Private Red-Hot World

[Shath Kharole]

From a small Rakata ship in orbit, Shath Kharole watched Mugg Fallow cool. Onrai 's fleet had left the cursed planet red-hot. Heat bled sluggishly into its threadbare atmosphere.

Though the Rotten Crown's hulks still orbited the planet in bulk, the Forerunner contractors had finished securing and cleansing the ships they wanted. They'd stripped the vast debris field of the best examples of ships from their species.

The Forerunners and Onrai's Maw Irregular Fleet had given each other a respectful distance. Now Shath reached out at last to the Force presence on the flagship.

Greetings, he sent.

 

[Onrai]

Mugg Fallow was a ruined and scorched world. The firepower of an entire fleet had been offloaded onto the planet, vaporizing the great oceans of Mugg Fallow and leaving it a charred and scorched landscape bereft of any and all life. Scans revealed only traces of Mnggal-Mnggal that remained on the world, comparable to what one would expect to find living in a dank sewer or in wretched puddles amidst the muck-ridden landscape of a swampy plain. In time, Onrai would offload upon the world hordes of machines to end the remaining traces of alien resistance, and once safety was paramount, she would begin the process of establishing a ritual to slay that last vestibule which remained.

And then there was the message. Onrai's presence aboard the Ablution was surprised that one of the interlopers sought to reach out.

Greetings. Tell me of who you are, as I am unfamiliar with your presence.

Shath Kharole

 

[Shath Kharole]

Onrai 's presence in the Mist was qualitatively different from those Shath had sensed in this day and agent. Not old, exactly, but something about it resonated in a familiar way.

I am Shath Kharole, a Thrella Mist-weaver, a man out of time. What are you, other than an enemy of Mnggal-Mnggal?

 

[Onrai]

I am the Goddess Onrai, Queen of the Stars, Lady of the Land and Sea. She said in response. You come of the time of the old gods, do you not? Those who came before the new pantheon?

If the man was indeed so incredibly ancient, perhaps he knew of the real Onrai, or the other creations or monstrosities that called themselves gods from millennia before the present Onrai had taken her name. Perhaps... things would get complicated.

Shath Kharole

 

[Shath Kharole]

I do not know what you mean, Onrai , when you speak of these old gods and this new pantheon. But I am new to this time. Enlighten me.

 

[Onrai]

Intriguing. So he was not old enough to recall them? Perhaps this was an opportunity.

The old gods responsible for the creation of the material plane are dead. Typhojem, Ooradryl, Tharagorrogaraht, and of course Mnggal-Mnggal. Even Akala is dead - I witnessed her passing myself. I was the inheritor of the dead gods' power and now stand at the precipice, forging those I consider worthy into the nascent beings to best participate within the new order. From giving the shreds of the Night Spirit to the Empress of the Eternal Empire to melding the heart of Typhojem himself into the kin of the vilest monster of a man presently alive in the galaxy, I have progressed, and the pantheon has grown.

She was curious as to the response of Shath Kharole to her vision and what she had already accomplished.

 

[Shath Kharole]

Shath chose his words carefully. There was no reason to make an enemy of this being, whoever and whatever she was.

I was born tens of thousands of years ago — a man out of time, as I said — but my people, the Mist-weavers, have existed since the stars were young. I can't speak to moments of creation. The names you share are familiar to me from our old tales. Which painted them, and the origins of the material universe, in a much different light, but this wasn't a moment for comparative or combative theology. Suffice it to say that I know who you mean.

Tell me, Onrai . What do you intend to do with the power you have accomulated and propagated? What is your goal? Or rather, why are you in the business of creating new gods?

 

[Onrai]

To do as the gods who came before were supposed to have done. To guide the galaxy, to answer prayers, fulfill the supplication of those whose prayers waft to the voids of of the heavenly abode. It was hardly a lie or understatement - that was her main goal, and she hardly intended to be an interventionist deity - interventionism had been the downfall of the last pantheon and was the reason why the gods all suffered their appropriately horrendous fates.

I do believe that it may be more beneficial if we perhaps speak directly as opposed to across this archaic method of communication. Would that be amenable to you?

It was important after all to maintain benevolence in the face of new contacts.

Shath Kharole

 

[Shath Kharole]

---

Shath spent the next half hour preparing and studying, then took a petite Gree shuttle over to Onrai 's colossal flagship. He touched down on the hangar deck alongside human-built small craft, graceless things to his eyes.

He'd opted to wear simple clothes from another age: boots, trousers, a shirt, a poncho of sorts. No weapons, no ornamentation, no hint of pride or threat. As he came down the shuttle's ramp, he squinted against the garish light of the hangar bay.

 

[Onrai]

He was greeted by a less alien visage, blonde hair and brown eyes suggesting an almost human countenance. She was dressed simply with a one-piece robe made of unspecified grey fabric that was bulky and long enough to cover and hide her hands and feet. The smile on her face as as genuine as one could expect, and indeed she was pleased that such a forerunner entity had come to her home of many decades.

“Welcome, Shath Kharole, to the conveyor of my essence. Please, come with me.” She motioned for him to follow her to one of the meeting rooms. It was inappropriate for her even as a deity to disrespect him by merely defying the laws of reality to make such a sojourn immediate, for herself or for both of them.

 

[Shath Kharole]

Onrai clearly didn't consider herself human, and might be something else entirely by this point if even half her claims held up. But her virtually-human appearance and the ship's obvious human origins set Shath on edge. Like other Forerunners, he'd awoken from his cocoon to find his homeworld ravaged and subjugated by centuries of human dominance. He had feelings on the subject.

