Siricco Urraquoa - Creatures of Habit

[Matulaak]

Taurabi

Under a distant sky in a whirlwind of ash, the Taurabi people burned.

Three long days they had spent fighting the Urraquoa, cornered by their fearsome neighbors as they expanded westward to avoid the scorching winds of the rising sun. The lands grew barren in Urraquoa soil, but not for the Taurabi.

For this, they must be purged.

Huts and hovels burned as warriors sprinted down the winding streets of the cliffside plaza. Taurabi men and women leaped from their torched varandas and incinerated homes wielding vicious sickles and jagged spears. But when they met the Urraquoa, they found warriors wielding not blades or farming tools, but staffs of precise fire and burning plasma.

Their process was swift and their march implacable. On the faces of the Urraquoa was the silhouette of Rek’s burning light, a constant reminder of the scorching winds that chased them out of their original home so long ago, the dreaded Siricco.

One by one the Taurabi fell, centuries of farming and isolating themselves from the other tribes made them fat and complacent, but they too had to steal this land from its owners. And wars on Rattatak have changed much since the days when they raided others for their spoils. Now they are the prey, such is the way on Rattatak.

At the seat of the cliffs where the great Archway of Taurabi lay ruined and in rubble, a mother and father hid, watching as their neighbors cut and sliced through invaders, only to be incinerated in brilliant flashes of plasma. Their weaponry was like nothing they had seen before. Behind them, cries originated from an occupied crib. Their only child weeps in panic and confusion, seeking the comfort of something familiar.

A line of Urraquoa now approached, the archway had fallen and the Taurabi were driven back. Those that stayed to fight were summarily executed. The mother and father knew they could not save their farm, and they would have to move with what they could carry. They both looked at the crib and understood what must be done.

The wooden door bends and creaks, thunderous kicks warp it against its frame until it was battered down. A large Urraquoa warrior, his face covered in piercings and inked in the pattern of a star, entered the living space flanked by others wrapped in tattered cloth and sturdy leathers, their boots jingling from the bells and coins tied to their shins. They followed the sounds, smelling prey and food nearby.

What they found was an empty home, the food larder already emptied of anything valuable. Still, the large clan lord was approached by one of his men, who pointed at a crib with a single, crying baby inside, still bare-faced. They stared at it with hunger in their eyes, teeth glistening in anticipation.

The Clan Lord stopped them, they knew they didn’t have much time. Even now he could feel the air broil around him. Siricco approached, and he had to make a decision soon.

The Taurabi people burned, but the Urraquoa grew in number, even if that number was one.

[Matulaak]

Agizul

When Siricco thought of her father, she remembered the cold.

Agizul of the Urraquoa was intimidating in stature even by the standards of the warrior-nomads of his tribe. Broad of shoulders and heavy set, the man marched through the dunes with a presence so commanding the sand sat still beneath his feet to spare him the effort less they incur his wrath.

The former Clan Lord, now turned War Lord, guided a group of young hopefuls, many of them barefaced, across the freezing planes of Rattatak’s most unforgiving desert. On the verge of twilight the air was bitingly cold as it swept the sands and bit into the skin until the chill seeped into the bones of all in the group.

“Endure”, he reminded them. “For such is our strength.”

At the top of the highest dune was their prize: A great rain beetle. These monstrous, migrating beasts of fur and chitin followed after the rare storms that swept the dunes to collect the moisture as it evaporated on their dense and coarse bristles.The group moved with haste to catch the beetle before the sun rose and brought with it scorching winds and magnetic storms, shivering and buckling under the strain of Rattatak’s unforgiving climate. All of them save for Agizul, who felt the howl of the wind bite into his skin and welcomed it like the rain.

Among the hopefuls was his adopted daughter, the young and lone survivor of the Taurabi. He named her after the deadly dawn they escaped from. She saw her father guide the group unbothered and determined, and found herself struggling to line up her footprints with his own determined stride.

They stopped under the great beetle, the air around them damp and heavy as its body collected thick globs of fluid seemingly out of thin air. All of the hopefuls stood there in their rags, wet and freezing. Agizul commanded them to wait, and to collect.

