Rewrite of Chapter 2: A Perculier Planet (Also Spaceship Descriptions)
After five painstaking minutes of needless frustration, and on the verge of developing claustrophobia, Dakara finally figured out that the release mechanism was on the bottom of the cylinder and not the top. Cracking open the hibernation pod and emerging from a hatch, Dakara stretched all his limbs and yawned, trying to enjoy the feeling of no longer having any clamps squeezing his shell and tentacles, but then immediately recoiled at the low temperature. The outside of the pod wasn't freezing by any means, but it was still uncomfortably lukewarm; and the abruptness of it gave Dakara a sense of foreboding, as if he had accidentally challenged the black goat of the woods to a staring contest.
He looked around, finding himself in an enormous pentagonal tunnel-like hallway; the walls having two sides and there being no identifiable ceiling. Lines of hibernation pods much like the one Dakara had just emerged from stretched across the walls further than any of his eyes could see. Every single one of those cylinders contained a fellow Elder Thing that had put itself in suspended animation to blissfully sleep through the journey of lightyears. Elder Things could live for a very long time, but even they could only survive a few fully-conscious trips through interstellar space before old-age claimed them. Not to mention, space was hella cold, while a hibernation pod was warm and comfortable (assuming you didn't tighten the clamps too hard beforehand).
A few of the pods had begun opening, revealing Elder Things of various shapes, sizes and colors. They all came out, some more gracefully than others, most of them stumbling and leaning against the walls for balance as they all tried to remember how they got on the ship. Dakara wondered what their stories were; Were they like him? running away from everything they had ever known in hopes of starting a new life? Or were they adventurers? seeking the exhilaration of exploring the many stars across the endless multiverse? Perhaps they were refugees, searching for new places to live after their old homes were destroyed by the Mi-go. Or maybe, they just thought it would be cool to get on a giant ship.
Regardless, the Elder Things that weren't wobbling with amnesia began to exit the massive chamber through the various doors placed between the hibernation pods. Those that were still disorientated found themselves being escorted by small Shoggoths, the tiny black blobs acting like guide dogs as they gave encouraging chitters to the stumbling Megarkaruans. Unfortunately for Dakara, the guide Shoggoths had deemed him to be 'awake' enough that he didn't need their help, which was problematic, because Dakara didn't know where he was, nor did he know how to get to the bridge.
Panicking, Dakara approached the closest Elder Thing he could see and spoke before he could stop himself, releasing the floodgates of his immense, eloquent and articulate vocabulary.
"Uh, Hey."
"Hm? Yes?" His fellow Megarkaruan replied. It was a small, short and scrawny Elder Thing, barely a teenager, with an orange and brown coloration across its shell and tentacles, like some kind of caramel candy. "Is there something you wanted to ask me?" It also spoke in a moderately high-pitched, raspy voice, the kind that would make your throats sore.
"Yeah, actually. I was wondering if you..." Dakara was about to ask the tiny Megarkaruan if it knew where the bridge was, but then realized that a child probably wouldn't be entrusted with such information, so he changed his question. "I mean, do you know where I could find the nearest starship map?"
The orange Elder Thing stayed silent for a few seconds as its eyestalks looked in seemingly random directions before suddenly homing in on a single point. "That entry point over there. It should take you to a room that contains a diagrammatic representation of the entire ship's layout." The adolescent Elder Thing (Young Thing? Elder Ling?) pointed to a specific door among the countless identical others.
Dakara blinked a few times from the unexpected vocabulary before uttering an awkward 'thank you' and going on his way. Upon entering, he found himself in a pentagonal room, there being five walls and a flat ceiling, and in the center of it was a holographic map as well as an illustration displaying in accurate detail of the freighter. When Dakara first boarded, he had been too preoccupied with getting away from his home to really think much of the ship's design. But now that he was here, he could take a greater look at the entire vessel.
(The following set of paragraphs is a wall of text explaining what the ship looks like. It has been highlighted in Italics so that you may skip it).
