| [Azimuth] |
| Orc, Female, True Hero |
| Location: The Human Capital, Castle |
Azimuth runs through the burnt, gore-stained corridors. Her boots hammer as she sprints, pressing through one torn off door to the other, running past bodies and limbs until she reaches her residence and looks around herself at the chaos.
It’s quiet.
She steps inside, calling out for anyone.
No response.
“Mom! Dad!” calls Azimuth, looking at the tall bookshelves that are covered in the scars of claws and magic, much of the paper still smoldering.
Nothing.
She walks through the many rooms, passing corpses that she recognizes as being a part of her personal guard and a few of her stewards — the maids and butlers, many of whom had tried to barricade themselves in small cupboards and pantries.
The orc reaches the garden and drops her sword, running to the center of a room where a woman lays on the ground in a massive puddle of blood that stains the world. She’s moving.
Azimuth grabs the shoulder of her head attendant, the woman who had lectured her so often about life in the castle, and flips her over.
“Are you alr-?!”
She stops as the woman flops over onto her back, long since dead. Her entrails fall out of her crudely eviscerated stomach. The movements had come from a bird that is still held in her arms, which it seems she had tried to protect.
However, it seems that in her death, she had fallen onto it. Its legs and wings are broken.
| [Gottlieb] |
In the days that are now, looking back on those days that came before, people might wonder why they were ever worried at all, honestly. Much the same can be said for each individual, staring back at the days of their own youth, in which they too struggled with turmoil and troubles of an individual nature. Such things are always easier from a distant perspective.
The problems of a person or of a community, or the world are often easier to identify from an outside, or distant, perspective. Yet, paradoxically enough, they are more difficult to address and solve from this vantage point, as one does not have the privilege of access to the facilities that an insider — the person or people experiencing such quandaries — would have access to.
It is the curse of having insight, but bound hands at the same time. The ability to see, but never to touch. The ability to watch, but never to instruct.
The world is massive. Millions and millions of people live there, each of them segregated into their individual families, which belong to individual communities, which belong to individual confederations of individual states which come to form individual nations — and these are solely the hard lines drawn. Things such as individual cultures and beliefs ebb and flow across borders, faiths and religions do not stay firmly put within their tight confines of geography. As people spread, so do ideas, and they travel far quicker than people ever could.
A theoretical missionary could travel the world, trying to span its width once in a perfect loop on his pilgrimage. He speaks to a man on the way of an idea he carries and continues walking. This other man then speaks this idea to yet another man, and this latest man speaks to another and so on and so on. The idea spreads, traveling as if it were a missionary all of itself, propelled forward in immaterial form in the shape of noise and conceptual thoughts, until one man tells two and two men tell four, and by the time this theoretical missionary finishes traveling the world once, his idea has spread out far, far ahead of him, propagated by the act of a single sermon — not only in a straight line, as he has traveled, but also in all directions, like wildfire.
The orbital station follows a perfect orbit around the planet, meaning it is relatively locked in regards to its position on the world as it always travels along a rail of sorts. However, its direct blasts into the planet are one and the same as the act of thrusting a seed into the soil.
It germinates where it is planted, and it spreads roots there.
But over time, those roots dig outwardly and the plant grows and thrives, creating then new seeds of its own, which it drops off through its mechanisms of progenation out further from itself. These then grow and repeat the process, and this goes on and on until eventually the single seed becomes a forest, born from one individual act.
In this sense, it is why everything matters, in contrast to the arguments of nihilists.
Every act, no matter how trivial and inconsequential, results in some differentiation down the line of history — minute or massive. Yes, in the grand scheme of aeons, this may not be relevant, but it is true. However, for the grand scheme of the totality of human existence, it is.
What one does matters. What one doesn’t do matters.
This is the curse that one must understand and bear if one wishes to break free and become a creature that doesn’t exist at the whims of the results of the actions of others but instead takes charge of its paradoxically consequential tiny, infinitesimally small place in the universe.
“You got it?” asks Gottlieb, looking through the visors of his helmet at Grunheide, sitting at the auxiliary gunner’s position.
The goblin looks at him and then back at the console. “Yeah. Sure. Whatever,” she replies.
“Thanks, Grun,” remarks the man, clicking the helmet into place.
| [Wood-Mother of the Goblin Tribe] |
| Dryad, Female, Woodmother |
| Location: The Human Capital, Castle |
Moonlight shines in through the open windows of the castle, catching on the broken shards of glass as she holds the soldier up by his neck, cool winds blowing around past her, carrying her hair off to the side, together with the stench of the underworld from which they’ve crawled. Teeth gnaw and men clash all around them as they stand within the primacy of the human castle.
