The adventures of Sigrún “Lioness” Magwar: Oni [1], Red Mage [2] and Field Operative in the Thulean [3] Automaton Hunter Corps (TAHC), in the perilous sewers of Ultima Thule.
*****
Ultima Thule, Thule (Tzaphkiel 2, 1796, Late Third Age of the Gnostic Era in the Epigenetic Aeon) [4].
7:00
In the pitch-black bedroom of a middle-class apartment, serenated by the low hum of an air conditioner, rang an alarm clock shaped like a bell-carrying kitty. Buried deep beneath the covers, Sigrún “Lioness” Magwar groggily rose as the scent of violets filled the air through the ventilation systems, disciplining the annoying contraption with a palm strike. As she languidly wormed her way out of bed, her automated blinds opened up to Yaldabaoth’s scarlet rays and the collective gaze of Agathós, revealing a veritable pigpen of messy clothes, paperwork, mead bottles, animal parts in formaldehyde jars, and a lonely and coiled holo-PC crowned by a lacy bra; all isolated from the cacophony, the roiling mists and the electrical buzz of the city-streets; thanks to he wonders of soundproofing.
Sigrún “Lioness” Magwar (Credit: Kenomitian)
Squinting in the sunlight, and afflicted by a head-splitting migraine, she shambled off to the bathroom in her oversized pink pajamas. There, as she washed her face and brushed her teeth, the usual reflection greeted her from the mirror: tall, blonde, brown-eyed and blue-skinned, fuchsia-horned and pearly-tusked, big-breasted, blessed with long and wavy hair, childlike thanks to rejuvenation procedures, and extremely brawny due to the custom-made symbionts implanted beneath her flesh: two eel-like worms that made her strong in exchange of a pint of blood and a bit of Orgone. It was a sight that inspired fear, attraction and revulsion in colleagues and suitors alike, though it was cutely dampened by the way she lumbered towards the kitchen once she concluded her ablutions.
There, forming itself out of a fleshy cube, greeted her Nuka, her ΘΕΛΗΜΑ [5] -branded homunculus; a lifeform magically crafted as a bass-headed bronze statue with tuxedo-like skin and green tubes protruding grotesquely from the base of the skull. It wordlessly handed her a cocktail of Hadit Industries [6] pill-shaped painkiller nanomachines, but gently stopped her before she could imbibe them. Through a painful daze, she glared at it inquisitively.
Nuka (Credit: Kenomitian)
—Wha…? What do you want? –she groaned, rubbing her eyes.
—I require nourishment, mistress –it answered, in a comical falsetto.
—Aargh…, fine. Go ahead…, take it.
Having obtained verbal consent, its tubes detached with a squelching sound and dangled themselves like vines near her head, sensing her pain and converting the resulting readings into Orgone, for Nuka was a cheap model that didn’t require food/drink nor oxygen to operate, but those features compensated for its subpar (yet highly empathetic) intelligence and its dull personality. Once it had guaranteed its sustenance, it served its master a humongous bowl of fried noodles for breakfast and a glass of icy water for the nanomachines, and remained on standby, breathing softly.
Hadit’s product worked as intended: releasing swarms of embryo-looking bots that swam to her brain at the moment of ingestion, all equipped with injectable analgesics, and fused with her nervous system before dissolving into nothingness, leaving behind only a brief tingling sensation in her ring fingers. Perched atop the counter, she wolfed down her food whilst a snake-like lightning arc emerged from an electrical socket, widened itself, and morphed into a holo-screen; one projecting the morning news from a randomly chosen network, in this case Aiwass Magitek’s [7] I-GNC. It spewed nothing but propagandistic drivel, but it made for good background noise,
Her mind now clear, she went over the day’s agenda: the briefing session for her first mission as the leader of her own squad in the TAHC: Maner; a momentous occasion whose stirring trepidation was only hampered by last night’s mead-fueled celebration. Four operatives had been placed under her leadership, and she had to tread very carefully in order to mold them (and herself) into her ideal team: a pack of bloodthirsty predators, willing to rend all sorts of spellborne beasties and mutated freaks into smithereens with a smile on their faces. Though the activities of the TAHC could be summarized as “supernatural pest control under the exclusive authority of the jarls”, and plenty of operatives functioned as mere jobbers and mercy-killers; she enjoyed hunting and taming/ incinerating her marks (to the point of keeping gory trophies and openly questioning why she couldn’t just stuff and mount her kills), and was eager to share such experiences with her subordinates, but first she had to train them, bond with them, and (most importantly), keep them alive.
