Lore:Dynasty
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Dynasty is a Lore book introduced in Episode: Echoes. Entries are unlocked by completing each Act of Episode: Echoes. It describes the fall of the Qugu civilization from their perspective.
Chapter 1 - A Step Leads. A Step Follows.
The name Te'Qal fades from focus. Red anticipation runs into dripping memory as the unknown sprawl of the future stands endless and dark.
Moments before jaws close, reality confronts the mind. Reason pleads with the body.
Every nerve screaming too late to retreat from viral attraction.
Deterministic instinct forces Qugu to jaw-beast. Severed. Paid. Reformed in the belly of sacrifice, repaid.
Drink deep the nectar, and recite…
all change is pain…
…
…Gloom shades a great Mountain.
Rigid.
Cut against the sky.
Floodplains engulf the Mountain's shadow to every horizon. Coral forests dotted by mossy patches root into red sands and maize-streaked stone. Geothermic silt-rich shallows steep aromatic lichen, and flow through subterranean channels that erode foundations until the surface above falls into slithering grooves across the planet Seht.
Within a sunken valley at the Mountain's base, a Qugu slumps, dying. Cephalopod frame atop bi-pedal, inverted legs, cloaked in a flowing mane of tendril-like tentacles, with a single forelimb reaching from their chest… the deep black eyes infer connection—but primal, lost and alone.
:Te'Juna:cries out alone:extinguishment:the old fear:shared burden:
Their legs have no strength left, but something in the blood compels them forward into the maw of an enormous mollusk beast. The great jaws snap shut. A mane of tentacles limply grope, and then lay still. Remains into the shallows. Life leaves the flesh and gathers again. It splinters and fractures, then melds, entwines. Decomposes, and gestates. A death-grove awakening. Time passes. Te'Juna's rot seeds the grove that drinks from the dark pools beneath the Mountain.
Five rise from the silt and shallow. Their existence burns bright for a time, then dims. Five return in frailty to the death-grove, to the mollusk beast, compelled into its jaws. Their flesh churns to nectar. They seed the grove anew.
A dozen worlds persistently circle a blazing white star. Qugu herds stride the open floodplain, feed-basking the starlight of Se'Tar. Their migrations find the coral edge that falls into the sea. Direction is sought; mane-limbs are offered in ritual symbiosis to the great mollusk of the Mountain—a deified jaw-beast. Vision-bringing nectar is collected, fermented, and imbibed. Seeded death-groves saturate with it. The line of the Qugu people carves valleys deep into Seht. Their existence resonates across time, through consciousness, in voice and actioned flesh.
The children of their children would return to the coral edge, to swim in the depths and pry submerged jaw-beasts to surface. These holy beasts are given new roosts beneath the Mountain. Many cycles pass. A village of salt-stone, lichen and coral shelters the herd. In time, many dot the shallows around the Mountain.
The death-grove churns generations in the silt, and new groves take shape, filling the shallows for miles. Groves anchor villages. Villages spiral into cities that join the Mountain to the sea and reach high to seed bodies in the sky. Qugu voices echo in unity across a shared dream of existence. A haven from fear and loneliness. A horizon of communal ambition.
Memories and concepts—as distant reference—as echoed warning—as guiding hand. Ever sharpening the whole. Living, active reincarnation.
And now, Te'Qal. This expression of the cycle. One of three. One who has seen the skies colored by four stars, the insight of nectar many times, and the perils of 70 years. One who now sees the line of their descendancy, back to its inception; the lives of Te'Qali ancestors entwined and present before them. Above, the stars are absent, a hollow sky.
Te'Qal concentrates on the breadth of the Qugu line—listens to their voices, seeks guidance. In their deepest dreaming moments, Te'Qal would experience their knowledge, feel their gentle pull or push. As if all action had been building to and from their decisions. The herd surrounds them. They stride across the floodplain, together. They wriggle through sea-rock coves and run the paths of their evolution together.
The herd halts under a starless sky. Te'Qal stops but a few paces out of step—so sudden is the loss of momentum—and looks back, draws faces known to them forward, listens.
