---Return---
---Aghogh’s perspective---
This… is bad!
It has been weeks now that the hunting parties have not been able to leave the city without fear of attack!
There hasn’t been a Vermin uprising since I was a broodling!… Long before Khr’kowan’s mother delivered me an [empire]! Why now!?
One Vermin is killed in a displacement and suddenly we have thousands of them who’ve apparently sprung up from the undergrowth and seem intent on starving our city to death!
My strongest daughter is… dead and, with her entire body having been taken somewhere, she can’t even grace us with her bounty of thanatite… We can’t honour her with a mortuary butchering!
Was it the Vermin who took her? All of her?
Or was it the ‘Foreigners’?… Yet another thing to worry about!
Mhakhrav, my latest broodwife, is… hungry… I’m already having to consider the terrible sacrifices that might need to be made to nourish the next generation growing within her…
Of course… no word from Wokhash, yet!
I know it hasn’t even been a [week] since I sent a ship to ask their aid and I know it will take another [3] at the earliest…
Of course, knowing Khravash (a man as slippery as the fish his daughters pull from the ocean(!)), he’s very likely to send back some stalling excuse, justifying being unable to send us food right now!
Likely, he will be gleefully rubbing his palms together at the thought of Khawekh starving into irrelevance, paving the way for his realm to rise to hegemony!
Little will it matter to him that his sister’s brood will be among those that starve!
The crown atop my head has… never felt so… heavy before!
At this moment, I hear Haorken’s thundering, seven legged gait as she approaches.
What now?!
She bursts through the curtains into the throne room “FATHER!”
Mhakhrav hisses at her for the breach of decorum.
“What is it girl?” I say, giving my broodwife’s sturdy hand a reassuring squeeze and turning my sightless eyes to where I hear my daughter.
“Khr’kowan has returned! She’s ALIVE!!!”
I stand, ignoring how my armour aches beneath my fur “Truly?!”
“Truly, Father!… She’s on her way here! Though, I cannot tell you how she survived! There is no question that the wound she received was mortal!… There’s something else too… the ones who brought her back…”
“Why don’t you let me tell Father of those that brought me back, Sister(?)” deadpans the voice of what is unquestionably my strongest daughter, entering the room!
“Daughter?” I shiver.
I hear her turn her head to me and greet “Hello, Father… It’s good to see you!”
Wordlessly, I beckon her over.
Unmistakably, that is her gait approaching… no one else has the sheer weight of their footfalls that she does!
I feel the disturbed air and hear the dampening of sound that indicates her to be stood right in front of me.
I reach a hand high above my head… and feel as Khr’kowan presses her face into it…
“You are truly back from the Warm Lands, Daughter…” I breathe.
“I wasn’t in the Warm Lands, Father…” she states, her tone sombre.
“Where… were you Khr’kowan?… We needed you here!”
Urgently now, she asks “You were told of the Foreigners?”
“I… was, yes?” I answer, bewildered.
“They took me high above the world to a ship, made of metal and larger than this city, in which they sail on the stars. They used their sorcery (which they insist is no magic and, instead, nothing more than an understanding of the natural world!) to heal my wound, weave items from thin air, see my brain and craft a metal coin that let me understand their words when I wear it on my head. They told me they have sailed here from other worlds around other stars and that they wish to treat with us…”
“Khr’kowan, stop! You’re not making any sense!” I say, frightened by the insane words streaming from my daughter’s mouth.
“I am making sense and you need to listen to me!” she retorts.
Weaver!
I have never heard my daughter have such fear in her tone in all her life!
“Father, they say they want to broker a peace between us and the Vermin, or the ‘Twigg’ as they’re apparently called…”
“You speak blasphemy!” challenges Mhakhrav, aggressive from her pregnancy.
My daughter instantly turns her face to my broodwife and roars “Bite. your. tongue!… I speak a truth on which hinges our kind’s very survival!… May you be still in your ignorance!”
“Calm, Daughter… Calm… Explain what you mean…” I sooth, placing my hands on her elbows.
