End of Days
It was the end of days here on Utopious.
Ever since our ancestors crash landed here in their sacred vessel on their pilgrimage to the holy planet, we’ve had to revert to the barbaric ways of the past to survive. This planet, with its naturally fertile soil, has provided us with a means to grow and harvest the many natural species of plants. In our small fortified village, we have survived for centuries, protected from the dangers that come in the night from outside our village walls.
Every time I hear the Holy Story it seems to have changed a bit. The main plot stays the same, but some minor details change with each telling. The story goes that on the pilgrimage to visit the Holy Planet, the dark gods intercepted the vessel, bombarding it with their demonic stones. Through our god’s grace, the vessel managed to crash relatively safely in the forest breaking into pieces, killing the pilots and mechanics, who must have been great sinners to not be saved by our god’s influence. Of the other compartments, only a few were injured, but the sacred tools of Tzech Kno Logie and belongings of our ancestors were destroyed. Our ancestors only could keep what they had on them at the time. They soon learned of the dangerous beasts that come in the night, and erected a village with walls that we live in to this day. Since that time we have lived in a setting of peace and productivity. We all worship our god for sparing us, and dissention is not tolerated. Those who go against the will of the populace are put through a trial. If they can live in the wilderness for thirty days and return, it is assumed that our god has spoken his will through this person, and the original decision is changed. No one ever returned; they never do.
But now, the former setting of peace and prosperity has turned into a setting of fire and death. A fortnight ago, the first demon of the dark god arrived from the sky. They are completely unlike the beasts from the woods, having a slimly legless and handless body. They wield terrible power, especially when they climb into their machina, but their skin is weak and membranous. The first one, a scout apparently, was quickly dispatched for the demon it was because it had come alone to our village and wasn’t in his machina. Now their assault is relentless, and the greater part of the village has fled into the wilderness, occasionally returning to the village to collect our stockpiled food. It is complete anarchy. I am with a small group that is hiding out in a cave. Our numbers protect us from most of the beasts, but our numbers are beginning to dwindle. Yesterday, I had to sacrifice my neighbor so the demons wouldn’t get a group of us. Just as quickly as we had arrived here, we may be scattered to the four winds by these demons. Hell has truly descended on Utopious.
End of Days (Part two)
So we were still stuck in our cave stronghold, waiting for the end. The men were discussing a plan for another food raid and how to improve the barricades. The beasts almost got in last night. We, the children and women, were listening to the stories of the one elder to make it out here. He is very wise and was quite an explorer in his time. He knows many secret paths on Utopious, as well as many other useful things.
“Back in my day, we didn’t have to worry about these alien attacks; we were at peace with each other. Only the occasional dissenter was sent out into the wilderness. I remember back when this practice started. It was back when Martin Delaus and I were kids… He was a great person; he was very charismatic and would often be the leading voice in making the decisions for the community. Almost everybody wanted to agree with him automatically, the rest feared appearing as dissenters. He was a great friend, it really is a shame he got killed by those dang blasted aliens…. Where was I? Oh yeah! I was a kid and group of fifty dissenters were tired of 'waiting in this dying community for an unloving god, who would never come to our rescue.' The rest of us were incensed by there sacrilege, but we begged them not to go. They left early in the morning and headed out into the wilderness. It wasn’t until night, when the beasts come out, that the trouble started. We were woken up by a few members of the group at the gate. They had apparently changed their mind and wanted back in. Unfortunately, the gate takes very long to open and close and some beasts were hot on there trail. We had just gotten the gate open when the lookout began to see the first of them. The first couple of survivors made it in when the six-limbed beast slammed into the gate, closing it to keep the others from escaping. We watched in horror as the two more descended on the rest of the people out there, dragging them into the jungle. We never found out what happened to the ones that didn’t turn back. We always assumed they survived; our minds unable to comprehend the worst. Looking back, sending the dissenters out there was both cruel and wrong…. What was I talking about again?”
Ok. Maybe he isn’t that wise.
“Beasts, that’s right. They come out at night and hunt in groups of two to three. They have six legs, the back four being cloven and the front two being clawed and having opposable thumbs. Their face looks like a canine. While they can be deadly to individual people, several people with simple weapons can take one down. Their prey is usually the herbaceous animals that live in the wilderness. The animals don’t bother us and we don’t bother them.”
