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Post by Admin on Aug 24, 2015 19:15:03 GMT -6
Fossils from an unknown era.
Bone and chitin preserved in alien earth, some relic of a species long gone.
Or perhaps the foremothers of the queens themselves?
Potential was there. Power the Hive could use, if they could unlock secrets.
-------------------------- Hive Unity discovers fossils of some ancient creature while colonizing their moon. A Research Agent would be able to analyze the fossils and acquire useful knowledge from them for the Hive's benefit.
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Post by dragonlord7012 on Oct 1, 2015 10:33:36 GMT -6
T7: *agent sent to investigate* [Reserved for story at a later date]
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Post by dragonlord7012 on Oct 18, 2015 16:44:43 GMT -6
The Queen watched over her pod as her mind floated in a haze.
It made her heart flutter, the admittedly beautiful gem-like hide of the one outside her shell, glimmered like a rainbow dancing upon black carapace as she move smoothly and confidently.
She recognized a couple of her family now, a second daughter to her mothers aunt. Staring up lovingly at the nearby Monarch of the Unity.
She suppressed a shudder, not wishing to draw unneeded attention, nor wishing to be forced to explain such an act.
The original attempts to integrate the "Children of Nas" as their conquerors called them was mixed. The early results had turned into fanatics as their brain chemistry was altered back and forth again and again experiencing something beyond human pleasure and pain, in wave after wave, all inflicted at the whim of the Queen before they finally settled down. She only knew because the Queen in question, Niyx'Sil, was for lack of a better word, chatty. She openly complained about their species quite vocally. Mostly about their inefficiency, but then she'd marvel at the most mundane things like they where some masterful trick.
A hammer and Nail was not something she would of considered impressive until she had heard the ten foot long bejeweled insect marvel over it for what felt like a galactic cycle.
A sense of tightness at the base of her skull caused her to tense briefly as the symbiote pushed its way further into her. She did her best to force herself to relax as she was instructed, less she cause herself problems.
They where strange. Alien. Not like the fithy Xenos they'd contacted before. Truly a stranger among their family.
They would demand instant results, and then showed unending patience, without rhyme or reason. The only unacceptable outcome was abandonment of task.
Her people adapted well.
They where well accustomed to hard work and effort. Their task masters pushed them hard, harder than they pushed themselves. But they didn't stop there.
Intigration. That was a word she had never overly considered. But it was the word that described what was happening.
It filled her heart with perverse pride in how her people took to task at hand. They didn't buckle like that...
She suppressed another shudder.
The general of their army was cruel, even in a short time it had ordered atrocities almost beyond her comprehension to be committed. Their tactics worked, that was the only redeeming quality the monster had.
She remembered the day of the invasion well. Watching the moon that evening, as the Arch-Paladin taking the last hope of her people and escaping.
And the last of her peoples hope went with him.
She fell the the hospital floor and wept, her voice joined with the growing hundreds of renaming as the Swarm swept in.
The Starving One, the Famine of Unity. The Prince of Atrocities. Those are just a few of the names that...thing, had been refereed to over her time here. It had stated they would be useless, and would be better served to be recycled. And her people had spurned it. Perhaps they where no where near the efficiency of the hive. but they where versatile. A human could do a job of the hive at maybe 10% the efficiency. But that same human could do a thousand different jobs without issue, where the mindless drone would be utterly baffled by all but the smallest changes. Their was a Hierarchy in intelligence she'd found. And her own people would rank reasonably high once they had integrated. They would never be the equal of the queens, but given time, they could help support the Unity in their own way.
Just as the Unity would support them.
Her arm twinged, and she looked at the three fingered limb.
It was not hers, and yet it was a part of her. Just as the symbiote would be a part of her.
Many of her people required replacement limbs, espeically after the invasion. But she had never had one to begin with.
She had been terrified at the hospital when the bugs came to take them away, she had cried as the drone demanded compliance she simply couldnt give. Her arm and the greater half of her right side had been slowly eroded by a disease, leaving her only one lung, and a broken body.
It was only by the light of Nas, and the technology of the priesthood and her people that she had been able to even live her half-life in the hospital. To wach the world flow by around her.
She had resigned herself to death long ago, but all the same she begged for her life, miserable that it was.
Then Niyx'Sil came in.
And her world changed.
Eight seconds. That was how long she stared at the twisted snarl of scars and flesh.
A needle sharp probiscus stabbed the lump that acted as her shoulder. She fell down to the floor in agony. And in a scant few minutes later she shakily stood up.
For the first time in her life, completely under her own power.
The disease that plagued her, and others like her. That researchers, had poared massive resources to try to erradicate, that the priesthood had waved her away on, saying it was her personal challange.
Gone.
In eight seconds.
The Queen's only comment on it came much later once they returned to presumably the hive homeworld.
"A pleasent, if simple diversion"
The arm came later of course, but not much, within a week the queen had picked her up and decided to use her to test a first generation limb, and to hopefully curb the sycofants that she had accidentally made in her earlier experiments.
Somehow the black chitinous thing was functioning using her own biology, and was even a match for her own biochemistry and genetics.
That was what the Hive was. She had overheard a distant cousin from another clan, a scientist. His explination felt strangely fitting. Destructive without really intending to be. They didn't "Understand" biology and chemistry, they simply..were. It was the entirty of their being. Their culture was as volitile as the very craft that formed their being. Frightningly similar to an organic based, rogue AI from a work of fiction.
She had several symbiotes now to correct "Flaws in her design."
Glands that allowed her to clearly sense past the light spectrum(which was amazing), to smell advanced pheromone messages(which was confusing). To hold nutrition, and increase her digestive efficiency(which was...convenient).