It was almost dawn, and the air was changing. What was once an unbearable cold started to broil and bubble, and the humidity in the soil steamed until it gathered in the creature’s bristling belly. Now it was hot, too hot, and the sudden shock made some of the young ones collapse for a few seconds from the delirium.

Agizul watched them all, but Siricco felt his gaze fall upon her the heaviest. Her throat was dry and her lips were cracked, vision blurry and her head swimming as if in a fever. Still she stood, holding on to the container with shaky fingers.

Endure.

Finally those drops of moisture fell upon them just like the rain. It refreshed and revitalized as it washed down on them. The water was so cold, but against the burning rays of their merciless star, the cold didn’t matter anymore. Siricco welcomed the sharp pain as it refreshed her body. She understood now how Agizul could stomach it. He knew what reward awaited him if he continued.

The young ones returned with containers full of this sloshing, rich mixture. This was their final test. For their survival, they would all earn the mark of the Urraquoa: The light of Rek painted upon their faces.

Siricco found her step fell more naturally into those massive footprints impressed into the sand, in the shadow of Agizul.

[Matulaak]

Urraquoa

The eastward cliffs of Old Varsakan are said to have housed one of the oldest settlements in Rattatak, a shelter of their ancient ancestors when the rattataki did not need to fear the sun. It has been scrapped and picked clean in the centuries since, but its central location in the salt flats make it the only source of shade in one of the most dangerous trade routes to the Cauldron.

It was here that Warlord Agizul would bury his warriors alive.

Warlord Agizul stood before his warriors: All of them were heavily bandaged, from head to toe, with thick, tinted lenses covering their eyes and wicked blades sheathed at their sides. They each stood before shallow graves, dug out by a line of urraquoa that helped lower the warriors into the sand.

Siricco was with the rest of the Urraquoa soldiers, taking sniping positions along the hidden crags and niches of Old Varsakan. She had watched this ritual many times before, and every time Agizul made it a point to see each warrior before they were buried. When she asked him why, the answer confused her at first,

You must learn to follow before you can lead.

Once the last one was buried under the sand, Agizul returned to the other snipers. The sun would rise soon.
Zegidon was one of the more fortunate tribes on Rattatak. Frequent sponsors and patrons of the Cauldron, their warlord had a ruling seat thanks to the abundance of slaves and creatures they supplied to the massive arena. But such a trade always had logistics, and logistics could always be exploited.

Across the salt flats came a caravan, the dust on its back and its turbines howling as it raced the sun. The sky warmed from its deep black to its warmer purples and gold. Rek was not far now, and the Zegidon guard felt the air broil around them. In the horizon they saw a vast plateau, rippling now from the heat distortion, the last checkpoint they had to reach before making it to Cauldron.

Old Varsakan.

The cliff face was heavily carved, and the shadows cast within its cracks were deep and impenetrable. Here the Urraquoa laid in wait, listening for the call of their warlord. They couldn’t jump too early, for their prey could find an escape from their ambush, but if they jumped too late they risk sacrificing the element of surprise and the superior range afforded to them. The sun was rising now, and following its baleful light were the searing winds and storms of fulgurite that ignited the land and rendered all into ash and salt.

Zegidon could waste no time, it was either inside, or out under the sunlight where they would surely suffer casualties. They marched up the steps, rushing towards the cliff face as others tried to guide the massive hovercraft of their caravan into one of the larger recesses on the cliff face.

By the time they heard the first howl of the Urraquoa it was too late.

Bolts of scintillating energy and brilliant plasma rained down upon Zegidon, disintegrating some guards while those closer to the shade were stunned and swiftly dragged screaming into the darkness. Zegidon was no slouch when it came to fighting, and their superior weaponry and equipment could shred the Urraquoa snipers if only they could catch a line of sight to them.

If only they could get closer.

With the scorching winds at their backs and a wall of blaster fire before them, the Zegidon had no choice but to advance, and every step they took was precipitated by a salvo of blaster fire that scorched the stone and dropped a few Urraquoa sharpshooters from their perch.

Siricco ducked behind a lip on the cliff as the stench of ozone filled her nostrils. By her feet, her spotter clutched his burning side, lungs filled with plasma as every breath scorched his throat. She held him steady as they watched the Zegidon guard advance up the steps, emboldened by their steady advance.