While the old man has a tendency to go off in tangents, he knows many things. His speaking of Martin takes me back to before these attacks. We were all faithful believers with Martin being one of the elders and the only one with preacher training. His father and his father before him passed down the training all the way back to the only preacher on board at the time of the crash. We always believed our one god would protect us from the malevolent powers of the dark gods and eventually rescue us, so we have been waiting in our village for a long time. Though we made all of our decisions as a group, the group was always easily swayed by the pastor, but now that Martin is gone, the teachings’ of the pastor are gone with him. Hopefully, our god will save us from this horrible mess we’ve gotten into now.
End of Days (part 3)
Things have gotten worse at the cave. The attacks are getting more and more frequent; the barricade will not hold up much longer. We are planning on taking the back entrance out, hoping that this will confuse the beasts for awhile. The back entrance is a small series of narrow passageways that honeycomb throughout this area. The passages are much too small for the beasts to follow, but it is very easy to get lost. While one man held the barricade up with all of his might, the rest of us headed towards the back of the cave. We had all made it to safety except for the one man. The assaults had quieted down, and the man looked like he was going to attempt to dash to us. I shouted “NOOOO!” because as the man diverted his strength from supporting the door, a beast rammed through our barricade, quickly overtook the man, and then dragged him out of the cave. There were now twelve of us left: three able-bodied men, including me, five women, three children, and the old coot.
I don’t see why the women insisted that we bring him along, but hopefully he will be of some use. Everybody prayed for the man’s soul, and then we began to walk. We had to walk single file and even then we sometimes scraped the wall, rubbing something sticky off onto us. The women and children were in the middle of the group, while one man and the coot led, and another man and I were in the back. The men were the only one to carry torches. I could hear the old man talk about when he was last in the cave as he led us down one of the several passages. He said that it was some fifty or sixty years since he was last here, but not much had changed since then.
Every now and then the children would complain about hearing a rustling sound, but we told them to ignore it. Suddenly, with a swooshing sound, one child was gone, then another, and then the last. One man held up his torch high into the air. The entire ceiling was filled with giant spiders. The old man mused, “They weren’t there when I last visited.” I shouted, "Apparently, more has changed then you thought." Everybody ducked and covered their body so to make it harder for the spiders to get us. We were beginning to craw onwards, when I said “We can’t leave the children.” “What do you want us to do about them,” said another man. “We can’t save them. God has forsaken us!” I was getting angry with their defeatist attitude. I shouted, “Maybe he wants us to do something for ourselves every once in awhile!” as I chucked my torch at the ceiling. As it stuck to the webbing, it caught ablaze, and was spreading like wildfire. As the fire spread to spiders themselves, they began to screech and dropped the children. We all held hands and began to run, not sure whether we were running from the fire or the spiders. As we came to an exit, we stopped to say a prayer of thanks for our safe arrival. As we continued into the jungle, we heard a river. We headed to the river to use as a guide point. When we reached the river, we stopped to get a drink and clean our hands and face. A pointless ritual, maybe, but it was still a good habit. We continued on and we heard the howls of the beast. “What now?” said one man. “Jump!” I said. We made it into the fast moving river as the beasts burst out of the jungle behind us. They faltered as they saw us escaping by river, because they couldn’t swim due to their weight and body physics. They chased us along side of the river, so that if we tried to get out, we would not live long. The river began to flow more rapidly, and I saw what appeared to be a dead end. The river just stopped and opened up into clear sky. “A waterfall!” yelled the old man. “A what?” we asked. “Prepare for a drop,” he said. We went over the waterfall, and one of the beasts tried to hop over the cliff with us. The others didn’t try to follow, especially when they heard the sound of his shattered body hit the ground beside the river. As we crawled out the river all soaked, we saw that our original area was a plateau with no way up or down, other than the waterfall or two. We began walking again, in search of food this time. While walking, we came upon a person who said he had a village around here. He led us to the village of the dissenters. They gave us food, fresh clothes, and let us rest before bombarding us with questions. The village was run by an elder who met us and led us into the village center, where the entire village came out to see their new guests. The elder told us that occasionally the village would get new guests, but never so many at one time. The arrival of guests correlated to approximately one of every seven dissenters arriving here safely. We had truly experienced a miracle.