Amongst her colleagues, those who best understood her way of thinking were the four members of her formative squad: Landeythan. It was an elite unit led by Agnar “Hook” Scheving: an oceanid (that is, an amphibious and anthropomorphic fish) and a Golemancer (an Archmage whose Magic allowed for the creation and enslavement of AIs made out of “unliving” matter). Under his guidance, his teammates had proven themselves as the best spell-shots in all of Ultima Thule.
He was her mentor and rival, as well as her ideal marriage prospect (a futile hope due to their incompatible biologies): the one who nurtured her instincts and guided her in every aspect of her professional life (from the weapons that suited her the most, to the kinds of parasites/symbionts/cyber-augmentations she should enhance her body with), teasing and taunting her along the way with veritable “sagas” of his exploits (chief among them that time he eliminated the last Bar Juchne [8] of a particularly elusive serial killer, by manifesting a wisecracking zinc tree inside it) and his superior trophy collection (he was particularly fond of the left hand of a zombified mastodon centaur [9] from the Pneumatic Era [10], taken down in a joint operation with the Tartaruchi Undead Hunters). She already envisioned long and drunken nights spent bragging and carousing with him and their collective minions, lapping their wounds after a difficult hunt in a seedy bar somewhere. All she needed to do to hit the ground running was to pull off one mission.
Once she finished her noodles, she climbed down from the counter like an azure sloth and instructed Nuka to pack her a massive pork sandwich and a protein shake for lunch, clean her room whilst she was away, and prepare kalops and red wine for dinner. Letting out a lengthy sigh, she ambled off to prepare for work, taking off her pajamas and allowing them to fall to the kitchen floor in the process. Her newfound naked state revealed the symbol of her faith, tattooed in her nape: the merpanther of the Vitalist Church; the most prominent worshippers of Father Yig, the God of Life.
The Merpanther of the Vitalist Church (Credit: Kenomitian)
09:00
Two hours later, she arrived at The Kennel: the seven-storey “pillar” of concrete and tinted glass that served as regional headquarters for the TAHC, which was as busy as ever when she entered its lobby, donning a black business suit with flamboyant shoulder pads, and enough makeup to seem “naturally beautiful”. Hundreds of clerks and automata servants were indefatigably filling in mission reports; registering newly crafted homunculi, golems and familiars; compiling data about monster sightings; and cataloguing any evidence of phoenix usage from persons of interest; whilst floating screens of molded lightning kept everyone abreast of the locations of fiend and cryptid nests. All of this occurred under the gaze of a statue of the organization’s mascot and emblem: a scarred she-hound, sculpted out of green stone in an echoing and crescent-shaped hall that overlooked, like a balcony, a bloodstained docking bay. There, those perps with enough sapience to stand trial (along with their proprietors), instead of ending up in the manifold pens, labs and crematoria in the building’s basements; were ushered into holding cells by dour guards armed with cattle prods and blessed (by Titanic and Divine forces) spears and firearms.
The Kennel
Stone-faced, she approached the front desk, where the receptionist: a sullen and gnomish granny (hairy, wide, baby-sized, pointy-eared, hazel-eyed, golden-skinned and covered in leopard-like spots) furiously typing on four floating keyboards; curtly directed her to the “East Wing, Sixth Floor, Conference Room B”. Two escalators, a couple of poorly lit hallways and an elevator trip later, she was there. Inside were her four operatives, seated around a mahogany table, and one by one they greeted her and saluted her:
—May the Mutant Prince bless you this fine morning, Squad Leader (SL) Lioness –croaked Eberhard “Cage” Lund, a toad gveleshapi (with the body of an anthropomorphic and centauroid herptile) donning a wan tunic and a merpanther pendant. He was an expert in barrier, sealing and time-stopping spells; and a fellow Vitalist of great devotion, with a mean streak against anything weak or demonic.
