Post by Swith on Jan 19, 2016 15:13:54 GMT -4
NOMINATION 1: Fall of Earth
Nominated by: Yaana Noore
Notes by Yaana Noore: [Writer's] effort in [RP] describing the fall of Earth as well as introducing their own monstrosity.
The guttering lights of a thousand burning metropoli illuminated Earth. In Vancouver, Husks picked over the corpses of civilians. Streams of refugees fled the ruins of their once-normal lives, clutching whatever personal possessions they could take as their rank tides emptied out into the wastelands. Many would starve. Many more would die. Such was the order of things. It could not be explained. It could not be changed. It could only be accepted - that things would never be the same. Nobody could change it. There was no fighting it. There was no reasoning with it. The human spirit - a joke! A sham! It had fallen apart once the pathetic masses had realized that there was no weapon they had, no hero they praised, and no god they worshipped that would intervene to protect them when they got a whiff of real power. A power that needed no explanation, that brooked no dissent, that cared not for the beggings, pleadings, and petty defiances of the tiny beings below them. The humans had fought, throwing their wondrous armaments and dreadnoughts as large as cities at the invaders. But what was human science to beings which thought on a plane beyond anything that any human save Lovecraft could comprehend, who had outlived suns and were ancient, ancient as the days while humans were still living in caves and shitting in the dirt? Nothing. Sand. Ash. Dust in the wind. Humanity had been arrogant, thinking itself special within the cosmic order, thinking its perspective important.
Foolishness. They had been, in a matter of hours, humbled to a degree which had not been seen before. Abased. Shown the futility of their own existences, the worthlessness of their toil towards some half-imagined utopia. What rubbish. What idiocy. They would live. They would die. It had always been so. It would always be so. For the entities that passed aeons slumbering in the dark, that harnessed unholy science and power beyond comparison as a matter of fact, the lives of humans meant nothing.
In the fetid clouds above, rank with the sickly-sweet smell of roasting flesh and broken arrogance, gods moved.
With the coming of the Reapers, Earth had burned. In the first fifty minutes of the assault, almost a billion people had been wiped out. In the weeks to follow, billions more would follow them in their return to dust.
-London-
The First walked the ruins, an eye-aching canker on the face of reality which warped the universe itself as it moved. Wan fires of annihilation flickered across its skeletal frame, and a horrific jagged-toothed grin split the infinite fractal madness that one might call a face. It was humanoid, roughly nine feet tall. At the edges of Its being it rippled and flickered, as if it was forcing itself into three-dimensional form through the power of its infinite will alone. Ahead of it lay some famous structure - it honestly couldn't care what the biological garbage that built this shit hole of a city called it. Street lights, sensing the artificial night made by the billowing spirals of smoke, guttered in the half-dark. The First shone. Like a dead star, it shone in the midst of the twilight of Man.
It cocked its head. Something was moving. It sensed a threat. As it turned the blazing pits of its eyes left and right, searching in dimensions undiscovered by any species for over three hundred thousand years, it felt a shift in the air currents. How curious. It turned its face, and promptly caught a sniper round in the middle of its forehead.
For a moment it flickered, and then grinned.
"Well well, lookie here Johnny boy", it spat in words that curdled the atmosphere around it, "somebody thinks they're special."
And in a moment, it... folded, for a lack of a better word, and was in front of an extremely befuddled SAS operative clutching an absurdly customized rifle.
"Oh my, what a bad boy you are! You think you're so very very unique, don't you?", the First declaimed as its lighting-veiled fist smashed through the man's helmet at something past the speed of sound and sank into the unfortunate man's brain. The sniper began twitching madly as the First tilted its head.
"Coates", it drawled. "Cccooooaaaaatttteeeeessssss. Maaaaaaajjjjjorrr Ccooooaaatttteeesssss..... Neeed Coates. Ned Coates. Wow. Real home-grown hero here, aren't you? You think you're hot shit, don't you Coates? You're the best of the best of the SAS, ain't that something? Think you're one of the best in the whole damn galaxy at killing people in cowardly ways. Well. Way things are going, that's getting a fair bit easier, innit?"
Coates foamed at the mouth in response and rolled his eyes back into his head. Having a pseudo-physical fist rammed into your brain by a demigod tends to do that.
