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Maxsaeli — The Tale of the Worm - part 1/3
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Published: 2022-01-18 15:29:20 +0000 UTC; Views: 4324; Favourites: 51; Downloads: 1
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Description
In the Age before Creation, a universe was a cold and uncaring place.
A hopeless and barren void where all things alive where destined to face slow and inevitable demise in the chasm of primeval chaos.
But besides that, it was also a time of Primordial Entities – ancient and powerful beings whose existence was inferred from the numerous marks they left upon the face of the early universe. And while some of them at least seemed to be benevolent toward the fleeting lesser lifeforms, the other were more than willing to thrive in the unending decay and ruination that this primordial age entailed.
And among these vile creatures, the entity existed known simply as “The Worm”.
A singular being with a thousand bodies, who managed to outlive the end of its primal age – and spend uncountable millennia trying to restore the world back to its original from by any cost!
A being whose influence runs like a red thread throughout the entire history of Assembly as we know it – erased by the infamous “Curse of Oblivion ” and only recently rediscovered thanks to the hard work of numerous historians across the entire world.
This is a full chronicle of this creature.
This is the tale of the Worm.
* * *
Origins
When the Founders had built their Ark and ventured into their fabled pilgrimage to the Heart of the Universe, they discovered what would later be called the “Road of the Graves”.
That was a name given to a number of potentially habitable planets visited by Founders along the way. All of them were located by the radio-signatures clearly indicating the presence of intelligent life.
All of them beared signs of rich and well-developed civilizations.
And yet all of them were desolate and void.
Disfigured by a multitude of various seemingly mundane cataclysms – wars, asteroid impacts, ecosystem disruptions and industrial catastrophes of massive proportions.
This vast collection of dead realms had been taken as an evidence showing how hostile to the intelligent life the universe truly was – ready to crush it with its cold and indifferent hands at any moment – and eventually became one on the prime reason behind the founding of the Creacon – a hub of intelligence in the heart of space! Made to protect and preserve it – and the rest of the Assembly had formed around it, like braches from the stem.
And so the Creation had happened – giving shape to the once formless cosmos and marking the end of primordial age!
But centuries later, the Founders have reexamined their old records – revered almost like the Holly Texts by that point – and upon inspecting them with a fresh eye, they had noticed something rather… strange. A pattern left unnoticed back then, but now obvious in retrospect…
A pattern that had no reason to be there, and yet it was!
Indeed, most of those dead realms were lost to the mundane causes – but there was also something else. Some unseen force catalyzing, accelerating the process of destruction.
An otherwise slow decline was often followed by the unreasonably sudden demise. The ruins bore signs of active demolishing even when the cause of extinction had nothing to do with the warfare. And in many cases, various indicators of environmental damage like poisoned atmospheres or gigantic mining quarries – initially assumed to be a direct cause for the respective civilizations’ fall – turned out to be created only after the society had already supposedly collapsed.
All of this considered, the Founders had arrived to the only possible conclusion – not only the universe was incredible hostile toward intelligent life, but there was also some kind of elusive, hidden thing that was actively participating in this state of affairs.
And that, right there, was the first evidence of what would be later known as “The Worm”.
* * *
Investigations
From that moment onward, century after century, the Founders along with their closest associates tried to piece the evidence together, so they could uncover the mystery of the Worm.
The exact origin of it – as it is with all Primordial Beings in general – was never truly revealed. Numerous theories were proposed – some argued that it came from regular, flesh-and-blood creatures exposed to some kind of arcane influences. Others suggested that it was a purely cosmic being, evolves directly in the void of outer space. And some even claimed that it was an artificial creation akin to the Elder Gods – a relic from some bygone interstellar civilization that preceded the Assembly by the span of countless millennia.
But in the end of the day, nobody had discovered the true answer – and the only thing certain about the Worm was that it has already been there before the Founders were born.
And the Founder’s forebears.
And their forebears’ forebears…
Way, way before the very first sludge of microbial live had appeared deep within the waters of the Founders’ long-abandoned Homeworld, the Worm was already there. Spreading through the formless universe. Feasting upon the ruins of the dead realms!
According the researches, the life cycle of the Worm worked more-or-less as follows:
- The individual worms were able to traverse space freely via some manner of biologically mediated wormholes – no pun intended – targeting planets capable of maintaining the sentient life. After reaching the planet’s atmosphere, the worm released about a few dozens of egg and died – with its body being destroyed either during entry or upon the impact.
- The eggs were dispersed around the planet and hatched into larvae. These larvae then buried themselves deep into the ground – tens of kilometers beneath the earth – and morphed into cysts, entering the state of anabiosis. In this state, they were able to persist for millennia, constantly scanning the surface – waiting for the emergence of intelligent life.
- If the intelligence did evolve, the cysts started to actively monitor its state. It was suggested that they could even produce some highly specialize beings to crawl up to the surface and witness the natives directly – but it was never confirmed.