He followed the simply-clad blonde woman regardless.

"Tell me," he said as they entered the meeting room. "What set you on your path? What prompted you to...revitalize the concept of deity?" He took a seat.

 

[Onrai]

“Prior to my inheritance of the old mantle, I was but a watcher. This ship, these people… all are vestiges of that time.” She said, finger tracing a line through the table in the meeting room. “I observed the galaxy stuck in an endless cycle. The light destroys the dark, and the dark in turn succumbs to the light. Such senseless destruction, with neither natural nor artificial purpose at hand. So I chose to seize from the apathetic ones what was necessary to give the galaxy what it needs. I answer their prayers, I offer them my protection. And yet the tenuous weave of the Celestials eludes me, as it did Akala.” She frowned. “An innocent soul. She had no idea what she had done, for she had never developed enough beyond her nascent godhood to realize what one must do in order to maintain it.”

Shath Kharole

 

[Shath Kharole]

Shath nodded slowly.

"I woke up twenty years too late to experience Akala's pain and desperation, but I've spoken with many who lived through it. Ancient, terrible, stronger than anyone, but yes — naive in a way. Self-destructive even, drawing attention and opposition like she did. I'd imagine you take a much different approach."

He glanced meaningfully through the meeting room's window at the slowly-cooling planet below.

"After all, Mnggal-Mnggal doesn't exactly have allies. And it'll take years to recover from your strike, and I doubt it'll ever control the planet's surface in the same way as it did, not that there's much surface left. No, you picked a target that doesn't incur opposition."

 

[Onrai]

“It comes from experience.” She said. “Akala immediately invested herself with the powers she possessed, without understanding the responsibility that came from being a god. At heart she was still the same scared little child she was before her ascension, making decisions purely off a whim with no real goal at hand other than personal satisfaction. It is… unfortunate. But her power has been returned back where it belongs, waiting for the one who I will one day deem worthy of receiving it.”

Of course, Onrai did not mention that her mortal past had in fact been in part responsible for Akala’s death, but such was not something to dwell on.

She gazed out the window, eyes turning white as she looked out upon the devastation she had wrought. “It was the last of the spawn of the Soulworm that needed to be felled. Gorog was withered and devoured by the will of an associate, the same one who assisted me in the slaying of Ooradryl. Typhojem’s destruction was long before I awoke. That left only the rot god, the one who speaks in riddles and desires solely to feast across the universe. And here a blow has been dealt to his heart, a knife through his carapace, as it should be.”

She turned, eyes returning to their prior coloration. “What of you? What was the purpose for your kind to have been stored away from the torrent of galactic strife so many years ago?”

Shath Kharole

 

[Shath Kharole]

"Preservation. We Mist-weavers, from many species, caught glimpses of futures where our homeworlds were ruined, even eradicated. We decided to set aside a small sample of our people, our cultures, some of our smaller technology, and weave mist-cocoons that could slow time to a crawl.

"This was tens of thousands of years ago, and some of the cocoons opening today are much older than others. We're here to reclaim our homes and rebuild our civilizations. It's a grand work that'll take as long to unfold as it did to set in motion.

"Personally, I'm a Thrella, one of the extinct races of the planet Mimban. We have a great deal of work to do, the peoples of Mimban."

Onrai

 

[Onrai]

“It is wise, to have preserved a remnant in the event of annihilation.” She said. “I believe your wells are still extant, though bereft of civilization. I know there are sentient species on Mimban that live a similarly subterranean life.” A member of an extinct species was interesting enough to arouse Onrai’s curiosity. “A time-cocoon… warping the very fabric of chronology. For you it must have been seconds until you awoke. Mortal minds are not meant to be frozen within, aware of all but unable to act, for so long.”

She did have a couple of inquiries. “Have all the cocoons opened?” Such was an inquiry, wondering if others were planned to open in the future as a further safeguard. “Your world is very torrid and humid. The Kaiburr crystal was once there, but no longer. The temple of Pomojema lies empty.”

Shath Kharole

 

[Shath Kharole]

Shath nodded. "Yes, that's the situation I found when I came out of my cocoon some time ago. We Thrella Forerunners have been working with many of the modern Mimbanites and Coway to revitalize our homeworld. There's still a great deal of work to do.

"Awareness in the cocoon," he said slowly, "is like a series of very long dreams. The mist-weavings suspend both the body and mind in time, but differently. It wasn't a matter of seconds to me, no, or for others I've spoken with."

 

[Onrai]

Well, at least they weren't inherently genocidal. "It is good to adapt as you have. The plains of reality perpetually shift, and the situations adapt for all of us." She pondered for a bit, before listening to the explanations the Thrella gave regarding being entombed in a mist cocoon.

"A better experience than being imprisoned within an angle-trap, that is certain."

Shath Kharole

 

[Shath Kharole]

Onrai

Shath went very still.

"I understand that you're trying to gauge the extent of my knowledge of the deep past," he said slowly, "but now I have questions of my own. How did you come to know of angle traps? Have you personally encountered one?"

Dangerous things, angle traps. Things that even the poets feared.

 

[Onrai]

"In my ascension to the state of one of the primordials, I learned of many of the forbidden weapons of the past." She said. "The angle-trap was used in the great conflict of Typhojem, of Ooradryl, and the other spawn of the Soulworm. I have not encountered one, though - and hopefully will not given how dangerous they are to my kind."

She pondered for a bit, curious as to his other inquiries. "Please, ask more and I will answer as much as I can."

Shath Kharole