The Whitestar Regime

[The Whitestar Regime]

(They say that all is fair in love and war, but we feel immense guilt for what we are about to do. We shall tell you about ourselves, if only so that you might understand our cause a little better)

Name:
We are a part of the Whitestar regime, but before this we were known to nobody as the Children of Whitestar. We do not have individual names as some of you do for we do not feel worthy of them, but we refer to ourselves in the singular as 'child'. 'What are you doing, child?', 'I am looking at that child over there', and so forth.

Age:
We have existed for as long as Blackstar has. Perhaps longer, but we do not think so. We do not know how long we live for, for we do not believe that any of us has died of old age yet.

Gender:
We do not believe that we have differing genders as you do but we are not certain.

Species:
We suppose that the Whitestar regime is an organization, so for our species we shall put down 'Children of Whitestar'. We feel that is a nostalgic and pleasing name to be known by, more now than ever before now that we are known by a different name.

Description and Physiology:
We are... unusual, to say the least. Please wait whilst we come to an agreement on how to accurately describe ourselves...

...

Thank you for waiting. We are most similar to insects, or so we have been lead to believe. The average child is about 7 feet tall (a little over 2.1m) and weighs close to 850 lbs (a little over 385kg), has six legs extending out from their abdomen and four arms extending from their thorax, two of which are vestigial arms (truth be told, we are a little embarrassed about our arms, for they are not very useful, but we can use them to hold small or lightweight things if necessary) and two of which are not. The non-vestigial arms have large spade-like claws which we use to dig and... Well, we can't do much else with them aside from dig, actually.

Our legs are all exactly the same size and shape, they are evenly spaced apart and are as long as we are tall. We are covered in what would appear to be a thick suit of armor, but though it gleams like metal it is merely our exoskeleton. We believe that our coloration is best described as anything from 'deep purple' to 'midnight blue'... It varies a little from child to child, though we don't really see them as that colo- Oh, it seems that is something that should be saved for the next section.

Our eyes are quite large and 'black', we believe that there is a deep quality to them that causes those who gaze into them to become mesmerized (but perhaps that is a little boastful...). They are compound in structure and allow us to see in all directions at once. Our heads are covered in the same exoskeletal armor as our bodies, though there are gaps in the armor to allow for movable joints (otherwise we would be little more than statues). We do not have a 'mouth' as some of you do, but rather a single needle-like... Popular consensus suggests that 'proboscis' would best describe the structure. It allows us to absorb thoughts and transmit our own to others, something that we shall describe in greater detail in the next section.

As we mentioned earlier, we are adept diggers, and this is because we have spent all of our lives underground. It is where we have lived for many years now, beneath the surface of Blackstar, for as long as this realm has existed... Or so we believe, it is a difficult thing to prove, really.

We have saved the most unusual and most important aspect of our physiology for the very last, for it is both the reason for our recent and rapid decline as well as our declaration of war against the people of Blackstar. We 'feed' on the very specific kind of energy created by the hopes and dreams of others. We ourselves are incapable of hopes and dreams, or at the very least we are incapable of the kind that provide us sustenance, and as such we must have others capable of such things present in order to survive.

The process of 'feeding' is not painful at all for the dreamer (we suspect that nobody has ever noticed it, but we cannot know for sure), and unlike the standard concept of 'feeding' where something is consumed we do not actually take anything from them. We see glimpses of their desires and such, and this is enough to keep us living. It is a difficult thing to describe, but... we find your dreams to be overwhelmingly humbling for us to able to bear witness to, and it makes us incredibly grateful to be alive.

Physical Abilities:
As we mentioned earlier, digging comes naturally to us. 'Time' and 'distance' are difficult things to gauge underground, but by our understanding the fastest speeds that we can dig at are around 30 mph (a little under 50 km/h)... Though at these speeds we could not create a stable tunnel, we would merely be propelling ourselves through the ground.

Our vestigial arms, though embarrassingly weak and pathetic, have opposable digits, and allow us to hold and manipulate small or lightweight objects.

Above ground we are also quite speedy thanks to our tall stature and many long legs. At a decent pace we can reach speeds of about 50 mph (approx. 80 km/h), but we can maintain a sprinting pace of 125 mph (a smidgen over 200 km/h) for about 5 minutes if need be. We are under the impression that we could move quite a bit faster than that, and it is not unusual for a child to exceed such speeds, but we are used to living in cramped quarters or digging underground, so running is still very new to us.

