 |
| Art by Mohammed Mukhtar |
Check out Oematra's story and let us know what you think in the comments! Also, don't forget to follow us on Facebook and Twitter for more news and updates!
Oematra of Kothametk
Oemathra of Kothametk was born over one hundred years before the arrival of humans to Kir-Sharaat. Oemathra, like all erahthi, grew from a colossal tree, suspended in a translucent pod of plant flesh, psychically connected to all other unborn erahthi across the entirety of Kir-Sharaat. During this fruiting state, Oemathra's unborn form was subjected to numerous divinations and oracular readings intended to determine the soon-to-be erahthi's nascent skills. In this way, erahthi are born into the role they will serve for the formative decades of their life based on inherent potential. It is in these divinations where erahthi are named. Traditionally, erahthi names are chosen by the head of a particular caste that will claim the unborn into their order. Oemathra was named by Aenji of Ashkerei, a scientist and researcher of symbiotic life forms from the House of Alchemy. Aenji named Oemathra after an erahthi hero-poet six centuries dead whose lyrical art enraptured Aenji as a youth.From a young age Oemathra was trained in the art of alchemy and symbiont development for the biological sciences caste. Aenji served as Oemathra's mentor, guiding the young erahthi into the study of physical sciences, specifically chemical manipulation and alchemy, as divinations indicated Oemathra would excel in those fields. At the same time, Aenji offered Oemathra room to explore and grow creatively, offering instruction when possible and recommendations for supplemental teachers when Oemathra's curiosity reached out to areas beyond Aenji's expertise. The praise and adulation afforded to by Aenji was a positive reinforcement to the young erahthi, emboldening a desire for understanding and innovation. Oemathra served as Aenji's understudy for twenty-six years before taking a position among the House of Alchemy–the Atkrisanya–where there was increased freedom to explore other schools of learning alongside performance of required societal functions. As a member of the House of Alchemy, Oemathra researched medicine, botany, agriculture, and their intersections with chemical sciences and alchemical art, all while performing lab work that produced poultices, balms and other medicinal alchemy supplies.
Sciences aside, Oemathra was also fascinated by erahthi history and the legend of the Era-Sharaat, the forebearers who became the divine Tritarch that rule the world of Kir-Sharaat. Little in erahthi history spoke of the age when the Era-Sharaat were young, before the first erahthi was born from a tree of life. Researching this historical blind spot consumed Oemathra's free time, but was met with frustrating dead-ends and hierarchical roadblocks at nearly every step along the way. The more Oemathra pushed to research the history of the Era-Sharaat the more the Atkrisanya required Oemathra's attention and the more responsibilities that were given. This pulled Oemathra away from the puzzle of ancient erahthi history time and again.
Twenty-nine years after joining the Atkrisanya, Oemathra earned a personal stay of responsibility to pursue private study. Oemathra was quick to depart their job to devote every waking hour to study the mystery of the Era-Sharaat. Repeatedly, the Atkrisanya requested Oemathra to return early from private study, that urgent matters within the caste required immediate attention. Oemathra was not swayed. During this period of study, Oemathra journeyed beyond the safety of civilization, walking the road-branches and delving down into the lightless depths bordering the forbidden realm of the Darkwild, miles below the canopy of the world trees. It was here where Oemathra risked discovery by ruthless clans of zahajin that call the twilight realm of the Darkwild home. On one such journey Oemathra discovered the ruin of an erahthi city predating the world-city of Kir-Sharaat, one that laid on the furthest border of the Darkwild that any erahthi was allowed to go since the war with the zahajin ended. In that ruin Oemathra unearthed an ancient record-keeping tool of the erahthi that recorded spoken word for later listening called a soundstone. These expensive and fragile crystals fell out of use when the erahthi developed symbionts capable of memorizing and repeating massive amounts of spoken and telepathic information. To Oemathra, and the rest of erahthi civilization, it would be a monumental historical find.