It was the last mistake they made.

Funneled into the entrance of Old Varsakan, the Zegidon warriors had no way to retreat; the sand behind them erupted into geysers. Flanked by the scorching light of the dawn, Urraquoa warriors lept from their shallow graves in the salt and sand like undead, the tattered bandages and rattling trophies of rusted coins and charms flowing behind their unnatural movements.

The Zegidon soldiers were cut down before they could even understand what had hit them. Some turned around to shoot at the warriors, only to hit thin air as they were blinded by the radiant light of the sun. Halos of fire engulfed these supersonic warriors, but their skin did not burn. Their movements bled into each other with impossible speed, each a whirling dervish that took out multiple guards on their own.

By the time the sun was up, the Zegidon caravan belonged to the Urraquoa. They dragged the bodies of the fallen into the shade for sustenance, and took their wounded to be treated.

Siricco was still with her spotter, supported by Warlord Agizul as he directed the rest of the tribe and braved the scorching daylight to escort his warriors back into Old Varsakan where they could rest, their spirits and bodies drained in equal measure.

She approached her father and asked them of these deadly wraiths, how they light of Rek did not hurt them, while Agizul’s pale skin was already burnt from the brief exposure he suffered guiding his people to safety.

He began, “The planet acts through them, young Siricco. They are the spirit of Rattatak.”

“They are our Wraiths.”

[Matulaak]

Zegidon

Of all the warlords presiding over the Cauldron, none could stand to lose more than Uriah Zegidon. His tribe was lucky; struck first by the landing of an alien craft on their soil, Zegidon was quickly provided exotic tools and supplies from this miraculous event that elevated them among their neighbors. Through aggressive trades and bloody invasions, the men and women of Zegidon acquired more stock than they knew what to do with, and they certainly weren’t keen on feeding all their prisoners.

The Cauldron was their answer, and on the bloody sand of this massive arena, Zegidon cemented themselves as a scrupulous, opportunistic body of scavengers and slavers, hauling in warriors from across Rattatak to keep the Cauldron fit with a diverse cast of characters that would fight and die for the amusement of the other War Lords.

Suffering an attack and robbery by a tribe a fraction of Zegidon’s size was an ignominy too bitter for Uriah to bear.

Uriah himself was a vulture, a scrawny Rattataki male with a build made of elbows and knees. He hunched over usually, his skin stretched taut over his ribs, and his leathery hide burnt one too many times by the sun. Despite his youth, the cracks and pockmarks made him look considerably older. His pale eyes, deeply recessed into his skull, stared at the shadowy figure before him.

It was sleek and feminine, draped all in a smooth, black cloak and with a featureless mask that covered its face save for the clicking layers of gears and metal under its black visor. If Uriah’s hunched posture and rangy proportions evoked a vulture, then this statuesque phantom evoked an owl perched on a branch, listening and waiting. Clearly an outsider to their world, it was short in height and slight in build, but the shadow this figure cast was large indeed.

“You say Agizul’s men are also blessed by this power?” asked Uriah to the figure, who remained infuriatingly still and unaffected by the garish decor and display of wealth around the Zegidon Warlord’s throne. She waited to answer, like she always did, as if his question was lower priority than whatever thought or whim was currently in her head.

“Blessed is a strange word for it, as if there is some providence in what they have. They are creatures of circumstances, warlord. And they defeated you because they are creatures of habit,” that voice was cold and measured. This strange alien being offered to teach Uriah wisdom and unlock tremendous power within him. Yet whenever she spoke it was in infuriating riddles.

“What habits?” Uriah hissed, now unfurling from his throne to stalk up at the shadowy figure. The featureless helmet did not move, its midnight black facets clicking like a canvas of clockwork.

“They train and harness their rage towards you, Uriah Zegidon. They covet what you have and through their anger they slay your warriors and devour them.” A raptor-like claw extended from her sleek cloak, and upon those silver-tipped talons lay a sigil. They curled and bit into Uriah’s shoulder with surprising force for a figure so small.

