Tales of Acamar: Legends Updated 5/24

[SanyuXV]

Great stuff SK! Wish that I was around to read the early renditions but "I have no regrets"

[Iron Aquilifer]

Oh deary, I have read it all. Moar!

Good stuff here, always impressed.

[Alwyn]

Mysterious communications and a war, confidently begun, turning to ruin - great chapters! I wonder if Sizaba's killing of her own mother will undermine her position in the Consortium (who would trust someone who did that?) just as Bespal's war undermined her position as leader of her country?

[Scottish King]

Great stuff SK! Wish that I was around to read the early renditions but "I have no regrets"

Thanks SanyuXV. The old version is still up on the site just buried in the pages somewhere. But "I have no regrets" about starting over.

Oh deary, I have read it all. Moar!

Good stuff here, always impressed.

Thanks Iron Aquilifer. More is coming. I promise.

Mysterious communications and a war, confidently begun, turning to ruin - great chapters! I wonder if Sizaba's killing of her own mother will undermine her position in the Consortium (who would trust someone who did that?) just as Bespal's war undermined her position as leader of her country?

Thanks Alwyn. We may see more of Sizaba in the future. I haven't decided yet.

[Scottish King]

Anger

Dedasi Fessa pushed his black hair out of his eyes as he stared over the city from the top of his apartment building. It was quite something to behold. The night was filled with the lights of the great city that the Reguli had built hundreds of years ago though those who would have laid its first foundations wouldn’t be able to recognize it anymore. The buildings of metal and the city of lights would have been as foreign to them as the Hadar, now a common place sight in the streets of the city.

It had been eighty-seven years since the Hadar had appeared above their planet. The Hadar were an alien race from a planet far away they called Adar Minor. In appearance, they were short generally less than five feet tall, with light brown skin covered in bony protrusions. Sixty-seven years later, the Consortium, a group of industrialists and intelligentsia took virtually taken control of nearly every government on the planet. Twenty-five years afterward, the Hadar were given permission to establish colonies on Septimus and offers of citizenship. Desai turned his gaze toward the construction cranes that were now part of the skyline. Another apartment building designated for the Hadar. He shook his head in digust. There were plenty of Reguli that could use housing and the government was building housing for aliens that weren’t even born on Septimus.

Yes, Septimus was the name of their planet not Civilis as the Hadar called it. In doing so, they were disrespecting the Reguli’s culture. When he told others of his view some said that that wasn’t the case. It was just the name they used for their planet. They were others who agreed with him but that the Hadar were not consciously doing it. A load of crap. The Hadar if not anything were smart. They knew exactly what they doing and every time they called Septimus by anything other than its rightful name they were purposefully dismissing the Reguli culture as inferior to their own.

Isn’t that what conquerors do? They try to erase the cultural identity of their conquered subjects as to not give them anything to rally behind and throw off the chains of oppression. The Hadar had not come as conquerors. No, they came as ‘explorers seeking friends among the stars’ but to no lesser degree did they conquer the Reguli. The future only held a Hadar dominated Septimus, a servile Reguli race.

Who was to blame for the condition of the Reguli? None other but the Reguli themselves but there was one group that was more to blame than all the others. The leaders of the Consortium. As soon as they gained power they immediately became bedmates of the Hadar accommodating their every whim. Instead of using native factories to build things for their own people, they set out building things for the Hadar. Traitors. That was what they were. Every last one of them. Dedasi hated them, hated the world he was born into. In the matriarchal society in which he was born into, his options for improving his lot in life were slim to none. Yes, there were males that had risen to the top. There was even one that was a leader in the Consortium. But they all had given away their dignity in exchange for success. He would not do.

Dedasi turned away from the skyline and walked back inside the building and downstairs to the street. As he walked down the street, Dedasi looked up at the night sky. It used to be a comfort to him when he was younger to look up at the night sky and see the stars and wonder what else was out there. Now the night sky was like a taunting bully. Every time he looked up and saw the stars it reminded him that the Hadar were up there looking down on him from whatever ship they were in, from whatever planet they came from. With their arrival he had slipped one more step down the social ladder. Dedasi clenched his fist. Anger was welling up inside of him. He felt like he was about to explode-

“Hello, there. Good evening, isn’t it?” an elderly Hadar walking past said in bovi, a Reguli language which had been made the official language of the Consortium. But it was not the language of Dedasi’s ancestors. It was a language forced on them by the Consortium and by extension the Hadar.

Before he knew what was happening, Dedasi began pounding the Hadar with his fist. The Hadar’s protest and pleads of mercy fuelled his rage as he pummeled his victim to the ground. Yes. Finally, he was taking the fight to them. With each blow he was taking back what was his, showing the Hadar that not every Regulus could be bought, that not every Regulus would be subjected to their tyranny.