Our eyes, as mentioned earlier, allow us to see 360 degrees around ourselves, however, we process what we see in a different manner to most. We see light as darkness and darkness as light - deep underground is as bright to us as what you might consider 'daylight' to be, but above the ground when the sun is beaming down on us we struggle to see anything. It is not a painful experience for us, unlike say, suddenly shining a very bright light in your eyes... It is more like being in a 'bright' room and then somebody suddenly turns the lights off, your sense of sight simply ceases to be helpful.

We also perceive colors differently to most, but we still refer to them by the same names as you do, so you probably will not notice this (in hindsight, it is a bit of a trivial point for us to mention).

Our exoskeletons are incredibly hard, as are the spade-like claws that we use to dig, and unless they are extremely unlucky most of us are capable of surviving if their tunnels collapse on them. We have not had to pit them against much else until now, but we believe that they will protect us from most of your more primitive weapons, such as swords or bullets.

We have waded through molten lava before with little trouble and have tunneled through solid ice without slowing at all, so as far as we can tell we do not feel temperature at all, and brief exposure to extreme heat as well as extreme cold does not do us any harm.

We have no need to breathe, eat solids, drink fluids, we don't bleed and we can survive just fine if one or more of our limbs are cut off... We often wonder as to whether or not we are really 'alive', it is a very difficult question for one to answer.

Supernatural Abilities:
As mentioned earlier, we are able to read minds to a certain extent, but we are really only capable of taking a very shallow look into what is a very deep ocean of thought. We can catch glimpses of hopes and dreams, but we do not see many things, and it is something that we must consciously choose to do. We cannot pick up on stray thoughts or suddenly tune in if somebody thinks a specific word or anything like that.

The same 'proboscis' that allows us to feed also allows us to communicate by broadcasting our own thoughts. In theory it is fairly similar to the 'mindspeak' that you do with your minds, although in practice it ends up sounding more like the 'speaking' that many of you do with your mouths, as we are incapable of keeping our communications limited to a single person (anybody within range will hear us 'speak' if we are doing so, and the range varies depending on how 'loud' we are). It is probably not much, but we are quite proud of this ability, and those of us capable of producing an interesting 'voice' are always popular.

Signature Moves/Attacks:
We are not experienced fighters, nor do we consider ourselves to be, and as such we do not have anything in the way of 'signature' moves or attacks.

Weaponry:
We suppose that our spade-like claws can be used to bludgeon foes, and, if swung with enough force, chop them up if they are softer than solid rock. We could probably hold small weapons like guns with our vestigial arms, but we do not possess any weaponry as of yet. We believe that our main 'weapon' for the war will be our vastly superior numbers.

Equipment:
We possess a small yet powerful device that transmits our declaration of war over a broad range on a single frequency. Several years back we secretly set up many one-way radio devices to receive this signal and play it to all of the residents of the Dojo, though initially we had not planned to use it in this manner...

Home:
We live underground, and can construct a small dugout to serve as living quarters within minutes. We do not have much in the way of sentiments towards any particular 'home' location, nor do we experience anything in the way of 'homesickness'.

Origin:
We were born underground here in Blackstar, and have spent our entire lives underground. It is only very recently that we have emerged, and we are still not entirely used to the aboveground yet.

History:
We do not have much in the way of history, but we will tell what little there is to tell.

We were born, we 'fed' on dreams and watched on as outside observers as Blackstar flourished. We came to find that particular individuals had bigger and more nourishing hopes, dreams and aspirations than others, and focused our attention on them. The one who had the biggest dreams was the Ruler of the Realm, who continually encouraged new people to come to his lands and worked hard to make their time here interesting. During this time everything was good, there was much for us to 'eat' and Blackstar was a wonderful place for all to live in.

Eventually, we began to sense that something was amiss. At first it wasn't too noticeable, there was a bit less food here and there and some of us dropped a bit of weight as a result of it, but we didn't really think much about it. But then the Lord of the Land died, and that's when people began to disappear in droves. Without him to watch over them, the inhabitants of the land felt unsafe, and we saw that many of the hopers and the dreamers were looking to new lands for a new life. We learned much from these worried dreams, many of which seemed more like nightmares, like how the Lord's heir had vanished without a trace, and how the few remaining Guardians of the land were guardians in name only.

Eventually we began to starve. The residents of Blackstar who remained grew bored, their dreams were not nourishing and their hopes were barely existent. The famine hit us hard, and after just a few months over half of us had already starved to death... To listen to the woeful moans of a fellow child starving was horrific, to secretly not tell them about the few remaining dreams so that you could keep them to yourself was even worse.

