Previously on SDNW4 wrote:Authorization for Badwill Operation NOM approved. May commence when ready.
Acknowledged, comrades.
With that command, agents in deep space activated a series of devices.
Transplanar Psionic Waveform Emitters, otherwise known as Psi-Emitters. Many were secretly positioned in derelict ships, unmanned outposts, and seeded asteroids in deep space. They hummed the music of the spheres, calling, beckoning, whispering through the dark. Making a line in space, an arrow directing those they beckoned to their where their gruesome service was needed.
The final device was activated on their ultimate destination.
THE SCOURGE OF GOD
Brought to you by Mayabird, Simon_Jester and Shroom Man 777
Aray, Outlander Central State
Former Outlander Commisions
The Centralite forces were recalled. The partisan fleets were full of revolutionary fervor, and so they were disappointed, but they followed the state’s command, and these were given by the state. They returned, just in time, and all for naught.
“I sense... a great disturbance...a force!” The powerful esper oracle of the Order of the Black Star, his name renounced at his rank, clutched his head. He tried to concentrate, but there was something simultaneously distracting and repulsive clouding his thoughts.
The nameless one could not know that it was not one force but
two pressing against his senses. The second was partially masked by the first, but it was so powerful that its presence bled through.
The first force was the Psi-Emitter planted upon Aray. Its superluminal waves rippled across hyperspace, the final bright beacon in the multidimensional chaos. Every esper in the system could feel it, and there were many, as the Centralites had been gathering them, by or against their will. The second force, even greater than the first, was such that they could even hear it in their minds, the music of the spheres, drums in the deep. In their dreams they saw visions of what was to come, disturbing sights of death and destruction, the sounds of billions of minds screaming before the silence fell. In touching their minds, the psychoplasmic transmissions of the dream machine amplified the psychic footprints of those touched by the warp. It echoed in the dark, and was heard by hungry minds.
The nameless one and his acolytes searched for the Psi-Emitter. The Black Stars suspected an act of terrorism, for they had many enemies. “But what purpose would it serve?” he asked, as they triangulated the source and commanded an orbital bombardment upon the location. The Psi-Emitter was quickly destroyed and its signal ceased, unclouding their esper senses. Revealing the
true form of that second, greater force. And then the acolytes screamed in utmost horror upon realizing what was to come.
“The Swarm! The Swarm is Nigh!”
A shadow in the warp fell upon the Aray system. Just as it had in Janus. Just as it had in Nova Genoa. Just as it had in many worlds across Wild Space and elsewhere, all of which were now consumed by the hunger without end of countless billions of organisms. They were life, living things that embodied natures ultimate perseverance, the culmination of the evolutionary process, of Darwinian selection on a galactic scale. Yet they were death, the death of self subsumed into the greater whole, the death of countless billions consumed by their ravenous hunger. Death-in-life. Life-in-death.
The Karlack Swarm.
The World-Eater Hiveship’s presence was enough to drive lesser psykers mad. Even from lightyears away, its looming presence in the warp could be felt by the touch. Now, as it approached the world itself, the voice of the Overmind was unbearable for the pitiful minds of the humans. The chorus of the Swarm seeped into their thoughts, the whispers and hisses and chitterings of countless organisms all linked to the greater brood-minds. The sound was drilling through the feeble human psykers’ minds.
Suddenly, it became quiet. And the World Eater spoke.
WE HAVE COME. FOR YOU.
The Karlacks came.
All of them.
I have doomed us all Lord Wankiller knew, as the alert reached him. It had seemed such a pragmatic decision, pulling their forces back; large and important it was in its own way, but it was just another step in the grander plan, just a step, nothing more. Now it was the worst decision of his entire life, possibly threatening the entire cause of Centralism in the Outlands. He would pay for his mistakes soon, but for now, he had to save what he could.
“General evacuation!” he ordered. “All ships capable of launch, load all the personnel you can and lift off immediately. Ground forces away from the space ports, support the evacuation with all your capacity. Your sacrifice will be forever remembered. Space forces, cover the evacuation! Hold back the Karlacks as long as possible!”
