I finally made first contact and shouted out a few common platitudes in the friendliest voice as I could imagine that an orc would appreciate. I could see them chatting among themselves, but they never responded to me. So I began shouting phrases of greetings in uncommon, dwarven, elven, demonic, vamperic, and dragonic. Finally they began to shout back. Junior began applying the audible dialogue to the resonance of the orc soul essence. I repeated back the phrases the orc had used, hoping it would prompt new orcish vocabulary from the scouting party for Jr to analyse.
Before long the nearby village began to show signs of activity. It seemed a few messengers were leaving the village in addition to the scout who had left his comrades here to keep an eye on us returning to the group. They had another brief discussion and finally sent two of their grunts our way. We exchanged words and gestures without much progress and eventually the orcs from their group shouted a few commands at the orcs we had been interacting with. After that the group of orcs returned to the village and the orcs tasked with communicating with us seemed to begin setting up camp.
I shrugged back at Lilith and Dash and began to assist the orcs. We spent the evening trying to communicate and my symbiote attempted to help me understand the language, and he attempted to understand it himself. This grew quite boring and repetitive so we decided to call it a night. Of course we did not sleep. Although unable to host a dreamscape myself, sleeping on my own produced a link with my symbiotic companion. This link was much like sleeping, and felt much like dreaming, but unlike dreams they produced absolutely zero dream-chi; Or so it seemed. Junior had noticed his abilities to grow and to repair my body had diminished since contributing so much latent energy to our chi constructs. So I decided to invite Luseal, Dash, and Lilith to a “dream” hosted by Junior/myself.
The result was especially dull compared to our usual late night activities. We were unable to communicate with one another very clearly. Instead of studying the orcish language the whole night turned into a vampiric tutoring lesson. Which probably wasn’t a bad idea, considering the soul essence method was the same approach we were planning to take toward learning orcish anyway.
The next morning the other orcs began shouting and waving their arms around wildly, so we looked around to see if anything threatening had been approaching. We saw nothing for what seemed like an incredibly long time and then finally, we spotted banners on the horizon. Soon after one of the orcs with us went and fetched Dash and Lilith, so Lilith led Lightning along behind her and we regrouped.
The banners grew closer and we were eventually able to see some kind of a convoy approaching. Many orcs began to appear from the nearby village and we began to hear war drums. This would be unnerving, but somehow felt more like a show of strength. The first of their numbers rode huge ugly wolves, then came infantry, then archers, followed by a group of well equipped elite troops. Their ranks split in two and filed into two separate paths allowing their leader at the back to make his way towards us.
The king orc was indeed the same orc I had seen trapped within the depths of the crater. He looked like he was in much worse shape than he had been the first time I had seen him. He was missing one leg but the stump appeared to have a clean curved shape to the wound. I began attempting to speak to him using what little orc I thought I had managed to pick up so far and the orc king began to laugh.
He shouted to one of his minions and then quickly fetched a moderately large size cage from a caravan they had brought along with their convoy. Inside turned out to be a goblin, the orc king began to speak in uncommon. He revealed himself as Gui1ty C0d3, a traveller from another world and also that he had studied the uncommon language with the help of this captured goblin. After exchanging a few words with one of his guards he began to speak once again.
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He seemed to be aware that I was the one who had removed the power source from his previous dwelling place. He referred to his “escape pod” and a “power supply”. It appeared as if he was not entirely ungrateful for my actions but demanded I return the device to him. My first thought was to refuse, I really liked the amount of “juice” it added to my steed, plus not only was it used as the primary power source for my horse but also it was utilised by The Black Ruby.
After a quick consultation with my present thinktank, we decided it was not worth the immediate risk as well as the risk of a prolonged conflict with their species. So I agreed, my uncommon was a little rusty so combining what orcish I knew with the uncommon I remembered I began to probe the strange orc for what useful information I could get. I was able to learn that this orc had spent aeons only looking for a safe place to live peacefully. But information wasn’t free, and any more would cost me.
The orc leader shouted and the nearby troops closed into a circle, one of the elite units entered the clearing in the middle and readied a sword. The lone orc pointed its weapon at me and insulted my mother I do believe. I didn’t need to understand the entire language to know that they were fighting words. I drew my katana and calmly walked to the middle of the makeshift arena. My challenger lifted its weapon and I rapidly clashed my blade against it. The orc’s crudely forged iron blade didn’t quite cleave off, but it was damaged enough to bend awkwardly off to one side at an odd angle. I pulled my blade back and struck at the already damaged blade, causing the twisted upper portion of the blade to flick off into the crowd. The observers cheered, and Guilty Code shouted something that sounded vaguely like it would translate to “finish him”? So I thrusted my thin agile blade into the eye slot of the orcs helmet and instructed Lilith to activate all of my leaching enchantments. The orc aura shrivelled into nothingness and its lifeless husk fell to the ground. After the battle our conversation continued as if nothing had even happened.
Guilty Code heard from his drones that some sort of flying dinosaur had attacked the crater up north. I attempted to explain the dragons of this world without giving too much away. So I told him it was probably just a drake or wyvern and he wouldn’t need to worry about it. Next, I prepared to return the orc p/s, and when I did Guilty Code followed close by to observe the mechanised horse that it had been fueling.
The peaceful encounter filled me with hope for the future of Denisea. We began to discuss the establishment of UNOFFICIAL diplomatic relations. I explained that we did not know who to trust, and that public unification could bring ruin to the three kingdoms. I gave a brief description of the previous ages, and the lay of the land. Telling him of the past war between humans and elves, about the great dwarven homeland deep under the mountain. And I told him about the fourth kingdom that had betrayed the others when they caused the end of the age of dragons.
We decided that it would be best to set up guilds, also serving to keep our relation strictly economical. Hellsing Corp. had become somewhat of an unofficial engineers guild, so by establishing an outpost nearby; Guilty Code could sell me a replacement power source if he is able to reproduce one. Or better yet he could provide me with schematics in exchange for just about anything he may need.
After the festivities, if you can call it that, Guilty Code sent the majority of the other orcs away and invited us back to his stronghold for the night. Guilty Code was very quick to pick up the common language and even helped me pick up orcish words and phrases as we spoke throughout the evening. Guilty Code was very interested in visiting Sanctuary and obtaining some seeds. He had hoped to regrow some of the trees that the low-orcs had decimated.
I opened a portal to Sanctuary and invited Guilty Code inside, this however turned out to be a bad decision. He entered for about 5 seconds before returning through the portal. Apparently he had lost his connection with his hoard and had not prepared them with standing orders of any sort. I was able to provide him with a few seeds that I felt might successfully grow in this climate and also found a few volunteers to stay behind and begin establishing trade relations. The next morning we left, heading south to reunite with The Black Ruby and cycle out the crew, so they could get some rest.