The First grinned its papercut smile. "Well sorry Ned old chap, but I'm in a bit of a tizzy at the moment. This is a pretty neat body, innit, but the problem is Neddy boyy that I can't keep it up for long. You see, I've got a redhead to kill and so I'll have to stick around for a bit. So I'll have to borrow you from you for a bit. Maybe I'll give you back to you when I'm done with you, hehehe, so that you can see me strangle the hero of your worthless little species to death in front of you. OK, mister Coates?"
Coates foamed some more, choked, and released his bowels into his pants.
The First grinned.
"Oh don't feel so very bad about this, Coatsey. Because you'll get to be me for a bit. Meeee. The First. The very First. Four-eyed fuckwads didn't get one - we'd been working them for ages - but your lot definitely do. Otherwise, how do we kill off your great big hero that you put in jail for annoying Harby? You'll be a host to the one that ends your race and teaches it a lesson, oh Neddy boy. You'll be the face of the Herald of Despair. When soldiers die, they'll curse your face. When children starve, it'll be your body that they remember because of it. When people see what we've done to their pretty little planet and realize they're never getting it back, it'll be you that they'll blame. When I kill their heroes, you'll be the traitorous bastard what done it. Because the Masters - the great big god-machines, the Inevitable Ones, the Head Honchos, the Big Kahunas, call them what you will - are pretty darn effective, but they lack a personal touch. You'll be me. And I'll be that. Ready?"
The First folded. Major Ned Coates of the SAS screamed. Even as his personality was annihilated and his individuality chased back into a small dark corner of his own mind, he had the bizarre feeling that there was something wrong about this. Very wrong. He wasn't supposed to DIE now. Not yet. Not yet. He hadn't met Shepard - wasn't he supposed to do that? Why would he even think that?
After that, Ned Coates didn't do much thinking at all.
The First stood in Coates' body, stretching it, before snapping its new fingers. Reddish light shone through them. Its eyes glowed, and lightning spiralled across its suddenly floating corpse-body.
"Right-o, fellas", it yelled in something approaching ecstacy. And just like that, it was on every screen in the galaxy.
"Heya chums. 'Sup, tally ho wot wot? Just want you all to know something. The Reapers, who your governments have been hi-dinng from you, are re-al! Super duper real, realer than chips and gravy, realer than the morning cab fare, realer than that kinda cute fella you smiled at every morning and were thinking of asking out that was just impaled on a goddamn spike, shortly to become brainless cannon fodder. We're here, gents, and we're the realest thing you'll ever goddamn see. We're here. We always have been. From the dawn of your useless little existences, we have been here. We'll be here for a while yet, and don't plan on stopping that. Now of course you'll naturally try to contest that. That's what dumb pathetic meat bag sacks of garbage and inefficient biology always do. Sure as sure, you'll fight us. But there's one thing in this universe that's for certain. Your hopes, your dreams, your aspirations, and your imagined futures are about to all go up in a cloud of smoke - pufft. You're fucked. Doomed. Damned to annihilation, sure as sure. Nothing you do will ever change that. What am I? I'm the First of many. I'm the last human to be born on Earth. I'm the alpha and omega of this accursed little species. I'm more. I'm the prophet of your incurable demise, planned out long before your sweaty retard ancestors wiped their hairy bums on leaves and thought they were clever little duffers. I'm the Messenger, folks. The Messenger of Despair. And I'm here to teach the galaxy its first lesson. Your resistance is worthless. Fight? Die now. Run? Die later. Everyone dies eventually. The message is this - fuck you, dirty little organics, 'cuz you're all going to die. Sure. As. Sure.
Oh yeah, and a note from my sponsors - Shepard? Commander Shepard? Something like that. Whatever. I'm coming for you. You gonna die, Sheppy, and you gonna die badly. Get prepped. Are you ready to race each other to your demises, puny organic dunce-a-trons? Are you prepped? On your mark! Get set! GO!"
The First Snapped. It was suddenly in front of the building - Parliament, it helpfully picked out of Coates' brain. It giggled.
"Look at your history. Now look at me. Now look at your history-"
A Thanix Cannon's shot hit the historic building, annihilating the foundation-place of modern liberal democracy.
"Oh wait", it tittered, "you can't. Because I blew it up. See y'all soon!"
Regular scheduled programming was resumed soon after.