It is true that they are present in inconsequential numbers compared to the human tribes, yes. But they don’t need to fight and kill all of them. They just need to fight and kill the center of power. Human society is already unstable. By creating a void in it, they will come in all by themselves, devouring themselves as if they were a den of hungry beasts. Fires will rise, moonlight will cut through dead eyes, and in their restless conquering of one another, they will allow the door to remain open for the tribes of the deep world.
This is the will of the heavens.
This is the final explanation of every divine action that has come to pass until now. The darkness heralds the end of the reign of humans and their ilk, the sunrise that is to come as she feels it to do so in her heart to signal the rise of the age of the things that crawl.
— The soldier in her grasp stops struggling.
She drops him to the ground.
Walking through the chamber that is still at war, her hooves clacking, she strides over towards the great doors that block her from her prize and presses against them, the heavy metal croaking with the cries of a hundred spirits as the ancient wood, stolen from her forests generations ago, welcomes her touch.
In the room, surrounding a table, sit a ring of old humans who turn to look her way as a harrowing, loud roar fills the air.
It’s time to end this and let a new day finally begin.
The scream grows louder, louder, and louder still as she steps into the chamber, only looking around behind herself just in time in confusion as a massive, lumbering creature of steel and sinew charges through the frenzy, breaking skulls and hands indifferently as she breaks forward straight towards her.
The dryad only dives to the side at the last second, as a metal fist barely misses grabbing a hold of her head and instead strikes down into the stones of the floor past her, breaking them with a minor quake. The creature inadvertently blocks her entry as it turns its head, staring first toward the mess it has left behind and then at her, carrying within its eyes the mark of a wild thing.
Rabid. The orc in metal. It is a rabid thing.
The two feral monsters scream at one another, like beasts in the midst of the dark forests, snarling over territory, spittle dripping from their open mouths and barred teeth, and, coming to no agreement through this method, they both leap forward towards one another, to reclaim the territory as their own.
Screams, fists, and claws of metal and bone clash as they fight.
| [Azimuth] |
| Orc, Female, True Hero |
| Location: The Human Capital, Castle |
Azimuth runs through the burnt, gore-stained corridors. Her boots hammer as she sprints, pressing through one torn off door to the other, running past bodies and limbs until she reaches her residence and looks around herself at the chaos.
It’s quiet.
She steps inside, calling out for anyone.
No response.
“Mom! Dad!” calls Azimuth, looking at the tall bookshelves that are covered in the scars of claws and magic, much of the paper still smoldering.
Nothing.
She walks through the many rooms, passing corpses that she recognizes as being a part of her personal guard and a few of her stewards — the maids and butlers, many of whom had tried to barricade themselves in small cupboards and pantries.
The orc reaches the garden and drops her sword, running to the center of a room where a woman lays on the ground in a massive puddle of blood that stains the world. She’s moving.
Azimuth grabs the shoulder of her head attendant, the woman who had lectured her so often about life in the castle, and flips her over.
“Are you alr-?!”
She stops as the woman flops over onto her back, long since dead. Her entrails fall out of her crudely eviscerated stomach. The movements had come from a bird that is still held in her arms, which it seems she had tried to protect.
However, it seems that in her death, she had fallen onto it. Its legs and wings are broken.
| [Gottlieb] |
In the days that are now, looking back on those days that came before, people might wonder why they were ever worried at all, honestly. Much the same can be said for each individual, staring back at the days of their own youth, in which they too struggled with turmoil and troubles of an individual nature. Such things are always easier from a distant perspective.
The problems of a person or of a community, or the world are often easier to identify from an outside, or distant, perspective. Yet, paradoxically enough, they are more difficult to address and solve from this vantage point, as one does not have the privilege of access to the facilities that an insider — the person or people experiencing such quandaries — would have access to.
It is the curse of having insight, but bound hands at the same time. The ability to see, but never to touch. The ability to watch, but never to instruct.
The world is massive. Millions and millions of people live there, each of them segregated into their individual families, which belong to individual communities, which belong to individual confederations of individual states which come to form individual nations — and these are solely the hard lines drawn. Things such as individual cultures and beliefs ebb and flow across borders, faiths and religions do not stay firmly put within their tight confines of geography. As people spread, so do ideas, and they travel far quicker than people ever could.
