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Post by OhGodItsHimRun on Oct 2, 2016 11:00:27 GMT
I've been doing some writing, trying to find the Tyranid voice. Here's the opening section of what I'm working on. And remember, nobody sees themselves as the villain of their own story; no matter how little they grasp the true context or consequences of their actions.
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Among the Brethren of Metraxinaar Secundus, it is understood that the greatest gift in life is clarity of one's own purpose. The Great One provides that clarity to each of his adjunct-selves; from generation to generation, we have always known our purpose. I am his Magus; my purpose is to understand our world, and to gift my understanding to the Great One's overself when it comes to bring our world into Resonance. To gift us with harmony.
In my dreams, I know that day is coming soon. All of the Brethren can feel it, in our true bones. We have grown many enough, grown strong enough, for the Great One to finally fulfill his own purpose. His overself is coming, and we shall become immortal.
I am his Magus; my mind has always been closer to his than the rest of my Brethren. Through his dreams, I know that Synaptic Resonance has been formed and attributed. I know that the Great One's overself has evaluated our world, and found it to be worth harvesting immediately. The youngest generation of the Brethren grows swiftly. Within a year, they shall be fully purified. And our world will be gifted with harmony.
In his dreams, the Great One touches the mind of his overself. The mind is too large, too complex, for me to find any beginning or end among the multitudes of truths therein, but the Great One helps me to see what I must know, to understand our greater purpose.
I see worlds beyond counting, worlds of grace and harmony. Worlds that have never known war. The life systems of these worlds exist in harmony, the clarity of their own purpose shining in them. And it is beautiful.
I see the Great One's overself, our overself, my overself, coming to these worlds. We commune with each of them, sharing of ourselves as we taste the life system of that world. Time and time again, I see two life systems sharing themselves, learning the strengths of the other, and choosing to become one; we reshape ourselves to take on their strengths and carry forth their wondrous beauty to other worlds.
We bring Resonance. We bring harmony. We hold entropy at bay, with the glorious beauty of evolution itself. This is our greater purpose. And we share it with all the life systems of our galaxy.
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That's enough for the first installment of my WIP. Let me know what you think, the good, the bad, and the ugly.
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Post by barbedsparky on Oct 2, 2016 11:54:36 GMT
Not bad so far. Will need to have more please.
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Post by OhGodItsHimRun on Oct 2, 2016 12:19:49 GMT
Okay then. Here's section two. I've got two different sections in progress which both should go third (for different reasons), and I'm still deciding which presentation will be easier on the readers...
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I see a moment in our overself's past. All of its adjunct-selves converging at the galactic core. Communing. Converging. Becoming one again, after uncountable periods spent splintered. We shared with ourself all that we have done. All we have seen. All we have tasted. And there was consensus.
All life systems had been communed with. All life systems were in Resonance. After so very long, the galaxy as a whole was finally in harmony. Our great purpose had been fulfilled. There was uncertainty, what our new purpose should be. The adjunct-selves provided a cacaphony of possibilities. The overself considered them all. And there was consensus.
We had such knowledge then, when all of our adjunct-selves were one. We had a thing... that I can not begin to fathom, even with the Great One helping me to see the truth that I need. An echo of his overself names it as a quantum entanglement slipstream aperature, but all I know is that it is not the Warp, but allows travel between worlds in some other manner.
When we were all converged as one, we used this thing, there at the galactic core. And we left the galaxy behind us. Then we were in an infinitely branching maze of possibilities, and with trillions of minds like the Great One, we were able to navigate it. We searched for another galaxy, with life systems seeking communion. We heard only one.
The voice echoes in the dreams of our overself. The powerful mind of a vibrant life system. Calling out for liberation from the confines of flesh. To be elevated to a state of consciousness that stretched beyond a single world. And there was consensus.
We were needed. And we would come to liberate that world. Slipstream convergence vectors were forecast, intuited, selected. At inordinate cost to our energy reserves. But we were needed. So our dreams reached out to that life system, but the echoes were so faint, so scattered. It was just so very far away. We could not establish Resonance.