The herd screams in silence. Their mouths agape in that old extinguishing fear. Te'Qal turns from the line of their ancestors and looks to the starless sky. The floodplains fall away into cliff and void, the starless nothing dripping down to overtake the horizon. And there, at the pointed tip of the Qugu line, Te'Qal sees an end, a precipice of silence, a great yawning tear in the sky of nothing, looming over the Mountain.
An Omen.
Split. To swallow them all.
A vision of purpose.
The culmination of many cycles.
A pivotal step…
…
…Te'Qal sinks to the floor before stretching mane-tendrils stabilize them. A steady line of blood flows from one freshly nubbed tendril; one of 15 missing from Te'Qal's mane. The bloodied nub spasms with pain. Musical percussion vibrates through their limbs and plants them back in the present, in time to hear a voice address them.
"Awaken, Warden Te'Qal. With the knowledge our forebearers entrust to you, the Seht Armada's Command is now held to the Te line."
Three Qugu elders wrapped in pearlescent second-skin sleeves stand before Te'Qal. A golden-crowned sleeve is suspended above them. The golden mantle, a Will-weaver, to meld disparate intentions into unity.
"Rise and accept this burden of service."
A massive jaw-beast bubbles with nectar, the taste of it still fresh, its shell bloodied. Providence fills Te'Qal's heart. The hum of spaceflight vibrates in rhythm with the pulse of pain in their mane. This ship, their command. To stand against what is coming.
"The line of Te accepts." Te'Qal stands, raising their mane-tendrils as the golden-crowned sleeve lowers over them and enwraps their form. Data and feeling pour into perception, into control. Te'Qal feels dozens of ships taut at their command, like bladed waves cresting in the wind of Te'Qal's voice.
"In service. For Seht."
*****
Te'Qal hangs suspended in their command sleeve aboard their flagship, two years wiser, having learned to guide the fleet's movements like amorphous ripples across magnetic fields. Now Te'Qal and their Captains react as one. Tendrils twist within sleeve and draw the fleet together. Fifty-three of the armada's finest far-reaching War-pearls drift into formation, their sleek horizontal teardrop shapes rendering them nearly invisible against surrounding space.
Progress? The request awaits an answer.
"The Se'Un Gate is ready to send the fleet, Warden." The voice resonates in Te'Qal's mind from the right flank of their fleet. Captain Je'Gana. "There is no response from Se'Un Receiving."
The Qugu system of Se'Un had fallen silent. There was fear.
Te'Qal speaks to the fleet. "We do not jump in blindness. Our ancestors guide this fleet. We will see what has caused silence in the system of Se'Un and return them into concert with the Qugu. Forward."
The fleet slips from Te'Qal's awareness ship by ship, into the folded space between points and out again, until finally the flagship follows them through to a far-off star.
And there, upon the exodus, the fleet is met with a great yawning tear of nothing. It spans ten times the width of their numbers. Te'Qal's eyes catch something within the void. A gulf that in its deepest reaches burns with jade flame.
:an Omen: :to swallow them all:
Te'Qal tenses, and the fleet, feeling their apprehension, halts. Te'Qal listens, and the fleet boosts sensors, sending scans deep into the black. Those that probe the tear return no information. The gate behind them cools.
"Je'Gana. Pel'Uma." Te'Qal draws the captains into shared concert.
"It is empty," Je'Gana states flatly. "What is it? A gate?"
"I cannot locate any planetary signal, nor ark-ship, nor groves," Pel'Uma's concern strains the connection.
"I have seen. This is a doom we must avert." Te'Qal is firm, grounding the connection. "Pel'Uma, go to Sehta'Un. The elder of their grove will—"
The tear shudders, sending a shockwave through the fleet. Hundreds of small objects surge forth from the tear, like sparks spitting from sharpened steel. Their trajectories appear random and inelegant until a massive vessel—a graven spinal corridor of obsidian and jade flame—breaches the tear. As it crashes into open space before Te'Qal, the sparks react and scream forward toward the Qugu ships.