- When the civilizations finally reached the point of their inevitable demise, the cysts erupted! Thousands of wormlings were released onto the surface to demolish and consume the remains of civilization, draining the residual energy that it managed to gather. Apparently, they were especially fond of consuming the mined up fossil fuels.
- After the feast was over, the wormlings gathered into multiple swarms and merge together, forming gigantic cocoons. From that cocoons, the adult worms emerged, leaving the planet with explosive propulsion and venturing back into the space, where they could infest even more unsuspecting realms.
It is unknown what might have caused such an absurdly overcomplicated life cycle.
But the main theory the Founders came up with suggested that initially, the ancestral worms were indifferent toward intelligence and only targeted the planets with lush and rich biospheres, capable of producing large amounts of biomass to satisfy their astronomical hunger. But as the time went by, a vague consciousness started to develop within the worm-kind. Not an individual consciousness the Founders were familiar with, but more of a hive-mind type of thing – a vast and interconnected network of minds, where thoughts were able to pass freely from one individual to another, even from a parent to its progeny.
While originally developed to coordinate individual swarms in the final stages of their life cycles – the ones with the whole “merging into cocoons” thing – these networks had become progressively stronger over centuries, eventually allowing adult worms from different planets to share their memories and thoughts.
And in these webs of thoughts, the intelligence had emerged.
A vague, ephemeral intelligence. Never quite there, constantly phasing in and out of existence – but the intelligence nonetheless.
And as its worms were spreading, the intelligence started to notice the patterns here and there.
Planets that generate a lot of biomass usually have creatures that are aware.
When certain conditions are met, some of these creatures can become especially aware and start to build some strange and curious stuff. With this stuff, they start to draw the energy from the planet, collecting it in the neat and refined form that was easy to consume. If you try to consume it, however, they will get angry and attack – but if you just wait a little, they will all eventually die out, allowing you to take what they managed to collect for yourself!
This strategy turned out to be superior to the blind consumption of biomass – and so over time, the Worm had slowly shifted its focus toward the planets capable of hosting the intelligent life exclusively.
Thus, the harvesting of dead civilization – tearing down their fallen kingdoms in search of fuels and energy deposits – became the main activity of the Worm. And the mind governing its actions even developed a kind of morbid fascination with the entire process. A wild, destructive curiosity – a quality that the Founders found both admiring and horrifying at the same time! It was hard to explain precisely what that feeling was – but allegedly, one Founder once tried to compare it to the curiosity of a child that smashes their toys with a hammer to see what’s inside.
But over time, the Worm grew impatient.
Too eager to consume! Less willing to wait!
Often revealing itself not after, but during, or sometimes even before the decline!
Ravaging the ruins of civilizations even when said civilizations were still very much alive. And by doing so, turning from a mere opportunist of death and destruction into a main perpetrator of thereof! The cosmic decay gave rise to the Worm – and now, the Worm had become its greatest harbinger.
So naturally, it didn’t want this decay to ever cease…
* * *
Conclusions
Initially, the Founders didn’t plan to remain in the Assembly for too long.
Their ultimate goal of reshaping the world into the one where life can endure and flourish was completed by the end of the Turmoil Age – and the Omega-Gates opened during Duel of Gods showed them that there were worlds beyond their one, sparking the idea of Exodus. The Assembly they created was more than capable of surviving and evolving on its own by that point, and so the Founders were free to leave it all behind, heading toward other places that might have needed their help…
But with the discovery of Worm, these plans had to be changed.
For shortly after figuring out its modus operandi, the Founders decided to check something.
They sent one of their own all the way back through the Road of Graves – straight to their long-abandoned Homeworld! And upon arriving to their ancient birthplace, the scout was met with a gloomy picture. The planet was desolate, and their kin was never to be found. And among the devastated ruins, the signs were visible not unlike those found on the other dead world.
The signs of the Worm!
The homeworld was infested, all along! Apparently, its cysts had erupted mere centuries after Founders had left. And while the situation was dreadful in its own right, the ramifications of it were even more threatening.
It knew about them!
About the Ark they used to leave their decadent birthplace.
And the direction they were heading towards!
Which meant that it might have known about the Assembly – and that was a serious problem…
By ascending above the natural cycle of life and death – the Founders had reasoned – the Assembly became an obstacle for the Worm. It grew, spread and propagated like no other civilization before it – and unlike them, it didn’t plan to stop! It breached the great filter that destroyed all its potential predecessors and now marched its way towards the universal domination!
For assemblians, this world of theirs was a stronghold of safety and beauty.
But for the Worm, it was more like a... tumor!
An undying, ever-growing, ever-expanding thing that could not be harvested, and also threatening to assimilate any regular civilization it encountered into more of itself!
And so the conclusion was certain – at some point, the Worm will attack!
Thus, having postponed their Exodus until the better times, the Founders shared their concerns with their closest, most trustworthy associates – and together, started to prepare their world for an upcoming invasion. Quite timely, in fact.
Because far across the stars, the beast had already started to make its moves…
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