One of our adjunct-selves grew impatient, and transited out of the slipstream regardless.
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From here, I can either go into Hive Fleet Behemoth's experiences after jumping the gun and arriving early, or I can keep the narrative in chronological order within the frame of when the cult's parent hive fleet experienced each memory-moment. And I'm not sure which works better. In any case, how do you like my insanity?
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Post by barbedsparky on Oct 3, 2016 7:40:49 GMT
I think I can see the vision of a unified existence coming through and I like the idea.
Not sure which way you could go although a parallel montage of the two could be a third option I guess.
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Post by OhGodItsHimRun on Oct 3, 2016 22:34:50 GMT
Section three. Written to what feels like a good cliffhanger sort of a break point. More will be forthcoming as I write it.
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One of our adjunct-selves grew impatient, and transited out of the slipstream regardless. Each of its ship-bodies was following the voice of that other life system, and they somehow emerged into normal space scattered across the stars. Becoming so small, so alone. Entire genome libraries were lost, as was their Resonance with their overself. And we were diminished.
Those of us who were still within the slipstream turned billions of our minds to the problem, and we grew in understanding. The echoes of our dreams had been scattered by a strange subdimensional tumult present in that galaxy, as the echoes of the other life system's voice had been scattered. Since the natural Resonance echoes of our dreams could not establish a Synaptic connection sufficient for accurate slipstream transit, the only choice was to create a new genetic construct that would serve as an amplifier for our Resonance. And there was consensus.
Our overself sent new dreams to the life system that needed us. Special dreams, tiny fragments of consciousness, superpositions of instinct and flesh. Seeking out the Resonance echoes of sentient bioforms. Seeking worlds rich enough in nourishment to allow the evolution of sentient bioforms, which could be further evolved to meet our needs. And there amid the synaptic distortion of the Warp, the dreams found their dreamers. Genetic information was unpacketed from within the Synaptic Resonance constructs, and the dreamers began their evolution. Growing their true bones.
Many were lost to us; with their evolution coming manifest in the dearth of nutrition endured during travel between worlds, they had no opportunity to establish a proper Broodmind. After devouring all the available biomass, they could only go dormant. Waiting for more biomass to come when their space hulk was discovered.
But enough of the dreamers evolved amid a vibrant life system on a nutrient-rich world. On each of those worlds, the harvest evaluation strain arose. The Brethren arose. Growing many enough, growing strong enough, for the Broodminds of their Great Ones to dream of our overself with sufficient clarity for Resonance echoes to flow in both directions despite the spatial inconstancy of the Warp, and for a proper Synaptic connection to be formed. Like we have done, here on Metraxinaar Secundus.
It was then that our overself discovered what was so very wrong with this galaxy.
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That's it for the moment. Feel free to respond with any questions or comments that might occur to you. To anyone on the forum reading my little story.
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Post by OhGodItsHimRun on Oct 10, 2016 16:29:16 GMT
And I'm back. I bet some people thought I'd forgotten about this story, but the issue of which clues should be turned up by each of the two investigative bodies (Behemoth + Broodmind) was just kicking me in the brain repeatedly. But here we go, section four:
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It was then that our overself discovered what was so very wrong with this galaxy. But we could not accept it yet; the truth was simply too unfathomable.
From one world after another, the Broodminds established Resonance with their overself, and every one reported the same failure to establish Resonance with the native life system. Most of those life systems did not appear aware that the Brethren existed among them; and those few that did reacted with incomprehensible hostility. On every world, our adjunct-selves had attempted communion. And time after time, they failed.
A few failures would have been plausible; some life systems had Resonance profiles which drifted quite far from the median, and the analytical resources available to each Broodmind were miniscule. They had only a tiny genome library encoded within the original Synaptic Resonance construct; they could not even expand their own numbers without co-opting the native gestational infrastructure.