Te'Qal scatters the private concert and relays alerts to the fleet.
Battle stations.
The sleek hull plates of the Qugu War-pearls part to release dozens of drones: weapons, shielding, utility, they flock around each ship and form into tight-knit squadrons.
Qugu fusion batteries charge and rip into the incoming swarm, disintegrating swaths of chitinous ships before the attackers close in. Te'Qal contorts sleeved tendrils and directs the fleet into a cloud formation—each captain's sub-command and drones a murmuration within the greater armada—united in fluid motion. They draw the tiny, bladed ships into crossfires and reduce them to ashes.
Te'Qal turns the fleet's attention to the tear and the ship in front of it.
Suddenly, dozens of obsidian vessels burst forth from the tear. Sheets of tiny Rippers dislodge from the larger vessels and cut across space toward the Qugu fleet, supported by salvos of axion volleys.
Qugu fusion fusillades cull hundreds of tiny blades from the surge of approaching ships, but it is not enough to punch clear holes and target their supporting artillery. Te'Qal tries to guide the fleet through an upward arc over the incoming swarm, dodging heavy ordnance and tiny chitinous blades that peck at their flanks through torrents of retaliating fusion energy.
:terror:pain:silence:
One of the fleet is snuffed out. Te'Qal tightens their ranks against the bladed swarm and attempts to redirect fire to the larger ships, but their numbers are quickly beginning to pale to those of the invaders. They watch doom pour from the omen. Another wave of ripping blades blitz through the tear. The invasive surge overwhelms their armaments.
Te'Qal detaches Pel'Uma to spool the gate home, then adjusts tactics. They draw drones in close to chain power between ships. They inhale, and fusion energy flows through the fleet into one unified beam that scatters the swarm of blades and splits two obsidian ships. Then another, and another… Shields fail across the fleet.
:hope:hopelessness:extinguishment:
Te'Qal feels Pel'Uma slip away as their ship is overtaken by a thousand blades, but the gate is ready.
They would need the full might of the Qugu to stand against this horror.
Retreat sounds across the fleet. Se'Un has fallen.
They flee through the swarm, leaving wreckage and fire.
Chapter 2 - To Split the Sky
Hive horrors desolate every world in the Se'Tar system before they come for Seht, home world of the Qugu. They split the sky above the great Mountain. Tomb Ships and Rippers spill from the tear. Endless, their assaults erode the diminishing might of the united Qugu armada.
Te'Qal commands all remaining Qugu fighters in one massive fleet. Thousands of war craft concentrated above Seht's planetary defense installations to secure their sacred Mountain's groves. It was enough to deter a frontal assault, enough to protect the final stages of Seht's evacuation.
Hive and Qugu battlegroups skirmish just outside Seht's Karman line, just outside the range of hundreds of ground-based rail cannons. Te'Qal maneuvers the Qugu fleet to prod at Hive flanks without advancing on them. They must be cautious not to overcommit and be enveloped by the throng of Hive ships emerging from the tear. They want to draw the Hive outward from the planet to deter, to scatter, before folding back to the safety of their own defensive installations; larger destroyers exchange heavy fire with Tomb Ships, swarms of Hive Rippers chase dancing Qugu murmurations that beam searing fusion energy in twisting displays.
It is a distracting spectacle that will not last.
Below the blockade of war vessels, Qugu ark-ships gouge acres of grove land from the surface of Seht, lifting their sacred soil and ferrying it to the other side of the planet to await escort from danger. They prepare to journey to the last remaining gate, one that will take the Qugu to a new star.
Te'Qal manipulates tendrils within their command sleeve and watches large craft and individual combat-sleeve pilots fly in tandem; Te'Qal lives their experiences from the frenzy of battle to the deadened hopelessness of silence. They feel a warship buckling under axion bombardments, and focus their intent upon its battlegroup, weaving combat-sleeve fighters and shield drones between the warship and several aggressing Tomb Ships. Te'Qal projects their presence through the combat sleeve of a dead captain and leads a squadron on a counter run against incoming Hive Rippers. They assess the balance as the warship shifts deeper into the safety of their murmuration, to be be replaced by fresher guns from the interior fleet.
