New New Worlds

[Cirrial]

(( Time for a real non-summary post! ))

The serls slept uneasily on the dark blue grass, the stationary sun above them losing its glow. The clouds began to suddenly split into smaller and smaller fragments, turning from outlines of hollow shapes into glimmering lines of light, peppering the night sky with a starry pattern.

Aurichalcite watched the clouds go by, stars in the night sky, completely unsure what exactly caused this transformation. The serl Eki seemed to be right. The clouds didn't seem to bring forth rain at night. Presumably.

Instead, they illuminated the ground below them, weakly, casting light onto the plains as a gentle breeze caused ripples and waves among the blades of blue grass. The air seemed thicker. Perhaps it did rain at night, in the form of mist? It seemed an odd notion, but Blackcube seemed an odd world.

The serls slept on. The fractal trees glimmered in the night, their glowing leaves a beacon on the otherwise featureless plain.

Aurichalcite hadn't considered the possibility of such light bringing unwanted attention.

In the distance, figures loomed and crept closer to the glowing lights of the two trees, while a distracted Aurichalcite continued to focus on the sky, puzzling over the patterns of the glowing cloud shards.

There were six of them in total. They stayed close to one another, treading softly on the grass. The heads and bodies of each figure seemed vaguely wolf-like, yet more angular in places and more streamlined in others. They each had six thin, almost insectoid legs, with two joints in each leg, ending in needle-like points.
Along their limbs and undersides, straight lines ran in parallel to other straight lines, like the copper etchings of a printed circuit board. These lines gave off a gentle red glow, pulsing slightly in a rhythm synchronised to the group's own carefully synchronised movements.

As the figures grew closer, Aurichalcite noticed their existence, and drifted towards them, intrigued. At a closer distance, their eyes were a similar shade of red to the lines on their limbs, rhombuses as opposed to rectangles. They were illuminated only by dull reflections of the clouds from above.

As they approached the trees, still moving as a single unit, the combined light from the leaves and the clouds showed them to be rather more bizarre than Aurichalcite had imagined. They were smooth and organic like the serls in their bodies and most of their head structures, yet their mouths, ears and legs seemed mathematically precise, geometrical constructs arising from complex formulae forged closer to the world's inception.

The group stopped. In the gentle breeze, black strands waved along the bodies and heads of the figures, while the metallic grey of their legs and now open jaws glimmered in the light of the night clouds. The gentle pulse of their red lines slowly quickened, and one of the figures made a gentle hissing noise.

The six creatures stared at the trees uneasily, ignoring the sleeping serls a small distance away. Aurichalcite attempted to decipher the hiss, but couldn't decipher it as language. What were these beasts it had attracted? It hadn't seen any trace of them on its initial descent from the skies during the day.

It recalled something Eki had uttered earlier when trying to motivate her group. "Hunter not out at day..." In the quiet, tense, stillness of the night, Aurichalcite's ethereal presence twitched. It twitched again when one of the creatures seemed to notice this first twitch, its ears flicking up as it looked side to side.

It had felt Aurichalcite's presence. For a moment, just a fleeting moment, it had felt Aurichalcite's presence from a slight twitch, while the serls were oblivious to it as it flowed around them like a gentle vortex. What are these things? How can they even sense me?

The alarmed figure dropped its ears, slowly moving its legs and lowering itself to strike. It quietly growled in a series of square wave tones, almost melodious in its threat. The figure that had been leading them turned to it, and looked up.

It looked directly at Aurichalcite's invisible, swirling, disembodied self. It shouldn't have even been possible. Panicking, Aurichalcite attempted to hide itself through as many levels of encryption, abstraction and separation from its world as it could. This just served further to bring the group over. The leader of the pack sat on the ground, as its companions looked to one another in confusion.

The leader of the pack howled a single square wave. A mathematically pure tone. The rest of its pack joined it. Together, the noise was a six-note dischord. Aurichalcite gazed on, bewildered, disturbed yet amazed by what was going on. What were these things, and why were they reacting to it?

Aurichalcite ceased all motion, all action, and removed its layers of isolation. The wolf-like beings stopped their howling, stood up on their six legs once more, and walked over to the sleeping serls on quiet needle-like feet.

The pack leader paused, as if waiting for something. Aurichalcite rushed towards the serls, spreading its consciousness around the space the serls occupied, ready to intervene if anything harmed the objects of its reports and studies. The pack leader barked quietly in a strange pattern, almost dejected, and turned away from the serls, the rest of its pack following.

Aurichalcite felt that, if it had a body, it'd be shaking right now. It flew into a mental storm of activity once it heard Eki quietly click away to herself. "Keep going... keep going..." Had she been awake this whole time? "Quiet. Hunters might come back." This second voice belonged to Rukil. How had these beings it had indirectly created managed to either see it or fool it? So much for being an objective, near-omniscient, invisible observer in this world it had given form to!

Eki clicked quietly in response. "Hunters not come back. Hunters never come back. Eat everything. Or run from something."