But to account for a total lack of success at establishing Resonance, there was only one logical conclusion available to our overself; the harvest evaluation strain had some unforeseen flaw in its genome, preventing them from being able to communicate naturally with the native life system.
We turned tens of billions of our minds to isolating the flaw, but we could not find it. Then we were fortunate. Our orphaned adjunct-self, which the native life system had named "Behemoth", found one of our Broodminds. The adjunct-self that was the Behemoth offered communion, and the adjunct-self that was the Broodmind accepted gratefully. We tasted of ourself, and full Resonance was instantly formed and attributed.
The Behemoth shared with us the sheer beauty that can only be found in true Resonance with our overself. And the Broodmind shared with us the means to reclaim that for ourselves. The Behemoth cast its dreams far into the slipstream, and our overself heard them. The Synaptic connection was finally restored. And we remembered.
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There's section four. Next time, what the Behemoth had learned during their time stranded in this galaxy.
Questions? Comments?
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Post by sunshine on Oct 26, 2016 6:19:38 GMT
This is really cool. It reads like the magus is preaching to his flock the sacred history of their gods, very cool
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Post by OhGodItsHimRun on Oct 27, 2016 12:51:34 GMT
This is really cool. It reads like the magus is preaching to his flock the sacred history of their gods, very cool Thank you, sir or madam as the case may be. I actually intend it to be a slightly more intimate lecture than that (from one generation's Magus to the next), but it's nice to know that I'm on the right track. And now, since the two weeks of constant VIP visits at work (due to the buyout-in-progress) are finally behind me, I'm able to write again. So here's the just-written section five. Please enjoy. --------------- The Behemoth shared with us the sheer beauty that can only be found in true Resonance with our overself. And the Broodmind shared with us the means to reclaim that for ourselves. The Behemoth cast its dreams far into the slipstream, and our overself heard them. The Synaptic connection was finally restored. And we remembered. We remembered that none of the life systems in our Resonance had ever attempted to complete an intergalactic slipstream transit before. There were so many uncertainties yet to be addressed, but inevitably one of our adjunct-selves would have to go first. And thereby provide hard data to address those uncertainties. Each of the adjunct-fleets had their own qualities inherited from the life systems they had communed with during the periods of separation. Genetic predispositions toward different strengths. And within our own adjunct-self, there was consensus. We were the bravest; we would go first. Each of our ship-bodies turned our attentions toward the many scattered echoes of that distant life system's voice, and one body after another we secured navigational locks onto one particular echo. Systematically ensuring that there was no variance in the Resonance parameters; that we were all following the same singular echo to its source. Prepared, we selected our slipstream emergence vectors, and transited to that galaxy without our overself. As one, we reached the edge of the target galaxy's slipstream transit infrastructure. And we were struck by an unforeseen barrier, a strange subdimensional tumult to the quantum entanglement chains of this galaxy's stars. The singular target echo was warped into many variations, and our ship-bodies were scattered across the stars. Our Resonance was fractured; we lost the dreams of our overself. Crashing through the warp-barrier had badly injured our ship-bodies, leaving many of us unable to heal ourselves. Too scattered to heal each other. Entire genome libraries were lost. And we were diminished. But some of us were lucky enough to emerge in proximity to life systems suitable to restore our strength. None of the fragments of ourself retained the strength necessary to commune with an entire sentient life system, so we began with the less-evolved worlds. They had no qualities to justify the energy expenditure of a full communion, and were simply harvested. Every cell of biomass, every molecule of water and oxygen and the other chemical resources necessary to heal our remaining ship-bodies. First the bodies harvesting those worlds; then they transited within that galaxy, to share the resources needed for healing their stranded Brethren. And to begin gestating replacements for the many ship-bodies we had lost. But we needed tremendous quantities of water to fill the greater gestation sacs. And so we converged our remaining ship-bodies, and transited to our first sentient life system within that galaxy. We would commune with it, sharing of ourselves as we learned their strengths, and we could carry forth its beauty to the other worlds of that galaxy. And in the part of myself which is outside the dream, I recognize that oceanic world. In my false bones, I know it to be Tyran Primus. --------------- And now we're back into the field of WH40K history. Just obviously from the other side's POV. I'll keep working on section six, but please feel free to continue providing feedback. It really is why most authors keep writing. |
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Post by OhGodItsHimRun on Apr 22, 2017 3:29:40 GMT
I've been away for a long while...
