Episode 6: The Green Tide
Chapter 3: An Impending Disaster
Thought of the day:
"If Murphy's Law says that what can go wrong, will go wrong... do you get RICH by trying to become POOR?"
Anakin's stay at Randland Station has been quite a unique experience, even for a prescient, galaxy-trotting Jedi, and so far, things have gone smoothly.
But of course, since we are talking about Murphy's Law, it wasn't very long until something went horribly wrong... but not in the way you'd expect from a multiverse at war. The moon-sized armored space station most certainly didn't instantly get surprised and bum-rushed by raging abominations. That would be too easy, and also poor writing by the Maker's standards. The crisis was a little more subtle, it was an enigma. For now...
"You've got to be kidding me. How could anything like this actually happen?"
Ziggs' expression of disbelief was totally understandable. His Jaeger comrades were totally skeptical about the most recent bad news too. But Anakin's incredibly disturbing vision completely validated what Professor Cecil B. Heimerdinger was telling everyone.
"Just minutes ago, on our HoloNet monitors, my science team and I witnessed a whole solar system's population vanish without a trace. As if they've ceased to exist. Is it true that Anakin saw images of a comparable event occur inside his mind?"
The Jedi nodded.
"I'll repeat myself, it's like countless souls cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced forever. That's the only way I can describe it. The people in my nightmare simply... disappeared. And you're informing us that a settlement of that size literally blinked out of existence?"
"The work of a coward, preying on innocent civilians, albeit the most powerful coward in the multiverse," Thianna growled. "Why can't our enemies come right to us, so I can punch them more?"
"Probably because our enemies are a lot smarter than we give them credit for," Noelle stated.
"A disaster of this magnitude demands our utmost attention," Keyleth declared. "We should head to the Tertius System, the place where this mass disappearance happened."
"I have a bad feeling about this," Sidon said. "But even if we fail, and tyranny flourishes, bringing a new dark age, at least we fought for what we believed in."
The party made a beeline for the hangar bay and boarded a Corvus Blackstar stealth transport shuttle, which had the uncanny capability of cloaking itself, so nobody could see it, while sensor systems didn't register a thing. Then they were off to inspect ground zero at Tertius.
After dropping out from hyperspace and approaching the intended destination, Thianna (who was piloting the Blackstar) initiated a flyby of the third and (formerly) most populous planet in the system, Tertius III.
The dreadful sight of the planet's desecrated surface actually creeped out the frost giantess, which was saying something, since Thianna had fought in thousands of battles across the stars, taking on truly terrifying opponents and grotesque monsters in the process. She only expressed scarred silence in reaction to what she glimpsed.
Suffocating fumes of dark magic filled the atmosphere, which were almost certainly responsible for the mass disappearance. Similar fumes were present on all the other worlds in the system, too. It was similar to what the Upside Down looked like, minus the gigantic fungi, dead organisms and tentacles, so it wasn't exactly clear whether the voice Anakin heard in the obelisk was responsible or not.
"What do you think the gas did to everyone?," Noelle wondered. "There's no clue behind the exact fate of the populace."
"You know what? Let's take a sample of the vapor," Anakin suggested. "Then we can see what it's made of, and what it does to people who breathe it in."
"I'm way ahead of you on that," Keyleth said. "Now deploying my bio-analysis probe! It's what Druids use to test the chemical makeup of pollutants in a natural ecosystem."
The Blackstar released a small droid spacecraft, barely bigger than a large pumpkin, which flew into the atmosphere of Tertius III and gathered enough foul toxic air to produce several dozen flask samples in a chemical laboratory.
It came back to its mothership intact, and successfully docked with the Blackstar, with no damage of any kind. Things were getting really weird... but then Ziggs received an emergency call from Randland Station.
"Guys, we're getting an SOS alert from the station! They say an unknown vessel has entered Gordasha's gravity well! And according to the personnel's observations, it's unlike any spacecraft people in the Republic have ever seen, in terms of appearance. I hope I get to blow it up."
The party was briefly unsure of what course of action to take. Sidon chose to be decisive, though.
"There's only one way to find out what our new potential complication is, and it's quite obvious."
"You heard what the fishy guy said," Anakin told everyone. "Fire up the hyperdrive!"
When the Blackstar shuttle arrived back at Randland Station, the first thing the crew noticed was the enormous silver and cyan orb rapidly approaching the orbital defense network.
"What the hell is that THING?," Thianna shouted.