"Why do they not commit their entire force?" Je'Gana asks impatiently, in concert with Te'Qal. Their ship poised near the center of the command fleet. "They must know by now their numbers can overwhelm our installations."
"They do not attack because they do not have to. They lay wait-traps to bleed us. Are you so eager?" Te'Qal feels Je'Gana's thirst for vengeance. "We defend the groves."
"And sacrifice Seht." Je'Gana's bitterness furrows Te'Qal's beak. "I feel them dying too."
Te'Qal lets the battle fade from their eyes and looks to the distant ark-ships collecting groves on Seht. "I once thought I was destined to avert this doom. But I mistook that guidance. I was only meant to prepare us for it." Te'Qal impresses this perspective onto Je'Gana through the Will-weaver. "Victory is never of singular meaning. Seht will burn. The Qugu may continue, together."
"If we press now…" Je'Gana pushes back, eyeing the growing reserve of Hive ships slipping through the tear. "Implode the Omen as we did above-"
A Hive flagship breaches the tear. A circlet of bleached white bone, shaped by death and cunning.
The strange ship moves to settle high above the Mountain of Seht, Tomb Ships change course to buffer its advance into the atmosphere as runes of jade flame burst around them, dissolving into obfuscating smoke.
Qugu planetary rail cannons open fire, shredding any Tomb Ships bold enough to skirt the atmosphere and position themselves between their flagship and Seht. Amidst the destruction, the Hive flagship begins amassing a singularity of soulfire at its hollow center.
In the chaos between rail-cannon volleys, Te'Qal sees a break in the Tomb Ship lines and directs hundreds of combat sleeves through the opening like a fusion spear. The ring ship releases legions of Rippers and their forces become entangled in battle, but enough of an opening is held to maneuver the armada's right flank into the gap like a fulcrum. Te'Qal applies pressure; hails of fusion beam energy trade blows with a storm of axion projectiles raining from the enemy ships. When evenly matched in numbers, Te'Qal's superior tactics pick the Hive forces apart. Their efforts pry the defensive Hive line open wide enough for the Qugu rail cannons to thread shots at the circlet-shaped flagship.
Te'Qal directs a command group to plunge below the Hive ships, pivot, and surge upward through their center to sever them from reinforcements. If they can isolate the flagship, hold it within range of their rail cannons for only a few minutes, it could be enough to bring it down and halt the assault.
For a moment, this idea holds true. The Hive forces are bisected. Their reinforcements rout and scatter as Tomb Ships fall to Seht's vengeful rail-cannon fire. Te'Qal is careful to keep their most distant ships close enough to recall to the main fleet should the Hive turn and counter.
The Hive flagship detonates its collected soulfire without warning, sending a shockwave through its own ships, the Qugu fleet, and the planet Seht. Hundreds of ships are lost in the wave, Hive and Qugu alike, while those that remain intact struggle to repower their systems.
On the surface of Seht, the Mountain quakes. Great slabs of encrusted stone slough from its sides and crash into the sacred death-groves below, burying the defensive installations and last few ark-ships still diligently working to save their ancestral grounds.
As dust settles, the Mountain shows a new face of deep black skin with carved trenches of resonating energy. A pulse blasts from the Mountain's base, razing the surrounding landscape and decimating the heart of Qugu civilization. The thing the Hive had torn from the mountain groans as it slowly lifts into the sly, rising to meet the Hive flagship.
Te'Qal wrestles order back to the fleet and reconsolidates their forces, assuming direct control of entire battlegroups where necessary. The sight of Seht's upended crust burns into Te'Qal's memory. Gaps in the fleet meet Te'Qal with their absence. The silence from the surface washes over them. Te'Qal realizes they no longer feel Je'Gana. The old, lonely, fear trickles between beats of silence.