On the soundstone Oemathra heard the voice of an erahthi thousands of years removed from the contemporary age. This ancient erahthi, never identified by name, spoke of a war that ravaged their world and Oemathra immediately thought of the ancient war between the erahthi and zahajin, though nothing on the recording could confirm this suspicion. While little conclusive information was contained on that stone to pinpoint an exact time, Oemathra was quick to return home to the Kothametk district of Kir-Sharaat to share this information, though they were convinced yet more soundstones remained to be discovered in the Darkwild. Upon returning to the Atrisanya, Oemathra was confronted by direct agents of the Tritarch, agents already aware of Oemathra's discovery. These enigmatic operators of divine will demanded the soundstone be handed over, and the word of these servants was a direct extension of the Tritarch's supreme law. Oemathra did not question this demand, did not for a moment question the will of the Tritarch, for the erahthi had long benefitted from the protection and guidance of the Tritarch, accepting that their ancient minds saw further and deeper into the causality of the world than the erahthi ever could. With that simple understanding, Oemathra handed over the only physical evidence of the erahthi's ancient history. The agents of the Tritarch thanked Oemathra for their noble service and sacrifice, then departed without another word.
The years following this loss were particularly difficult for Oemathra. Working in the Atrisanya became drudgery. In spite of offers for Oemathra to work with other clans and institutes of research there was no personal will. Everything Oemathra had once loved felt blunted, disinteresting. Brilliant as Oemathra was, the passion that fueled expeditions into the fringes of the Darkwild no longer existed when it came to biological sciences. Oemathra could only contemplate personal losses for so long, however, before choices were made in absentia.
On one clear morning, metallic vessels riding on jets of blue flame descended from the clouds over Kir-Sharaat and pressed through the canopy towards the Darkwild. To the shock of all erahthi, one of these vessels broke away from the others and landed in the center of San-Kaishan, the holiest of districts and home to the Tritarch. What emerged from the vessel was neither erahthi nor zahajin, but a then unknown species: human. In spite of their vast biological differences, erahthi and humanity curiously shared a common linguistic root, which formed a bridge for initial communication between the two species. However, this diplomatic first contact was short-lived. Humans had not arrived to make contact and were wholly unaware that erahthi even existed on the forest world of Kir-Sharaat prior to their arrival. Humanity had come in response to a resource-crisis on their homeworld, seeking a supernatural crystalline mineral that existed within the Darkwild, a mineral so toxic the erahthi called it benu-waratan the "poisoned shards of the world." Humans had another name for it–they called it aetherite.
The visitors to San-Kaishan left abruptly and word soon spread that their other vessels had traveled beyond the threshold of the Darkwild in violation of millennia-old erahthi pacts with the zahajin. Rumors flared that the humans had defiled world trees outside of city boundaries, that they had clear-cut vast areas of sacred forest and caused untold damage to the very sources of erahthi life. These actions alone, coupled with the sudden disruption to the relatively isolated erahthi way of life ignited a war that would burn for a hundred years as one act of aggression led to yet more violence in reprisal, and soon the erahthi and humans forgot who struck the first blow; the war became a history of retribution.
As a member of the Atrisanya, Oemathra was forced into developing biological weapons to employ against the humans and their spacefaring vessels. Terrible alchemical weapons came out of the union of the Atrisanya's resources and Oemathra's creative genius: poison gas that caused mass asphyxiation, symbionts that bored into the nervous system and could puppeteer a living creature, plants that secreted acid so potent it melted steel. Oemathra became an innovator in the field of murder and this horror weighed heavily on his conscience. Every day stories passed through the districts of Kir-Sharaat that erahthi were dying by the hundreds, sometimes it was the thousands. Symbiont ships were born to take the erahthi to the stars to meet the human threat head on. The dream of space exploration was born out of violence and bloodshed. This loss of erahthi life became justification for coming atrocities that would shame generations.
