RP Buried Beneath The Tears of Ankh'Yula, Escape From Shu

[Ira]

-Welcome, to Shu-

​

Shu is not a beautiful moon. Its dark skies are permeated with a thick, grey miasma that holds strong over every inch of visible surface. Light barely filters through the atmosphere from the nearby blue star, but this does not bother the Shu-ites. Shu not a terribly large moon, there are no more than 10,000 continuous, planet spanning levels of hive steel beneath its surface. In addition, there are no more than 5,000 surface levels of industries. But this too, bothers not the Shu-ites.

For the Shu-ites are a simple people. Squat, thickly built, hairless dwarves, Shu-ites are genetically bred to see in the dark, be practically immune to industrial pollutants, and live no more than fifty years to the hour. They were made to dig in the ground of Shu, to extract the powerful and valuable minerals within, and bring them back for sure by their gods. For hundreds of years, they have toiled and labored faithfully without revolt.

But the minerals have dried up.



For the past fifty years, no ship has left Shu with fresh, virgin material. Instead, the Shu-ites dutifully tear apart that which is not needed and that which they could do without, sending it along as tribute instead. The illegal communities and black markets, having thrived before in the hive-steel tunnels, now fight the Shu-ites tooth and claw. Their neighborhoods and their townships were the first deemed 'unneeded.' As a result, an unending war has been waging all over and under the surface of Shu.

It is not uncommon to see soldiers imported in, warriors to fight the corruption and illegal communities. Nor is it uncommon to see Shu-ites carted out by the thousands to underground corpse-farms, where their bodies feed the Deadhead bees to produce the narcotic 'Black Honey.' With every death, the illegal trades grow, and the Ankh'Yulians seem to allow anyone to leave Shu who can afford the toll. Even more so if they can afford the 'look the other way' toll. The gods are nothing if not pure capitalists.

But something is changing. It can be felt in the heavy, smog laden air on the surface. The Shu-ites seem tenser than usual, their guttural cries and growls grow all the more desperate with each passing day. Something is wrong. Even you can feel it, whether you are crawling in the darkest levels or scraping across the highest air-platforms.

For whatever reason, you have come to Shu. Perhaps you are trapped here, perhaps you have been brought to wage war in the name of the gods, or perhaps you seek other disgruntled sentients to add to a war machine. For the log of the gods, describe it to me.

Why are you here?

 

[illirica]

An Explanation

Shu did not understand the value of its own dead. It found value in other things: in work and in steel, and in these recent times when there was not enough of either, in life. The corpses resulting from the burgeoning war were seen as a necessary evil, not as the desirable product of the process. Unfathomable as this might have been, the result was that there were others who were quite willing to freeze the bodies in cryo-fluid and ship them off elsewhere in vast transports.

Eshe would have preferred to be elsewhere. This was not her world and these were not her people, and she did not like being separated from her canopic fluid storage by such a distance. She could operate for seven months after an injection, but the universe was vast, and she did not yet want to become a part of that unthinking emptiness. The other Sekhem, Ammon, was returning to Duat Mechane with the collected shipment of bodies, and her place was to remain here and continue collections until he returned. She would take back the next shipment, in her time.

For someone who thought themselves accustomed to solitude, Eshe found herself missing his presence. Even his strange tendency to hold conversations with his ghoul-Jackals, though it had annoyed her at first, seemed conspicuously absent. Eshe supposed she could do likewise and hold a conversation with one of those, but puppeting their voices into words of her own creation seemed too much an oddity. She preferred hers to be silent when speech wasn't necessary, as if they chose to keep their counsel hidden.

She knew, of course, that they had no counsel, for once the personalized fuel-fluid had run out, the unpersonalized productions of the Resurgence Machine would offer only mobility, not thought. Some feared the transition; others welcomed it. Eshe had yet to decide. For now, her thoughts were her own - and though her orders were not, she must follow them nonetheless. The dead must come to Duat, and if they did not do so on their own, then the Black Jackals would be there to herd them there.