This is sort of a combined die/win, but I did considerably more dying than winning, so I'll post it here.
Started out as an ashlander, and tried tidying up the clanhome as much as possible and getting some basic materials to ensure our growth. Strangely, someone else apparently picked the role as well, and I had a fellow clanmember to tool around with (even if he mostly spent his time zooming out and about with a crate, collecting who-knows-what).
The clanhome spawned very close to the human mining base, and so we saw the miners going past fairly frequently. We'd just started out, and even with a full set of bone equipment after numerous hunts, the miners and their advanced equipment would always be terrifying... It was an uneasy period.
Jasuba, my clanmate, told me that he'd spoken with one of the miners, and that they were friendly and would provide us with the dead bodies we needed for our clan to grow, via the cycle of rebirth inherent to our clan's egg tendril. I wasn't particularly trusting of this smoothskin miner, but we were in no position to negotiate, so a tenuous peace was struck.
Indeed, the miner did give gifts to Jasuba, and he dutifully came back to the clanhome with them, and we grew stronger. But then, tragedy struck... While exploring, I found the entrance to the smoothskin mining base... And there, submerged in a lava pool outside with a trail of blood leading to it, was the charred corpse of Jasuba! Murder!
Another clanmate was there, and had managed to steal one of the smoothskin exosuits, which he was now hiding inside. Blood called for blood, and we would not allow the smoothskin invaders to callously slaughter one of our own.
After a very tense period of waiting, we discovered that nobody was in the base, and nobody was coming any time soon either. I went back to exploring the wastes, and eventually found the body of one of the miners, along with such treasures as his radio headset. Using this and the intercoms at the mining base, we expressed our outrage and demand for recompense to the smoothskins on the station above. They said that since we couldn't specifically identify the name of Jasuba's murderer, that there was nothing they could do about it. Understandably furious, we offically banned them from the planet, proclaiming a blockade of their shuttle.
Over their communications network, I overheard them organizing a death squad to take out
"the liggers". So it'sss war, then.
What followed was an absolutely crazy and hectic battle where we fought tooth and claw with lava traps, primitive spears and the stolen exosuit in order to hold our ground, and although there were casualties, we inflicted grievous damage on our foes. The research director thought himself invincible in his high-tech Phazon exosuit, but through strength of numbers and iron will we managed to topple the metal beast and sacrifice the RD to our tendril (I attempted to perform a ritual sacrifice by cutting out his heart and throwing it, still-beating, into a bonfire, but... Apparently nothing we had was "saw-like" enough to complete the surgery procedure, so that whole event just kinda failed miserably). The loss of an expensive exosuit and one of their heads got the full attention of the station staff, and more skirmishes were had.
But then, the pale-faced one arrived... A mime, who had long since broken his vow of silence and had kitted himself out with an armored suit and helmet, came into the base from the shuttle. We started to attack, but he evaded our blows and called for a ceasefire, stating that he was an enemy to the station and wished to help us.
While we paused, waiting for him to continue, he whipped out a taser and struck two of us down, repeatedly stunning and stabbing us as we lay helpless on the floor. After our deaths he took a third brother captive, and started gloating about being hungry for some
ligger stew. This brother suffered the worst fate of us all, and was brought onto the station to be made into one of their metal demons, a cyborg machine enslaved to them by unbreakable laws. This steel husk was later sent back down to the planet to negotiate with the few clanmembers still alive (there had been many, many cycles of rebirth as we died and our souls entered into new eggs, and even with all the bodies we managed to recover, the number of eggs was dwindling rapidly), but having our former brother paraded in front of us in a grotesque display of dominance wasn't exactly conducive to peaceful discourse, as one might say.
The pale-faced one returned, with another of the metal demons in tow, and took on two of our number yet again, nearly bringing us low. But in his final moments, my brave clanmate grabbed hold of the pale one and dragged him into a pool of lava, so that they both would burn.
I shouted to my brother that his noble sacrifice had been witnessed, and would not be forgotten, but the borg managed to get the better of me and retrieved the body, taking it back onto the shuttle for cloning. We'd snatched only a temporary victory, and at massive cost.
Picking apart the mining station for spearmaking supplies and scouring it and the ashlands for more bodies we could offer to the tendril and increase our flock, there was a tense lull in the fighting. Through the sacred creation device, we'd blocked off their shuttle's landing with a moat of lava, and were guarding the area. After a few attempted landings, the shuttle returned to the station and we saw nothing more from the smoothskins for some time.
Horribly outnumbered and with barely any resources left (many of our lanterns had been lost or destroyed, so I had to blindly make my way through the darkness between our clanhome and the mining base), we focused our efforts on regrouping. Maybe the smoothskins had given up. The AI had declared the planet as a major threat to human life, and was strongly discouraging anyone from trying to land on it. Perhaps, finally, we could have peace.
...but it was not to be. While I and my sole surviving clanmate tried desperately to feed the tendril and restore our egg supply, a brazen visitor strolled directly into the heart of our clanhome. The pale-faced one. The mime.
He claimed that he'd come to parlay, that he was with us, not against us. He announced that he was a shapeshifter, a trickster who had stolen the form of the mime in order to deceive those aboard the station. His arm dissolved and reformed itself into a disgusting, fleshy shield as means of proof.
I was wounded after being caught in an ash storm (my fifth or so time that round...), and was weak, but I could see through his deception. This was still the pale one who had slaughtered and tortured so many of our kind, and who had tricked and betrayed us before with underhanded methods. I moved to attack, but my clanmate stopped me and said to hear him out. Had he forgotten the blood this monster had shed? The lives it had ended, and worse?
But I could not fight them both, so I held off. It did not take long for the pale-faced one to make his true colors known, however... He wanted to be worshiped as a god, and informed us that our lives were firmly within his gloved hands. That he could end us at any time he desired.
My clanmate asked if he also held the power to heal us, and requested that he heal my wounds. The mime agreed, and though I resisted, I was touched by his foul powers.
But the pale one had no intentions of healing... He reshaped my body into that of a smoothskin, a hideous copy of himself, and in the hostile environment of the ashlands my new form quickly began to choke. "SUFFOCATE!", he jeered, and with my last breaths I gave all my strength to fight back against this unholy abomination.
Somehow, impossibly, we managed to bring him down... He was already burned from the ash storm, and I had taken with me the relic of holy flame from our clan's treasury, so he was not at full strength. I doubt, also, that he had considered us much of a threat in any case, and was unprepared.
Regardless, he was finally laid low, and before he could reform himself his life essence was sacrificed to the sacred tendril, and torn apart.
My smoothskinned body collapsed, drowning in the air of my home planet, and I died in the arms of my clanmate as I begged him to deliver the body to the tendril, that the cycle could continue once again. He did, and so I hatched anew, and took the severed head of the great adversary, the pale-faced one, the oathbroken mime, and placed it on a pike in the center of our clanhome. The war was over. We could rebuild.
Soon after, the smoothskins aboard the station announced a full evacuation, and boarded a shuttle to leave. As their ignition sequences were counting down, I spoke to them on their radio channel, declaring once and for all that this world, and the sacred ashlands of the necropolis, were forever the domain of our people and our heritage. With the death of the great adversary, and a heavy toll paid in blood by both sides, I declared the feud to be finished, and wished them safe journeys.
The AI, whose core had been carried onto the shuttle, returned a message of peace and wished our people good hunting, and then the shuttle departed.
We had won.
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Topic: How did you last die? (Read 2415338 times)