The ragtag forces organized themselves to defend their world. The bulk of their fleet had been dispatched to fight some unknown enemy sectors away before being suddenly recalled back, much to the disappointment of the eager revolutionaries. Now many of their vessels were berthed and refueled, repaired, for even their uneventful deployment had taxed some of the ships that had been poorly maintained since the dissolution of the Outlands. But even these aged vessels were scrambled to meet the threat, an enemy unlike any other. The once formidable Araynan military mustered what it had left, the rusted down weaponries and warships unused since the final days of the Outlands, brought out their stockpiled arsenals, and prepared for the worst. Most of the soldiers here were new recruits dedicated to the cause of Centralism, tested only in the guerrilla conflicts and brushfire wars and uprisings against the Orthodox fanatics and alien factions, experienced only in the sectarian violence but otherwise unproven in real interstellar warfare. There was a cadre of veterans, though, commanders and officers experienced from the days of old, when the civil war that broke the Commissions apart and pitted the militaries of Arayna against that of the Angmarids, Airaii and others. These battle-hardened elite knew what it was like, and now their experience would be put to good use once again.
The old Arayna military had contingencies for Karlack incursions, as was inevitable for a nation so close to the Swarm. Those remaining veterans, who had survived the purges by pledging loyalty to the Centralist cause, knew of these contingencies and put them to good use. Gunnery crews were instructed to aim for the larger Karlack creatures, whose synaptic organelles were used to coordinate the lesser bio-forms; missile batteries were advised to prioritize the spore pods that would spearhead the invasion forces and to destroy them when they were still exo-atmospheric, before they could disperse their taint; fighter wings and flotillas were told to stick together and cover each other to avoid being isolated and overwhelmed by the horde.
This was their home world. This was the center of the Central State in the Outlands. This was the home to countless people, not only the denizens of Aray but of innumerable refugees who had fled the anarchy plaguing the other systems for the safety of the better world Centralism had made here. They all had helped in building this great society, they were all part of the State and the New Order. For all it had given them, they would gladly pay back in blood - that of the enemy, preferably. But with fascist fervor, they were ready to make the ultimate sacrifice for Centralism.
But the Araynan Centralites, as formidable as they were compared to their rival ragtag revolutionaries in the Outlands, were just that. Ragtag revolutionaries. What they faced in the Karlack Swarm was nothing like the enemies they fought in their petty ideological squabbles. Their foe was implacable, nigh unstoppable, a force to be reckoned with even by the hyper-militarized nations of the Koprulu Zone, a race of assimilated predatory organisms that have evolved into the galaxy’s ultimate killing machines.
The Centralites knew this. But still they fought.
The Swarm descended upon them like a flood of chitin, claw and carapace. This was the true mindless, senseless, all-consuming horde. Utterly inhuman. Utterly without mercy. Without conscience. Their biological perfection was matched only by their hostility. And they came in undeniable numbers. Despite the defenders’ preparations, despite their home-field advantage, despite their revolutionary fervor and willingness to fight and die for State and Order, the Karlack flood simply drowned them in a deluge of death. There was no ark to flee to, no covenant to protect them.
Expecting no quarter, thus they gave none. Lasers, missiles and cannons racked the blackness of space, illuminating it with tracer fire and nuclear flash-outs. They killed, so many of the lesser bioforms that preceded the bulk of the splinter fleet. They came in waves and the Centralites at first weathered them, dealing death to the first living salvos of expendable creatures, but the Karlacks did not stop, they simply kept on coming. Gradually they were overwhelmed, little by little, as the sheer number of living weapons seeped through their defensive envelopes and inflicted damage, thus further diminishing their defenses. The intensity and numerosity of these sacrificial waves grew as the main body of the Karlack fleet came closer and closer. There was no stopping the Swarm.
More of the suicide space beasts detonated against the hulls of the warships. Despite their small size, the damage these living torpedoes dealt was devastating. The warships reeled. In desperation they focused their fire on the largest of the Karlack bioships, the World Eater, hoping to strike at the guiding intelligence of all the bioforms. But the Mothership simply bore the brunt of the blasts, seemingly unaffected, its brood-mind filling space with guttural laughter as it unleashed a storm of Omega Energy and bio-torpedoes at those who dared to stand against the fury of the Swarm. World Crushers joined the chorus, launching their own bioplasma attacks or disgorging countless winged bioforms, mutagargoylisks and devourators, which swarmed the Centralite ships and spewed acids and glaive wurms on their hulls. Slicer ships fired scything Omega lances, concentrating on enemy capital ships. They did not destroy them outright, instead merely disabled them, for the damaged ships would face fates far worse than destruction.