A theoretical missionary could travel the world, trying to span its width once in a perfect loop on his pilgrimage. He speaks to a man on the way of an idea he carries and continues walking. This other man then speaks this idea to yet another man, and this latest man speaks to another and so on and so on. The idea spreads, traveling as if it were a missionary all of itself, propelled forward in immaterial form in the shape of noise and conceptual thoughts, until one man tells two and two men tell four, and by the time this theoretical missionary finishes traveling the world once, his idea has spread out far, far ahead of him, propagated by the act of a single sermon — not only in a straight line, as he has traveled, but also in all directions, like wildfire.
The orbital station follows a perfect orbit around the planet, meaning it is relatively locked in regards to its position on the world as it always travels along a rail of sorts. However, its direct blasts into the planet are one and the same as the act of thrusting a seed into the soil.
It germinates where it is planted, and it spreads roots there.
But over time, those roots dig outwardly and the plant grows and thrives, creating then new seeds of its own, which it drops off through its mechanisms of progenation out further from itself. These then grow and repeat the process, and this goes on and on until eventually the single seed becomes a forest, born from one individual act.
In this sense, it is why everything matters, in contrast to the arguments of nihilists.
Every act, no matter how trivial and inconsequential, results in some differentiation down the line of history — minute or massive. Yes, in the grand scheme of aeons, this may not be relevant, but it is true. However, for the grand scheme of the totality of human existence, it is.
What one does matters. What one doesn’t do matters.
This is the curse that one must understand and bear if one wishes to break free and become a creature that doesn’t exist at the whims of the results of the actions of others but instead takes charge of its paradoxically consequential tiny, infinitesimally small place in the universe.
“You got it?” asks Gottlieb, looking through the visors of his helmet at Grunheide, sitting at the auxiliary gunner’s position.
The goblin looks at him and then back at the console. “Yeah. Sure. Whatever,” she replies.
“Thanks, Grun,” remarks the man, clicking the helmet into place.
| [Wood-Mother of the Goblin Tribe] |
| Dryad, Female, Woodmother |
| Location: The Human Capital, Castle |
Moonlight shines in through the open windows of the castle, catching on the broken shards of glass as she holds the soldier up by his neck, cool winds blowing around past her, carrying her hair off to the side, together with the stench of the underworld from which they’ve crawled. Teeth gnaw and men clash all around them as they stand within the primacy of the human castle.
It is true that they are present in inconsequential numbers compared to the human tribes, yes. But they don’t need to fight and kill all of them. They just need to fight and kill the center of power. Human society is already unstable. By creating a void in it, they will come in all by themselves, devouring themselves as if they were a den of hungry beasts. Fires will rise, moonlight will cut through dead eyes, and in their restless conquering of one another, they will allow the door to remain open for the tribes of the deep world.
This is the will of the heavens.
This is the final explanation of every divine action that has come to pass until now. The darkness heralds the end of the reign of humans and their ilk, the sunrise that is to come as she feels it to do so in her heart to signal the rise of the age of the things that crawl.
— The soldier in her grasp stops struggling.
She drops him to the ground.
Walking through the chamber that is still at war, her hooves clacking, she strides over towards the great doors that block her from her prize and presses against them, the heavy metal croaking with the cries of a hundred spirits as the ancient wood, stolen from her forests generations ago, welcomes her touch.
In the room, surrounding a table, sit a ring of old humans who turn to look her way as a harrowing, loud roar fills the air.
It’s time to end this and let a new day finally begin.
The scream grows louder, louder, and louder still as she steps into the chamber, only looking around behind herself just in time in confusion as a massive, lumbering creature of steel and sinew charges through the frenzy, breaking skulls and hands indifferently as she breaks forward straight towards her.
The dryad only dives to the side at the last second, as a metal fist barely misses grabbing a hold of her head and instead strikes down into the stones of the floor past her, breaking them with a minor quake. The creature inadvertently blocks her entry as it turns its head, staring first toward the mess it has left behind and then at her, carrying within its eyes the mark of a wild thing.
Rabid. The orc in metal. It is a rabid thing.
The two feral monsters scream at one another, like beasts in the midst of the dark forests, snarling over territory, spittle dripping from their open mouths and barred teeth, and, coming to no agreement through this method, they both leap forward towards one another, to reclaim the territory as their own.
Screams, fists, and claws of metal and bone clash as they fight.
