Alien Evolution System

Chapter 199 - Urth Vault III

Ragnar-Uruk. When the Collector heard that vocalization, it felt an immediate sense of connection draw it towards that term. It was as if a sense of alertness had washed over it, the same kind of predatory awareness that made its hairs stand on end, its sense sharpen, and its killing drive hone down to a razor's edge.

That term, though merely a tinkering vocalization, lingered with the Collector, and soon, it came to process why the word had such strangely significant impact upon it. This was a word of power, one that signified a great end and new beginning, and this word was one meant solely for the Collector.

This was the 'destiny' that the fighter known as 'Kui' and this Jotnar spoke of. This was the destiny that they believed the Collector would bear. Yet, was this destiny one that the Collector could reconcile with the duty invested unto it by the Collective?

The Collector determined it was so. This concept of ending and beginning was one that the Collective would enforce regardless. An end of all life on the planet as was known now. A new beginning within the Collective.

And yet, as the Collector formulated these thoughts, it could not shirk an underlying sensation that no, this destiny and the Great Purpose of the Collective at some level was fundamentally incompatible. The end and beginning the Collective promised was not that which Ragnar-Uruk promised.

Regardless, this was a matter of semantical thought that the Collector would waste time considering for it had no real impact upon its goal of destroying the existing divine power structure and obtaining might towards that end.

"Ragnar-Urukk shall happen," said the voice. "This is ordained. The White Voice may falter, grow weak, and even die, and then this world shall plummet into the clutches of Undeath for an unfathomable amount of time.

But always, the cycle of life and death will continue. The New Gods will die at the hands of the rot they have created and all reams will be devoid of life. Over time, however, life will return in new shape and form, and that life, we shall shepherd, guide, and grow when we awaken.

But Ragnar-Urukk need not be an End of such massive scale. Lives may yet be saved.

The End of the New Gods and the restoration of the World Shards – this will be End enough to restore the White Voice, the world, and, consequently, nourish life that exists now.

To that end, you require power. That is why you are here, searching for threads of our once great civilization for power that may yet be salvaged.

I tell you now that there is no power pure enough to challenge the New Gods but the pure might of the Shards themselves. Should you still have the might the challenge the New Gods and topple them, without the Shards, you cannot restore the World.

To that end, when this message ends, this Origin Rune – the rune from which all others flows – shall be engraved into your being. With this rune, you may accessall our artifacts, magic, and marvels, what little of them remain from the devastating wars and plundering that the Draconids have wrought upon our people over the centuries should you find them.

The Origin Rune, coupled with your Shard, shall also grant you connection to all other Shards of the World. You shall know where they are so that your journey may be guided properly.

The Shard you possess already grants you connection to the gateway we utilized to enter our slumber. That gateway, however, is sealed, and no power exists within it anymore to prevent any with ill intent to reach us as we dream of a better world.

However, the Origin Rune shall become both a key and a catalyst, inputting enough mana into the gateway to allow you to reach us and to bring us back when the time is right, when the world is cleansed of the New Gods and ready to be seeded with new and proper life once more.

Or, if you require our war power, we will be glad to aid you, especially in a fight to claim the Shard that the Draconids have taken upon themselves. 

On a journey to harness the Shards, the only information we can provide is that which pertains to this land.

There are three Shards in this wintry land. One, the Shard of Succession of my peoples, you hold now.

The other lies in control of the Draconids.

The final one in the clutches of the Facestealer.

Of the Facestealer, we hold little record of, for it has never left its territory for over a millennia and a half. To obtain their Shard is one that will be a mystery, but one that we are hopeful will be one unraveled as your destiny fulfills itself.

The Draconids, however, you will find that we have vast and bloody knowledge of.

As a people, they emerged five hundred years past the Convergence. They came from the corpse of the Great Winter Dragon Fimbulvaltr where a winter storm surges so strongly that not even we Jotnar, masters of this icy land, could pierce.

We know not how they were formed, and it is a mystery that confounded us all the way to the day we decided to enter our slumber. Their appearance was too quick, too organized, and their purpose so geared unifyingly geared towards destruction when natural life is meant to propagate and restore that many of our Seers thought they were creations of Fimbulvaltr's remnant hate against the New Gods.

Yet, that should mean that the Draconids would hunt only the New Gods, but they set their fangs upon us, and from them, our peoples that had known only peace, never truly fighting, never developing magic and artifacts meant for war, knew only great misery and suffering.

The Cataclysm rose, a conflict between Draconid and Jotnar that lasted five hundred further years, a conflict of immense scale and yet one that is known not by any others in this world, not the New Gods, not the Common Body, none. Hidden as we are in these lands so shrouded with its primal veil.

There is one trait of the Draconids that we understood thoroughly, and one that made them impossible to fend against over time.

They were creatures of change. Over generations, perhaps even faster, they could change their forms, suiting themselves to destroy us.

The great golems our people can create, constructs meant to build cities and homes, were purposed to war, and for the first century, the golems slaughtered Draconids by the many thousands.

Then, a change in the tides of war. The Draconids developed a magical, electrical pulse capable of rendering our connections with our proudly fashioned golems inert, and from then on, they surged against us.

They created their own leader, one known as Valtr, one who had managed to take a Shard of Succession  from the Great Winter Dragon's corpse, and they devised means to enter the slumbering spaces of the Old Gods, devouring them as they slept, usurping their powers for their destructive end.

With this might, the Jotnar were doomed, and soon, our Shard was to fall to them.

But we could not let that occur. For the Draconids are not a force for the good of this world. They are solely destructive. They claim to hear the White Voice, but theirs is a false one, one that spurs them only to war.

The White Voice destroys, but she also builds. She represents the Cycle of Life and Death, but the Draconids know not life, only death.

The Draconids and their false White Voice cannot be allowed to stand. They may bring forth an End, but it will be an End that may well raze life in its entirety from the world and its realms. They will fight the New Gods and they may slaughter many, but the wake of their destruction will only leave Undeath to reign supreme. 

To defeat the Draconids, our peoples have devised one final hope, though far too late for us to wield it. 

In our travels, we secured a piece of the Scalebane: a plague the New Gods once developed to fell the ancient dragons, but one that should fell the Draconids also, for as they are birthed from the Great Winter Dragon, so too should they bosses that dragon's blood.

The few fine Seers left in our midst have made their own changes to the Scalebane plague, ensuring that it will lay waste to the Draconids, and this is the final and greatest treasure I can leave unto you."