The remaining Centralite ships disengaged and retreated back to Aray, planning to combine forces with the planetary defense grid, hoping that the added firepower would make up for the losses they had sustained.
In the meanwhile, the World Eater released its space locusts, billions of teeming organisms that would blanket the other bio-forms, to heal the injured or accelerate the decomposition of the dead and reuse their bio-matter. As it did so, the Mothership neared the Centralite ships that had been damaged and disabled. Their helpless wrecks floated in space, and the surviving crews entombed within them would bear sight to a grotesque spectacle.
The locusts and smaller ships dragged the space hulks into place, then the World Eater revealed its Infestation Tentacles. They lashed out and spewed digestive enzymes to weaken the hulls, or snaked into breached sections, gradually making their way to the parts inhabited by the remaining crew. Where then they would begin their gruesome work.
The dying screams of sailors being digested alive filled the minds of the rest of the Centralists in the surviving vessels. The World Eater’s brood-mind broadcasted the sight and sounds of the poor souls’ last moments, and the more sensitive could even
feel what it was like to be consumed by the gastric juices of the Karlack bio-forms. Even the most stalwart of the Centralites could not help but feel fear and revulsion, and for those less-than-die-hard members, their despair was unknowable.
Do you think death is the worst thing that can happen to you here? a female voice asked them in the back of their minds.
Infestation is what's coming for you.
Soon all will serve the Swarm!
Her cruel laughter echoed in space. For the quivering masses, those broken survivors, that was the last straw. A number of ships left their formations and went for the other side of the system, as far from the Karlacks as they could, going for the hyperlimit and departing despite the dangers caused by the shadow in the warp. These deserters were few, but their abandonment nonetheless struck their comrades deeply, but they couldn’t punish the betrayal for they reserved their dwindling armamentations for the oncoming storm.
The World Eater continued its inexorable advance to Aray, accompanied as it was by its retinue of bioforms. It met the remaining Centralite ships, who were supported by a combination of orbital and planetary surface-to-space defenses. It was there that they would make their last stand.
Karlacks fell before them by the scores of thousands. Their mighty guns blazed at the heavens-turned-hell, striking down the bio-demons that threatened to engulf them. Warships at the fore, all cannons roaring, lasers lighting, missiles launching. Orbital platforms behind them, like space artillery firing for effect. Even weapons from the surface of Aray hammered the endless Karlack hordes. It was their last hurrah. Their final act of defiance against the monstrosities that came to destroy their precious new order.
But losses did not matter to the Karlacks. For every five that fell, twenty could take their place. Their dead could be consumed to replenish their numbers, the ultimate in recycling. Some would be blasted too small to be found, or would enter the atmosphere and burn away, but that did not matter; there was plenty more food on the surface to replace that. Soon they would descend.
Craving for carrion, the dark raven shall have its say, when competing with the wolf, it laid bare the bones of corpses.
Among the cities of Aray there had been a demented preacher. He was actually a Mechanical of the Outlander type, though an android so greatly resembling the human norm that without specialized tools, no one could tell the difference. He traveled from town to village to metropolis, always one step ahead of the authorities, and speaking his seditious blasphemy, for he worshipped the God-Emperor of Man and opposed the Centrality.
Now he stood upon what had once been a cathedral, lined with platinum and chrome, shining with the reflected glory of Aray’s star. It had been repurposed into a Centrum, but now the preacher made it his platform.
“Thy end hath come, oh ye faithless. Thy pride turned thee from the light of the True Faith, and thou bowed before false idols, believing the empty lies of the Centralists! Now the holy face of the God-Emperor has turned from ye, and His protection is held from thee. Tear at thy hair and clothes and heap ashes upon thy heads, o wicked ones, but thy prayers come too late!”
His voice boomed from the Centrum silver, amplified by his internal electronics. Even as flaming debris crashed among the buildings and explosions tore apart others, his words could still be heard.
“For thy hubris, thy vanities will be cast down! Salvation will not be thine! We are sinners in the hands of an angry God-Emperor, and his wrath will not be denied. Behold the fruits of thy depravity! Thy wickedness is returned thousandfold! And even now, the might of the God-Emperor is clear, for He-on-Terra uses the alien Karlacks as the instruments by which thy heresy will be cast down, and by which thy arrogant belief that thou could conquer the universe in an eyeblink is chastened! Yea, the swarm that descends upon us is the very
Scourge of God!”