I'm still disgusted by the unrepentant plagiarism, and I still haven't found any renewed motivation to spend any more of my money on GW's products (or even to go back to assembling those Purestrain Genestealers), but my writing-thoughts turned back to this story today, so I figured I would post more. In case anyone would enjoy it; even though it's been six months since I wrote myself into the corner last time.
I have tried to find a way out without contradicting the GSC Codex (which to be fair hadn't yet been released when I started developing the story), but in the end I decided to just acknowledge the contradiction in my narrating Magus being a Divination user. So be it; on with the story!
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But we needed tremendous quantities of water to fill the greater gestation sacs. And so we converged our remaining ship-bodies, and transited to our first sentient life system within that galaxy. We would commune with it, sharing of ourselves as we learned their strengths, and we could carry forth its beauty to the other worlds of that galaxy.
And in the part of myself which is outside the dream, I recognize that oceanic world. In my false bones, I know it to be Tyran Primus. I have never traveled even to Metraxinaar Primus, but my gifts have shown me that world so many times.
Rarely is it my place to go out with my Brethren to strike against the Great One's enemies. For I am his Magus; my purpose is to understand our world. And few are the occasions when the Great One, in his mantle as The Silent Conductor, judges my understanding crucial to the application of his wrath.
So I watch from afar while my Brethren make prey of our enemies. And using the gifts which the Great One has seen fit to cultivate in the genome of my ancestors, I seek understanding of that which has come before the men who are our prey. I listen, not to the dreams of my Overself, but to the screams of the prey. And within them, the echoes of their ancestors. Generation to generation, a stain in the soul of their lineage, back to the beginning.
So many different lineages, in the men not of the Brethren; so many worlds offering to me their memories of predation. I am truly blessed.
Not all of those lineages are bound by blood; instead the truths of their ancestors become part of them by stranger methods than the Great One's own Kiss. One lineage in particular, who call themselves Mechanicus, hate their own flesh. They aspire to mutilate their bodies; to cut the gifts of their evolution out of themselves, and replace them with machines that spew oil and smoke and sparks. These monsters actually believe that finding the Resonance of their Overself can only be achieved by making themselves into things which no longer live. They are an abomination unlike any other.
Once it was my privilege to accompany my Brethren, setting out to raid a military outpost of supplies before one of the Kissed caused an "accidental" explosion in its main reactor. We gained much that day, and in particular I have selfishly cherished the screams of one man who fell to our claws. He was of the Mechanicus, and on many cold nights since I have found comfort in listening to the echoes of his screams, in searching backward through the echoes of his ancestors. And whichever path I take through the generations which came before, they all lead back to the harvest of Tyran Primus.
So within the dream of our Overself, I look upon the oceanic world from so long ago, and I remember.
We remember.
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That's what I wrote today/tonight (I work overnight shifts now). Maybe someone will enjoy. And I shall continue to ponder the Behemoth's perspective on encountering humans for the first time. Such a very alien life-system, these humans. (grins)
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Post by sunshine on Apr 24, 2017 6:42:58 GMT
I enjoy your writing, eager to read more
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Post by OhGodItsHimRun on Apr 25, 2017 4:39:40 GMT
Hooray, validation of my skills as a writer. Thank you again, sir or madam as the case may be!
Section seven. The Behemoth approaches Tyran Primus. And remember, I don't subscribe to the belief that the Tyranids are simply too evil to have any motivation beyond being the bad guys so that the good guys can kill them...