She was being 'fixed' . To be made one of the Hive. To be "worthy" of it.
The last upgrade was a symbiote. One that would attach to her spine and give her the one thing the would need.
That she must have to be part of the unity.
A vision of the ancestral memory and-
She felt it, and her world burst into color, as she saw. She saw the first queen on Rak, on [The Origin of All] , through the Queens own eyes.
She saw the war of sisters waged over millennia as memories split and reconnected. She saw the Uniter who crusaded and warred against every other on her world, and slaying every last queen. The Queenslayer broke their one taboo. the one forbidden act.
And with every last one she enforced the birth of a daughter, and passed on her ideal. Her dreams of Unity.
And once her task was fulfilled, she ended her own life to save her daughter the misery of such an act.
The Unity, the ideal of a single common goal.
That was what it meant, It was the one thing the hive must have. And she was part of it.
She felt the minds of the Unity. billions, and billions of light, of every shade and painted in colors which never existed, some thinking twisted beyound even in the minds of madmen.
And she was one tiny light herself, and thousands more of light just like her...Her people.
Thousands of connections spanning to it as the smaller dots all tethered to a core star, in one way or another.
And then she opened her eyes.
The diamondlike gem,a star of song and knowlege, and curiousity, and wisdom, sang before her.
Niyx'Sil was an anchor, a beacon against the madness of the universe, and thoughts, tens of thousands of individual conversations, both silent and vibrating between her and all those benith her.
She saw her own light connect to her.
[Submit] She was overwhelmed by bliss, and complied without error. Her own will offered no resistance whatsoever. She didn't wish to even dream of it.
A small part of the hives memorty told her how this technique was a biologically adapted version of the technique that is used when a Queen manages to conquer another queen.
But that was unimportant. Nothing was more important that following that voice.
The voice.
The True voice of the one who cured her.
Who made her whole in body.
Who now made her whole in spirit.
The Paladin stole their hope.
But it didn't matter.
Not anymore.
Because they now had purpose.
Because they where being given the gift of Unity.
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Post by RWU on Nov 9, 2015 21:09:36 GMT -6
The Devouring of Galaer
The Hive Invasion of Galaer would go mostly unnoticed and unrecorded by the spacefaring powers of the galaxy. A small nation of some 8 billion humanoids, it was advanced enough for occasional communication with the rest of the galaxy, but little more. It certainly could not have prepared for the invasion, even if the Galaeri known in advance.
The battle for Galaer was swift and brutal: Despite their valiance and their best efforts to holding the line, the defenders were almost all overrun and devoured within a few days of the insects' arrival. A few weeks later, the entire planet was devoid of life.
__________
-- Hive Unity devours Galaer (system currently marked as "Sovereign Alliance")
-- Armies Rak'Fin and Rak'Frond each lose I infantry. They return to Rak before the onset of the Bug War, but their casualties will not heal unless they remain idle for all of Turn 14.
-- Hive Unity gains 33 Biomass from eating the planet and 1 Biomass recovered from their casualties for a total of 34 Biomass.
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Post by dragonlord7012 on Dec 15, 2015 7:07:47 GMT -6
"We cannot eat other humans!" the black chitin armed girl reared back in horror.
"Why?" the queen ordered, but with childlike curiosity.
She spent a long moment on how to answer the being before her, she felt the queen get impatient before she spent her mind elsewhere while she waited. She'd done this before, so long as shed didn't move to leave before answering she would be fine. Eventually she broke the silence.
"Why is it you fight the other queens?" she asked.
Annoyance pressed lightly upon her consciousness. The queens did NOT like it when they had to be lead through to an adswer.
They would tolerate it so long as they didn't sense you where trying to fight them, and you where not being disrespectful however.
"We fight because it is our way. We grow stronger. It is in our nature."
"Humans do not eat each other because it is in our nature. We grow strong by supporting one another. Consumption of each other is conterintuitive to this, as we would be destroying a source of our own strength."
"This philosophy is weakness. Competition is the path to strength." The queen stated factually.
"It is a form of Unity." she countered.
That struck a cord as emotions flowed off the queen into the bond. Uncertainty, confusion, happiness. That was one of the thing that made her queen different. She enjoyed new concepts far more than any of the others.
She tried to press her point. "They have joined their strengths, this proves their unity"
It was the wrong thing to say, one of the queens great legs snapped up catching her in the stomach as several ribs cracked, her own symbiotic hissed its own disdain in her mind as it translated, refusing to reduce the pain.
Slumped in a corner the great monstrous gem-like insect rushed for her, sharp mandibles clicking out angrily as she shivered in pain and fear.
[The Queen slayers have no unity. They only have Oblivion. That is the only outcome for them, nothing less] her queens mind screamed directly in her brain.
"What about the other factions, the other peoples" she said desperate to move away to anything else.
"They will be made to join" she stated, thankfully aloud again.
"What if some truly have their own already?"
"Then their Unity should be made to join our. "
It was a gamble, but she had to try.
"Why would your unity not join theirs? Is there a truly a difference?"
The great beings mind shifted as its presence still pinned her shivering to the wall. After a few moments she felt her symbiote numb the pain and begin to begrudgingly repair her body as she instinctively curled up, the memory of fear still burning hot in her consciousness.
Some time later orders she felt orders being passed down that the human population was to only be fed biomass from non-human sources so long as it was uncomplicated to sustain them in doing so.
Eventually, and without ever receiving any acknowledgement, she felt her queen seem to lose interest in her, and with the casual dismissal she crawled out of the chamber, feeling completely drained and as though she had accomplished something.
What it was she didn't know...
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