Down in the streets, the populace turned their impotent rage towards the preacher standing above. The Karlacks came, but without the power to oppose them, they hurled jeers at the android instead. Inside the Centrum, guards raced towards the rooftop to remove the preacher, to have that last bit of spiteful pleasure before their end.
The preacher would not grant it.
“Wicked, wicked fools! Now I bring down the God-Emperor’s cleansing fire,” he said at the last. Then he turned his head towards the sky, held his aquila to his chest, and activated his self-destruct.
In their last moments, those few foolish exiled Mari regretted their folly and rebellion, but repentance would not save them from their punishment. The most merciful deaths came at the hands of their enslaved Tym, striking down their hated masters while they were too surprised to react. Among those Tym had been Communards, infiltrators who had planned to sabotage their enemies from within. They would not allow the fascists even a chance to damage the scourge of the gods or slow their wrath upon the oppressors.
And when they were done, they airlocked themselves, for even the Tym knew of the Karlacks and the fate that would await them otherwise.
Karlack ground and atmospheric organisms fell upon the defensive lines around the evacuation ports, trying to cut off and devour the escaping Centralists. Aerospaceforms swooped down upon the ports from above, but were stymied by a mighty concentrated air defense.
The Araynans’ mobile defense batteries blazed away, drilling tunnels through the swarms of aerospace bioforms that besieged them from above. With laser fire, flak barrages, and blasts of raw nuclear force, they swept the skies above the evacuation ports clear, trying to allow at least a few transports to flee before the planet was hopelessly englobulated by the might of the Swarm.
On the ground, the valiant and diverse Revolutionary Guards, Black Shirts, Brown Shirts, Red Shirts, and other military and paramilitary organizations of the Centralist Outland State held the line to the last vehicle, the last man and, often enough, the last round. Wave upon wave of gauntlings, hydragaunts, and larger creatures such as the dreaded carnilisks mobbed the ports. They were met with all manner of defenders, from war surplus battledroid hand-me-downs to überpanzerfausts in the hands of Völkslander mercenaries brought to remote Arayna by the promise of Centralist riches, and safety from their many enemies. But they would find no safety here, for these exiled warriors of the self-proclaimed Master Race had now met an even
more masterful race, one whose
evolution was far more
complete than their own... and it was hungry.
Behind the infantry, war machines and artillery fired with abandon, blasting through countless rounds of machine gun and cannon ammunition, burning enough fuel for a million beam weapons to vaporize a million spherical masses of iron. The Karlack waves were slaughtered by the thousands at sites all over the planet, and for a time the Centralists thought they might even TRIUMPH over their innumerable and chitinous foes.
They were wrong.
Ultimately, the munitions ran out. The fuel ran out. The men themselves ran out, unable even to lift their weapons. There were no reserves, no reinforcements, no secure lines of supply- for where on Arayna were there
not mighty armies of Karlacks descending upon the planet from above? Every unit fought surrounded and isolated- the ammunition dumps defended by only a handful of troops who couldn’t shoot fast enough to save themselves, the frontline positions defended by legions of stormtroopers who
could shoot fast enough... but who soon ran out of ammunition.
Out of desperation, some of the defenders turned to using the Nova Atlantean nanoweapons, in a vain attempt at transforming the hostile bioforms into much weaker, and easily beaten, Tau. The weapons did not work, though upon sampling the nano-retroviral, a synapse creature noted its curiosity and commanded that those defenders who used the nanoweapons be taken alive. They were restrained by spider-like larvae who wrapped themselves around their heads and hugged faces very tightly.
In the handful of sites, mostly in close terrain in the urban centers, where the Karlack vertical envelopment did not avail them, Centralist resistance lasted longer. Sometimes as much as half an hour longer... but no more. For now, the battle in orbit was lost, utterly lost. The Karlack bombardment creatures- guardianoid long range acidbombers and other, more terrible creatures- were in position. These chitinous alienoids proceeded to biobomb, poison, and sporify the last remaining human defensive positions from orbit.
It was the only way to be sure.
Human, Angmarid, Mechanicals, Mari, all fell before the fury of the Swarm. There was no discrimination between human and inhuman. All were equal in the eyes of the Overmind. All were welcomed to join the brood, to become one with the Eternal Swarm. To die and be born again through the horrific process of infestation. To be consumed, broken down to constituent proteins and nutrients and nourish the ravenous bioforms. To partake in the feast unknown, to be participants in an evolutionary culmination unlike any other, a sacrament against all that was past and holy. Not a sin against nature, but a sin
of nature, directed against all who had profaned her.
