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In the Eye of the Maelstrom
Orbiting above the
dead planet that was once one of the most proud and
prosperous civilizations in the Union, the Enlar were
jubilant in the aftermath of their success. They readily
convinced themselves that the Ignus threat had been
forthright eliminated, as they could detect no life on
the “sterilized” world below: it had been leveled to
dust by the immolating fires of their explosive weapons.
They mocked and scorned Mandrala as he left their vessel to return
to his homeworld. Calling him a false prophet, they
spoke amongst themselves: “If he had had his way, had we
armed the Mandralor vessels—and had they attacked
instead of fled the external colonies of our Union’s
territory—untold numbers of his own kind would have
perished needlessly, and to no avail…It is only through
the administration of our superior intellect that his
pitiful species even exists to this day!”
But as the Enlar stared down with glaring eyes to the now hideously
scarred face of the world that was once their home,
their exuberance over the committed deed slowly waned
unto nervous excitement. They began to doubt the
accuracy of their own technologies, and there came to be
an ever-increasing need for reassurance that no living
creature still remained upon the devastated planet
below.
Not much more time passed before the tenuous equanimity of the
Enlar aboard that infamous vessel slowly broke into a
sort of semi-frantic terror. The refugees contained
within the starship began to stir, while their
electrically charged tendrils writhed and sparkled in
anxious turmoil. Repeatedly scanning for any signs of
biology upon the annihilated surface of their world,
they tried neurotically to convince themselves that the
deadly serpentine monsters had all been
vanquished—until, finally, when no absolute certainty
could be further accepted amongst themselves, fear
overwhelmed them into fate….
After being hastily accumulated from the fleets of regularly
returning messengers and cargo vessels, the first and
most easily accessible Mandralor starships that entered
the system were forcibly conscripted into the Enlar’s
schemes. Several expendable Mandralor spacecraft were
selected to scout out the planet for a closer, “hand’s
on” scrutiny of its surface. In this fashion, the craven
Enlar had hoped to once again reestablish their
confidence in the situation: that the Ignus were,
indeed, all dead.
Overwhelmed by the command of their freedom-giving benefactors of
spaceflight, the naive Mandralor descended upon the
shattered planet, while their Enlar masters remained in
the safety of orbit. At first, the transmissions that
transpired between those condemned vessels (the startled
crews of which were all terrified at their first glance
of the devastated world) and the Enlar mother ship were
nothing other than what would be expected: the planet
was lifeless, and absolutely nothing—no vestige of
ecology nor civilization whatsoever—existed upon its
entire barren vastness. But as the doomed Mandralor
troupe began to walk out from their landed starships,
into the scarred expanse of destroyed world that was
once home to a mighty and fruitful civilization, a
dreadful and sudden change occurred….
An abrupt, inexplicable profusion of life erupted upon the surface
of the “sterilized” world for just a few short moments.
At once, the transmissions from the Mandralor scouting
mission grew startled and terrified, as their gurgling
cries reverberated loudly through the air. The terrible,
dying screams of those unprepared Mandralor on the
planet below blasted from the Enlar vessel’s
loudspeakers, while their scanning systems blared wildly
in sudden alarm—until, just as quickly as it began, all
became silent once again.
Of the dozen or so Mandralor vessels that had descended to the
planet, only a single ship managed to limp away from the
carnage. The damage it had endured was so great that its
structure was now hardly space-worthy—threatening to
implode at any moment, and kill all of the few,
remaining inhabitants inside. Those aboard, as they were
quick to proclaim to the Enlar in orbit, were either
dead or dying, and begged for emergency medical
assistance.
But, though their desperate pleas were so loud and pitiful that
they rattled like incomprehensible static throughout the
volumes of the Enlar’s well-equipped and hearty
spaceship, the Mandralor refugees were provided with
absolutely no help. The Enlar minds, cold and
calculating, quickly concluded that the decrepit vessel
before them was a threat….
They destroyed the ship, blasting it to a thousand pieces the very
moment that it came within range of their overpowering
weapons. In their paranoia, the Enlar killed whatever
wretched creatures that managed to survive the holocaust
of their own selfish expedition by fleeing onboard the
vessel, eliminating any potential for allowing the Ignus
a chance to escape. They did this “quarantine”, so it
was rationalized amongst them, to prevent what they
feared most: the “spreading of the disease.”