—G’morning, Madam SL –mumbled Helge “Dumbbell” Pajari, an ashen-bearded, bald, and purely violet-eyed gray elf (humanoid yet endowed with an inhumanely angular face, sharp fangs and elongated fingers and toes); enveloped in an outsized leather coat over a brown suit. He was a lean and towering mass of pure muscle; a master of anesthetic and healing spells; and a health-freak with a fitness obsession.
—Hiya, ma’am! How’s it going? –beamed Hanne “Dapper” Omdahl, a redheaded, cyan-eyed and green-skinned hobgoblin (recognizable by his pointy ears, prominent tusks, sharp teeth and bony protrusions) in a blue pin-striped suit. He was quite adept at magically controlling magnetism, and a “party animal” that hunted his marks with the same joyous fervor as he picked-up men at the nightclub.
—Greetings, SL!! We eagerly awaited your arrival!! –bellowed Ásta “Fury” Falkr, a jittery nasnas woman with short chestnut hair and the orange goat eye, pointy ears and purple skin typical of her species; donning a drab white dress. She was familiar with spells that extracted information from locations and soulless lifeforms, and was infamous among her colleagues for being a paranoiac (which made her rather apt at bagging “things that go bump in the dark”) prone to berserker rages (which, at the very least, made the hunt quite exciting).
—At ease, folks –acknowledged them Lioness, returning the salute–. I’m glad to see you in such high spirits. Let’s see what freakish monstrosities will the brass throw us against, shall we? Today’s our big day, after all.
—Indeed it is, lass. But ya ain’t gonna like the mission –said a raspy voice behind her, prompting a swift turnaround.
Three people stood at the entrance, chief amongst them “Uncle” Hákon Sigurdsson, the Spellshot-General and Head of the TAHC: a stocky merrow (with a humanoid torso and the skin and lower body of a banana slug) in a green suit, with a ginormous white mustache, a ridiculous mullet, and dangling eyestalks on his forehead. He had risen through the ranks thanks to a combination of skill, politicking and the blood of minor nobility; and treated the TAHC as a “family business”. Next to him fidgeted a chubby and pink-haired rabisu woman (red-eyed and sharp-fanged like the rest of her species), slathered with goth makeup and shrouded in black robes; whilst the third person was a tall and gangly gennu woman with raven-black hair and the aura of a hardened war veteran, accentuated by the many claw scars and bullet wounds that covered her body without tarnishing it; giving her an air of rugged beauty that complimented the amber eyes, sharp fangs and slightly pointed ears of her species.
Maner saluted Uncle Hákon the moment they noticed him, and eyed him worryingly as he wordlessly slithered into the room and placed a holo-laptop on the table, whilst the rabisu goth slumped into her chair and the gennu rested her back against the wall with a purposely blank expression. With a hoarse whistle, the device deployed 3D maps of the city’s sewer system as everyone in attendance took a seat and, once its primitive AI detected that it had “grabbed the operatives’ attention”, it also displayed images of downed and dissected lifeforms. With rats, roaches, bats, crows, foxes, worms, carnivorous plants, poisonous fungi, dogs, cats and other vermin popping up all around the room, the Spellshot-General expectorated into a paper cup and addressed his subordinates, with the images accentuating every point he made, as if telepathically prompted:
The Sewers of Ultima Thule
—Alright, kiddos, let’s start by making one thing veeery clear: this is a recon mission. I want ya to get in, gather all the info/people ya can, and get out. Don’t try to finish off the mark, or ya won’t be back alive. Normally, I wouldn’t hand over this mission to a debuting squad, but… mmm, with this SL, mmm…, it wouldn’t be right to keep ya out of it: ya would storm out of here the moment ya found out I gave the order to someone else, ya…
—What do you mean, sir? Why is this about me, in that sense? –interrupted him Lioness, leaning her impressive bulk on the table–. Please clarify.
