The Great Game 🎲 Kollarum & Skrakta
A Tale of Two Worlds
Even though the Dalitians and the Vallorians came from different universes (The Frozen Skiff in the Soodbelt & The Pink Sea in the Nordbelt), they were destined to find each other. This didn't seem obvious, however, for the first billion years of their histories.
The Dalitians were originally a serf-race, held in bondage for 55 million years to the hooded Superions. You could see this ancient serfdom in Horsefly’s eyes — not in their servility or disgrace, but in their determination never to be subjects again.
The Vallorians on the other hand were accountants and middle managers in the great hierarchy of the Pink Sea, the most abundant sectors of which were located in the galaxy of Vallorità. This galaxy was invaded five thousand years ago by the Seabreezers, who were content to let the conquered inhabitants live, as long as they proved themselves useful to the Seabreeze Empire. The Vallorians didn’t mind, as long as they got a good pension and could spend their weekends floating in their pink swimming pools.
The life of the average Pink Floater was a safe and easy one, whereas the life of the average Dalitian was full of unimaginable dangers.
🎲
Horsefly looked around the Contabri Bar and wondered how many of the patrons could understand the difficulties he and his people had faced. The hardest Kollaran drugs were like bird-seed to him. Their hardest drinks were like soda pop.
The carburran served by the host went through Horsefly’s system like water. Qayam could see this, and was impressed by the fact that the Dalitian could still sit up straight after three hours of nonstop carousing. He asked the gigantic hornet to tell the story of his life, if he felt so inclined.
Horsefly had told Venoozia his history over a dozen time. She couldn’t get enough of it. She said that she was so used to swimming that she could hardly grasp a world in which people could fly. She was so used to a world of luxury that she could hardly imagine a world where people worried about things like food or shelter.
So Horsefly decided to tell his fellow guests what it was like to be born a larva in Skrakta, the capital city of the Dalitian Empire. But, he cautioned them, to understand where a larva comes from you must know what other creatures flap their coloured wings.
🎲
The Planet Skrakta
Horsefly explained to his fellow travellers that the Dalitians were initially a scornful, bitter species from the planet Skrakta. “We were like this because we lived for 55 million years beneath the yoke of the Superions. A Superion wouldn’t touch a Dalitian even if the Superion was slipping off the edge of the Gilzat Cliff and the Dalitian held out its dark tarsal pad to rescue it from falling into the Fiery Abyss. If not for the intervention of the Bakhtars, the Dalitians would still be toiling day and night, bound by electric shackles. Without the Bakhtars, they would still be cleaning the toilets, servicing the Superions’ sexual needs, ridding the foothills of infectious mites and bacteria, and serving as whipping posts whenever Superions were in bad moods.”
“The Bakhtars are high-flying birds who are capable of carrying massive tanks of radioactive poison. 25 thousand years ago they started dropping these on the Superions whenever they treated us as slaves. The Superions soon learned to treat us with dignity, and soon made their dignity a hallmark of their superior virtue.”
“Superions are from either the Anglott, Bramzatt, Parsnip, or Zermatt clans, all of whom inhabit the Mount Blonque Mountain Range, which forms a continuous belt along the 220,000 kilometre equator. The Range is about six kilometres wide and has an average height of seven thousand metres. The capital city district, Shambalalaland (“Golden in the Sunset”), has a population of 86 million and sits above the thick clouds at 12 thousand meters.”
“From their lofty peaks, the Superions literally and figuratively look down on the jungle dwellers beneath them. The only time they paid attention to them was to swat them for trying to escape the swampy forests beneath. These low-lying forests had millions of infectious diseases, blood-curdling predators, and flash-fires that burned down millions of citizens in minutes.”
“Before the Bakhtars interrupted the reign of the Superions, the various Skraktan species were terrified of breaking the Superion Code, which forbade killing and eating each other, or doing anything that would otherwise interrupt the economic system the Superions had set up to maintain their cool and fragrant mountain kingdom.”
“As soon as the Bakhtars saved the Dalitians and the other Skraktans from the Superions, all hell broke loose. Species ate species, and all the built-up resentments of history surfaced from the deep waters and dense jungles. Only the most agile and powerful species survived. The brutality of the struggle only confirmed to the Superions that they had once been the benevolent patrons of a Golden Age. This inconceivable brutality lasted for five hundred years, after which an alliance was formed between the Dalitians, the Bendagadians, and the Devagarians. Vegetarian laws were passed, and the Bakhtars enforced them from above.”
“Only later was it disclosed that the Bakhtars weren’t from the planet of Skrakta. They were in fact advance squadrons of the Badrigar Empire. They were sent from Badrigar Prime to take down the Superions before they got any ideas about space travel.”