More and more of the Mandralor harbingers began to return with the
shocking news of what happened on those infested planets
on the periphery of Union space, sharing their gruesome
tales of the ravaged frontier worlds that had fallen to
the Ignus Scourge. Their vessels, having been terribly
slow, outdated and overused, took years to return to
their homeward destinations—but they were of the few,
lucky survivors who had lived through the hazardous
journey.
Word of what happened at the decimated outer worlds proliferated
like wildfire throughout the Union; and at once, the
Enlar was set into a state of mass hysteria. They became
aware that, everyday, the Ignus conflagration raged
closer to the heart of Union space; and so the Enlar,
having no other options available at their disposal,
were forced to elicit more duplicitous means of ruthless
cunning to protect themselves…
Thousands of newly ordained “priests” began to spring up like weeds
throughout Mandralor civilization. Preaching to
widespread throngs of Mandralor eager to receive any
news about what had happened upon the Union’s ravaged
frontier worlds, they wove half-truth tales that
depicted the suffering that their kind had endured while
simply defending themselves against the “wicked servants
of Chaos” Their fiery words and relentless passions
caused all those who listened to reject the long-honored
sanctity of non-violence that had been imposed by
Mandrala thousands of years ago, cleansing their minds
from the voice of rational thought while twisting their
religious zeal into an instable lust for vengeance.
Mandrala did everything within his power to denounce these “false
prophets.” He tried to reveal their true intentions, but
many of his people simply lost faith in his words. Only
the truest of believers truly listened, while millions
of others readily filled the vast volumes of the Enlar’s
interstellar transports vessels—endless legions of
carnage-bound fanatics ready to be sacrificed for “the
Preservation of Order.” Hauled away like sentient
chattel to the slaughter, the brainwashed minds of the
Mandralor recruits had no comprehension of the sheer
magnitude of the horrors that awaited them….
The makeshift armies soon landed upon the surface of their
destination, intending to easily retake the Ignus
infested world, and set it free from the clutches of
Chaos without much effort or bloodshed. But as they
departed from their grounded vessels, taking their first
steps upon the planet’s ashen ground, which had long
since assumed the corpselike color of consumed charcoal,
the Enlar driven transports that had brought them there
suddenly blasted off to the safety of space—taking
refuge from the hostile world below.
And as the retreated Enlar transports shone like brilliantly
glowing stars in orbit above the condemned, the forsaken
Mandralor looked about their surroundings to see a
planet utterly ravaged by the effects of war. They had
been duped into expecting a recently conquered world
that still bore the full splendors of Union
civilization. Instead, what they saw was a lifeless rock
covered in countless unnatural canyons and craters that
stretched across the vastness of its barren expanse for
as far as the eye could see.
And this is when the unsuspecting army of Mandralor was sent
crashing to its knees, as the very ground beneath its
myriad feet began to rattle and quake. The Ignus then
erupted from upon the horizon, blasting into the heavens
in twisting, billowing geysers that rained down upon the
broken landscape. Like oozing liquid gushing onto the
face of the planet, the fluidic Ignus hoards spread
outward to encompass everything beneath its writhing,
oceanic mass.
The serpents shook the very earth with their undulating movements
while they slithered across the landscape, traveling
faster than the deadly waves of a tsunami, as if guided
directly toward the Mandralor by some unseen hand. Mere
moments passed before their bodies, having grown to
gargantuan sizes and lengths from feasting upon the
planet’s previous inhabitants, let out a noisome bellow
before they reared up upon their back segments, with
heads arching ominously through the clouds in the sky to
loom over the frightened army of six-limbed creatures
like some towering forest of nightmarish monsters.
Thousands of fidgeting talons protruded from each of
their scaly underbellies, methodically clenching and
slashing in grisly anticipation of the feast before
them. They had awakened from their slumber, at the
beckoning call of fresh meat….
Though the Mandralor were, of course, terrified at their first
sight of the Ignus, they held their ground. The overhead
canopy of serpents cast a pall of darkness upon them,
strangling out the light of day as Ignus’ gaping mouths
glistened with drooling saliva and countless razor-sharp
fangs.
But the unabated Mandralor ranks then let cry an almighty cry of
war to the heavens, which boomed like thunder through
the twisting maze of snakes around them. They dashed
toward the nearest Ignus within their sights, sinking
their primitive, dagger-like weapons into its armored
carapace. They swarmed upon its sinewy body like ants
scaling some enormous tree—crawling over one another and
slashing in every direction with fiery eyes and a
hell-borne lust for the creature’s blood.