Dedasi stepped back, his energy spent and looked upon his work. The Hadar lay there beaten, bloodied, unconscious but still breathing. For a moment, Dedasi only saw an elderly being who had nothing to do with his feud with the powers that be. But Dedasi took that thought and pushed it far from his mind. He looked at his bloodied hands. This is what he had to do. They were all the same. They would all have to be punished. The Hadar. The Consortium. They would all pay.

[Alwyn]

I like the way that you build up the image of Dedasi's anger, so that even the night sky, which might have been a peaceful scene, becomes something provocative for Dedasi. There may be trouble ahead ...

[Caillagh de Bodemloze]

I like the way that you build up the image of Dedasi's anger, so that even the night sky, which might have been a peaceful scene, becomes something provocative for Dedasi. There may be trouble ahead ...

You're expecting this kind of thing?! It doesn't seem all that likely to me...

Sorry it's taken me so long to get here and comment, Scottish King. This is great stuff. I'm hoping there will be more at some point.

[Scottish King]

Hey guys,

Its been awhile since I've been around and even longer since I updated this. First, I want to say thanks to those who voted for this work and helped it win best Best in the Yearly Awards. Hope I can keep up the same standard of writing as I move forward. Now without further ado: a short, but new update.

[Scottish King]

We Came as Explorers but Now We Come As…

How did we get here? Tazer Japup thought to himself as he viewed Civilis from the bridge of the Starchaser. The Starchaser was supposed to be a cargo ship but with the escalation of events on Civilis, the Starchaser had been refitted to troop transport. In fact for the past decade, ships like the Starchaser had been financed by the Hadar and 15 had been built. Each one was designed to transport an entire division, or about 12,500 men. They were behemoths. Bigger than any ships the Hadar had built before. It had taken only a decade to build due to the advances made in artificial intelligence the Hadar had made in the past 50 years. It had allowed the construction to proceed much faster with machines than the twenty five years predicted with just Hadar labor. In addition, each of the 15 troop ships was accompanied by 10 supply ships which carried weapons, ammunition, food and other necessary supplies. It was indeed a large operation. In fact, it was the largest movement of Hadar soldiers since the last world war on Adar Minor and the first military operation by the United Adar Council since its inception. And now here they were miles above the surface of Civilis awaiting orders, his orders. Orders that would decide the interactions of two races of peoples for years to come.

How did we get here? It was a question Tazer already knew the answer to. The Hadar hadn’t started the building of their troop transports without reason. The leadership had already known that one day it would come to this. All it had taken was the death of one old Hadar. Could he have known that his death would be the one that would lead to the clash of two civilizations? No longer would they battle for supremacy in art in galleries, books in libraries or in discussions in the cafes of Civilis. The superiority of one and the inferiority of the other would be decided on the field of battle. Now Tazer orders were only to protect the Hadar colonists on Civilis but he doubted that the Reguli would see their actions as nothing less than an invasion. There would be war.

But how could have the old, insignificant Hadar had known his death would have could this? That his death would cause the Hadar on Civilis to stage demonstrations after the acquittal of the Reguli that had killed him on technicalities, even though it was clear to all that a hate crime had clearly been committed. That over the next five years, tensions between the Consortium and Hadar would escalate as the Hadar argued for his extradiction, even as incidents of violence against Hadar by hateful Reguli were swept under the rug and their perpetrators never brought to justice. And finally that things would be brought to a head when the Reguli who had killed him was assassinated at a rally promoting the hate and forceful removal of Hadar from Reguli. The Reguli’s death provoked a wave of anti-Hadar and anti-Consortium hate. Riots and demonstrations ensued. In some places, Hadar were dragged from their homes and publicly executed. The Consortium had struggled to keep their control of the situation but things were too far out of control. The Hadar embassy was overrun and many of its personnel killed. That had been the final straw. When the United Adar Council heard the news, they had no choice and now here Tazer and 15 of the divisions of the Hadar awaited the inevitable. The clash of two civilizations.

Tazer Japup turned from the viewport. The silence of the bridge was deafening. His crew, the captains of the other ships, his people awaited his command.

“Let the Operation begin.”

The bridge erupted in a flurry of activity as he turned back to viewport. Before they had come as explorers. But now they came as conquerors.

[Alwyn]

The death of one old Hadar led to a war ... that reminds me a little of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914. I like the idea of these two peoples battling "for supremacy in art in galleries, books in libraries or in discussions in the cafes of Civilis" during peacetime and now facing each other on a battlefield - that brings home the deep sense of loss when former friends go to war.

[Caillagh de Bodemloze]

That's very nicely done, Scottish King. As Alwyn says, there's a real sense of sadness - maybe disappointment - that the war is taking place at all.