The Samples

 

Hey, so this has some stuff that can be pretty disturbing. I out and out encourage bad behavior for this game. Catharsis is best when people have it coming, and the sting of tragedy hits harder when those that have it coming don't. There's some sexual harassments and assault that happens. Nothing too terribly explicit, but it is there. Just keep that in mind please. 

Another thing to note: this is being played out betwixt friends, and in this case spouses. The session was played out in deeply black humor, with full permission from all parties involved.  Everyone at the table walked in knowing what boundaries everyone else had and we had a lot of "laugh or cry" moments happen. We chose to laugh.

Covered entirely in wildly differently colored trees, Ilkouzh was a rainbow marble in a sea of stars and black. The planet hangs closed enough to its sister Talteen that its inhabitants can see Ilkouzh, even in broad daylight. It's a familiar reminder of the deceptive nature of beauty as well as how close pure evil can truly get to anyone's heart. So to say it was disconcerting to be approaching that planet would be a bit of an understatement. But Aurel, Otilia, and Andrei didn't have much time to think about it. They'd stolen a lander and needed to get it out of shared orbit with Talteen, where the Casnic would no longer be able to track them.

 

There was a section of the planet that was orange; Aurel and Otilia (his co-pilot) set down in that area, into a canyon with all sorts of strange vents and openings, some compromising the walls.  Trees with every shade of orange adorning their needles grew out of every possible surface of the canyon, except for a little area that was clear. It was for this open space that that Otilia set the landing sequence for, after yet another suggestion that she should join Aurel in his seat. These offers were frequent and more than explicit.

 

Four grey-skinned men came running into the clearing, one of them holding a bag, just as the lander bay doors were lowering. Andrei, the mechanic, met them in the bay. "Please help us! We need to leave! Now!"

 

"Now now," said Aurel, coming from the cockpit, "What seems to be the issue?"

 

"We have something that needs to be gotten back to our friends before it-"

 

They all heard it. The whispers.

 

What they have in that bag can make you a respected man again. Aurel flinched, but said nothing. He had been exiled from his community for his.... tastes and predilections... and had never fully lived it down.

 

You can do a lot better than that pervert. There's a cute boy, somewhere on this planet, waiting for you. Where was the lie for sixteen year old Otilia? Aurel had taken Otilia in after she was exiled for being a hedge wizard and had taught her everything he knew about lander piloting. And had also tried to molest her at the drop of a dime. Otilia went to bed with a pistol, every night. She was glad she had it.

 

That man over there, sure looks like the one who killed your dog, doesn't he? The one you've been looking for, after all this time? And the whispers were right. He did look like the man who had killed his dog. That dog had meant everything to Andrei.

 

And that's when it came into view: a stag-like thing, spikes instead of fur and eyes. The four grey men screamed and pushed their way into the lander.

 

Andrei pushed the dog-killer out, just as the door was closing. But the dog-killer grabbed Andrei's hand and pulled, just as the door swung closed.

 

Everyone heard the blood-curdling screech.

 

The next few minutes were screams of rage and anguish. Andrei lay on the ground, blood spraying from the stump in his shoulder, all around the hold. Otilia took over flying while Aurel took a welder to Andrei's stump, flesh blackening and letting out a horrible smell under its influence.

"He pushed our Dmitri out!" shouted one of the men as the lander fled into the air from the creature.  Aurel dragged Andrei back to the cockpit, the three grey men following. "We want him hung! Now!"

"Whoa, slow down there!" shouted Aurel, who had backed up to Otilia's chair, and began to fish around for the small pisotl he'd found on Talteen. "None of us knew Andrei would do that. Why don't we figure out why he did it? He's never done like this before." Aurel kept talking, despite the fact that he could see Otilia's rack under her dress, rising and falling, from the position he was standing.

"... you're saying you want a trial?"

"What, your people don't do that on Ilkouzh?"

"You can't be serious, we watched him-"

"Do you really want to be the type of person who just kills someone in cold blood?" asked Aurel, as he casually slid a hand over the front of Otilia's seat, down inside her dress. Just for a quick squeeze of courage. 