The rattataki warlord nearly dropped to his knees, a terrible chill afflicting his joints as his muscles betrayed him. His royal guard aimed their weapons at the figure, but they could not fire. Their own will betrayed them, strangled by phantasms they could not perceive.

“You too could harness this power, warlord. If only you listened to me. It is not too late, Uriah. I am a kind and generous creature.”

Uriah’s pale eyes stared up, wide in awe and fear. He may be a warlord of Rattatak, but compared to this menacing shadow he was a fledgeling.

“What must I do next?” he could barely stammer through the chill and the pain, his voice lost between the thrill and the fear.

“The Dark Side provides,” the figure’s voice echoed from every corner of Zegidon’s throne room, and rattled within the skulls of others. It was wise and reasonable, and it evoked within the minds of the other rattataki the desire to be wise and reasonable themselves by swift agreement.

“All you must do is submit.”

[Matulaak]

Rek

The Guter Wade system was dominated by the star of Rek, a blighted ball of fusion and death whose cascading light frayed technology in stubborn defiance to the progress of galactic civilization at large. At some point in its lifespan, Rek collapsed into a bomb of strange matter that forever warped the planets it influenced and made charting the system a difficult process. Some planets fared better than others, but for the developing colony of Rattatak during the era of great expansion, its newly terraformed atmosphere was bombarded with enough radiation to veil it in a scintillating cloud of poison and lightning that threatened all who ventured into and out of the planet. Its harmful rays stripped flesh from bone and the dawn brought such rushing winds of heat it produced violent storms with its rapid change in pressure.

As grim reminders of the dawn they must outrun, the Urraquoa inked the fury of Rek upon their faces to remind all who challenge them:

Fear the sun.

Zegidon learned this quickly, and struck back at dusk when the Urraquoa were winding down. Under a veil of darkness they stalked, and when they leapt into an attack, the Urraquoa could hardly respond, overwhelmed by sheer number. Siricco could barely remember the rest of the night.

She remembered traversing the salt flats across The Cauldron with her new haul, her warriors celebrating under the stars with chanting and dancing around the fires. It was a hard won victory, but Zegidon’s wealth was more than sufficient. New weapons and armor for the entire tribe and plenty of bodies to sustain them. The Urraquoa are small, but fierce. Agizul trained them to slay giants.

But it was the shadows that claimed them this time.

Siricco was forced to kneel, in chains and side by side with her fellow warriors as they stared helplessly, flanked on either side by Zegidon warriors. At the mouth of the cave they were trapped in, framed by the night sky were two warlords: A bloody and bruised Agizul, wielding nothing but his fists and weeping from multiple wounds across his pale flesh and towering form and the scrawnier, smaller, but no less vicious Uriah of Zegidon wielding a bloodied sickle in each hand.

The captured Urraquoa were forced to watch as their unarmed warlord struggled to land a hit against Uriah, who moved like a blur as he defied the limits of his body to extract his revenge against the rebellious and arrogant Agizul one cut at a time. In the shadows watching as well was a short creature in a sleek, black coat, with a terrible mask full of moving parts under a globe of glass. All Siricco could see was the mist rising from its valves and clicking clockwork like a veil. A feminine voice hissed out, as sinuous as the wisps rising from the quartz-like mouthpiece.

“Quit toying with your food, Uriah. The dawn is coming and we have work to do.”

But the Zegidon warlord did not back down. He snapped back in his pride, “No! They must learn. They must see what I have seen! And this filth will pay for what he has cost me!”

Uriah’s strikes were unnatural, as if his whole form vibrated and the air parted so he could slice at Agizul’s bulky frame, his serrated weapons hooked into the other warlord’s pale flesh and tore crimson ribbons of gore with every sweep, while Agizul could do little else but block and endure. Uriah laughed and howled, just like a vulture to pick at a corpse.

Too bad he didn’t make sure it was truly dead. Enduring through his flurry, Agizul swung a mighty punch at Uriah’s face in the midst of his swings, trading one superficial cut across his arm for a powerful jab that knocked more than a handful of teeth from Uriah’s mouth. Thick, syrupy globs of blood spat from his mouth as the Zegidon warlord corkscrewed through the air and fell on the sand in an insensate daze.