"It ain't like any spaceship I've ever seen before on my travels," Ziggs said.
Whatever the orb was, it was coming closer and closer, and it wasn't long until the gunners officers aboard Randland Station requested permission from the Jaegers to fire on the unidentified object.
"This is Gunnery Sergeant Hopper, coming in. What is the recommended procedure for dealing with this likely threat?"
Thianna messaged him back with an order you'd totally see coming:
"Over. Blow that thing to kingdom come. Leave no survivors."
However, her teammates (save for perhaps Ziggs) were not as eager to be this extreme.
"Hold on, Frostborn! Can't you see that we don't even know who this object belongs to?!," Keyleth said, somewhat exasperated.
"We can't take any chances with a possible breach in our fortifications," Thianna replied. "Sergeant Hopper, commence fire with a quad laser cannon barrage."
Keyleth and Noelle tried to cancel the order, but it was too late. Several quad laser batteries, Randland Station's main close in weapons systems (CIWS,) locked onto the silver and blue orb, and carved it up like a ripe melon with pinpoint accuracy, using beams hotter than the surface of an average yellow star.
Anakin was furious with this resolution.
"Thianna, you asinine fool! Do you realize the ramifications of this? Blowing up a spacecraft we have no intel on could legitimately start yet another intergalactic conflict!!!"
"That just means more fights for me!," Thianna said, grinning maniacally.
"I'm gonna knock that smile off your face," Anakin threatened.
"COME ON OVER, THEN," the frost giantess shot back.
"Both of you, SHUT UP!," Sidon ordered. "There's something bizarre within view."
"What is it?," asked Noelle.
Ziggs zoomed in on the wreckage of the orb with the Blackstar's integrated electrobinoculars.
"The destroyed object has released a probe, which attached itself to our command center. Someone is attempting to make it inside the station."
"We better intercept them, then," Keyleth stated. "Then again, we did blow up their ship. The person who is probably just trying to make contact with us is going to be pretty pissed off."
The Blackstar shuttle docked at a smaller hangar right next to Randland Station's command module, and Anakin led the way inside, expecting an ugly surprise from the angry crew of the shattered spherical spacecraft.
What the Jaegers got instead was anticlimactic in the extreme.
The sole pilot of the sphere craft was a sea otter. Not just an ordinary one, though, but a sea otter that walked upright on two legs, spoke numerous complex languages, and wore a classy wizard's robe, as well as a fancy pointed hat with feathers attached to it.
He was still mad, though, of course.
"How idiotic do you mortals have to be, blowing up my only means of travel across dimensions? Can't you understand that I've spent millennia trying to get to the Milky Way, just to help save you from imminent ruin?"
"You're expecting us to understand your motives when you wouldn't even try to communicate with us?," Thianna grumbled. "If you told us why you flew so close to our space station, we wouldn't have perceived you as a threat!"
"Be quiet, Thianna, you're not helping," said Anakin. "Let us introduce ourselves before you tell us why you're here. I'm Anakin Skywalker, and these are my comrades-in-arms and friends to the end, Keyleth, Ziggs, Thianna, Sidon, and Noelle."
The highly evolved sea otter knew how to respond, as these people needed to hear his name first before any further action could be made. After this, he summarized everything he intended to tell the party.
"My full name is Montgomery Bernard Oum... but you can just call me Monty Oum. Or just Monty. To give you some insight on why I'm here, what my background is, and who I am, I'll need to delve into a lot of primordial history. Sit tight, this is a lengthy tale."
"In the long gone epochs, billions of years ago, the Otterman Empire was one of the first nations of the multiverse, alongside the all-powerful Time Lords. In these days, the Time Lords spent their time seeding worlds with intelligent life, and building civilizations from scratch."
"But a great, nameless evil, hatred and malice incarnate, sought to corrupt the Time Lords' technology and use it against them, for the purpose of tyranny and destruction instead of creation and equality. This is where the genocidal Dalek menace originated, from an event you all have heard of, but know nothing about: The War In Heaven. The current iterations of Daleks pale in comparison to what they used to be, when the Nameless One first created them."
"When the Time Lords fought back against the very incarnation of hatred and malice, we sea otters aided them by mass-producing a device that could literally bring back the dead without any negative consequences. When the war finally ended, because of the Doctor's ultimate sacrifice, and the subsequent annihilation and rebirth of the multiverse, the schematics behind the life-giving, death-undoing machine, the Eternity Matrix, were lost to time, just like the rest of the primordial gadgets... until now.