End of Days (part 4)
It was hard adjusting to the changes. We had been there for one week now, and even though the elder let us live with him for now and took care of our needs, he said that eventually we would have to get a “job” in order to make “money,” a hard metallic substance used to acquire things you wanted. He had heard stories of our village from his ancestors, how we had not used money, but instead each labored for the good of the village and shared the crops based on the needs of each family. He thought us as strange as we considered him. We asked if we could take up farming because it was all we know how to do. We were sorely disappointed when we discovered we would have to buy both seeds and land first. He explained we could work for a farmer for a small portion of the harvest. While this seemed unappealing to us, we had no choice. It was either that or we could try to learn a new trade.
We all began to work for a very wealthy farmer-merchant named Farquar. There were many other workers, but somehow we all got bunked in the same area. We were trying to adjust to this new life, but the old man kept reminding us of the village and what had happened. He was a doom sage, predicting the monsters would continue their wrath onto this village. He was really riling up our fellow workers with his predictions of death and destruction. We were complacent about it because we figured “What could we do? If the monsters come here, we will run and start a new town.” That was until one of us figured what if we used this towns strong metals and turned them into weapons. We and the other workers petitioned the village elder and called for a village meeting to tell everyone of our plan. The elder explained how Farquar was the one who really ran this village and if we were to go to war against these monsters, his palms would have to be greased first, whatever that meant. After explaining a bribe, we went to visit him. He wondered of the monetary benefit of this war, and when we told him none, he almost turned purple with rage. Just then, we warned him of the loss of money with everyone being dead and all would bring. He reluctantly agreed. For the next month or so we trained with spears and swords and created fire bottles using containers filled with spirits. Soon we would be at war with the dark god’s minions.
End of Days: Utopious' Last Stand
We had to collectively strike hard and strike fast if we were to defeat these aliens. We prepared as well, but more importantly, as fast we could. We could not allow them to bring more troops and we had to rescue what survivors remained in the wilderness. They greater part of our village, including Elder Larpan, prepared to fight. The men, the Elder Zachus, and one of the women, from the ancient village were going to lead the troops, seeing as how they had dealt with these aliens before. Our men tried to dissuade some of the women from joining the battle, but to no avail. If this strong-willed woman from the ancient village was willing to fight for their survival, so were they.
The women were each given a small dagger and several fire bottles, while the men were given several short spears, a buckler, and a sword. Everybody was armored in the hardest leather they could find and whatever scrap-metal they could attach to it. This preparation was largely funded by Farquar. He said he would ask for his money to be returned in full, but he was more grateful not have to fight than anything. The blacksmiths also realized the gravity of the situation and gave tremendous discounts on their prices.
Within a week's time, everyone had a basic proficiency in the weapons they would use. We would have waited more, but time was of the essence. Ervin Traxim the spider-roaster, as his compatriots called him, and Elder Zachus had created a plan of attack based on what they knew of the aliens so far. Due to previous food raids, they have determined that the aliens had a similar sleep schedule to them and were relatively blind without a light source to guide their way. Celise the strong-willed said that she and another stumbled into a machina storage facility on one of their raids, the same facility that necessitated her sacrificing her companion to get away. They don't always use their machina, but rather only use them when under attack. So the plan is to lead a false charge to distract them and while they are distracted the others hope to destroy the machina. Then it’s a simple sweep and destroy mission. The first charge will be led by Ervin and ten of the best fighters. The plan is to begin at 2500 hours tomorrow. The troops of maybe 200 well armed troops were led into a cave in the wall of the plateau by Elder Larpan and Elder Zachus. The fire started by Ervin had gutted the entire honeycomb cave system, ridding it of spiders. The Elders led the troops single file for many miles in the winding caves that slowly led up. They eventually reached a certain intersection, and Zachus yelled back to Ervin, "I remember this passage! We passed by here on the way out." Ervin mumbled, "The coot has a better memory than I thought." "What was that?" Zachus yelled. "Thanks. (And apparently better hearing, too.)," thought Ervin.
