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- The Lamorri - By sholari James It is not known where the lamorri came from originally. Maybe they themselves had forgotten. But from the darkness of the night sky they ascended upon Sho-Caudal with their partners the cleash and enslaved the shantas. The lamorri and cleash, along with their machines and terrible creatures scarred Sho-Caudal forever. The planet was not only physically damaged, but also the sho-sen displays disturbances that have its origins in the manipulations of the lamorri. When the lamorri were defeated and fled Sho-Caudal, they left behind their technology, their slaves races and abandoned their former partners, the cleash. The shanta tried to restore Sho-Caudal and destroy all things of lamorri origin. This proved to be harder than they imagined and today the ancestors of the slave races and humans search for the powerful legacy left behind by the lamorri without knowing the dangers these present. T HE S TAR -F ARERS Long before the lamorri came to Sho- Caudal they had become masters of manipulating the flesh, both their own, and the flesh or structure of all things around them. Nothing was holy to the lamorri who with great greed exploited everything around them. They broke free of the organic boundaries set out by their genetic code and altered themselves after their slightest whims. In the beginning these changes had been drastic and the number of species and sub-species of themselves must have exploded on their homeworld. After some time these changes became smaller and more subtle, as they learnt their lesson through years of monstrous offspring. Lifespan, physical strength and physical resistance to diseases and Artwork: Ola Holmdahl poisons were things that were rapidly altered. However, the most important alteration was the imposing of psychic or empathic abilities upon themselves. These abilities provided them with the final domination over their creations. Great machine beings or altered sub-species were crafted to serve the lamorri genetically and would answer every mental summon of their masters. Although this required artificial augmentation, some of the empathic imprinting would be passed down through the genes, creating loyal slaves and machine beasts. The lamorri even managed to create copies of themselves in large devices referred to as “essence amplifiers”. In a way, the lamorri managed to cheat death. They could make copies of their very souls and induce these into newly spawned bodies, thus living nearly forever. The lamorri also mastered the manipulation of various geological matters, such as the “hard stone” materials (certain types of hard, but slightly elastic varieties of stone that slowly “grows” by itself.) that came from their homeworld. With these they created most of their more physical technological artefacts. Although being masters of biotechnology, the lamorri never fully mastered physics and never created faster than light drives. When they started exploring the stars this was done with slow generational ships that were composed of several symbiotic beings. The huge ships themselves were alive. Time meant little to the star-faring lamorri and they gladly sacrificed their bodies and preserved their essences in their essence amplifiers. When their ships reached their destinations they would simply spawn new bodies for themselves. If the travellers ever returned to their homeworld or simply continued to travel outward is unknown. If they had returned home they would have found many things have changed, most probably their own species. The star-faring lamorri therefore became separate castes or sub-species of the race and bent all their will upon finding other inhabitable systems. These systems they would conquer and exploit worlds as they and their ships required massive amounts of food and fuel. Before moving on, the lamorri would either have created a colony (which the lamorri regarded as a practical way of leaving offspring behind instead of having to kill it) or destroyed the world in their search for resources. As with many other things, the lamorri did not have any kind of conscience or moral problems with this. Maybe the disturbing and uncontrollable instincts and ethics had been removed through all their alterations of themselves? One enclave of such star-faring lamorri had conquered and destroyed several worlds and moved like devastating world-hopping locusts out towards the outskirts of the galaxy. Among the conquered and consumed homeworlds were those of the thriddle, corastin and croid, whom the lamorri now used as slaves along with their original ramian servants from their homeworld. Finally, the lamorri encountered the cleash and their servitor race, the scarmis. The cleash were far more industrious than the lamorri and technologically more advanced when it came to mechanical machinery. Their homeworld was one great factory and they had 2 developed faster than light drives that had spread the cleash to some neighbouring star systems. The cleash were however very aggressive and spent much time fighting each other and devising cruel weapons of destruction. Nobody still lives to tell the tale of the first encounter between the lamorri and the cleash. Maybe the lamorri exploratory ships met resistance, maybe the two races found each other straight away? The long-term effect of their encounter was, however, cooperation with one of the cleash fractions. The cleash had great problems surviving neutrino radiation from suns hotter than their own red dwarf star. Hotter stars quickly destroyed their genes and prevented their regeneration of exoskeletons and their reproduction. The aggressive cleash were thus limited to a few star systems with red dwarf suns and could only briefly visit other systems. The lamorri, on the other hand, wanted to travel between the stars at speeds greater than light. So, the two species entered a partnership. The cleash would be altered to survive other star systems and the lamorri would receive enhanced ships capable of travelling faster than