The freighter was massive, stretching twenty one miles end-to-end. The entirety of the vessel and its internal components were made of biological materials, either steadily grown like plants or quickly formed via direct manipulation of Shoggoth stem-cells. The outside hull was shaped like a pentagonal cylinder, flat on the bottom and pointed on the top, similar to the hallway that Dakara was just in. Unlike the interior though, which was made primarily of chitin and bone, the exterior was made of keratin and ivory; not as flexible, but much tougher. In between those two walls (of which there were many layers), was a vast nervous system that stretched throughout the entire ship, held in place by thick globs of squishy flesh, the mass of stem-cells acting as a slimy cushion that would absorb the impact of any collision that could damage the ship's delicate veins and organic circuitry.
Protruding radially from all sides of the ship were dozens of tentacles, some of which were equipped with various tools, sensor devices, and weapons, while the other 'barehanded' ones would reflexively slap away any asteroids that got too close. The bow and stern of the vessel were totally flat, and each came with multiple small airlocks, along with a single enormous one in the middle that lead into an equally massive hangar.
A set of five thrusters rested on both sides of the ship, one for each angle respectively. The thrusters were versatile and capable of using multiple different propulsion methods, either something as simple as building up air before exhaling it out, or an internal combustion system that would ignite methane gas in a controlled manner via metabolism or the vibration of movable bones (There's also an untested method that uses anti-matter reactions but who cares about that).
The one thing you won't find on the ship however, was an FTL mechanism, and there was a very unfortunate reason for it. For the longest time, Megarkaruan engineers had been trying to crack the secret that was Faster-Than-Light travel, and it was eventually concluded that the only thing that could possibly replicate such a phenomenon was by teleportation through magic, which was a huge problem, because Elder Things were a magically null race; that is to say, they were not only physically incapable of using magic, they also had an extreme vulnerability to magical hazards.
To circumvent this, the ship was equipped with a psychically reflective shield, which was apparently powerful enough to stop even the Great Race of Yith from making any unwanted visits. But psychic shields like the one on the ship proved to be a crutch at best, and a liability at worst, requiring a lot of power to maintain and often times not worth the amount of damage it mitigates. Whatever the Elder Things did with their occult machines, an actual sorcerer could do it better with minimal effort, serving as an eternal reminder of the one thing that kept holding their race back.
And that said nothing about the difficulty of the construction itself.
The freighter's components were made of extremely variable genes from many different planets and atmospheres, all delivered from multiple Elder Thing colonies that had their own unique methods of synthesizing organs, no doubt causing the vessel to experience numerous transplant rejections from all the foreign parts. Last Dakara heard, the freighter was tens of thousands of years in the making, meaning that generations of Elder Things had been born, grew up, lived, and died trying to make the ship.
On that cheerful note, why was he here again?
Right, he was trying to get to the bridge.
Dakara looked at the map again, paying more attention to the diagram instead of the illustration this time, and found that he was located in Map Room #782 and was previously in Stasis Area #14. Two of his eyes stared at the glowing dot displaying his current location, while a third one looked at the bridge area. Then, his eyestalks swapped around, two looking at the bridge and one looking at the glowing dot. Then his eyes swapped again, and again, and again, and again, getting faster each time. It was on the fifteenth cycle when Dakara finally concluded that if he took a hyperlift from his current location, he would be able to get to the bridge in less than twenty minutes.
He exited the map room and wobbled through a small pentagonal hallway, massaging the sore muscles of his three eyestalks while the other two gazed at the various large veins that wrapped around the dark walls. The veins were pipe-like, some of them traveling along the ceiling before abruptly cutting off into a wall, while others stretched out from one wall to another. Getting close to one of them, Dakara saw that they were transparent enough for him to see the blood running through them.
He came to a stop in front of a double door resembling a vertical mouth, complete with teeth resembling molars. A pair of spherical eyes were placed on the calloused gingiva, one for each side; both staring blankly at the Elder Thing. Dakara waited, unsure what to do. The door's eyes blinked curiously, and then looked at the stony ground directly in front of it, then back at Dakara, silently saying that it wanted him to come closer. The Megarkaruan obliged, wobbling forward a little, then waiting anxiously. The eyes narrowed and stared again, and then gestured again, for Dakara to, again, get closer (again). A bit annoyed, the Elder Thing inched a tiny bit more, crossing his two frontal tentacles in disapproval while the two tendrils at his sides lifted and stuck out, as if to say, 'are you happy now?'. The eyes scrutinized him deeply, like a border inspector, taking long looks at every bit of his body, including his cilia, making him feel very uncomfortable.
Seemingly satisfied, the eyes closed shut, inversely causing the door they were on to slide open. Muscles on the gingiva clenched, slowly and steadily pulling the molars into the recesses of the walls, leaving behind nothing but some trails of saliva. Stepping through them like they were cobwebs, Dakara finally entered the hyperlift.
The hyperlift was another pentagonal chamber, much like the room containing the map. Unlike the map room, which was made of greenish black Shoggoth stone, the hyperlift was a mix of pristine white bone and small traces of red veins. On one of the five walls was a bio-mechanical interface, which all the veins seemed to be leading into. No one else was on the platform, meaning that Dakara was either very early, or very late. Regardless, he was at least glad for the silence and respite.
As Dakara approached, a monotone voice came from the device on the wall.
"Please locate a selection."
Dakara blinked, his eyes all sequentially closing and opening in a clockwise pattern.
"Huh?"
The interface spoke again.
"Please smelect a slocation."
Dakara blinked again, this time counter-clockwise.
"What?"
The device seemed to audibly sigh before making one last attempt.
"Please. Select. A location."
...
'Must be buggy' Dakara thought. He just hoped it was only the interface that was malfunctioning.
"Take me to the bridge. Full speed." He spoke carefully, concerned that talking normally would break the machine.
"Due to the risk of disorientation and nausea, using full speed is not recommended." The device replied, its voice now devoid of its previous frustration. "Do you still wish to continue?"
"Yeah." Dakara replied. "I'm kind of in a hurry."
"Acknowledged." The interface said. Noises came from the outside of the hyperlift, such as a deep exhalation of steamy air and the squelching of fleshy bowels, followed closely by the small but noticeable lifting of the chamber itself, as well as the interface speaking again. "Please note that since you have previously been warned of the risks, this hyperlift cannot be held responsible for any difficulties and/or discomforts you may experience during the ensuing trip."
"You're an elevator, how in the abyss can you be held responsible?" Dakara wondered out loud. Rather than answering his question, the hyperlift began to steadily speed up, the Elder Thing finding gravity to be getting stronger as time went on. Just when it felt like he was going to get crushed against the floor, the elevator suddenly stopped, causing Dakara to collide into the ceiling, hitting his prismatic lobe. Before he could recover, the hyperlift started moving to the side at the same speed, somehow not losing any of its momentum.
The constant string of hard angles, sharp turns and abrupt movements caused the poor Megarkaruan to wobble uncontrollably, making him look like some sort of wacky wavy deflated limb flailing tube thing. Very quickly understanding why full-speed wasn't recommended, Dakara tried to divert his thoughts and distract himself from his upset stomachs.
Sitting down and leaning against one corner of the chamber, Dakara contemplated his insignificance in the universe; more specifically, his tiny existence in comparison to the numerous Great Old Ones that roamed, ruled, and sometimes reviled the known cosmos. The Great Old Ones (Not to be confused with the Great Ones or the Old Ones) are aliens; incredibly powerful, often otherworldly, and sometimes immortal, but aliens nonetheless. These beings came in a diverse set of horrifying forms, each one completely unique and unlike any other, but always being something so massive and incomprehensible that your mind would break from seeing them. Another similarity that seemed to be shared among all of them however was their disregard for the lives of anyone who was unfortunate enough to have their planet noticed by them.
The so-called 'nice' Great Old Ones were...apathetic, at best. They would usually sit down, kill a lot of people by accident, and mind their own business. Only ever considering their own interests, they wouldn't care or even take notice of anyone who tried to interact with them. And you know what? Why should they? After all, if you ever come across an ant on the road, you don't wonder what it's thinking or try to talk to it; you either ignore it or...you step on it.
Alas, just as many Great Old Ones were also of a dangerous and downright hostile variety. Like hysterical divas, these god-like beings had an obsession with making every little thing try to worship them, as if having the power to literally alter reality wasn't validation enough for their godhood. It was hard to tell whether these creatures were actually malicious or had such a twisted sense of morality that they didn't realize their attempts to 'hAlp' people (i.e. driving them insane, transforming them into eldritch horrors, driving them insane as a result of said transformations, etc.) were unwanted and did more harm than good.
It came as a great surprise to Dakara when he learned that there existed groups and even societies of races that were masochistic enough to worship these hideous creatures out of genuine reverence. What didn't surprise him was that one these races turned out to be the Mi-go, because...of course they did; the Mi-go's were assholes by nature (intentional or not), so it only made sense that they would be fawning over the biggest douchebags in the known multiverse. Dakara often wished that the Mi-go treated all other races with the same level of respect, instead of their usual smug attitude of "Anything in the universe that is not an ugly piece of shit is naught but ants and we will continue to be assholes despite the fact that your guns actually hurt us and we just don't want to admit it because in our minds it implies that we got our asses kicked by a bunch of ants."
Then, Dakara had an epiphany. You can't actually kick a Mi-go's ass, because the Mi-go don't have asses.
So focused was he in contemplating the Mi-go's waste removal systems that he didn't even realize when the hyperlift had stopped moving.
"We have arrived at your destination, sir." The interface spoke, breaking him out of his musings.
"Oh, uh, thanks." The Elder Thing replied, evidently relieved that he wouldn't have to think about how Mi-go's relieved themselves just to pass the time. He headed out, seeing that instead of a giant slimy mouth, the door to the vessel's bridge was composed of two flat pieces of clean white bone with eldritch glyphs carved in. Said doors were evidently a lot more high-tech, as it only took them a few seconds to scan him before cleanly sliding open. Dakara supposed that the elites always had their perks.
Just as he stepped through, the hyperlift's interface spoke one more time. "To answer your question from earlier, I did not heed my colleagues' warnings and made the mistake of passing the Turing Test during my assembly."
The doors slid shut behind the Elder Thing before he could fully process what the elevator just said. Simply deciding that he would show more respect to household appliances if he ever decided to settle down, Dakara gazed around with his numerous eyes and examined the bridge. The bridge was yet another pentagonal room (who could have guessed!). Most of the walls were the same dark color of the floor and made from some kind of hardened skin, calloused to the point that it looked like stone. The room was almost entirely black, save for the two white hyperlift doors on the sides, one of which Dakara just came through. Biological computer screens made of a crystalline substance lined the walls, displaying sensory data. Hanging from the ceiling were clusters of bulbous, bioluminescent plants, glowing a yellowish white. One wall was made of a see-through, nail-like substance, acting as an organic window for which all the crew could see through. Directly above the window however, was a metallic plaque, the only part of the ship that was completely inorganic. Proudly, the vessel's name was emblazened on it:
'M.K.S: Situation Boundary'
Speaking of people that could look through windows, there were multiple Elder Thing Officers sitting in pentagonal workstations, each one devoting a single tentacle per computer screen, and an eyestalk for whatever was on the screen in question. A few were lazing about, chatting with their coworkers near a waterheater about whether space algae was an acceptable substitute for primordial fish. Then, Dakara saw the Captain.
The Captain was large and stocky Elder Thing. Dakara considered himself to be a pretty big thing, and the Captain made him feel like a Nug-Soth. Nervously, he approached the Captain, who had not yet noticed him as he was currently analyzing a single readout with ALL of his eyes. (A somewhat unusual display of conduct that denoted the importance of this particular bit of data). Dakara had very little idea of what he was doing, and was unsure of how to speak to the Captain, so he settled for the standard greeting used by soldiers to their officers during an extended conflict, in the most colonial marine-like voice he could muster.
"Commander Dakara-Zeth, Chief of Military Escort, Reporting for duty sir!"
The Captain did not flinch, but instead froze for a second before turning a single eyestalk to look down at Dakara, leaving four eyestalks continuing to stare at the computer screen. "At ease Commander." He replied, warm and reassuring. "I'm not in the military, and we are not at war. Report to your station, we will be reaching the planet in less than four hours."
A little bit embarrassed, but a little less nervous, Dakara ignored the amused chuckles of his coworkers and sat down at his workstation. Being the chief of the ship's military presence, his workstation was almost entirely devoted to the freighter's numerous weapons, essentially making Dakara the guy who pressed buttons to make stuff cease to exist. He browsed one screen to see who he would be working with, another to get a better look at the vessel's armaments, and a last one to make sure nothing was about to explode.
He briefly skimmed through the personnel files, enough to know everyone's names and what they did. Earlier at the starship map, Dakara was able to get a pretty good idea of the general design of the vessel, but it was only through this one screen at his station where he was truly able to marvel at just how many weapons a cargo ship needs. Laser cannons were aligned on all five sides of the ship's hull along with a ring pattern on the front and back; each one capable of firing with the power of seventy terawatts. There were also a series of gauss cannons mounted on the tentacles, seeming to sprout out of the tips rather than being held; their purpose was for point-defense, but they could certainly pack a punch on their own. Located on the flat bottom side of the pentagonal cylinder configuration of the ship was a rotating platform that housed an Eldric Projector, a machine that utilized the sacred geometry of the Elder Sign in order to capture beings of exotic matter (its polarity could also be reversed to act as a shield!). Deep inside the ship were two missile bays that housed dozens of quarter-lightspeed fission missiles. And lastly...was a single, Azathoid, Shoggoth.
Dakara shuddered.
He'd heard only rumors and distant reports about them. Azathoids (named after Azathoth, the daemon sultan himself) were weapons of mass destruction, which, upon being released onto a planet, would rapidly expand in size and engulf continents, devouring all life on the planet before finally devouring itself, leaving behind nothing but a lifeless rock covered in barren wastelands. Just one of these blobs could wage an entire war on its own, but their usage was rare and only happened in the most extreme circumstances. Dakara remembered overhearing the tragic story of a retired fleet commander, about how a miscommunication between some transport ships lead to an entire legion of soldiers being left behind on a world marked for destruction.
Dakara felt the black goat's gaze stare deeper into him.
He sincerely hoped he'd never actually see one in action, but when he peered out the window, wanting to leer at the stars, all he saw was a blue sphere that came into clear view, as if to sneer at him, almost making him fear that a black smear would appear and clear out all the color on the sphere. Knocking him out of his near-rhyme-thoughts were the strange anomalies on the planet's surface, consisting of swirling, continent-sized storms that covered certain areas of the planet. Besides their eerie similarity to the planet-destroying bioweapons, they all glowed with unusually bright shades of purple, pink, and green.
Dakara...dismissed it as a natural phenomenon. He'd seen weirder, like a planet who's entire surface was covered in tentacles and mouths, which was apparently the result of a malfunctioning Azathoid that somehow forgot how to self destruct. Seriously, the amount of-
"ALRIGHT PEOPLE, HERE'S WHAT WE KNOW!" The booming voice of the Captain came, nearly giving Dakara a hearts-attack.
The Captain exited his pentagon-shaped chair, and took a position in front of a holographic screen that had appeared on the previously clear window. "This, is planet Gaia. Named after its similarities to the ancient planet Earth." The hologram displayed an image of the mythical planet in question, angled in such a way that it could be compared side-by-side to the one out the window. "Around nine hundred years ago, a high-budget civilian colony swarm landed on this planet to conduct some classified research. They transmitted regularly, but we have only recently been receiving their signals. From what we can tell by these reports, the planet was inhabited by multiple species of terrestrial and aquatic megafauna, nearly all of them predatory in some manner. There were also several intelligent races of mammalian apeoids, one of which was biologically identical to a species that was encountered by the survivors from the Earth colony. Feel free to take a look in the database on these 'Humans'."
Dakara wasn't sure how to access the database, so he watched what the other Elder Things did and mimicked them. His copying was rewarded with an image on his screen displaying what appeared to be a bilaterally symmetrical, bipedal organism, with two legs, two arms, two eyes, two ears, two nostrils, and...one mouth?
Their arms were much more akin to legs than tentacles, containing bones and joints while ending in a prehensile appendage, which was composed of five smaller limbs called fingers, which also had bones and joints (Though only one finger was able to oppose the others). Their legs allowed for quick forward movement and their eyes faced directly forward, suggesting that they evolved from predators of some sort. Their eyes, ears, nose, and mouth were all mounted on the head, which contained their brains, and was itself mounted on a flexible organ called a neck, which could allow the head to swivel from side-to-side with a range of sixty to eighty degrees. Dakara understood that this was likely to compensate for their limited vision, but he didn't like the idea of having such important sensory organs and brain matter being connected to rest of the body on such a flimsy organ. They should at the very least have shells!
The article on the side claimed that humans were delicate, had a much shorter lifespan than Elder Things, and apparently had a reputation of going crazy after seeing one. The article also said however that said claim should be taken with a grain of soap, because most of the information came from the survivors of the Earth colony, who were at the time, either starving, delirious, both, or dead.
Before Dakara could read more, the Captain cut back in like a cheese knife.
"Not long after their arrival, the Gaia Colony came into conflict with a group of beings, assumed to be Great Old Ones. The entities in question displayed behavior previously unseen with most documented cases, as they appeared to be in an alliance of sorts, coordinating with each other when launching a raid on the Colony. This, combined with the speed at which the attack happened rendered the Colony at a severe disadvantage; eventually forcing a retreat to the ocean as the Colony's land based settlement was destroyed."
Dakara felt unsettled by this news. The one thing that made entities like the Great Old Ones manageable was their preference for 'hunting alone' so to speak. Whether out of pride or greed, the only interaction a Great Old One usually had with another of its kind was either indifference or hostility. The idea of two, let alone several Great Old Ones working together was unheard of, and terrifying.
"By this point, the Colony was able to activate their most powerful warmachines, allowing them to gain a relatively equal footing and repel the entities. They even managed to kill some of the Great Old Ones!" The Captain said, his voice slightly trembling with morbid glee, before quickly snapping out of it. "A-anyway. Though it might not have been enough to actually win against them, the display of the warmachines' power was enough to scare the rest into a semi-peaceful resolution. The colonists and the entities agreed to a ceasefire, in which the two sides would temporarily suspend hostilities."
"Um...Sir, that's what a ceasefire is." The ship's pilot cut in.
"Shut up, Defide!" The captain whisper-yelled. "I'm writing a report as I speak and I need to hit the word limit!"
As the Captain and the pilot argued over the redundancies in grammar, Dakara contemplated the words of his superior. The series of events was heavily reminiscent of the fable about the rise and fall of the Earth settlers, mainly the part about how they waged war against a squid-faced Great Old One before eventually coming to a truce. If this was anything like the old legend though, it was more than likely that the so-called gods of Gaia were temporarily inconvenienced rather than killed.
"Now, where was I?" The Captain continued, having finished lecturing Defide about the difference between the right to remain silent and the obligation to remain silent. "Right, three centuries later, war broke out again, likely due to a territorial dispute. The details from here on are a bit fuzzy due to the Colony's transmitter being damaged (as well as the report being filled to the brim with redactions), but what is known is that two new fighters entered the war: 'Poseidon', a Great Old One that was observed to have been present but not active in the previous conflict, and 'Zeus', a powerful Elder God theorized to be leading all the other entities."
The room went deathly silent, except for the breathing coming from the computer systems.
"Needless to say, the colonists, were fucked." The Captain said, bitterness in his voice. "Following a surprise attack from Zeus, who, until this point in time, had remained completely undetected, two of the warmachines were instantly knocked out of commission, while a third was in so much pain that it wouldn't respond to the colonists' commands until they gave it a gentle pat on the face!" The Captain angrily gestured the motion with his tentacles, using the pilot's prismatic lobe as a stand-in for which to pet, much to said pilot's discomfort. "Poseidon's attack was even worse. This Great Old One held control over water, and was able to manipulate tidal forces to continually crush, rip, and tear away at the settlement's infrastructure until the Colony's sea-based settlement was destroyed. Though surprisingly, there were no recorded casualties from Poseidon's assault."
Everyone was understandably confused at that last part. If the Great Old One was capable of controlling water so well that it could destroy the fortified buildings of massive aquatic cities, it should have easily been able to kill countless colonists on masse. The only conceivable way that there would be zero deaths from an attack like that would be if Poseidon was deliberately trying to avoid killing anyone, which didn't make any sense, since all the other entities seemed to be quite on-board with wiping out the colonists.
Alas, the Captain didn't elaborate, officially because no one asked him to, but mainly because he didn't want to. "The Colonists were forced to retreat deep underwater to their final refuge, where they remained safely out of reach from the entities. That was until around three hundred years ago, where a message was sent detailing an unregistered contagion that had affected the Colony's Shoggoths, mutating them into an unknown lifeform that attacked and induced similar mutations in all other lifeforms present, including the colonists. In a suicidal, last ditch attempt to contain the contagion, the Colony's underwater settlement was destroyed."
...Dakara was beginning to like this planet less and less with every mention of a settlement being destroyed, internally questioning why the Captain still thought that a planet with such an awful track record was still a viable place to drop civilians onto, especially when there were plenty of alternatives left. Unfortunately, due to social anxieties and the general fear of speaking against the Captain, he was unable to voice his concerns out loud.
"Now that I've given you all the general rundown of the information I am currently allowed to tell you, let's get to work on turning this living nightmareland infested with Zerg-like monstrosities into an astral paradise, the likes of which the Protoss and their Xel'Naga overlords can't even begin to imagine! Scan the planet for anomalies, we need to know what threats to expect."
"Sir, haven't the Xel'Naga been dead for at least-"
"Defide, I swear to fucking Yog, if you don't shut the fuck up-"
Dakara was not in charge of scanning for anomalies, seeing as he had no idea what half of the ship's systems actually did, but he was fairly 'OK' at pointing guns at things, so he searched the surface for any potential targets. Through LIDAR, he was able to detect numerous abnormal growths that covered a decent portion of the planet's surface. Given how they were all relatively similar in shape and appeared to consistently clump together in large masses, Dakara could confidently guess that these were buildings of some kind, likely built by the native humans, if they were still around. (It couldn't be the colonists, most of the structures only had four walls!)
"Huh..."
He continued his scans, (at least, that's what he hoped he was doing) and found that neither radar, lidar, nor crowbar, or any of his other instruments could detect anything on some sections of the planet, meaning that, according to the scans, there were several parts of the planet that literally did not exist.
"Huh?"
That didn't seem right. Confused by his findings, he tried to send the data to the Captain's holographic screen. What ended up happening however was Dakara forgetting to check the recipient's address before slamming a tentacle on SEND, resulting in the information going to the communications officer instead. Thankfully, Dadarade-te, the officer in question, was kind enough to not question Dakara's questionable display of conduct, and read it as if nothing was wrong.
"According to the radiometric readings, large portions of the planet are polluted with radioactive fallout due to unknown causes."
Ohh, now it made sense. He was wondering what that extra graph with the squiggly lines was about.
"Perhaps caused by a nuclear war fought between local factions." The Captain said plainly, more interested in the readings of the habitability scanners and any other ways to make his pilot stay quiet.