She takes a frustrated sigh before saying “Father… these Foreigners have power like you couldn’t imagine!… They say they wish for friendship but also wish to respect our independence if we reject them… I am inclined to believe them for, with the power they have, they would have no need to deceive us… If they wanted us gone, it would be a trivial matter for them to make us so… If they wanted our land it would be an afternoon’s work for them to drive us from it!… If they wanted our goods, they could weave them themselves… from thin air!… It wouldn’t be worth their while to take us as slaves, since they have [machines] that do any work we could, better than we could, never faltering, never tiring, never complaining and never rebelling!… That creature that I killed when fetching your current broodwife from the Hoghawhan Realm, without flesh and with a carapace tougher than thanatite, was no creature at all but one of their [machines]!… If we rebuff their friendship, the best case scenario is that they leave and never come back… However, even if they don’t themselves exterminate us for the insult, since they believe the Twigg are people… and the Twigg seem very much to want their friendship, it is equally likely that they will return to this world, sharing their gifts freely with the Twigg, and we are simply outcompeted to extinction!… If sitting down to settle our differences with the Twigg is the price of a friendship with the Foreigners, then that is a price we must pay!”
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
At a loss, I’m silent for some moments before “…So… you think these Foreigners… can be trusted?”
She huffs “I don’t know, Father… I only know that, if they can’t be trusted, nothing will matter anymore!… Accepting the Foreigners’ friendship is the surest path to our survival!… They are waiting outside the village… You need to meet them, now… Do not offend them… but don’t grovel either… Being grovelled to seems to upset them…”
---Emiko’s perspective---
Right now, Lhamo and her husband are with Samus, Tuun, Tymancha, Steve and Ziva, waiting for the Twigg to bring elders from the surrounding villages to meet them in the forest, around 10km west of here.
Here to back me up are Thran, Xon, Victor and Leon… not that I think the five of us would be able to do anything about it if a whole city of Vrakhand decided to take exception to us!
Watching Khr’kowan, as she came up from fording the river and was greeted by sisters in arms who’ve spent well over a week thinking her dead, it was clear she wasn’t exaggerating just how much she outclasses typical women!
She is to them what a man Victor’s size would have been to medieval peasants!
Even still, each one is easily 400kg!
It occurs to me that Thran is likely to lose her status as the ‘strongest unaugmented woman in the galaxy’ with this species’ introduction to it(!)
We haven’t directly tested Khr’kowan’s strength (as doing so would have sent all sorts of unhelpful messages!), so it’s not possible to say for sure, but I’m fairly certain she would be the stronger of her and Thran…
It’s a good thing that these guys weren’t discovered by the GU before the UTC was… the planet would definitely have been glassed!
They’re so exactly what a gardenworlder would picture a deathworlder to be like(!)
Right now, I’m just trying not to look threatening as I’m stared down by nearly two dozen women, guarding the far side of the shallow river ford, around 300m away.
Behind them, a small crowd has gathered on the slope and are staring out at us, curiously.
Up the hill, I can see rows and rows and rows of well ordered silk tents, culminating in a gargantuan palace tent at the peak!
When the Vrakhand are weaned off of the aid money meant to help establish them in the GU, that silk they produce will probably become their most lucrative export… at least, that was Dr Hardwick’s opinion anyway.
It’s hard to argue against that assessment!
The result of them having such ready access to such a high quality fabric has the effect of making the Vrakhand look exceedingly well dressed!
Looking at them is rather like going to a historical fair… or watching a poorly researched, period drama where all of the characters are dressed in spotless haute couture and there’s a distinct lack of anyone wearing ill fitting, dirty or otherwise aesthetically unpleasing clothes(!)
Khr’kowan reappears, practically wading through the crowd of onlookers which she barges out of the way.
She parts the line of warriors and signals us to cross.
“Here we go!” I say, apprehensively.
Victor starts up the mule and begins piloting it over the river.
There is a gasp from the assembled crowd, audible even at this distance, as they witness the craft hovering a metre from the water’s surface with no visible means of support.
We swiftly close the ground between us and the space that Khr’kowan has had her sisters clear for us.
Victor sets us down and we all step off.
Now surrounded by large, powerful, armoured women, any one of whom I know would easily be able to pick me up and hurl me through the air or dash me against the ground, I think I may have some idea of the thrilling terror that that siQeten must have felt when he came to me to negotiate Vissitrith’s surrender to the 10,091st Rangers!
They gawk down at us in pretty much exactly the way you would expect Iron Aged people to look at aliens(!)
“Clear the way for our honoured guests!” barks the General at the assembled crowd, clearly terrifying the ones she’s looking straight at and waving out of the way!
She turns back to her sisters “Kvehah, Whakhowh, Aharnh, Hhlornh, Vhr’rkh, you five are forming the honour guard with me… and for love of the Weaver STOP GAWKING!… Everyone else, stay here!”
Five of the women, presumably the ones named, immediately fall into formation around us.
The remainder look quite clearly disappointed by not being able to follow.
I step close to the General and, under my breath, say “Apologies for not clearing this with you earlier, Khr’kowan, but would it be alright for us to bring the vehicle into the palace?”