Thirty-nine years into what would become known as the Century War, Oemathra was a first-hand witness to the gruesome Battle of Kothametk. Two-dozen human aetherships dropped out of atmosphere on the far side of Kir-Sharaat and flew through the Darkwild for thousands of miles, slipping past sentry stations and fortified borders, eventually emerging from beneath the district of Kothametk undetected. The attack happened swiftly, with the human vessels releasing devastating aether-powered plasma weaponry on a settlement as much designed for weapons research as it was medicine and life-sciences. These attacks destroyed the Academy of the Atrisanya, one of Kir-Sharaat's greatest schools, and claimed more than nine thousand erahthi lives in the process. During the attack, Oemathra did not fight directly, but instead maintained a medical triage center outside of the area of conflict. Towards the end of the attack, the erahthi deployed a weapon designed by Oemathra known as the Living Scourge; a plant symbiont fused with a corrupted elemental of bone that fed on aetherite to increase its power. The scourge attacked the human ships, consumed their aetherdrives, and proceeded to liquefy the bones of the vessels' human pilots with its corrupted elemental powers. The tortured screams of those afflicted by the Living Scourge echoed with the cries of the erahthi in a horrifying symphony.
Though the Living Scourge was successful at neutralizing the human invaders, Oemathra's design was never intended to be deployed in such a fashion, let alone bond the symbiont to something as dangerous as a bone elemental to increase its power. The Living Scourge broke free of the erahthi sorcerers commanding it and turned on its creators in mindless bloodlust. The corrupted elemental smashed through erahthi defensive blockades, ravaged Oemathra's hospital, and left Oemathra for dead beneath a pile of rubble and corpses. Ultimately, reinforcements from neighboring districts were able to destroy the Living Scourge, but the damage done was nearly as horrific as what the humans had wrought.
Oemathra barely survived the Battle of Kothametk and was transported to the capital district San-Kaishan for long-term care. Shaken to his core by the violence he witnessed–violence perpetrated by his own creations–Oemathra refused to further assist with military development of biological weapons. The remainder of Oemathra's exposure to the war was through daily updates delivered to their recovery room by scribes. Even after making a full recovery, Oemathra had withdrawn from society and the war, listening to long-delayed accounts of humans and erahthi destroying one another. Oemathra would hear of the horrors wrought by humanity's own alchemical research that created first the living weapons known as Paragons, then later the infused. Oemathra would hear of the first phalanx deployment by the humans and hear how terrifyingly effective these construct-soldiers were on the field of battle. Oemathra would watch centuries of knowledge turned into a sword that both civilizations were ever so eager to throw themselves on.
On the day that the war ended, when the armies of the Taur emerged through the gate hub and stole one of Kir-Sharaat's moons, Oemathra was among a few erahthi who saw this "defeat" as an opportunity for victory; not a military or political victory, but a societal victory. The conclusion of the war came as fast as the Taur's arrival did, with human and erahthi dignitaries agreeing to put aside a hundred years of violence and enmity to prevent their utter eradication at the hands of an unknown, superior enemy. Oemathra knew the truth was more complex, that perhaps both civilizations realized the futility in continuing the war that had claimed so many. To Oemathra, the Taur were as much a catalyst for change as they were a threat. It was this hope for clarity that saw Oemathra return from isolation–not as a soldier or scientist–but as a diplomat.
Oemathra's testimony at the first peace talks between human and erahthi representatives would serve as the road map to build human embassy on one of Kir-Sharaat's remaining moons, that would see erahthi traveling to the human home-world of Akasaat to exchange ideas and unite against the looming threat of the Taur. These decisions were not made easily or quickly, they were not made without the threat of the whole peace crumbling back down into the fire of war at nearly every step of the way. But, for for the first time in a very long time, Oemathra found passion again. A passion for peace, and a passion for hope of a brighter future ahead.
No comments:
Post a Comment