Otilia jumped as the old man's hand slid against her skin. Grabbing the hand offered her Otilia juked forward, slinging Aurel over her shoulder and the chair, on reflex. The lander crashed into an orange-lined canyon wall, knocking half a dozen trees loose. They fell  to the ground with a sound almost as loud as the lander hitting the wall. The wall was hollow, and the lander went right through, destroying an engine and part of the hull. "What the hell is wrong with you??" Otilia screamed when she got her breath back.

"Me?? Keep your hands on the controls!! It's a miracle we're all alive. How dare you!" raged Aurel. "You wrecked my ship and you want to scream at me, like the child that you are??" Otilia opened her mouth. And then shut it. She did wreck the lander, that much was true.

"We're... we're near our base," said one of the grey men in the awkward silence that followed. "We can take this one-armed murderer and try him. We're not animals, after all. And you two should come too. No need to condemn you because of what he did."

The group gingerly made their way inside the wall of the canyon, into fully furnished rooms, rotting with age. "I thought these were canyon walls" said Aurel.

"No, these were skyscrapers, before the corruption spread," replied one of the grey men.

"Skyscrapers?" Otilia raised an eyebrow.

"You saw how high they reached, didn't you?" answered another man, with a chuckle.

Andrei woke up with one less arm, the other one bound to his waist. He was being dragged by Aurel. "Hey, let me up!" Andrei shouted. "Why the hell am I tied up??"

"I'm not sure what you want, given what you did," Aurel said as he helped Andrei up, disdainfully regarding his mechanic. "But I'd sure like to know why you got us into this mess."

"Fuck off," Andrei growled. "You're selling me out!"

"Then you'll have to deal with them," Aurel stated.

As they left the building they'd crashed in Andrei noticed all the trees were not only metallic but that they had data ports. These trees were not fully organic. He kept his observations to himself. Stepping over the metallic wooden roots which snaked through cracked concrete. They made their way to another skyscraper, and ended up in front of an airlock. Going through it they found themselves in in a cavern that seemed to stretch on for forever, lit by a ceiling-wide skylight. Row upon row of strange yet wholly organic plants could be seen, far as the eye could behold. Otilia snuck a leaf. Her eyes weren't deceiving her; these weren't Talteen plants. If only they could get back to their home planet they could be filthy rich.

There was a shriek of glass above them. Down swept a vaguely humanoid figure with feathered wings. Glass, steel, and klaxons rained upon the group. The grey humans pulled out pistols and began to fire upon the avian. "Shit, the Collective is here!! Incoming!" one of them shouted.

Another avian flew in through the broken skylight. And the another four. And another five. A few divebombed Aurel, Andrei, and Otilia. Otilia grabbed Andrei (who'd just slipped out of his bonds) and cast the only spell she knew: a wall of fire, which repelled the divebombers.

Someone new has joined us, Otilia heard in her mind. Welcome, welcome! the other avians chimed in, even as they swerved away from the fire wall she'd made. 

Aurel was suddenly in the air, claws wrapped around his arms. Grabbing onto the beating wings Aurel guided the avian back to the ground. Feathers began to sprout out of his skin in an eruption of blood and corruption. We have yet another! These cannot be natives of Ilkouzh, remarked one of the avians.

Aurel could feel Otilia's mind in this collective. Oh, this is fantastic, he thought with a pleasure that made Otilia's skin crawl. We can now be as closed as I've always wanted us to be.

Other humans came running with cries like "Protect the samples! They're all we have left!" echoing from their trigger pulls.

Andrei saw his chance. He took a run at a low flying avian and managed to straddle it; feathers erupted from Anderi's skin. Don't think I forgot about you, buddy, he thought into the collective as he forced the avian he'd straddled to divebomb Aurel.

A low rumbled washed over the cavern. A gigantic bipedal tank jumped atop the building and howled. Feathers were sticking out between its metal plates, which also bristled with weaponry. Feathers burst from Otilia's skin as she looked upon the thing. 

The feathered tank roared and Andrei's mind went blank, for a moment. When he came back he looked at the plants with the hatred of the Collective.

The sky went dark with all the new avians flooding into the building at the command of their queen. The last fully organic plant life on Ilkouzh was ripped apart and desecrated by creatures who had previously given their everything to protect it. Not a single human was unchanged by the invasion. 

Nobody noticed two feathered humans running away from the orgy of violence and betrayal, in opposite directions.