—Ya’ll see, lass, and I’ll say it again: ya ain’t gonna like it. I wanted to give ya some routine cleanups like rabid critters, sewer gators or a rogue familiar. Heh, maybe a stray purposely infected with a cryptid pathogen, or one of my slaves (disguised and brainwashed), but then…, we found a source.
—A “source”? Of what?
—Of prey. We narrowed down ALL of the unclaimed automata cases in the last three months to a single “spawning point”, on a sewer tunnel nexus in a bad part of town, below an abandoned factory. We sent some recon drones there, along with a possessed homunculus.
—What was down there? ¿A mage’s workshop?
—A wayward spell? –mused Dumbbell.
—Maybe an enchanted machine? –speculated Fury.
—Some nasties with the right charms…? –guessed Dapper.
—Something…, otherworldly? –asked Cage.
—We got some readings of…, something (don’t know if Mana or Prosopon: it was well cloaked), near a crack on the wall in one of the tunnels, and then the homunculus went crazy and destroyed the drones before killing itself. Hence, we decided that a sapient touch was necessary so…, we sent Landeythan.
—Landeythan …? You sent Hook’s squad down there…, and you just talked about getting people out…, didn’t you? –tremblingly inquired Lioness–. Sir…, sir, WHEN did you send them there?
—This morning, lass: an hour before ya’ll came here. They went through the crack and found a horde of mutated rats, which they quickly dispatched. However…, once they ventured further, they went quiet and all our trackers went offline. That’s why I want ya down there, today: to see what the fuck happened and if/how can ya help. If ya don’t come back, I’ll have to ask Jarl Gille to send in the troops.
—WHAAAAT?????
Utterly outraged and flummoxed, Lioness flew out of her seat and lunged towards Hákon, intent of prying from him some sort of retraction, to make him deny the absurdity…, the devastating implications of what he had said, but was stopped in her tracks by the scarred gennu woman, who paralyzed her with a mere stare. Such an ambarine gaze ameliorated the shock through unknown yet clearly supernatural means, whilst inflicting a bitter fit of alertness akin to a sharp blade caressing an exposed nape; but the worrisome thoughts that assailed her mind never ceased:
Automata hunters like Hook always walked a thin line between dying of old age, surrounded by their trophies; and falling to a wicked critter or an exotic disease, but no matter how glorious or ignominious the death, nothing could dull the biting sadness of whoever had to find or handle the remains. Worse of all, the idea of losing such a pillar in her life to a crack on a literal shithole, and having to gather whatever was left of him (if anything), ran a shiver down her spine and made her grit her teeth in abject terror.
Automata hunters
—I know ya want nothing more than to run to him and carry him out of there, and I know that ya’re the one who must do it, but ya can’t go in guns blazin’ –chided her the Spellshot-General–. We must be ready for the worst: what if what lies down there is a nephilim? Or an Avatar? I ain’t keen on getting the TAHC on the Supernal’s shit-list, nor in giving them any reason to fuck up Landeythan on their Gilgul.
—That’s why I’m here –interjected the gennu woman, releasing her from her hold and watching as she visibly “deflated” –: my name is Ingunn “Knives” Hrafn, and I’ve been sent here from Valgata to handle monstrous and Avatar-related negotiations, as a servant of the Divine and a Thulean citizen.
—Val… gata? –slurred Lioness, gripped by sheer stupefaction alongside her team, for that was the name of the road connecting Ultima Thule to the Hall of Heroes: the abode of Implacable Ithaqua, the God of War–. That means that He doesn’t own whatever lurks down there…, right?
—Correct. And don’t be discouraged by the feebleness of my powers –answered Knives, producing, out of thin air, a black claymore inscribed with steaming runes–: I may be able to handle nothing but mapmaking spells, but I’m combat trained (by His angels, the Dynameis) and well-armed: my eyes have been blessed in order to “calm the beasts of this world”, and my blade will always cut through anything He finds revolting.
