I see other similar desire-sets. Simple creatures eating, sleeping and mating. Defending the herd against predators. Not being mentally complex enough to recognise that the 'oddface' members of the herd were now hosts for the primordial Star Conquerors.
Was one of them the hosts of the Star Conqueror who eventually became this?
This is trippy, just like i thought it would be...
A partially submerged city with six-limed sentients going about their business, apparently ignoring the starfish on their faces as they greet friends or work at their jobs.
…
What?
I concur... This can't be something real...
Yes, Star Conquerors kept some civilisations
sort of functioning, but never '
as is'. They only maintained the things their hosts needed in order to live and procreate. They didn't… Carry on like before but with added
starfish.
I have to wonder what part the Starros played in this culture? Were they fitted at birth with a Starro symbiont? What if someone's Starro died but they lived? Would they be ostracised, euthanised or simply fitted with a new one? This raises so many questions!
In the sky, Mother Stars.. look.. down, obscuring the stars and at the same time… Not. There's a sense of… Rightness about this. Either the Mother Star regards this as exactly how things should be, or… Star Conquerors in general do? I can't tell whether this is a stored memory from this Mother Star or telepathically shared memory from another part of the species.
...That just raises even more questions!
I look.. around, and through the overwhelming orange I feel from the Mother Star observers I.. can feel the other emotion of the people. A… Um, I don't know what sexes this species had. A starfish-faced 'care giver' escorts a small group of starroed children and I can see the bonds of love. A flash of compassion as one being helps another out of the water after they struggled to pull themselves up.
No, seriously, what is this?
Seriously, has the
world gone
mad, or just this Mother Star?
I press on, trying to find an actual memory and things snap. Mother Stars fade into nothing as I see lifeless streets, the inhabitants moving 'efficiently' from place to place. Children are kept in orphanariums until they're large enough for a Star Conqueror, the silent caretakers keeping constant watch on children…
Their faces are blank.
Blank of emotion? You'd expect there to be
something in an un-bonded child...
What am I seeing?
My ring ever so helpfully flashes up a diagram… The emotion-association patterns are retained in different parts of its neural network, okay. One literal and the other… Imagined?
Presumably the 'perfect' world he saw first was the dream, and the latter the reality.
There's no emotion from the hosts here. The small Star Conquerors don't have a huge emotional range, and the hosts… The Guardians were never completely certain as they had no interest in studying Star Conquerors in situ. But studies of the survivors and the remains of those who were killed suggested that their mental processes were severely distorted. They shouldn't be capable of what I just…
I'm floating over the streets of a city of thralls as they suddenly look up. There's no obvious reason for them to do so. They don't really need to look at loud noises or flashes of light in the way that humans do. Wrong set of instincts. But they've stopped, and-.
And that just makes it so much creepier...
The false-reality trembles
A street of happy starfish faces
A street of mindless starfish faces
So, something shattered their imagined world? Did the Starros believe they were bringing the dream to people, when it was actually the latter reality? Did... Did the Starros consider themselves to be
helping people?
A city of people
A city of thralls
And the contradiction between perceived and real drove them mad? Was this Dream of the Endless taking action to stop a perversion of his realm?
Oh this is bad, isn't it?
Something… Emerges, from the starfish, from the people, from the thralls, from the structure of the city they live in. I feel ideas and thoughts and memories flow past and up up up into
An eye opens in the sky, the five tentacles of a Mother Star-. No this Mother Star becoming… Visible. They were always… I think they were always there, just…
...Was... Was that the birth of a Starro god? a Nightmare?
What is going
on?!
"You just appear? That was where you were born?"
**QuietPeople DreamEchoes NoDream. So Hungry.**
"I don't understand! What do you eat?"
Maybe... Maybe it eats the dreams of the people with Starros applied?
A section of its neural network lights up
and I'm draw in to see a young amphibious alien spooking some sort of sea anemone which spits forth a school of bright red aquatic near-slugs and the alien is drawn to them swimming among them
and music interwoven with emotion, fragments of images and scents I can barely grasp
Cue the trippy music.
an endless meadow
streets racing past
a crystal refracting the light of a dozen tiny suns
This feels like some trance writing or something... The Mother Star must be having one hell of a trip.
"Is that how you see us? Our imaginations?"
more images than I can easily count of even perceive and something stirs from the part of me that touches the Ophidian as I try and soak them all in.
Hopefully without contamination... I shudder at the thought of a Starro embodiment.
**QuietAloneTired. HurtAloneTired. NoDream. NotDreamHurt.**
"Dreams? You see dreams?"
It sounds concussed... I suppose it is, given the circumstances it's awakening in...
**AllDream. ManyDream**
"You feed on dreams? You-?" No, hang on. "You are a dream?"
...Wat.
**Remember. RememberDream.**
"How can I help-?"
**Rem… em...**
And the spring's run down. Looks like it's gone.
It-. No, the shut down of the major neural clusters has… Reached what looks like terminal levels. A life form this big is going to take a long time to completely die, but I'm not going to get anything much else out of it. And in case it telekinetically flails around in its death throes I need to keep moving the ClusterShip.
Meanwhile, what of Pluto? Is it cracked open like an egg, or was the Mother Star just laying under the surface? I think there's going to be repercussions from this...
"Illustres to everyone. The Mother Star is dying, and unlikely to present a further danger after today. I… Didn't kill it. I will make a full report available shortly."
Half-glimpsed images continue to flicker through my mind
and I take a moment to check my spell eater and my armour's telepathic defence modules. No, they're all working just fine.
Once he works out what the hell just happened. Maybe the Ophidian was looking through the things he just saw?
I'm not sure… What to t-.
"My Lord Illustres!"
To think about the Mother Star. I'm pretty sure what to think about Lord Lantern Comic King.
And it's nothing you'd care to repeat in polite company, I'm betting.
"Lantern Khan."
I turn around in space. Lantern Koriand'r is still towing the ClusterShip, and Alan's gotten outside to cover it if necessary. Lantern Khan's only a short distance from me, with L-Ron held firmly under his right arm.
Well, if it's comforting for him... Are you sure that's
actually L-Ron, or just a dummy chassis, like some sort of body pillow?
"Might I suggest that your crew could benefit from your presence at this trying time?"
"Yes. In fact, I they're going to be benefiting a good deal more!"
...What? Wait, what are you talking about? Don't you have responsibilities to...
"… Right. What-?"
"I quit." He pulls the ring off his finger and tosses it to me, his environmental shield fading out at once. "My insurance doesn't cover giant starfish gods. No insurance covers that. We'll be leaving the Sol system as soon as we've recalled our planetside assets."
...Wow. Okay. Not even he's prepared to deal with Earth's bullshit. I guess there's not enough money in the
universe to make it worth it?
…
I catch his ring in a small ring case construct and stuff in into the most heavily armoured storage compartment in my armour. Then I weld it shut.
"Oh. Nooo."
"No need to sound so disappointed, Illustres. If it's any comfort, I, Manga Khan, shall spread the word: If you come to Earth, be prepared for
anything!"