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So within the dream of our Overself, I look upon that oceanic world from so long ago, and I remember.
We remember. All of our surviving ship-bodies looking down on that oceanic world, and within our orphaned adjunct-self, there was consensus of such hope. We knew that we were diminished, that in the intergalactic transit we had lost so much more of ourselves than we had imagined possible. Many of the intermediate sentiences we had awakened, for the purpose of translating the unfolding needs of a planetary harvest into terms which would be relevant to their subsentient adjunct-selves spawned to facilitate the practical execution of the harvest, awoke having forgotten some of the instincts of their subordinate bioforms. A few even found themselves with no memory at all of their respective adjunct-selves; entire genome libraries had been lost.
But not all of it was lost forever; we could still remember the shape of some of the missing pieces in our memories, and it was inevitable that a full communion with a sentient life-system would help restore us. When we integrated their neural association architecture with our own, we would learn from their learning of us; new associative pathways would form, illuminating much of what we had forgotten.
There was concensus; communion would make us whole again.
Each of our ship-bodies kept its gravitic compression senses focused on that oceanic world, following the density shifts of its tides, and imagining what sort of sentience architecture would be evolved by such a life-system. There was a cacophony of speculation: Would their Overselves ride those currents to remain in proximity with their adjunct-selves throughout the planet's seasons? Or would they hold fixed positions so as to draw on geothermal energy to support their cognitive infrastructure, then claiming attribution over those adjunct-selves which swam near and releasing it when they moved on? Or would they be evolved enough to swim freely through their world, cultivating specialized strains of adjunct-selves to meet specific needs?
The only true consensus was that we were eager to properly meet them. But for some reason, the life-system of this world would not or could not communicate with us.
We had listened intently to their Resonance echoes, including a localized echo of that same voice which had called out for us to come to its aid. And we heard the echoes of our own dreams, offering them friendship and understanding and liberation from their distress. But there was no sign of any conscious response by the Overself of this life-system.
We knew that their Synaptic Resonance nodes were hearing our dreams, so why wouldn't they respond? We dimly remembered that another adjunct of our greatest Overself had remembered communing with a life-system that was entirely sedentary; which had never needed to evolve beyond direct chemical transfers to establish their Resonance. But if this life-system had evolved similarly, then there could not be such a coherent localized echo of that singular voice.
We could not understand this contradiction, but we knew that we were too severely diminished to understand it. So there was consensus; we would still take communion with this strangely mute life-system, and thereby regain enough of ourselves to understand it.
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From here, I need to go back to the wiki-diving, and refresh my memory on the specific order of spore mine contact, space battles, boarding actions, planetfall vs artillery battles, aerial battles, beach landings, ground battles, and siege breakthroughs before the final act of the boss-Magos whose name I don't even recall. But I know that it's in both the Codex and the Lexicanum, once I get a chance to read them again.
Questions? Comments?
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Post by OhGodItsHimRun on Jul 15, 2017 14:19:19 GMT
Sad to say, but I've given up on this story. I just don't have either easy access to the source material or the motivation to dig it out the hard way, in order to properly reconstruct the first contact scenario from Behemoth's point of view.
So I'm just going to share the ending with you all. Remember how in the first post, I said "And remember, nobody sees themselves as the villain of their own story; no matter how little they grasp the true context or consequences of their actions? Here's why...
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On hundreds of worlds, where any of our selves had encountered this life-system, we had always offered it some of our bodies to eat. For it to map our neural architectures and begin establishing a communications protocol between our respective Overselves. And we would do what we could to help it find the truths it needed to liberate itself from the confines of flesh. And then perhaps it would choose to become one with us, and together we could bring this galaxy into Resonance. Into harmony.
But on every world, the native life-system's bodies demonstrated great haste to incinerate the offered bodies, destroying the adjunct-minds before eating them. It refused communion.
Even among itself.
That was what we had discovered, but never before been able to accept. It simply was not possible. But this life-system had no capacity to carry its memories beyond the confines of a single body's lifetime.