Little is known of what happened that day, as there were no
survivors of the battle itself to tell the tale; the
few, tattered accounts later recounted by the Enlar
vessels watching in orbit over the mayhem depict a scene
of the a most senseless carnage. Though every one of the
death-bound Mandralor fanatics fought with the utmost
courage, attempting to bring down the colossal serpent
with nothing but a small metallic blade in each of his
four hands, it is said that the beast went entirely
undaunted by the miniscule creatures’ valiant efforts.
Flailing its enormous length about in every direction, the serpent
easily disposed of the engulfing Mandralor blanket,
sending many to their deaths as they were simply hurled
to the unforgiving stone floor of the planet. Those few,
frightened and unprepared troops who managed to survive
the great fall were left to a far more hideous fate, as
they were helpless to do anything but watch while their
ranks disappeared like dust in the wind. And soon, the
Mandralors’ battle roar had become completely
overwhelmed by the screaming cries of their dying
brethren, as the air became rancid with the stench of
death, and the very earth was stained unto the dark,
crimson color of blood.
Having few leaders, very little military discipline, and absolutely
no organization whatsoever, the scattered remnants of
the Mandralor army became easy prey to the ravenous
horde of surrounding Ignus. The mammoth serpents,
gnashing and clawing at one another like hounds
bickering over scraps of flesh, flayed and slaughtered
the Mandralor with their lacerating talons, and
swallowed them by the dozen in their gnashing jaws. Many
of the Mandralor, it is said, were still screaming as
they were forcibly shoved down and into the black abyss
of an insatiable Ignus’s belly, to be eaten alive while
their bodies slowly dissolved in a torturous pool of
digestive acids.
Those unfortunate wretches who were not immediately killed faced a
far worse and more terrifying fate. After rounding the
remaining Mandralor into condensed masses, the Ignus
herded into the numerous cave-like openings that
littered the surface of the infested world.
After crossing the threshold into the very mouth of hell itself,
their fates became sealed, as the Mandralor were then
driven further underground into the subterranean network
of the Ignus’ burrowed tunnels: deep into the heart of
the serpents’ lair. Separated and in total darkness,
they had nothing but their own horrid screams to
accompany them into the afterlife, as their nutritious
bodies were slowly torn asunder to be nibbled upon by
the smaller Ignus yearlings that had not earlier risen
to the surface.
And that is when the Enlar, hovering in orbit and watching the
battle below from the safety of their transport vessels,
opened the storage bays to the vast arsenals of
incinerating weapons at their disposal. Though, they
realized, that even the valiant efforts of the Mandralor
would not be enough to stop the Ignus, their mere
presence on the planet below had been enough to lure
them away from the protection of their underground
lairs. The prospect of food had awakened the serpents
from their state of metabolic hibernation, bringing them
to the surface and exposing them to attack. The Enlar
then, seeing their moment of opportunity, bombarded the
entire globe with powerful explosives until every square
inch of its entirety had been charred unto lifeless ash
and fiery brimstone—killing all who remained below,
Ignus or otherwise, for the “good of the Union.”
And so it came to pass that the Union begat its systematic
“sterilization” of every planet within its boundaries.
Repeating this process over and over again to any world
deemed to have even the remotest possibility of Ignus
infestation, the art of slaughter was practiced to
perfection.
If too few Mandralor were sent to lure the Ignus out from their
subterranean dens on any given operation, then some of
the deadly serpents would simply linger beneath the
surface out of harms way, apparently not awakened by a
strong enough presence of life. And though countless
Mandralor died with every successful cleansing, the
Union took great pride in the care that they took to not
squander their “living resources.”
And so it is said that Mandrala, having heard the cries of his
people, became enflamed with anger. Though greatly
saddened to see such senseless devastation done by the
Enlar, the Prophet was enraged to learn that they had
been lying to his people for centuries. The brainy
administrators of the Union had always stockpiled their
own starships with a plethora of devastatingly powerful
warheads, while the Mandralor were denied any arms
aboard their largely outdated fleet of dilapidated
vessels.
Mandrala knew that his own people could have prevented the Ignus
from spreading beyond its insipient stages whilst their
reconnaissance vessels happened upon the very first.
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