light. However, none of the partners truly trusted each other, so the first test of conquest and cooperation was conducted far from each other’s territories, so that no race would gain an advantage over the other. The new and faster lamorri/cleash hybrid ships travelled for more than six cleash generations and reached the outskirts of the known galaxy. There they found a virgin world ready for their exploits. There, the bodies of the cleash, the lamorri and all their slave races were re-spawned with the aid of lamorri technology. There they would test their partnership. This place was the H21 system. Considering H21´s close proximity to the Sol system, it was pure chance that Earth did not suffer the same fate as Sho-Caudal. C ONQUEST OF S HO -C AUDAL The first lamorri exploratory ships reached the H21 system in 1750 BC (Before Colony reckoning). They quickly charted the system and its one inhabitable planet, Sho-Caudal. More than fifty years later the main lamorri armada decelerated around the system’s sun and made its way to Sho-Caudal. The long time of dormancy was over and the lamorri spawned new bodies for themselves, their servants and their partners as their ships drew closer to the life-giving star H21. The fleet was composed of six huge lamorri ships, large as cities, and hundreds of smaller cleash ships that had been attached to these during the majority of the voyage. The lamorri fell upon Sho-Caudal as they had other worlds they had conquered. Larger native settlements were destroyed by imprecise orbital bombing and masses of augmented slave warriors (croid and corastin) were unleashed upon the natives. 3 Despite the brutal and intensive initial onslaught, lamorri were at first surprised at the resistance they met. The seemingly primitive natives used strange, harnessed energy against them and moved around the planet quickly. Entire villages would evacuate within minutes and reappear hundreds of miles away from danger. As many of the shantic cities existed underground they were also hard to detect and hard to attack. It was the cleash who would become the lamorri’s generals in combat. The cleash constructed many machines and terrible weapons that bored down into the cities and scattered the populations, while the lamorri sent in terrible machine beasts and unleashed horrific diseases. Homeless and spread out over Sho-Caudal, the shantas found it harder to resist the invaders. Within 10 years most of the shantic resistance had been crushed and the shantas enslaved The battles of this time are only vaguely mentioned in shantic history. It is remembered as a time of great grief and destruction. Although millions of shanta died during the lamorri invasion it would be nothing compared to what was to come. 4 A GE OF S LAVERY As soon as an area had been cleansed of natives, the lamorri and cleash began the construction of their factories that would process fuel and create more soldiers and workers for them. Forts, landing pads and towns were constructed with the strange hard stone materials that were brought from their homeworld and stimulated to grow. In very short time great stone walls, roads and buildings popped up on several, carefully chosen locations of Jorune. Some mountains were tunnelled and hollowed as strange, huge machinery was constructed underground. Great mines bored down into the core of Sho- Caudal and entire ecosystems were destroyed or replaced with alien flora and fauna. Especially forests suffered as the great machine beasts ate and processed these, stripping vast areas of vegetation and leaving open dusty plain favoured by the lamorri. While the cleash constructed cities and factories bellowing smoke, the lamorri were more interested in the strange energy that seemed bound to the planet. They knew that they would never be safe from attacks by the free, roaming shantas of the wilderness until they had harnessed this strange energy. The lamorri soon saw the energy connection between the innermost planets and sent one of their great motherships to Elysium to study the phenomena more closely. The great ship travelled between the innermost planets, Elysium’s rings and Sho-Caudal’s moon Tra several times, mapping the isho phenomena that linked these worlds. Kaurr the Black was responsible for the study of planetary isho and he built himself a great fort on the moon of Tra. Slowly, the lamorri scientists started to understand the mechanics of isho. The lamorri found the isho energy to be a potent source of energy, which could be used by their ships as fuel. Great slabs of isho rich material could be attached around their ships in orbit and sucked dry of its isho over time. The skyrealms of Jorune were ideal for this, but artificial skyrealms would be even better as they could be created to store vast amounts of energy. These great “batteries” of rock, crystal and isho would also serve as a protective encasing of the motherships, which had proved vulnerable during faster than light speeds. The lamorri also started to understand how the isho could be neutralised and used directly by them. Great constructions were created in or close to their cities that would neutralise isho, preventing warps from opening and killing isho harmonics. An extensive breeding program began, where the lamorri tried to create machine beings that could harness the isho energy, in the same way the isho harmonics of Sho-Caudal used the isho. This project was a failure, as artificially created bodies seemed totally incapable of accumulating isho. Instead the lamorri started to alter the shanta into obedient slaves and isho tools. These terrible beings are named with great sorrow and terror in the history of the shanta. Sometimes referred to as Shan-Theel (“Twisted/Broken Shantas” or “Dark Shantas”), these pitiful creatures would haunt the shanta for many generations to come. In 1520 BC the lamorri had understood enough of the complex isho mechanics to start harvesting the energy. The Isho Geography Program was begun, its goal being the 5 [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |