ic Diaspora: The First Terror(IC)

[Ari]

GM

 

95923.87 billions of miles from anything

 

2 hours after Moon Moth woke up

 

A gamma dragon can grow to the length of an astronomical unit. While made of molten minerals, they are encased in a thick crust of high-density rock and metal that is effectively impervious to most weapons fire. 

 

Unfortunately, the one currently outside the Lor science ship To Live Is To Labor was twice the size of a normal dragon. It stretched on and on, seemingly forever from the perspective of the tiny Lanturnian, the bright glare of the ship's lights creating fantastical shadows in the dust around its rocky corpse.

 

It being dead was the good news.

 

He couldn't see them, but Moon-Moth knew a small fleet of refugee-Asshui was stationed at a polite remove from the Lor and their technical officers. They'd come to find the reason the dragon was dead. The reason was a male of the Asshui who had come to this system five dreamful sleeps before Moon-Moth had received the distress call on CoVic Station.

 

The Wanderers of Asshui hadn't come into known space without their own heroes. Moon-Moth had even met some of them, mostly great scholars or poets, people who recorded and studied the lore of the Wanderers and kept the past alive. Draz-Fel had been different. The mysterious enemy the refugees of the Diaspora were fleeing hadn't frightened him, nothing had. While without any powers he'd had a cunning mind and iron will, with the wisdom to know his own weaknesses. The clans who followed Draz had never faced a foe they couldn't at least outwit, and to the hero the gamma dragon wandering into the territory the Asshui claimed had seemed like a spectacular, grand challenge to be faced and not a titanic predator that bathed in stars and needed to be avoided at all costs.

 

But now the monster was dead. It wasn't cold yet, the volcanism of its interior would take a thousand years to die down. But it would never again lash its tail and crack a planet into chunks, never breathe fire vast as a solar flare and hot enough to evaporate a fleet.

 

And thanks to that volcanism finding Draz-Fel with the ship's sensors was nearly impossible. The ground crew of the To Live and some of Draz's closest friends and Asshui medical experts were headed down to find the dragonslayer on foot.

 

"What are you thinking about?" The second in command of the ship, a a tripod with a hard black chitin and small red eyes named Commander Skral, had paused beside him. Their grounding suit was already on, various tools affixed at magnetic points on the uniform. Some were tied on, too. Just in case.

[Exaccus]

Moon-moth had looked out over the corpse of the colossal cosmozoan in silence for quite a while, contemplating the very nature of the universe infront of him, the dragon was impressive indeed but when fate had called it had, like the great empire of moon-moths native era, fell before the scythe like so much wheat.

 

He was considered strange by the scientifically minded lor and even those amongst the praetorians with more scientific leanings and learnings, he understood of course their scepticism for the mystic, on their worlds it had been a tool of charlatans attempting to cheat and rob them in exchange for communing with uncontrollable forces on their behalf and averting the otherwise unalterable.

 

They didn't think such of him of course, that much he knew in his heart but they didn't think it was magic, they thought he didn't understand what he could do and so he called it magic but that it was really some form of beneficial mutation the exposure to lanturns firey sun through the destroyed atmosphere had brought about in him and his people entire.

 

it annoyed him some but never enough for him to speak out about it, it felt too soon to be upset at his friends, not when it had been such a short time between their two horrific battles with the communion and its terrible intentions for the universe to start bickering over such inconsequential things.

 

he might've stayed even longer in his own head mindlessly pouring over thoughts so strange that even his own native language would've had difficulty communicating to those fluent in it when he was brought back into the here and now matterium by the tripod with the smooth black carpace

 

Secretly that there were so many arthropoid aliens in the universe today gave him hope, hope that his people had survived through the milenia he'd been sleeping and though they were now far different they remained the same, too spread out and adaptable to be destroyed by the indifference of the universe.

 

"Moth thinks of elder days, bretheren, before the fall and the rise once mores to battle darkness between the stars." he answered simply "moth ponders what drives one to seeking out and confronting such adversity as this Asshui has, Moon-moth perhapsing seeing too much hardship to feel the thrills of huntings anymore." he sighed

 

"what of yous friendy, what thoughts brewings in your braining?"

 

 

[Ari]

GM

 

Skral's mandibles buzzed against the suit's voiceplate. Some of the eyes twitched to survey the dragon.

 

"I'm no hunter, sage, but I can understand the enormity of all this weighing on a mind. I think that's why Draz-Fel went up against this thing. The refugees...they haven't had such strange stars around them for a long time. Starting over, plotting against these 'imposters' they keep talking about when they think I can't hear them, dealing with us and our problems and all the people who look at them and see something to exploit, a single, isolated and powerful opponent must seem tempting."

 

He shrugged, "Either way, if he's dead he's dead. Transport is ready when you are."

[Exaccus]

"Indeeds, it is a wise being who accepts they knows not everything and a humbly one." Moth said kindly and softly as he took one last long look out the veiwport before turning away.

 

"Myothizar apologizing for keeping you and our pilot waitings, have difficulties keepings time tracked lead on friends and moth shall follow."

Edited June 24, 2018 by Exaccus