The invasion advances toward the rising, dark, pyramid that was once the Mountain. They blare roaring jubilation from their ships, howling at the desecration of the Qugu Mountain. As the Hive descend upon Seht, Te'Qal orders a retreat.
Frozen in extinguishing fear, in the silent scream of sacrilegious abandonment, in the paralytic end, the Qugu leave what remains of Seht to the Hive.
Chapter 3 - The Cry that Echoes
Seht burns, and the armada drifts in ruin.
Te'Qal guides what remains of the Qugu toward the last operational jump gate to their last safe star. They do not leave their command sleeve for the weeks-long duration of the journey. They have addressed the fleet many times, sought to bolster morale, to give them hope—what hope existed. Their speeches hang in concert but have no presence in the mind of the fleet. As repairs are completed to ships too damaged to continue, the rest wait to jump.
Tired tendrils slip from the command sleeve as it unwraps from Te'Qal's body. Their legs and forelimb tentacle numbly fold against the ground as atmospheric waste expels from hissing tubes that suspend the sleeve. The command chamber is small. Te'Qal lays in a circular perforated indentation in the floor. Most of the surrounding housing maintains the sleeve, and keeps the Warden alive, alert. The remainder of the ship houses drones, support systems, and automated functions.
Exhaustion keeps Te'Qal motionless, centered in the indentation in the floor, the fleet orbiting around them. They need rest. Sustenance. But most of all they need guidance.
Isolated from an ark-ship in which to seek the ceremony of a jaw-beast, Te'Qal depresses a plate in the floor and releases a mist of nectar into the command chamber. The name Te'Qal begins to fade, but as they dream, they hold it in their mind…
…
…They stand across a dark, domed room fifty paces from Te'Daru: the Qugu whose tentacle pulled Te'Qal from the silt. Who taught them to commune with the line of warriors and become a banshee shrieking across space. They recited the legends that tamed foreign stars.
"What do you intend to do, Te'Qal?" Te'Dura's voice echoes through the dim room. Between them a large holographic display clarified from the dark blur of unfocused memory. Two fleets oppose each other in the display, one is surrounded. Te'Qal looks to Te'Dura again, now wrapped in a command sleeve. "Do you concede?"
"No." Te'Qal remembers this day. They defeated a superior officer and earned command. This was a test they were intended to fail.
"No?" Te'Dura asks, flicking a tendril to motion their ships closer. "To the last then?"
"I remember this. You believed I would concede, and closed in, then I detonated my fleet and took yours with it."
Suddenly Te'Dura was beside them. "Another form of victory."
"I've failed us. I did not understand our ancestor's warning," Te'Qal whispers.
"Then listen closer," Te'Dura says. "This," they gesture with a tentacle. "An unwinnable scenario…"
The display shifts to a different theater.
"This," Te'Dura begins.
"Murin invasion, at the outer rim," Te'Qal finishes, now viewing twenty incoming carriers from a command sleeve.
"Our line of Te, your ships, broke them." Te'Dura's voice cuts cleanly through the dream. "Your maneuvers…
Te'Qal strains to maintain control over dozens of war-pearls. The aggressors chase Te'Qal's unpiloted ghost fleet across space, distracted, as other Qugu-piloted combat sleeves sabotage each Murin carrier one by one.
"…lone-flew the battlegroup. How many others can do so? And when at last you engage them…" Te'Dura exudes a wheezing laughter. "Their fighters won't launch. Their weapons overheat. Their shields lose power. One battle and war-tides turn."
Te'Qal coils and flicks their mane-tendrils in consideration. "I have won great battles. They do not come without sacrifices. I have averted great losses by inflicting my own, but these Hive…"
The display shifts to a different theater.
Te'Dura pays Te'Qal's doubts no mind.
Te'Qal drifts through space within a thin, bloodied, combat sleeve. Mechanized tendrils still hot with fusion discharge. "When the gate fell silent…"
"Se'Tar lost concert with Se'Ugn. The Qugu fractured. I felt it bring despair to your spirit, as I said to you then." Te'Dura says. "Years of existing out of concert drove them to uprising. Your decisiveness ended it, your diplomacy forged peace. It is why you were made Warden."
