Terminal — Roleplayer Guild

Dedonus said
I think Iikka needs a direct answer because he thinks he is hallucinating.

Exactly that. Like I said previously, Iikka is under the impression he is suffering from a severe concussion and is hallucinating like woah.

Until he gets some kind of response to his fumbling around and query as to whether or not blood is gushing from every orifice on his head, the only thing I could really write for him is having a panic attack in response to the increasing severity of his apparent hallucinations and possibly having a mental breakdown on the spot and turning catatonic.

This would not be terribly conducive for either the plot or for everybody escaping the construction site on time. '-'

Somebody - Jason specifically, since Iikka last approached him begging for a little bit of help and since everyone else is sort of ignoring him in lieu of the spaceship - needs to come to his assistance and tell him that no, he's not hallucinating or dying from cerebral hemorrhaging. :P

29 Years Ago...

"Lord Enlil, your wife has given birth."

Lord Fihr Wystan Aulus Cailean Enlil, Duke of the Crescent Lands under the bygone authority of the last Emperor, did not even look up from the terminal at his desk where he worked in his office of the Last Manor of the House of Enlil. Behind him was a grand balcony enshrouded in ballistic glass with delicate golden filigree. The desk he worked at had a body of white marble cast with polished pearl edges and capped with engraved platinum at each corner, ancient scenes of bygone myth gracefully and painstakingly carved into each face. His seat was a throne of polished multicolored chrome that somehow made the rest of the massive, ballroom-sized parlor seem small in comparison. The ceiling was a diorama of stars, the walls retold the birth and progression of the universe, and the floor was a precise, three-dimensional rendering of the planet's surface.

Lord Enlil himself seemed almost embarrassingly unregal in comparison. If anything, he might have been mistaken for a squirrely accountant, had he not been wearing a tailored suit of silver silk and more rings on his fingers than there were nickles in Jupiter, each glittering with gemstones.

He did not say anything in response, and if he paused for a moment as he typed it was more likely because he was lost in numbers than because of what the servant had said.

"She named him Poe." The servant supplied after several moments of silence. This merited a brief glance from the seated bean counter masquerading as a lord.

"...What else?" He inquired in the faint tone of wary anticipation used by those apathetic to answers that went with questions.

The servant had the dignity to look apologetic. "Just Poe, my lord."

Lord Enlil blinked, and then stared blankly at the servant for a few moments.

"Well." He said eventually, "I suppose it is only fitting. He is quite nearly almost a bastard. I suppose the stupid girl did this out of defiance, but it will do." He looked off towards a segment of the wall, where a cloud of proplyd aggregate was starting to form into a primordial planet. After a few moments, he added, "Have her sedated for another week."

"Yes, my lord. What of your son?"

Lord Enlil waved a hand errantly as he returned for work.

888888888888

"...The little shit BIT me!" The maid swore, shaking her hand vigorously as the nurse looked on with some amusement.

"Looks like he's been baked a little too hot while he was in the oven then." She snorted.

"That's the third one I've delivered this week," The doctor said from the sink where she was washing her hands.

"What the hell is that supposed to mean? Why does he even HAVE teeth? Newborns aren't supposed to have any!" The maid asked furiously as she bit her sore finger.

"It's the radiation." The nurse said as she started cleaning up the delivery table. "Despite all the shielding, some of it still gets through. It's not uncommon for us to see kids who got a dose prenatally, although most of them die after a few days."

"Not this one. Very healthy specimen." The doctor said absently.

"He's not always going to be like that, is he?" The nurse asked nervously.

"Maybe. Don't know any grown ones. All I know is, they don't really make a fuss. They just get mad and start biting things."

"I swear, he'd better not. I don't want to spend the next four years having him try to bite my fingers off."

The maid stared irately at the table where Poe, heir to the house of Enlil, lay in an capsule wrapped in blankets.

The newborn child there stared at her with eyes wracked by astigmatism, and clacked his teeth together in a wicked rictus grin.

888888888888

28 Years Ago

They were woken early again.

Usually they were woken by cold, clinging dampness from a bucket. Tonight was different. All of the childrens' eyes sprung open, their nightmares banished and supplanted by the nightmare called the real world, as a thunderous crack boomed throughout the cramped stone room like a boulder crashing and breaking on smoke.