Those who did not starve to death knew that they did not have long left, and so we gathered together to form a plan. The few remaining dreams were about usually about restoring Blackstar to it's former glory, so we felt a little inspired by that... It is difficult to describe how we came to the solution that we did, but it was largely fueled by the fear that if we helped to build another Blackstar without knowing why the old one fell, we would run the risk of history repeating itself. We felt that we could not allow that to happen, and so we decided to take the realm by force in order to re-make it as we saw fit. We decided that we would call this realm Whitestar, a name that symbolizes familiarity as well as difference, and once that has a bit of a personal flavor to it (given that we would see 'black' as 'white'... Well, we thought it was somewhat clever).

Those who stood by the old ways as well as those who'd helped to build them up alongside the former Lord would have to die, whether they chose to fight us or not, for otherwise the future of Whitestar cannot be guaranteed. Knowing that there would be conflict, we children who remained formed the Whitestar regime to become the army that would conquer Blackstar.

Please understand that this is our very last resort, and we are only doing this because we feel that we have no other choice. We all agree that our solution is extreme, but our alternative is death.

Alignment:
We are selfish, and for that we can only apologize, though it will do neither us nor you any good. We are ashamed to admit that our interests lie chiefly in self-preservation, and by extension, the revitalization of this realm.

Personality:
We love dreams more than anything, as well as those who dream them up, so it breaks our hearts to see that things have come to this. We are particularly fond of some dreamers, and we do not look forward to facing you on the battlefield, as it will be so much harder for us to silence your dreams for ever compared to somebody who does not dream quite as much or as big.

We are peace-loving at heart, and prior to forming the regime we were very content with living underground. For a brief time we sought to make our presence known to you, if only to thank you for continually providing us with sustenance, but we became embarrassed and shy, feeling unworthy of talking to those capable of such grandeur dreams and aspirations.

Our views of ourselves are... Well, we do not consider ourselves to be hideous or disgusting, but we believe that we are quite inferior to those who's dreams we 'feed' off. We don't really like our vestigial arms much, as they're not too useful at all, but our eyes are something we quite often get lost in. Looking a child in the eye when you speak to them is good manners, and we believe that it helps you to 'hear' them clearer... though we have no proof that this is fact.

We do not experience much in the way of extreme emotions (such as 'anger' or 'jealousy'), and above all we try to remain calm and considerate at all times. As such we do not fight with each other and prior to the famine we were always truthful towards one another, though once the famine hit many of us found that withholding the truth was a necessary life skill... Now that we have formed the regime we are trying to return to our older values. "Each child helps the other and we all survive", that has become the maxim that we live by. Even now, as we type this message, we are all talking with each other, deciding exactly how to tell you all of this... Though you probably will not notice this, as it will be completed by the time you read it.

We felt that we understood how to appreciate what little we had, as well as each other, and we were content with our lot in life. It is only when faced with the threat of death that we have chosen to turn to such drastic measures, and though we say that we have hardened our hearts many of us worry that we will have tears streaming down our faces as we stride onto the battlefield, and we wonder whether or not we are capable of war... But we reassure ourselves, for there will surely be other dreamers once we have rebuilt the realm, and if we do not do this then we will die anyway, and dead children do not 'eat' any dreams.

Known Weaknesses:
Ah, this part is something that we would prefer to keep secret, what with the war and all, but as we mentioned earlier we are trying to return to the older values, so we suppose that we must divulge information for this section like any other.

Our joints and vestigial arms are not covered by armor, and as such would probably not fare so well against any form of weaponry.

We have no trouble in dealing with brief exposure to the elements, but prolonged exposure is quite harmful to our bodies. Our exoskeletons are prone to melt if we remain in the lava surrounding the volcano area too long and spending hours in the frosty north makes us very sluggish.

For reasons unknown we believe that we cannot leave this realm. The few who have tried never returned, though we are certain that it is possible, and we hope to find a way to do this once we've conquered the realm. Failing that, we shall have to either recruit an attacking force that can pursue any Dojodians who flee the realm during our takeover or, if that's not possible, establish strict border control and heavy defenses to handle any and all returnees.

And finally, as mentioned many times, we require the hopes, dreams and aspirations of Dojodians for nourishment. If all of the residents of Blackstar were to leave (not including ourselves, of course) we would starve to death in no time at all.

Allies:
We do not believe that we have any allies as of yet, and we expect that it will be very difficult (if not impossible) for us to gain sympathizers when we are aggressors instigating a war on a peaceful land, especially considering that the most iconic members of Blackstar are the people that we have decided absolutely must be killed without exception...