Rukil replied groggily, awake for less time than Eki had been. "Hunters, run from us? Eki, you need more sleep. You not think so well." He rolled over and tried to go back to sleep, deciding such matters were better puzzled out by other serls. He didn't want to think how close the hunters had been.

Eki stared after the retreating hunters, fear dying away to confusion, confusion leading to many, many questions she had no idea how to answer. Finally, she too went back to sleep.

Aurichalcite stared into the patterns of the skies, troubled by the new developments. Were the hunters intelligent beings? Or did they perceive Aurichalcite's actions as something else? Or was it all blind luck?

It felt that perhaps creating the two trees had been a bad idea. The serls seemed too transfixed on the close encounter with the hunters to even notice they were there. When morning came...

It quietly unmade the trees. The plains grew darker as the tree-leaves disappeared from existence, one by one, before the trees disappeared altogether.

So yes, these are the hunters referred to. I'll get an image done at some point after my assignments stop piling up.

Hunters are nocturnal creatures, wolf-like in appearance and loosely wolf-like in behaviour. They travel in packs of at least six, and tend to become very attuned to one another's behaviour and movement. So much so, in fact, that many packs move in near-perfect synchronisation, and act using complex strategies without any visible form of communication.

Serls tend to be uniformly terrified of hunters, while also holding them in high regard for their enigmatic nature and behaviour. There are myths among serls in tribes/colonies that encounter hunter packs more frequently. These myths state that hunters can pick up on things no other creatures can. For instance, serls can tell if it's going to rain maybe a few days in advance at best, after staring at the skies for a while, while all the hunters in the area would have left a while ago to avoid the approaching rain.

If Eki and Rukil were a little more awake and a little less quietly petrified in fear, they might have recalled hearing of such legends, but as it is they're lucky to even be alive. Hunters kill and eat serls without any hesitation, if they feel so inclined, which tends to be pretty much all of the time.

As for whether the hunters are intelligent on the same level as serls or not, well, that's a question for another post to solve!

(( As regards to Aurichalcite, I have no idea whether to make Auri stay out of the world and remain the indirect narrator (most of these happenings are from Auri's perspective) or to go to the other extreme and have it directly interfere with its world even more than it already has. Suggestions? ))

[3kul]

((Ah New New Worlds, it's good to see that I'm just as capable of forgetting about and neglecting you as I am the old New Worlds thread

I'm afraid I can't help you much there Cirrial, I honestly can't say I've been too satisfied with any input from my outside characters in this RP... As an obvious physical presence actively influencing the world I found it hard to deal with the flow of time and the inevitable yet constant deaths of every individual that HollowEyes would encounter, and now that I've got a Brisican version of HollowEyes I've got to think about where the hell I ever thought I was going with this

Honestly, I like the way that you're currently going at the moment. The secretive addition and removal of trees, as well as the creatures that seem to be able to perceive you when they shouldn't... You seem to have a very interesting balance going at the moment, and I don't want to go wrecking it with bad advice ))

The Brisicans and the Genker had managed to form a somewhat uneasy truce after Hollo had discovered that the insectoids were capable of more than just attacking them. The Genker couldn't stand water and refused to swim in it, and as a result of this they would not venture out for food, but so long as the Brisicans kept bringing them enough meat the insects would not attempt to harm them.

At a glance this seemed like quite the one-sided agreement, but there were some small benefits for the Brisicans as well (more than just not getting eaten). The Genker, being swarming predatory insects, had a way of warding off predators. The Brisicans did not know how they did this, but many of them had observed creatures like Ragorlies actively avoiding their home, even on the odd occasion that the beasts had spotted them, and whilst they didn't understand why it didn't take them long to realize that the Genker were responsible.

It was for this reason, and this reason alone, that many of the Brisicans were more than happy to supply the Genker with as much meat as they wanted, but unfortunately for them it would not be enough to keep them safe for very long. The Bris toadstool that the two species currently occupied had survived for as long as it could in the newly flooded world, but it was now dead, and late one night the stem finally gave out, causing the soggy funghi to fall apart completely.

The Brisicans were quickly awoken by the splash and the sudden sensation of being in the water, and being quite capable swimmers they quickly surfaced to regroup. This was a surprise, but not an entirely unexpected one - many of the older Brisicans had discussed the possibility of their home collapsing, and they had all seen this coming.

The Genker however, had not seen this coming, and the mute insects were terrified. When they were suddenly plunged into the water they panicked, thrashing about wildly and grabbing at anything that they could in a desperate effort to keep alive. "Ahhh! Ahh!" Mgol cried out in pain as a Genker dug it's claws into the softer parts of his head, desperately trying to get out of the water. The Brisican feared that he was under attack and being eaten, so he quickly dove underwater in an attempt to free himself from his assailant. He and many other Brisicans did not realize that it was actually the Genker trying to avoid drowning, and in throwing them off or swimming away from them unwittingly sent them to a watery grave.

After quite a bit of panic and chaos in the darkness, Sweer and Hollo finally managed to calm the group down. In the confusion, more than half of the Genker had drowned, and there were now just three of the insects left. One was perched precariously on Hollo's head (with Hollo himself sporting several fresh cuts across his face), another was hanging on to Wael's skullcap for dear life and a third had managed to stay afloat by clinging to a small piece of the Bris toadstool.

