adventurer and had lost an eye to them. He knew how to fight them and worse still he had a grudge for his lost eye. Granted, he had it replaced, but the humiliation and pain was too big to be satisfied with a new eye. He joined the Army eventually and had a long and profitable career mostly as a Mercenary, as many Phaylaa Imperium human soldiers and commanders grow weary of peacetime and fight for other nations. Captain Shades' reputation in the darker parts of the world were widely known and he, himself, was widely feared. He jumped at the opportunity to fight Tya'Norians, even though he was at the top of the list to lead the mission.

Of course, the mission wasn't to destroy the hive, just cripple its military and bring in the Druidic diplomats. The Tya'Norians were animalistic, but still sentient and therefore reasonable beings, and also creatures of nature. A Druid diplomat would handle talks with the creatures well. But there was tension as Captain Shades was leading the mission, and there were worries in the Ku'Ru'Tai and in the Druids that he was not here to specifically follow his mission parameters. Many feared his personal vendettas would get in the way and they would end up setting fire to the Tya'Norian hive...Few suspected that Shades had something much more personal in mind.

But among the men leading the scout parties was Roddy McGristle and his now one-legged dog. Roddy was angry that he had lost a dog and his other dog lost a leg. Roddy was an ignorant man that everyone, especially the Ku'Ru'Tai, stayed well away from. That suited Roddy just fine. The fewer people to question his motives and anger, the better. Eventually, though, he was sent out less and less as the way was clear and more Army scouts were being used and the Company was pushing forward to the suspected place where the Hive was.

"BAT-BUGS!" one man shouted as Ysll began to appear overhead. Shots rang out as the bat-like insects were shot and brought down. Men screamed as bits of acid landed on their clothing and skin and the skirmishes began.

OOC: Yeah... I have a question. Is this deliberate suicide of your army? Keeping in mind that the Hive City has five hundred thousand Tya'norians, is walled on the outside (and fortified strongly on the inside, making walking across to the outside part a living wall of acid and bullets), all of which can be mustered to fight, if the worst comes to worst. So....yeah. Just wondering.

((I realized that I ought to make it a couple of weeks...

And teh purpose isn't to defeat the army, nor is the Captain planning to disobey orders and dripple your Gantaes and Ytll. But do you think I ought to increase the numbers? I was thinking that if Roddy can kill a Gantae with a stray shotgun blast, your bugs don't stand much of a chance against a Battalion.))

Kill, yes. But the reasoning behind that is that Tya'dorians don't heal well. Thus, they get wounded, and since there's no medical science.. chances are a wounded Gantae will die. However, considering the fact that they can go into blood frenzies, slaughtering everyone around them before they're torn completely apart, continuing to fight until they can no longer stand... Yeah. I'd say two hundred isn't enough.

((Suggestions?))

Twenty thousand could cripple a hive. Two thousand could probably gain an armistice. A single Druid could probably bring about a peace.

((Well, seeing as we have about 5 druids...))

(I meant in terms of talking to the various Tya'norians. A Druid could probably communicate with them, and they're really very friendly, once you get to know them. It's just the crazy slaughterseeking giant beetles that tend to incapacitate early relations)

((So...about 5,000 men or so?))

(It depends on what you want to accomplish, as I've said. Five thousand would probably give you a better bargaining point, at the very least)

((Ten thousand it is. I'm going to put this on hiatus, however, until I get my comp set up after I move, okay?))

OOC: Heh.. funny you should mention that. I'm moving as well. Coincidence? Probably.

((That's funny.

Well...See you next week or so.))