There could be no doubt. The Reapers had come.
Nominated by: Yaana Noore
Notes by Yaana Noore: [Writer's] effort in [RP] describing the fall of Earth as well as introducing their own monstrosity.
ENTRY BEST HORROR SINGLE POST
The guttering lights of a thousand burning metropoli illuminated Earth. In Vancouver, Husks picked over the corpses of civilians. Streams of refugees fled the ruins of their once-normal lives, clutching whatever personal possessions they could take as their rank tides emptied out into the wastelands. Many would starve. Many more would die. Such was the order of things. It could not be explained. It could not be changed. It could only be accepted - that things would never be the same. Nobody could change it. There was no fighting it. There was no reasoning with it. The human spirit - a joke! A sham! It had fallen apart once the pathetic masses had realized that there was no weapon they had, no hero they praised, and no god they worshipped that would intervene to protect them when they got a whiff of real power. A power that needed no explanation, that brooked no dissent, that cared not for the beggings, pleadings, and petty defiances of the tiny beings below them. The humans had fought, throwing their wondrous armaments and dreadnoughts as large as cities at the invaders. But what was human science to beings which thought on a plane beyond anything that any human save Lovecraft could comprehend, who had outlived suns and were ancient, ancient as the days while humans were still living in caves and shitting in the dirt? Nothing. Sand. Ash. Dust in the wind. Humanity had been arrogant, thinking itself special within the cosmic order, thinking its perspective important.
Foolishness. They had been, in a matter of hours, humbled to a degree which had not been seen before. Abased. Shown the futility of their own existences, the worthlessness of their toil towards some half-imagined utopia. What rubbish. What idiocy. They would live. They would die. It had always been so. It would always be so. For the entities that passed aeons slumbering in the dark, that harnessed unholy science and power beyond comparison as a matter of fact, the lives of humans meant nothing.
In the fetid clouds above, rank with the sickly-sweet smell of roasting flesh and broken arrogance, gods moved.
With the coming of the Reapers, Earth had burned. In the first fifty minutes of the assault, almost a billion people had been wiped out. In the weeks to follow, billions more would follow them in their return to dust.
-London-
The First walked the ruins, an eye-aching canker on the face of reality which warped the universe itself as it moved. Wan fires of annihilation flickered across its skeletal frame, and a horrific jagged-toothed grin split the infinite fractal madness that one might call a face. It was humanoid, roughly nine feet tall. At the edges of Its being it rippled and flickered, as if it was forcing itself into three-dimensional form through the power of its infinite will alone. Ahead of it lay some famous structure - it honestly couldn't care what the biological garbage that built this shit hole of a city called it. Street lights, sensing the artificial night made by the billowing spirals of smoke, guttered in the half-dark. The First shone. Like a dead star, it shone in the midst of the twilight of Man.
It cocked its head. Something was moving. It sensed a threat. As it turned the blazing pits of its eyes left and right, searching in dimensions undiscovered by any species for over three hundred thousand years, it felt a shift in the air currents. How curious. It turned its face, and promptly caught a sniper round in the middle of its forehead.
For a moment it flickered, and then grinned.
"Well well, lookie here Johnny boy", it spat in words that curdled the atmosphere around it, "somebody thinks they're special."
And in a moment, it... folded, for a lack of a better word, and was in front of an extremely befuddled SAS operative clutching an absurdly customized rifle.
"Oh my, what a bad boy you are! You think you're so very very unique, don't you?", the First declaimed as its lighting-veiled fist smashed through the man's helmet at something past the speed of sound and sank into the unfortunate man's brain. The sniper began twitching madly as the First tilted its head.
"Coates", it drawled. "Cccooooaaaaatttteeeeessssss. Maaaaaaajjjjjorrr Ccooooaaatttteeesssss..... Neeed Coates. Ned Coates. Wow. Real home-grown hero here, aren't you? You think you're hot shit, don't you Coates? You're the best of the best of the SAS, ain't that something? Think you're one of the best in the whole damn galaxy at killing people in cowardly ways. Well. Way things are going, that's getting a fair bit easier, innit?"
Coates foamed at the mouth in response and rolled his eyes back into his head. Having a pseudo-physical fist rammed into your brain by a demigod tends to do that.