"Off. Bris not float long." Sweer grunted at the insect, allowing it to climb on his head. The gruff leader had previously been totally opposed to interaction with the Genker, but once he had learned of their abilities to deter predators he completely changed his mind. To Sweer, that they'd lost so many of the insects tonight was a disaster in the sense that they'd lost much of their protection from predators, and he was relieved to see that they had not all drowned.

The Genker clacked their claws together feverishly, too afraid to make very much sense even to each other, which meant that the Brisicans, who knew nothing of their crude percussion-based language, had absolutely no chance of understanding any of it. "Where we go?" Niva spoke up, asking the question everybody was wondering but that nobody had the answer to.

It was at this time that the sun began to rise, and many of the Brisicans unknowingly took this as a kind of sign. They began to swim towards it, not knowing why they'd chosen to swim in this direction but at the same time not seeing any reason to doubt it.

((It's probably worth noting that the Brisicans and Genker have not seen much of the Mudstran sun, having spent most of their lives living under giant mushrooms and toadstools. I imagine that the odds of the Brisicans forming a religion based around sun-worship soon are pretty high ))

[Swix]

((What with this being dormant so long, I think it's time for a time skip))

But first, a little filler:
Zeckul, Halyan and Kheesth made their way through the trees for several days, the three odd travellers finally came to a small clearing where there were unmistakable signs of Yallian habitation. There were treehuts built into the strangely coloured vegetation, but rather than them being a uniform height these were several layers, helped in no small way by the massive height of the outer plantlife.

At this point the Tezcan woman slithered discreetly away from the two, opting instead to watch from the sidelines as the two last of the inner civilizations met the thriving outer civilization. Thankfully the colour and shape of the migrant Yallians had remained static enough that the two were not outright rejected. Of course, that didn't mean there weren't bumps, there were, and Kheesth got a good look at the spread of the virus that had killed the inner civilization in the outer one. The outside, however had come across another related virus and that gave them a level of immunity towards the one Zeckul and Halyan bought with them. (No-one would ever know, but it was Halyan who had been the carrier of the virus and had brought it outside for it's second, less lethal incarnation, whilst Zeckul had become completely immune having lived around her and it for so long). After watching this, and their rather valiant attempts at fending off enterprising Fellike with primitive spears and, to Kheesths great delight, primitive torches and fires ringed around the small city, the Tezcan once again felt the need for sleep. Kheesth slithered off as far away as she thought the Yallians wouldn't be able to find her very quickly and coiled up high in one of the red-blue, non-carnivorous trees. The Fellike, though she'd witnessed climbing up some of the lower, stronger limbs of the trees didn't seem all that adept at it. High enough and very few things woulf be able to reach her, she should have a fairly uninterrupted rest.

At a point of her sleep, Kheesth felt a shift, but the Tezcan was too lethargic to take all that much notice before she fell back into a dreamless sleep

((And now, after the timeskip))

Kheesth awoke, to find herself completely engulfed by... something, thankfully her eyes had no eyelids and her pupils became slits as they adjusted to the unaccustomed and entirely unexpected bright blue light that surrounded her. As Kheesth focused she uncoiled her body from the tree that was once big, that was now massive and extended high above her current perch. Though that wasn't entirely unexpected, what was, was an equally massive structure that surrounded the vegetation, stopping just about seven feet high from her current perch. There was a hole through which the now massive tree extended through and into the nourishing light of Celus's three suns. Though they provided some little golden light that arced down through the and hit the golden floor, that wasn't what was producing the blue light. It seemed that, during her sleep, the Yallians had discovered how to use stonework and had constructed some sort of building around the tree in which she'd opted to rest. Something that she'd hoped wouldn't happen. The inside as far as she could tell was made entirely out of the same glowing blue stone that had fed the ancient plants in the small cavern. Luckily for Kheesth, her planets sun was very bright and so her diurnal ancestors had developed eyes that could operate in such conditions. As by now it would be obvious she was awake to any Yallian that was in the massive building, Kheesth simply slithered back down the red-blue tree. The building she was currently in was held up by several pillars and was in a rounded shape, on each wall were both crude and artistic carvings of Yallian history, from what she could see even the viral outbreak had been recorded. The crude drawings centred on a blank wall that would have been behind the serpent had she still been asleep, whilst opposite that was a wide but low entrance clearly meant for Yallian stature. Scattered on the floor were long, low tables scattered about in groups, with everything from what appeared to be crude utensils and bowls, to tools meant for stonework, and several rather large bowls that had what looked like a type of material soaking in several brightly coloured liquids.

The Tezcan reached the ground, which surprisingly was warm and soft against her scales. The ground inside was made of the planets own soil, but it was easy to see that it was patted down with many feet everywhere but near the tree. Kheesth cautiously made her over to the entrance, wondering just what she could expect from this generation of Yallians. Clearly they'd developed to appreciate artform and history whilst she'd been asleep.