Valgata
—She’ll hunt with ya…, and die for ya if necessary, lass –asserted Hákon, giving the gennu a firm nod before pointing to the chubby rabisu, who meekly saluted–. And ya’ll have Kerttu Niemi as yar liaison with The Kennel, under the codename “Chroma”.
—…, I see. Sir, I swear on the Master of the Wild Hunt –growled Lioness with bloodshot eyes–…, that I’ll do everything in my power to succeed in my mission. I’ll endeavor to bring Hook’s team back…, and the head/s of whatever lairs in the sewers…
—I commend yar passion, lass, but ya’ll not be hunting alone: ya have “kids to raise” now. I want all of ya to come back alive…, and better spellshots than you were before.
Slowly digesting his words, Lioness turned to look at her squad, who had been intently listening with bated breath. She scanned them whilst sporting a crude scowl, prompting them to stand in attention and show their teeth in a feral manner, feeding off her bloodlust. After pompously inhaling, noisily exhaling, and tensing all her muscles, she roared at them:
—ALRIGHT, YOU LOUSY DOGS!! WE’RE GONNA GO DOWN THERE AND BRING OUR PEOPLE BACK, NO MATTER HOW MUCH SHIT WE HAVE TO SWIM THROUGH! WE’LL GO IN AS PUPS AND GET OUT AS PRIZED HOUNDS!! SO REJOICE…, YOU FILTHY ANIMALS!!
To be continued in Episode 2…
Notes extracted from the Kenomitian Compendium
[1] Oni: a subspecies of the Maelite race. They are amphibious humanoids with sharp teeth, two long and colorful horns on their foreheads, an array of skin tones including all colors, pointy ears, and oni/hannya faces drawn from Earthly mythologies.
[2] Red Mage: a form of advanced Pyromancy that grants the power to absorb, ward off, commune with, create and control fire/heat/ash/ smoke/lava.
[3] Coalition of Thulean Jarls: a neofeudal and Teslapunk alliance of sci-fi Viking territories, ruled by Noble Houses of warlords and slavers: the Jarldoms, who attain their positions through lineage, bidding wars and extremely ritualized and regimented duels; and exert tremendous sociopolitical control over magically powerful commoners.
A glimpse into the Coalition of Thulean Jarls (Credits: Kenomitian)
[4] Tzaphkiel: the third month (with a length of 31 days) of the Penemuean.
[5] ΘΕΛΗΜΑ: a Bio Punk megacorporation, prominent in the fields of biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, environmental technology, otherworldly exploration, nanotechnology, ergonomic goods and automata. All of its citizens are expected, by law, to host one or more magical symbionts/parasites and other biological augmentations.
A glimpse into the ΘΕΛΗΜΑ (Credits: Kenomitian)
[6] Hadit Industries: a Nano Punk megacorporation, prominent in the energy, gene-engineering, pharmaceutical, transportation, agricultural, environmental and mining sectors, as well as in otherworldly exploration and the slave trade. All of its high-level executives flaunt their openly and genetically modified families and staff, and rule over legions of brainwashed artificial lifeforms.
A glimpse into the Hadit Industries (Credits: Kenomitian)
[7] Aiwass Magitek: a Post-Cyberpunk megacorporation, prominent in the fields of robotics, computers, mass media and entertainment, slave trading, heavy industry, transportation, otherworldly explora-tion and magical products. Its ruler is the online-bound Lich Turiel Alraune.
A glimpse into the Aiwass Magitek (Credits: Kenomitian)
[8] Bar Juchne: a phoenix created by a Reincarnator (an Archmage whose Magic allows him/her to be reborn by devouring a nearby lifeform from the inside, if the appropriate spells are prepared before death).
[9] Centaurs: a subspecies of the Hashmal race. They are furred humanoids with prominent synapsid features (from the waist-up)/ the bodies of synapsids (from the waist-down).
[10] According to the Wheel of Ages, the Pneumatic Era in the Epigenetic Aeon (geologically placed in the Holocene, just before the Gnostic Era) lasted for 8700 years: First Age (1-2000); Second Age (2001-7500); and Third Age (7501-8700).