🎲
Learning to Fly
“I was an orphan from a small village in the vast swamp of Miasmabite. In our native mandible (or tongue), my name sounds like Ztrpfliltlic, and is best translated as ‘Horsefly.’ On Skrakta, horseflies are small insects that plague the slim, eloquent trees of Klashmara, the silky talking forest that take a different shape and speak a different language each time the planet enters one of its fourteen seasons. The trees resent the insects, and wish they could stop their tormentors. Yet, alas, they’re just singing trees, and remain at the mercy of tour operators and singing-tree exporters who disrupt their choirs and arias on a daily basis.”
“One day my parents were so mesmerized by the bright lights of Shambalalaland that they completely forgot about their little cocoon, who was the pride of the family’s holometabolous nursery. Their abrupt departure didn’t bother me, however, since I had never been interested in what my parents said. Even in the cocoon I knew they would resent it if I sprouted wings.”
“My parents never came back to Miasmabite, having made millions on the Casino Tunnels, and having made it all the way to the Final Tunnel. This tunnel took them to a place that no Dalitian outside the Gambling Committee were permitted to write about. It was rumoured, however, that beyond the Final Tunnel lay the Candyland of Bright Glittering Things, edible chocolate honeycombs, seventy-armed goddesses (which is alot of arms, even for a Dalitian), flying laptogills which float in watery currents of turquoise nectar with the aid of their three-metre wings (which are large, even for a Dalitian), and orange jet-ways which take the lucky winners in mere seconds to the best restaurants on the estern edges of the Frozen Skiff. I never blamed my parents for abandoning us, since any Dalitian would have done the same.”
“As a result, I had to transform myself into a kinderfly all on my own. I didn't mind, however, since this gave me the opportunity to go wherever I pleased, flicking from one stalk of nursery grass to the next. Without my parents, I could flick myself into any nursery cell I chose. I spent time in the dodgiest cells, one week experimenting with the effect of polyisomangsters and exquisilicites, and the next sticking my stinger into every sort of blissful toxic angiomorph imported or invented by the nursery scientists. Because the hyperganglian scientists were perpetually buzzed on the angiofiliums and angiosliders they invented, they had no time to worry about teenagers sowing their wild oats, although sometimes a scientist would take a stray youngster under its thirteen wings to do secret experiments.”
“The papers they wrote about these experiments garnered praise for the hyperganglions in the highest echelons of the Badrigar military squadrons. The hyperganglions were given coveted seats to the stinging matches held monthly in the Oscoleum. The hyperganglions enjoyed watching the matches, yet they were an ambitious lot: while the other spectators threw popcorn into the air and sang, they diligently took notes about the death-throttles of alien species, and about subtle jabbing techniques that were so fast and so hidden that even the Badrigar military experts couldn’t see them. The papers the hyperganglians wrote based on their keen observations garnered them even more praise and even better seats to the stinger games, from which they could also see the way the aliens were herded into the ring and dissected upon their removal.”
“When I morphed into an adult Dalitian, I vaulted from skyscraper to desert well, in search of new sensations that could satisfy that itching bliss that my stinger demanded at accelerating rates. After several decades travelling across the Kraslika, I arrived at last in Kollarum, looking for a job with the Kohlkutter Security Agency.”
Horsefly looked across the table at Venoozia and said, “And this is where I met my fiancée.”
The Wife of Pinksy’s Tale
Venoozia took this as her cue to tell her story.
“As soon as I saw Horsefly, I knew that my dream of marrying a flying unicorn was finally coming true. The bright darting thing I saw in my daydreams, darting above the teal Pinksy swamp, was in fact this virile form I had never seen before. I knew this with an absolute certainty. But how could I know this? I’d never seen anything like him before. Looking down at the resume on my screen, I realized the reason why: he wasn’t from the Nordern hemisphere at all. He was from the Soodbelt! No wonder he was built the way he was: he was from one of the scariest, most violent places in the Kraslika: the Frozen Skiff!”
“I’d heard rumours about life in the dark and blinding, icy and fiery realms of the Skiff, but I had never imagined that these lands might produce such magnificent beings.”
Venoozia looked up at Horsefly with amazement in her eyes, the same amazement she felt when she first saw him towering above her at the reception. She then lowered her eyes, as if to signal a deep reverence and respect for her future husband.
“While I was in fact twice as large as the stranger from the Frozen Skiff, for a moment I felt intimidated. So all I could do was bow to the sovereignty of the powerful warrior before me.”
As Venoozia finished her tale, she wondered if Horsefly really believed it. He had asked her to tell her the story at least twenty times, and after each time he said that he still couldn’t believe it. He was so happy his stinger was about to explode.
⭐️
Fra Sole had done impeccable work.
⭐️
Next: 🔮 Fractal Masters & Fractal Mystics
Table of Contents - Chart of Contents - Characters - Glossary - Maps - Story Lines