The Karlacks were a force of nature, performing cold, senseless and dispassionate biological processes on a planetary scale, on those who, in their hubris, thought themselves above such things. Science, technology, religion, politics, ideology - all these things meant nothing to the all encompassing Karlack Swarm. Whereas so many races saw nature as insignificant in light of their vain accomplishments, in truth in the multi-faceted eyes of the Karlack hivemind everything these vain species had built, all those temporary things that defined their short pitiful existences, was naught but microscopic planktons to be sifted and consumed. To be
assimilated.
Those who could not make it to orbit fled for the bunkers. There they cowered by the thousands. Hoping for some miraculous salvation to spare them from their fates. But alas, the remnants of their space fleet was scattered across Aray’s orbit, and the ground forces were the first to fall to the Swarm’s warrior strains. The fate of these fallen defenders was be a mercy compared to that of those left on Aray.
The stalking bioforms were joined by new additions to the Swarm. Their bodies were warped and twisted by the mutagenic spores, their minds corrupted by the Swarm. Infested Terrans, mutated humans and non-humans alike, together with the gauntlinglisks and carnilisks and other strains, pried open the bunkers and shelters and dragged the living out, sifting through them and scouring their genetic potential, assimilating those gifted with metahuman potentials or those whose DNA the Swarm had not yet encountered before. The Mari, who stayed in their ships and kept away, were now the subject of the Karlacks’ curiosities as they were cocooned alive, to be brought to the hive clusters for further analysis. Those who were already dead, or those whose genetic materials the Swarm was already intimately familiar with, were merely consumed to fuel the metabolisms of the bioforms. Those few Mechanicals whose logical computations assumed they would be spared due to their inorganic and inedible natures felt fear for the very first, and the very last, time as they were carved to pieces and masticated by the larger bioforms such as carnilisks, whose gastric acids melted the machines down, dissolving them and their mineral components to be later used to grow bone or chitin or claw.
In the center of that storm of flesh was an angry red eye. The last traces of defiance against the Karlacks. Those who began this madness lasted until its very end.
The snap-hiss of their blades, the dismemberment of gauntlings and xenogaunts and arachnomorphs, cauterization. The crackle of their psionic lightning storms, the shrieks of writing bioforms burned alive, incineration. The sickening snap of telekinesis, carapace breaking under the force of many gravities, pulverization. The dark warriors of the Centralist elite put their powers to good use, murdering obscene quantities of the abominations that had brought ruination and digestification to the new order they had forged. The frustration of seeing their dreams dashed against the harsh reality of these monsters from the damned Koprulu Zone, the horror of seeing all their revolutionary brethren, followers and underlings devoured alive, the fear they all felt deep in their hearts in knowing the fates they now foresaw. This only fueled them further. Bioforms were torn to pieces, hurled through the air, or outright exploded by the might of their minds. They proved to the dread Swarm that they, the proponents of Centralism, were more powerful than whatever evolutionary bastardries the Overmind could spawn from his grotesque ovipositors.
Yet this was what the brood-mind wanted. With every creature slain, it felt their power. With the compound eyes and oculars of the swarming gauntlings, it saw their strength. They proved their mettle. They proved their genetic worth, the purity of their seed, the strength of their superior genes over the recessive ones.
Truly, the effort the Star Brood took in quelling this world had been worth it. Not only had the disturbances that threatened to upset the region, an annoying nuisance to the Overmind and the Aspect’s plans for galactic domination, been silenced, but so too had they found truly worthy specimens. To add into their fold.
The beamsabers went out one after the other as their expert esper wielders were overwhelmed by sheer numbers. Defilermorphs spewed clouds of thick mucous to obstruct their movements. Burrowed Lurkgaunts collapsed the ground beneath their very feet. The gauntlings came and buried them under corpses. The carnilisks overpowered them, the Overloins took them.
The last who remained was the nameless one, the powerful esper oracle of the Black Star. He still fought against the hordes. Scores fell before his powers and swordsmanship, their misshapen bodies forming heaps higher and higher around him. The walls of twisted Karlack flesh gave him some extra protection, buying him a little more time, and then a little more again, but his powers were not endless. The Horde was.