She finishes listening to me and shouts “Our guests land ship is to be included in the guard!” at her sisters.
Without a moment’s hesitation the guard reforms around us and the mule.
I smile and nod at the woman in appreciation.
I signal Victor to put it into follow mode and get off.
The eleven of us begin making our way up the wide street, to the hilltop palace.
With my first good look at Vrakhand males… I find them to be… absolutely fucking adorable!
In stark contrast to their formidable sisters, the men look like gigantic, chibi, Jorōgumo plushies!
Where the women mostly stand between around 2.4-2.6m in their natural stance, the men are only around my height!
The bluish-black armour that the women have is completely invisible, except for on the tips of their earhorns and backs of their fingers, their bodies mostly being covered in thick fur (at least as far as I can see without undressing any of them(!))
Their thanatite is only visible at the tips of their feet, fingerclaws and the fangs/tusks that protrude from their faces.
Their legs and pedipalps are either much fatter than the relatively sleek murderweapons the women have or just so much hairier that they end up looking chubbily chibi!
Most of them have the reddish brown fur Khr’kowan tells me is typical of her region’s people but a few have other colours, darker and lighter, that suggest them to be nonlocals.
They mostly look far more nervous about us than the, more confused looking, women!
I have an overwhelming urge to cuddle and scritch them all… but something tells me that would not be the best way to make a dignified first impression(!)
Climbing the hill (and stopping every Vrakhand who comes upon us in their tracks to stand, staring at the sight we must be to them as we pass) I look around.
This hill is a remarkably well defended feature of the land!
It sits in a meander of the river, that looks most of the way to becoming an oxbow lake, overlooking a wide, forested floodplain.
To the North, the narrow neck of the peninsula is heavily fortified with a wooden wall.
With the exception of the ford, behind us to the West (which seems to be the main point of ingress and egress to the city), the only other break in the bankside fortifications is a small port, ahead and to the right, in the Southeast.
The medium sized, wooden ship I can see at anchor, in the river, suggests that the river is navigable all the way to the sea from this location … another great point in its favour! Further upstream and that ford would prevent ships from being able to pass.
The fact that this location was deemed necessary speaks to a species who are no strangers to war!
We find ourselves cresting the hill, onto a clearly somewhat earthworked plateau, mostly taken up by a 30-40m tall, 50m wide palace.
The dyed silk of the gigantic multicoloured tent is somewhat reminiscent of a circus bigtop… a comparison I resolve to keep to myself(!)
“Open the doors!” Khr’kowan barks at her distracted sisters, who start out of their staring and pull aside the curtains for us.
We cross an entrance hall, with more openings leading left and right to other rooms of the palace, and then pass into a single room that must take up the majority of the palace’s floorplan.
In the centre of the room is a large treetrunk, serving as a pillar, to support the tent.
Strung from the ceiling are various trophies of frighteningly vicious looking animals.
Among them, just as the General indicated, I spot an ODR drone with a large dent in its fuselage… next to it a, thoroughly destroyed, thanatite spear!
Around the room are various Vrakhand, both male and female.
I spot one who’s missing a foot. She must be the one that the Twigg girl dismembered to make her knife… or ‘the knife that she wields’ as she would phrase it!
At the far end of the hall is a grey furred male, his eight eyes milky (clearly blind) and his age apparent even through the fur on his face, sitting on a raised dais.
On his brow sits a band of metal, into which are mounted spikes of thanatite, symbolically taken from each of his major vassals after they accepted his overlordship.
At his side is his latest wife, clearly heavily pregnant (with anywhere from 33-44 babies, if the General is to be believed) from the swelling of her hindbody.
Behind the emperor is a grisly, ghoulish display!
Dangling from the wall hang 17 Vrakhand heads, their orbits devoid of eyes and periocular flesh, their mouths devoid of teeth and toothplates, their faces bare of their tusk fangs!
Even being forewarned of this and knowing this species view this as an honour, I can’t help but find it a little stomach churning!
I’m still unclear on exactly how this emperor has managed to get through so many wives if he only takes one at a time but… that’s probably not a question for this meeting!… Really hope it’s not a Henry VIII type situation!
I hand a boxed translator to Khr’kowan.
She takes it and approaches her father.
“Father… I present to you, our honoured guests from beyond the stars: Thran ‘Gimli’ Huntress, Leon ‘Kennedy’ Byrne, Victor ‘Embraces’ Taylor, Xon ‘Great Step’ Runner and Emiko ‘Smiles’ Miyazaki!” she announces.