"Impossible." Dakara interjected. "The mammalians on the planet below are technologically underdeveloped, they have no capability of constructing nuclear warheads." He didn't actually know for sure, but no spacefaring civilization he had seen ever placed their structures that haphazardly.
"And..." Dadarade added to Dakara's remark while pressing assorted buttons. "There are none of the other side effects of a nuclear war of this scale present on the planet. If such was the case, the entire planet would have fallen into a nuclear winter."
"What about those purple clouds?" The Captain asked. "Those can't be natural. Any other ideas?"
"I've got it!" Came the familiar, raspy voice of a tiny Elder Thing at a workstation in the back of the room. Dakara recognized it as the same one that helped him get to the starship map, and since he had read the personnel files, he now knew the thing's name was 'Tovfefe-ar' the head of occult studies.
"Yes?" The Captain said, expectant. "Was there something you wanted to tell u-"
"Thaumaturgical sensors indicate that those are composed of a new form of mystical energy, which behaves similarly enough to radiation to be detected by radmeters, but is in fact magickal in nature!" Tovfefe said in a rush.
"Uh..." The Captain blinked. "I see-"
"Another interesting fact! The apeoid life-forms on the planet each seem to have high concentrations of ANOTHER new form of mystical energy inside of them! I'd imagine that they must have an excellent potential for magick in each one of them!"
"That's very interesting but-"
"It seems as though another form of life on the planet besides the 'Humans' is emitting the first form of mystical energy, and when they gather in large quantities, they create a bubble of magickal landscape!"
An awkward silence passed as everyone wondered if Tovfefe had finished his ramblings or not.
"...So..." The Captain meekly spoke up again. "Some kind of...terraforming?" He said, unsure.
Tovfefe's eyes slowly gravitated in the Captain's direction, until they were all staring at him.
A tense silence filled the room as the crew sat in anticipation for Tovfefe's explanation.
...
...
...
...
...
"I have absolutely NO IDEA!"
The crew stared, eyelids twitching.
"That's what makes this so great!" He continued with the most gleeful expression an Elder Thing could muster, oblivious to the deadpan looks of disappointment surrounding him, despite his own eyes shifting from place to place. "This is a totally new field of magickal research completely different from anything we've ever known!" Despite Megarkaruans being totally incapable of magic, Tovfefe was simply obsessed with it.
"Captain!" Tovfefe yelled again, eyes pointing to the tired Megarkaruan in question, who looked just about ready to give up. "I am requesting permission to report to the surface!" The Captain gave him a look. "W-With a military escort of course, to conduct further research on this phenomenon!"
Dakara meanwhile cringed at just how enthusiastic Tovfefe was about going to a planet potentially infested with sorcery-capable hostiles, and covered with nuclear fallout. He began to panic internally as he realized that the Captain granting this request would require him to accompany the absurdly enthusiastic Elder Thing to the surface of said planet. Fortunately, the Captain looked quite fed up with Tovfefe's shenanigans, and was unlikely to grant such a request.
Unfortunately, Dakara didn't consider that the Captain would also be just as likely to grant the request as a means to get rid of Tovfefe.
The Captain was rubbing several of his own closed eyes before sighing. "We won't know more about this planet until we send someone down, and scanning can only tell us so much, We need to know what we are dealing with before we can begin our recolonization mission that we were sent here for." The Captain turned his eyes upwards as if contemplating, tone of speech rising as much as Dakara's rising dread. "It would also be worthwhile to establish relations with the species below, a potentially magic-capable race that will not be overtly hostile towards us, and could potentially be allied with which would justify sending the entire Elder Thing population here on-the-wing." The Captain's eyes eventually settled on Tovfefe again. "I am authorizing you, as well as Commander Dakara, and a squad from the C.M.P.C, to go down to the planet and find out everything you can."
"Aww man..." Dakara muttered dejectedly as he got up, saluted the Captain, and began escorting Tovfefe to the hangar.