His spirit was willing, but his mind and body were spent. He fought on, atop a mountain of slain abominations, but he looked around and saw an ocean of Karlack strains surrounding him, and looked up to see the sky blackened by countless mutagargoylisks and devourators. Yet even in the very end, he did not surrender. He harnessed what was left of his fear, his anger, his hate. His suffering. But at this point, it was hard for him to feel anything anymore. He held on to his crimson beamsabers, one of which was his and the other retrieved from the hands of a dead acolyte. He shouted at the abominations around him, beckoning them to finish it.
They just stood there and leered at him with their compound eyes. Then they quivered, all of them and as one, in a chilling effect as though the sea of creatures was rippling like water. They emitted a piercing shriek, as though of exultation, and they all craned their heads towards the heavens.
The nameless Black Star followed their gaze. The mutagargoylisks and devourators and guardianoids were gone. The sky was clear, blue, pristine and beautiful as though the world beneath them was not stained by the blood of so many men and monsters.
Then the clouds caught fire.
The World Eater came like a descending god, setting the very sky ablaze. Billions of locusts filled the air, germinating their spores into Aray’s atmosphere. The World Eater and the other orbiting bioships began to vomit copious amounts of creep onto inhabitable biomass-rich land masses. The spores and creep did their work. They were digestive enzymes, and all living matter that came into contact with them dissolved into protoplasmic fluid. Minerals, resources, inorganic substances that could be used for bone, for chitin and claws, and a myriad other uses were also liquefied.
The process began in the population centers, where most of the planet’s inhabitants were, and the dying screams of millions filled the air as they were digested en masse by the Swarm. It went outwards, to the farmlands and rurals, the places that could sustain life by virtue of terraformation. Those places untouched by the enzymes, for they were deemed to be of low nutritious value, were instead saturated in lethal plague toxins and long-lasting endospores that would spawn feral rudimentary Karlack strains should signs of life return.
After hours, the digestive process was complete. The lands of the living had become a grotesque hellspace where all life had been reduced into an ocean of fluid, a primordial soup. Even the terrestrial Karlack bioforms, both dead and alive, were not spared from this fate. The World Eater extended its Infestation Tentacles down to the ruined surface of the planet, to absorb what had just been externally digested. Much like how a common fly regurgitates gastric juices on its food in order to melt it, before sucking the dissolved nutrients in with its proboscis.
Mountain-sized chunks of still-solid matter, or collected aggregate materials that had hardened in the soup, floating around in clumps, were also consumed. Not by the tentacles. Instead, at the bottom of the World Eater, massive maws filled with an eerie light opened. The solidified objects in the primordial soup then floated into the air along with massive globules of protoplasm, propelled by an unmatchable feat of telekinetic might, heading up into the World Eater’s myriad mouths, those oversized orifices. Among the still-solid objects were Aray’s most fortified bunker complexes, which had somehow withstood the liquefaction process, succeeding in saving those inside them from that grizzly fate. Only to be lifted into the World Eater and grounded down by its teeth.
In the end, out of a populous planet, a center of civilization in the Outlands, only a few thousand survived. They watched from orbit, in the safety of their escape ships, as their world was consumed and ruined forever. Somehow, the Karlacks had chosen to spare them. Possibly their few gnat-like ships were insignificant compared to the banquet Aray offered them. They thanked their gods for their survival, their harrowing escape from the doomed planet, not knowing or caring why they had been allowed to live. They would forever carry with them the legacy of the Karlacks’ visitation of Aray, the bitter memories that would linger on in nightmares, and more. They wept as they saw what had happened to their world.
So many people had come to Aray, under the banner of Centralism, for it had promised to protect them. Refugees, exodites, the dispossessed human and alien alike. The Centrality had been so good at making war with the Byzantine fanatics, the communist guerrillas, the pirates and raiders. They had made so many territorial gains, they had killed so many. It seemed as though their victory was imminent, it seemed as though their dominion was undoubtable. They had done so much, so fast. But in the end, despite their successes, they had failed in protecting their own people.
The habitable terraformed zones of Aray were no longer. The very soil had been stripped off the landmasses’ surface. The more hostile uninhabited parts were not spared, but were instead cursed by an unending geostigma that would take even more destruction to remove. The world was lost.
The World Eater and its retinue of bioships, now fattened by the blood and corpses of countless lives, departed from the system just as suddenly as they came. The shadow of the warp disappeared. The survivors began to fill the hyperwaves with their cries of anguish and loss.
"
- PeZook