The Urraquoa roared and cheered for their warlord, bleeding to an inch of his life, as his massive, towering frame approached the stunned Uriah. The Zegidon warlord tried to drag himself away, but he was scattered. All he could voice were pained, wet gurgles as his breathing rattled out of his broken face. As Agizul brought his fists down, he felt his body lock up, gripped by an icy chill. Needles stabbed into his muscles and anchored him in place, sapping him of all strength and will while the blood in his veins slowly turned into sludge.

Siricco had howled and hissed at the cloaked figure, its silver talons held out towards the locked Agizul.

“Is this one important to you?” she heard that voice hiss out again, this time with the intimacy of her own thoughts, as if this alien creature had seeped into her head.

“You think this man gives you strength, yet you all see him powerless before the Dark Side. A demonstration is in order.”

With her puppet a miserable failure, the creature took matters into her own hands. Agizul moved towards the outside of the cave and dropped to his knees, his limbs jerking and twitching as if fighting back every step. Siricco rarely heard her father complain, but on that dawn the cries of pain from Agizul would haunt her for the rest of her life.

The Urraquoa yelled, some tried to charge forward towards their warlord only to be swiftly struck down by a glowing weapon of violent red, leaving a smoldering carcass in their wake. The creature commanded again,

“Watch.”

The light of Rek bathed over Agizul’s struggling body. Endure, she begged. Siricco cried until her throat was raw. By the time the morning came, all that was left of Agizul Urraquoa was a shriveled, seared husk.

[Matulaak]

The Cauldron

Fighting was all Nyk knew.

Nyk was not used to having a name. Mercenary work outside of his home planet of Sriluur made uncomfortable demands of the weequay, struggling with clumsy words that didn’t convey the raw intensity he really felt. He learned basic and took a name only as a means to an end, to survive and secure jobs as necessary. It was an entirely new ecosystem, one that often lead him into dangerous situations he regretted.

When he took a job escorting a trader to Rattatak he believed this was one of those situations. Not long after their ship crash landed due to a high-altitude malfunction, his employer was killed by the natives and he was taken prisoner. Words had failed him, for these people didn’t know nor care for the language he sacrificed so much time and energy to learn. Nyk resigned himself to death, cursing whatever ambition and dream lead him so far away from his tribe.

Imagine his surprise when he was handed a weapon and told to speak the one language that did matter to him: Combat.

Nyk was taken to a vast complex carved inside of a mountain: A large gladiator-like arena hidden from this alien planet’s blighted sun where contestants both local and offworld fought for the entertainment of mysterious spectators hidden behind tinted windows carved on the inside. What light that wasn’t artificial was filtered through the domelike sunroof of the arena, where its aperture would slowly open during midday when the sun was at its highest to provide a new hazard for the gladiators to deal with while they fought for their lives on the sands of the Cauldron.

It was here that Nyk would prove himself and earn the right to return home to his kin. But the Cauldron proved vicious indeed. The vast pit of the Cauldron was a free-for-all, his favorite kind of game for he could rely on his wits and leap at opportunities to secure his survival. The goal was simple: To be the last one standing.

In the chaos and the clash of all his strange and exotic opponents, Nyk skulked and waited for an opportunity to strike. Many of the locals were dangerous opponents one on one as he learned the hard way when one rattataki cornered him and nearly took his head off. The intervention of a large, chitinous and crawling beast is what saved him, its mandibles snapping around one of the rattataki’s limbs to drag him off the weequay before swallowing the tattooed warrior whole.

But now he had this monster to contend with, easily twice his size. Nyk tried his blaster, but found the bolts just bounced off its shell, and when he tried the explosives it only angered the creature even further. It chased Nyk to the edges of the Cauldron, where the weequay hid in between the ornate structures of the Cauldron to avoid the pincer-like claws of the crawling horror after him.

He looked around for an escape, spotting the cracks on the old columns that accosted the thrashing creature trying so desperately to squeeze between them in order to reach him. Brilliance flashed across his otherwise dull eyes, as he took an explosive from his bandolier and chucked it at the structure. With a loud boom and shrapnel that nearly tore open his face, the pillars collapsed on top of the monster that chased him, killing it and providing the weequay swift escape.