The First grinned its papercut smile. "Well sorry Ned old chap, but I'm in a bit of a tizzy at the moment. This is a pretty neat body, innit, but the problem is Neddy boyy that I can't keep it up for long. You see, I've got a redhead to kill and so I'll have to stick around for a bit. So I'll have to borrow you from you for a bit. Maybe I'll give you back to you when I'm done with you, hehehe, so that you can see me strangle the hero of your worthless little species to death in front of you. OK, mister Coates?"
Coates foamed some more, choked, and released his bowels into his pants.
The First grinned.
"Oh don't feel so very bad about this, Coatsey. Because you'll get to be me for a bit. Meeee. The First. The very First. Four-eyed fuckwads didn't get one - we'd been working them for ages - but your lot definitely do. Otherwise, how do we kill off your great big hero that you put in jail for annoying Harby? You'll be a host to the one that ends your race and teaches it a lesson, oh Neddy boy. You'll be the face of the Herald of Despair. When soldiers die, they'll curse your face. When children starve, it'll be your body that they remember because of it. When people see what we've done to their pretty little planet and realize they're never getting it back, it'll be you that they'll blame. When I kill their heroes, you'll be the traitorous bastard what done it. Because the Masters - the great big god-machines, the Inevitable Ones, the Head Honchos, the Big Kahunas, call them what you will - are pretty darn effective, but they lack a personal touch. You'll be me. And I'll be that. Ready?"
The First folded. Major Ned Coates of the SAS screamed. Even as his personality was annihilated and his individuality chased back into a small dark corner of his own mind, he had the bizarre feeling that there was something wrong about this. Very wrong. He wasn't supposed to DIE now. Not yet. Not yet. He hadn't met Shepard - wasn't he supposed to do that? Why would he even think that?
After that, Ned Coates didn't do much thinking at all.
The First stood in Coates' body, stretching it, before snapping its new fingers. Reddish light shone through them. Its eyes glowed, and lightning spiralled across its suddenly floating corpse-body.
"Right-o, fellas", it yelled in something approaching ecstacy. And just like that, it was on every screen in the galaxy.
"Heya chums. 'Sup, tally ho wot wot? Just want you all to know something. The Reapers, who your governments have been hi-dinng from you, are re-al! Super duper real, realer than chips and gravy, realer than the morning cab fare, realer than that kinda cute fella you smiled at every morning and were thinking of asking out that was just impaled on a goddamn spike, shortly to become brainless cannon fodder. We're here, gents, and we're the realest thing you'll ever goddamn see. We're here. We always have been. From the dawn of your useless little existences, we have been here. We'll be here for a while yet, and don't plan on stopping that. Now of course you'll naturally try to contest that. That's what dumb pathetic meat bag sacks of garbage and inefficient biology always do. Sure as sure, you'll fight us. But there's one thing in this universe that's for certain. Your hopes, your dreams, your aspirations, and your imagined futures are about to all go up in a cloud of smoke - pufft. You're fucked. Doomed. Damned to annihilation, sure as sure. Nothing you do will ever change that. What am I? I'm the First of many. I'm the last human to be born on Earth. I'm the alpha and omega of this accursed little species. I'm more. I'm the prophet of your incurable demise, planned out long before your sweaty retard ancestors wiped their hairy bums on leaves and thought they were clever little duffers. I'm the Messenger, folks. The Messenger of Despair. And I'm here to teach the galaxy its first lesson. Your resistance is worthless. Fight? Die now. Run? Die later. Everyone dies eventually. The message is this - fuck you, dirty little organics, 'cuz you're all going to die. Sure. As. Sure.
Oh yeah, and a note from my sponsors - Shepard? Commander Shepard? Something like that. Whatever. I'm coming for you. You gonna die, Sheppy, and you gonna die badly. Get prepped. Are you ready to race each other to your demises, puny organic dunce-a-trons? Are you prepped? On your mark! Get set! GO!"
The First Snapped. It was suddenly in front of the building - Parliament, it helpfully picked out of Coates' brain. It giggled.
"Look at your history. Now look at me. Now look at your history-"
A Thanix Cannon's shot hit the historic building, annihilating the foundation-place of modern liberal democracy.
"Oh wait", it tittered, "you can't. Because I blew it up. See y'all soon!"
Regular scheduled programming was resumed soon after.
There could be no doubt. The Reapers had come.