Te'Qal remembers their decisiveness differently. A clandestine detachment of combat sleeves. A raid of burning spears. "You remind me."
"Not because you forget, but because you have been hopeless before." Te'Dura rears into a taller posture. "There is victory in that darkness. A kind. Find it."
*****
The fleet passes through the gate a few vessels at a time. As each ship slips from Te'Qal's awareness, tiny etchings incised into the gate flare with jade flame.
Te'Qal slips through the gate and exits into wreckage and confusion. Ark-ships fracture and implode as holy ground bleeds into the vacuum.
At the other end of the gate they did not find the last Qugu star of Se'Otan, but instead a wall of Hive Tomb Ships surrounding their bone white flagship, flanked by the Qugu's desecrated Mountain, now a black void of malice carved into the fabric of space.
:oldfear:
In the shadow of the Pyramid, Te'Qal grasps the fleet through the command sleeve, and rallies their captains and battlegroups into defensive murmurations around the remaining ark-ships. Fusion beams cut in every direction, Hive Rippers pierce Qugu warships and combat sleeves like screaming needles. Behind them, the gate is nowhere to be seen. There is no tear, no exit through which to flee. Before them the Hive ships outnumber their fleet hundreds to one. A strange realm—a mirror of reality—encompasses them.
Dozens of Hive ships fall and countless Rippers burn for every Qugu vessel lost, but attrition does not favor them. Te'Qal holds the fleet against the horror of the Hive, but their strength wanes. Te'Qal wades through the silence of his ancestors' fear.
Suddenly, a dreaded pillar of darkness—another Hive ship—tears through the nothing of space and bursts into the fray, crashing through several Tomb Ships and dashing them against its hull. Hive ships turn to confront it as it barrels directly for their bone-ring flagship.
The two massive vessels exchange destructive barrages of fire, decimating all other surrounding ships in thundering bombardments of soulfire cannons and axion bolts. The pillar-ship emits a thin pulse, as the dark Pyramid had done as it burst forth from the Mountain on Seht. The pulse slices through the ring ship like a cleaver; waves of green fire erupting through its hull.
Te'Qal, seizing the moment, capitalizes on the distraction. They draw in all remaining Qugu vessels and press forward toward the Pyramid.
Te'Qal communes their intention to the fleet and maneuvers them into a valiant charge. If they could not destroy the Hive, they would take back the Mountain. Te'Qal places themself at the point of the assault. Qugu ships snap into formation behind them. Te'Qal draws the entirety of the fleet into concert to hear their voice, their words impel the charge into being.
"For Seht."
The armada surges, agile combat sleeves racing ahead to clear a path for the larger host of ships. Te'Qal feels the presence of the Qugu line, extending back to the first. They move as one, weaving between ship-fire and debris. Te'Qal closes their eyes to feel the fleet through the tension of their link. Te'Qal reaches beyond them, to the death-grove cores of the ark-ships, to their ancestral line. To those whose memories they carry with them. The Darkness that binds them resonates through the fleet.
Te'Qal flexes their tendrils and commands the deployment of all drones in attack mode. The Qugu collapse to form a phalanx and drive forward to impale the cursed thing that was their Mountain. Te'Qal calls to their ancestors, drawing their energy from the ark-ships and into the fleet, fusing the beam with ancient power.
"Guide our fire."
The Darkness-linked fury of generations turns the beam Resonant. It strikes true, impaling the Pyramid's obscene hull in a fatal wound. Their final stand forever branded into the Pyramid's flesh.
The Hive battle falls silent.
A flash of orange.
With the Pyramid's dying wail, Te'Qal feels the presence of their ancestors, not as a distant guide, but as equals. The Resonance wave washes over them, and Te'Qal hears voices as if echoing from a dream, "Noble Commander, do not fade. Take our hand and find Salvation."
They see the line of their people extend through them, through all Qugu, through Darkness, and death, and memory. All swept into an obliterating Echo. And then nothing.
They extinguish, together.