A man stood over a small prone body nearest to the door. A smoking handgun clenched in his hand. An archaic weapon, chosen for a purpose.

The prone body at his feet never moves again. All the children are still, eyes wide, the familiar sensations of fear and confusion flooding their minds as their muscles tensed and prepared for the inevitable pain that was to follow - but their bodies were only prepared for beatings, for knives and bars and burning paste. They were not prepared for this.

Another thunderous cracking noise, and the room is illuminated for less time than it takes for the next victim's heart to stop beating. The girl had been shot in the gut, but the sheer force of the bullet alone had killed her instantly.

The time that elapsed between the next shot being fired and for the screaming to start was nearly immeasurable.

The man was methodical and swift, firing once every second, and always hitting each child in the same place in the gut or along the rear of the hip if they were turned away from him. He only paused, twice, to reload.

The children cowered away from him, the children pleaded with him, the children cried, the children voided their bowels, the children prayed, and the children closed their eyes and tried to wake up from this new nightmare.

Mostly, the children died.

And then there was only one.

The last child had no name, had been the only one not to scream, or to even move from where they sat against the cold stone wall. Their eyes were wide, but also dull and empty. Almost accepting.

There was a final resounding boom, and the boy felt a sudden weight in his gut as all the strength fled from his body. Even if he had wanted to move, he couldn't have.

The man holstered the handgun and left the room. New men, adorned in dull green scrubs, came in and started checking each of the bodies.

"Dead." Says one as they checked for a pulse and a heartbeat.

"Dead." Says another.

"Dead."

"Dead."

"Live." Says one of the men. Two of the others quickly respond, picking the survivor up by their arms and legs and hauling them out of the room.

"Dead."

"Dead."

"Dead."

"Dead."

"Dead."

"Dead."

"Dead."

"Dead."

"Live." Another body is hoisted away from the mass grave.

"Dead."

"Dead."

"Dead..."

Eventually they reach the boy with no name. One of the men presses a finger to his neck and a palm against his chest.

"Live." He says.

As the boy is lifted, his consciousness fades, and he falls into darkness.

888888888888

"Four survivors from the first cell. Two from the second cell. Two from the third cell. Three from the fourth cell. None from the fifth cell. One from the sixth cell..."

The colonel mutters the numbers to himself as his fingers draws down the list, while keeping a mental tally of the number of children who survived. For a moment he was sure he would reach the end of the list before he hit the needed number - they hadn't really been sure how many they would need to shoot, and some cells were fuller than others - but there had been a single extra survivor from the last cell.

"Ha. What luck. Right on the mark." He said triumphantly as he tossed the clipboard down. It spoke to the state of the planetary regime, that they were using clipboards and paper. "It looks like we won't need to shoot all the little fucks in the second cell block."

"What should we do with them then, colonel?" Asked the captain just behind him.

"Have them all hung with the rest." He replied, sitting down and pulling out a half empty bottle of scotch. "Before you do that though, captain, make sure the secretary knows their candidates have passed the first test."

888888888888

Now

"Nailtooth is out meeting with the bosses again."

The interior of the ship is like a maze of rectangular shapes overflown with quicksilver. Nailtooth's frigates were restored hulls from the era of the old Empire, and they built things sturdy - reflected in their design aesthetics, both vessels were quintessential blocky bricks. Retrofitting and upgrades had slowly replaced individual components and segments within and without, and the new designer obviously had different preferences. Here and there, flat, matte-gray and seamless hull plating gave way to gleaming, rolling curves of silver and jet black with delicate streams of crystal running through them.

Even the mess had not been spared, and the floors either thudded harshly or clinked softly depending where one stepped.

Four figures occupied the place - three sitting at one table, another idling in solitude in a corner, watching.

The speaker was a relatively average-looking if somewhat worn man, perhaps in his early forties with grayed hair. His expression was one of mild exhaustion and general apathy, but there was a faint glimmer of mischief in his eyes. He wore a jumpsuit stained and frayed at the neck and sleeves. Just by looking at him, there was no way to know he was a flesh-peddler turned raider turned piratical maintenance engineer.

Most of Nailtooth's crew had similar profiles - outside the Duchy, the most dangerous of the bunch had made it by wearing masks that disguised them as ordinary people, and only the most vicious of the lot had survived to get part in Nailtooth's crew when it had left for the Duchy itself, seven years ago. All of them had a trace of true cunning to them that let them survive where larger and stronger brutes with bigger guns had been shot down.

"I know he thinks he knows what he's doing here, but I'm kind of worried that freak has Nailtooth wrapped around his little finger." One of the two women at the table - dressed in the Raider fashion of 'anything that works,' wearing a mix-and-match ensemble of salvaged military gear. Not everybody in Nailtooth's crew fully respected him, and not everybody in Nailtooth's crew would hesitate before stabbing him in the back - except, of course, for Nailtooth's connection to the bosses. He was the next best thing to untouchable, and if they questioned his ways, they didn't question that he was their meal ticket here in the Duchy.

The second woman, dressed almost sensibly in civilian garments, responded. "Never mind that. I just wish we knew more about what was going on with them. We're raiders, not a fucking military squadron. There's no reason I can see to keep us on need to know scraps."

"Perhaps I can clear the air here."

All three of the hardened raiders jumped a little when the fourth figure - who had crossed the room from the corner where they had been standing right up to the table without making a sound. They were not a member of Nailtooth's crew - whoever they were, they were clearly a professional. They wore sleek and trim ballistic armor underneath a concealing work shirt and coat, and their eyes - their eyes spilled over with a nothingness that crawled out and stung and numbed any sensible person who looked their way. The flesh peddler, the raider, and the cannibal all winced as his gaze bore down on all of them.

"The bosses, as you deign to call them, want to create a new kind of order. I do not mean something grandiose, nothing like the Covenant or the Duchy itself. What they have in mind is an exercise of efficacy."

The three pirates glanced at each other as the spook lectured at them, hands clasped behind his back.

"Very simply, by striking our enemies, we take from them what they have and impose our own doctrine upon them."

The man's face brightened with comprehension. "You're saying the bosses are making a power play?"

"In a manner of speaking." The spook acknowledged. "They prefer to think of it as a demonstration, or object lesson."

"Is that so? What kind of message are they sending?" The raider inquired.

"The fallibility of Order." The spook said. "Groups like the Covenant and the Duchy are said to be strong because of their size, influence, and the Order they impose. Order means reliability, consistency, and most importantly - security. Order is peace. Order can only ever allow measure across the content of the system across which it is imposed."

The engineer frowned. "You're talking about entropy. Arrangement of energy across a system. You're saying it's only good for the system it's in, if I'm following you."

"Yes. Order can only allow for the measurement of a system upon which it is imposed. The measure of the system can influence the arrangement of other systems, but by definition the same Order or measure cannot exist within two systems independently. They must be joined, or identical, for Order to be cohesive between them. The plan is to demonstrate that Ordered systems are vulnerable in ways disorganized systems are not. Take your crews, for example. Do you expect to be caught?"

"Caught?" The raider laughed. "Ok, I see what you're gettin' at. We're only two frigates, and at any time we can go cold or leave the Duchy or whatever. We're only ever vulnerable when we are on the attack, when we're inside an ordered system, right?"

"Very good." The spook nodded approvingly, although his expression did not twitch, or his eyes change. "A group like the Duchy or the Covenant though? They are too static, too large, too porous in nature. If the Duchy is a herd of elephants - large, smart, and dangerous - then we shall be as hunters. Far away, elusive, but with power to strike at the herd in any manner and way we see fit, without fear of retaliation. We cannot kill all the elephants. There are too many. But by wounding them, their young, their elders, their leaders - we can scatter them."

"I've got to say, what the fuck is all this bullshit supposed to mean?" The cannibal asked with a disbelieving air. "Why couldn't you have just fucking said, 'Oh hey we're going to attack the Duchy or the Covenant or the Brothel' or whatever?. You didn't have to prance on top of the idea like a fucking philisophical ballerina."

"You cannot call what we shall do an attack." The spook sad patiently, apparently not minding the verbal scorn. "You are ignorant of the context. At any other point in history - during the expansion period, or the ancient territory skirmishes, or the imperial era - our efforts would not have meant anything. It is only here, and now, that our student has been made...so that they can truly learn, what it is that we will teach them, with blood and flames."

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