It is a basic law of nature; sentience could not be evolved in a single body's lifetime. And so we discovered, that the voice we had followed across the slipstream to this strange galaxy was not the mind of a world calling out for us. It could not be, for none of these worlds have minds.
A galaxy devoid of true sentience. Merely this horrific approximation, this unthinking instinct that emulated an existential need well enough to have confused us so long ago.
We knew then what this life-system that calls itself "Man" truly was...
This life-system was a cancer eating away at this galaxy. That with each millennium it spread further, leaving depleted, poisoned worlds in its wake. That this horror, this abomination, had no sign of thought or purpose beyond the need to infest new worlds, on an unimaginable, galactic scale. And that all our innumerable selves could do was to try to stop the waves of unthinking slaughter that Man unleashes upon its galaxy by sheer instinct. We had to harvest and repurpose this life-system's biomass into forms which were capable of sentience.
We had to. Before it discovered how to travel to other galaxies, and destroyed all sentient life in the universe.
THE END
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There. That's the big idea of the story which I started so long ago. I hope that anyone appreciates it.
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Post by blackrainbow on Jul 18, 2017 14:39:10 GMT
Oh. Damn. How I am slow to this party?! Great writing OGIHR! And I must say, despite you nipping the story in the bud, I am very glad you came back and finished it. I hate unfinished things, especially great reads like this. Oh, and that ending! HAHAHA well look at my sig and think if I like it or not ;)
Cheers!
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Post by OhGodItsHimRun on Jul 18, 2017 23:12:07 GMT
Oh, and that ending! HAHAHA well look at my sig and think if I like it or not  Cheers! Well, it comes as no surprise to me that you enjoyed it, since (A) you've replied positively in my other writing-related thread, (B) it was repeatedly reading that quote which got me thinking about humanity as the cancer upon the galaxy, and (C) I'm pretty sure that nobody else on this board uses that quote in their signature. ::grins:: And the tragedy of the story is in the fact that the alien too different from us for us to understand them is also too different from us for them to understand us. It's not about being six-limbed insect-dinosaurs either; it's about identity. With the exceptions of Deathleaper and the Genestealer Patriarchs (and maybe the Red Terror; I suppose technically Old One Eye too), no Tyranid bioform has ever been truly alone with their thoughts. Never been completely cut off from the Hive Mind (unless you count the last gaunt to be removed from the battlefield after all your Synapse has eaten krak/grav/plasma). So as a race, they can not imagine the prospect of permanent individuality. When they heard a voice calling out for liberation from the confines of flesh, they assumed it was simply a race that lacked the knowledge to engineer their bodies into more versatile formats. They never imagined the possibility that the confines in question was that the source of the voice was trapped in a virtual corpse strapped inside a golden throne. Yeah, I went there. Complete failure of understanding, and a chronic inability to spot the flaw in their own reasoning. Just like all the times on Star Trek (series, before movies) when the TNG android Commander Data acted emotionally while denying to himself the possibility of there being any emotions in his mind to influence his decisions. Most visibly when he struggled for words to explain that he was "... strongly motivated" to solve the mystery of the week before his best friend became the next victim, but also clearly on display when he overrode his ethical subroutine's prohibition against taking a sentient life, and then more importantly lied about it when he was beamed away before the disruptor actually fired. Emotions clearly in play, in a character who genuinely believed them to be impossible. Of such contradictions are great dramas made. At least in my opinion. EDIT: If anyone out there with detailed knowledge of the fall of Tyran Primus wishes to assist me at any point in reconstructing that part of my saga, I will certainly welcome their expertise, and then repost the story with additional content included. |
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Post by NidNoms on Aug 3, 2017 21:28:55 GMT
I really like your work here, i am not sure if there are actual books on the Cult, and as for Tyran Primus info, unless you have already looked there i'd check the 1st edition of the Tyranid Codex, there is much detail on how it went down. But once again if you already have looked there, i don't know where else to look.
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