"From the information I had received, back when I was in the Triangulum Galaxy, 3,000 years ago, there was a prediction that Time Lord and Otterman devices would start to be uncovered by archaeologists in the future. Naturally, I wanted to find them before the Nameless One and his minions could."
"The good news is, the nameless evil is still sealed away in his prison, in the crevices between dimensions, and your Galactic Republic has a head start on recovering the relics. The bad news is, that eldritch abomination lacking a name won't remain in the seal for very much longer. His most trusted and powerful servant, the Dark Lord, VECNA, is making progress as we speak. Time is ticking. And if my worst fears are correct, Vecna might be disguising himself as one of the Republic's own leaders."
"I have spent millennia trying to search for an army of heroes who could assist me in the quest to find the primordial artifacts and use them to stop the Nameless One from returning, foiling Vecna's plot. The modern Galactic Republic seems to be the best hope against the blight, even though it has many flaws. I have read tales of the valiant and heroic, of individuals who sacrificed everything for a righteous cause they were devoted to. I only hope I can honor my ancestors, as the last of the Ottermen, by trusting you as the free realms' first and last line of defense..."
After that long explanation, there was yet another period where no one talked, which Anakin ended after a minute or so:
"So that's the true scale of things out there. We are now fully aware of the main adversary we're fighting against. How could our military's intel fail to uncover these hidden details after a thousand years of war?... That being said, Monty, I do have questions to ask, ones that you'll probably have an answer for."
"Of course. The fate of the free realms and nations might depend on it."
The veteran Jedi handed Monty a transparent flask full of the unknown toxic gas collected from the deserted remnants of Tertius.
"Can you tell what this is?"
The immortal otter wizard inspected it for a few moments using an instrument similar to a microscope, then suddenly had a look of ghastly horror on his face. His thick brown fur actually turned white for a moment, signifying that he had caught sight of something that mere mortals were never meant to see.
"When did you sample this material?"
"Just under 8 hours ago," Thianna replied. "What's the matter?"
"This is one of the Dark Lord Vecna's bioweapons. The Eschaton Fungal Infection. It turns sapient and sentient beings into hyper-aggressive, musclebound green monsters. Anakin, provide me with whatever information you have available. A disaster of biblical proportions is about to take place."
"To put one moment in a nutshell," Anakin said, "When I was on the forest moon of Pandora, in a spaceport that had been razed to the ground by some unknown enemy, my closest partners and I came across an obelisk made of pitch black rock, which spoke to us in a menacing, monstrous voice. It said that the Dark Side will rise again. Who do you think that was?"
Monty shook his head.
"Vecna was trying to mess with your head and drive you permanently insane. I'm afraid his legions are about to go on an all-out unholy jihad rampage. And the fungal plague inside that flask you handed me is where the troops are coming from."
"So that unveils the reason why everyone in the Tertius system disappeared," Sidon remarked. "They were infected with spores from the Eschaton Fungus, and some kind of evil magic was used to move them somewhere else in the vastness of space, so they could complete their metamorphosis and begin preparing to invade Republic worlds."
"How could Vecna prepare such a dangerous and unstoppable army in under a Terran day?," Noelle asked.
"It's because he's been waiting for the perfect time to do this," Monty said grimly. "Once he had the means to create a fungal disease with such a horrific effect, he proceeded to distribute it as rapidly as possible, and make sure the transformation of the infected was equally swift. We're in for a terrible time..."
"And when might that be?," Anakin asked, not wanting to know the truth.
Then a Yordle scientist from the command and control center interrupted the discussion.
"My lords, you might want to see this. Take a look outside the observation deck."
The heroes hurried to Randland Station's main viewing area, where crew members could get the clearest picture of the void of space (it was used by astronomers to make detailed maps of intergalactic space.)
Just outside Gordasha's gravitational field was an enormous, dwarf planet sized version of the obelisk Anakin saw on Pandora, at least 200 kilometers in diameter and 900 kilometers in height.
It had emerged from a glowing green vortex, bypassing the entire solar system's outer defenses, and countless tiny splinters of itself were breaking off and accelerating towards the battle network protecting the Forge World.
"Oh, crap," Anakin muttered, realizing what this all meant.
The battle begins...
Good luck surviving the FUNGAL FALLOUT.
Big muscular green-skinned monsters... hmm... I wonder what that term might be referring to. It should be obvious by now.