By the time Nyk crawled out of the rubble, he saw the aperture on top of the cauldron begin to open its exterior layer. The outer edges of the arena were flooded with the awful light of this world and many of the surviving contestants that were unfortunate enough to be caught in it were soon cooked.

Not many were left and the debris he created was far behind him: His only hope was the middle of the arena. And so he ran as fast as he could, ran until his breath was ragged and his muscles burned with acid. Blasters howled behind him, chased by other alien warriors desperate to claim the one spot of shade that would remain once the dome fully opened up. On his person, the only thing left was a bandolier with only a few explosives left. His life was more important.

When the bandolier was thrown over his shoulder and the dust settled, what was left of his pursuers could not outrun the sun. Nyk made it to the middle where the only ring of shade was, atop a triumphant dais. He looked around as most of his competition burned, and he was the only one atop the steps, clutching his rifle close and ready to defend his spot to the death. This was it: victory at last.

The next breath he took tasted like fire and smelled like ozone. The weequay looked down at his chest to see there was now a scorching hole through the middle of his torso, a pin point accurate shot. He didn’t even hear the whine of the rifle. As his vision blurred and his blood boiled, he looked around the sun-baked arena of the Cauldron and wondered who bested him? Who was more deserving? He had come this far, had he not fought hard enough?

Off in the distance, in the ruins he collapsed, there was a figure hiding in the shade he inadvertently created: It looked like a local, crouched and camouflage in the sand and stone. Her figure was lean and her pale eyes hungry. On her face was the mark of the sun he had cursed so much before. She held a smoking rifle with its long barrel squared at him from so far away.

Nyk collapsed backwards on the dais, taking his last breath to call out for his tribe. It wasn’t fair.

Fighting was all he knew.

[Matulaak]

Siricco

In Rattatak, no one was truly free. Whether out in the desert under the oppression of the sun or buried in the shade of the Cauldron, everyone suffered a Tyrant. In Siricco’s case it was Uriah Zegidon. In the labyrinth depths of the Cauldron she fought for the spectacle of her hated enemy and the strange, midnight-clad beings that preceded over the fights, plucking candidates that satisfied inscrutable standards.

Siricco could not remember the last time she had to outrun the actual sunlight.

Her time in the Cauldron was mostly spent hiding deep inside the mountain, snaking through its winding tunnels as she shuffled from fight to fight. The collar had stopped itching after a few months in the arenas, and now it’s been so long she has no idea how many days have passed.

Siricco’s last victory earned her a downed trading vessel, damaged thoroughly by the damning light of Rek. She had worked and saved up for its repair, studying the ships and salvaging spare parts whenever she could. There was nothing but time, and so Siricco threw herself obsessively at all of her tasks. Repetition, endurance, appetite, the holy pillars that held up the foundation of her life. The one thing from Agizul she could take with her.

When she was bought and then freed, Siricco wasted no time. Her pet project nearly complete, she took to her people one last time to say her goodbyes; they were all together in bondage, slaves to Uriah Zegidon but they vowed to die free at least.

She remembered when they were over five hundred strong and the salts of Old Varsakan were theirs. Now they barely numbered the hundreds, and they were dwindling. When asked where she would go, Siricco said she did not know. The rattataki knew there was more out there, something ineffable that drew her. She had caught glimpses of it at the Cauldron when she stared up at the balconies and saw spectators in pitch black, similar to the shadow that killed Agizul.

They know, she thought. Someone knows.

The day finally came when she would launch after these shades, her heart racing as she viewed the night sky out from the window of her cockpit. Her test runs were successful but none of them had reached the altitudes she was about to attempt. None of them have gone past the atmosphere.

The endless expanse of Guter Wade unfurled before her like velvet, stars glittering at distant horizons. For the first time in what must have been years, Siricco felt the warmth of her sun and the light of her people. It didn’t burn her skin or sear her to the bone. It felt so far away.

She closed her eyes and smiled, drifting through the void in pursuit of these cloaked figures. She was finally free.

[Marrowow]

Approved! Who needs the Force to break chains, anyway?