Eventually the troops piled out of the cave, and past a busted barricade into the jungle. The sun was setting and it was only 1800 hours. Zachus, Ervin, Celise, and the rest of the survivors gathered the troops and briefed the troops about the dangers of the beasts. Lookouts were placed that were changed every hour, and the troops got a brief rest before the upcoming battle. Only one beast attempted to attack the troops, the lookout quickly spotted it and raised the troops. Ten or so men hurled their spears with enough landing in the beast to make a pincushion out of it. The men recovered the spears and marked themselves with the blood of their kill in a manly display of showmanship. There were no other disturbances that night.
At 2300 hours the troops began to move out. Three-fourths of the troops were to wait outside the village in order help to make the sneak attack plausible. Ervin led his pack of ten hunters, ruffians, bar-room brawlers, and the like. They were to sneak in, remove the guards if possible, and distract the aliens away from the machina enough for Celise and the women troops to destroy them. Ervin's group of soldiers were more mercenaries than soldiers, all of them except Ervin brought there own weapons. The hunter brought a bow and a short sword. One of the ruffians had a pair of blades that were each slightly shorter than his forearm in length. Another man, one known for being really quick to fight when drunk, brought many throwing daggers and hand axes. Some had large axes; others had large spears, and one had with a giant hammer.
As the party approached the village gate from down wind, the hunter spotted to alien lookouts. The hunter knocked his arrow while the brawler brought back his dagger. The dagger implanted itself into the first aliens head mere seconds after the arrow severed the second aliens head from its body. The group approached, and the hunter commanded everyone to rub some of the alien slime on them. The aliens smelled awful, so it wasn't until Ervin proceeded to put some on that the rest of the group grudgingly accepted it. They then signaled for Celise's group to approach. "Wait here until you here a ruckus, then rush to the facility and destroy it by any means necessary," Ervin told her. Their group had managed get to the facility relatively unbothered; those who did were quickly silenced. As one ruffian slit the throat of the last alien in front of the facility, and then they gazed in. Three aliens inside turned to look at them and said something that meant "Oh Shit!" in alien. They slithered into their machina and gave chase to the men who were leading the aliens out another exit of the village. The noise created by the machina woke up the aliens in the village and the men were surrounded. Ervin said, "We expected this to happen, but if we should die, it will not be without killing as many as these demons as possible."
Meanwhile, the women snuck to the now defenseless facility. It was filled with about fifteen motionless machina and random parts for them. Their daggers quickly went to work severing cords, wires, and tubes. Some of the tubes leaked a foul smelling liquid. Celise inspected some of the containers among the parts and found more liquid. When she was examining these containers, she put down her torch and a squirt of the liquid landed on the torch. The flare that singed her hair and clothes and scared the rest of the girls gave her a brilliant idea. "Sever the tubes in back and let the liquid run out. Afterwards, get out of here." After she was the last one in there, she lit her fire bottle and tossed it. She dashed out of there as fast as she could and the explosion still sent her flying into her comrades. "That was fun," she said.
"That's the sign," said Ervin. "Help will be here soon." He then dodged a machina claw, and it grabbed another alien by mistake, crushing it. He then tossed his last spear into another alien and it passed through two of them before resting in the chest of a third. Already five of his men were down; among them were the hunter and brawler, who after shooting/throwing their weapons had trouble defending themselves. Just then an alien tentacle pierced his shield, stabbing him in the chest. He fell, but before the alien could finish him off, the man with the hammer turned the alien into liquid with his mighty swing. They were exhausted and couldn't last much longer. When they thought they could last no more, a fire bottle landed beside one of the machina blowing it over and setting many of the aliens on fire. The rest of the troops were rushing in to help the men and the aliens in the village soon found themselves outnumbered, and out-armed at the hands of people not feeling too merciful.
After the battle, the troops were split into groups of ten and sent in search parties. They ended up finding sixty people still living in the jungle. After much discussion, it was decided that the village should relocate to the much more prosperous village of the dissenters. The survivors were not ready for such a change, so with the help of the men, a town was established on the other side of the plateau. When they were ready they would join with the village, but until then, they would live there. So a pact was made between the two villages that they would agree to disagree and also prepare themselves in case they would have to join forces to defend themselves in such a way in a future date.
The End.