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Description

PART I
PART III

* * *

Precautions

It didn’t take more than a few centuries for Founders to actually find the Worm.

Well, its dormant underground cysts, at least.

Discovered deep underneath the lands of Iona – first planet with intelligent life ever encountered by Founders, and therefore the first candidate for searches – they were thoroughly examined and dissected, both confirming and expanding Founders’ preexisting understanding of the Worm’s life cycle. But unfortunately, these cysts were completely unconnected to the greater hive-mind, and bore no memories related to thereof – so no useful information about the Worm’s future plans was gathered.

After they were destroyed, the extracted samples were used to develop methods of detecting Worm’s presence on the explored planets – and with its help, a few more cysts were found, but the results were similar. The cysts refused to tell the secrets of their master, and even attempts to artificially make them hatch and receive adult specimen this way had failed – all of them just mysteriously self-destructed during the procedures.

And so the Founders decided – in order to uncover the plans of their enemy, the adult worms must be found!

Within the Godhunters Order, the specialized Helminthology Division was founded – armed with the worm detectors and tasked with the sacred mission of searching for any signs of the vermiform fiend! And as the portal webs grew, as apostles recruited more and more races into the ever growing Assembly – they were searching, restlessly!

But searches these were fruitless.

As for multiple centuries, no adult worms were ever found anywhere in the universe.

People started to doubt Founders’ concerns. Many had left the Division, switching to the more pressing issues. And not without reasons, to be fair. Because during the middle of the so called “Golden Age”, the Assembly’s state of affairs was in fact far from golden. The feral elder gods – once exiled into the far wilderness – were how heading back, bringing ruin and destruction on their way. Multiple factions were rebelling and turning against each other. And the Assembly’s main rival – the Drangobite Empire – was already on its rise to power!

The threat of the Worm was forgotten by many.

And only the most diligent and sharp-sighted adherents of Division still acknowledged its presence.

For indeed, there were a lot more to acknowledge than met the eye at first!

The gods that that returned from the far reaches of the world – they were not natural! It was hard to notice, especially in middle of a battle – but upon capturing and examining some of them, the traits were revealed that pointed towards someone’s intervention. Some unseen force that bred them to be more warlike, more violent and aggressive!

The leaders of warring factions were blinded by gossips and lies – as if someone was intentionally trying to play them against each other! And even the mysterious entity that contacted Drangobites and aided them with the creation their empire was probably not an elder god at all!

The Assembly was in disarray indeed – but in its dark corners, the thin, vermiform shadows were seen pulling the strings all along!

Thus, the Helminthology Division was abolished – and in its place, a conspiracy of shadow agents was established to work in secrecy, resisting the Worm’s corruptive influence from within until it finally decide to reveal itself for good!

* * *

Arrival

But of course, when the time had finally come, the Assembly was already mired too deep in senseless warfare to notice.

Just as predicted by one of the Founders, the Worm had come from the Relic Fields – a realm of vast, empty nothingness that surrounds Assembly from all sides. The Drangobite Empire, residing primarily on the edge of these Fields, had all the chances to notice its coming beforehand and prepare for incoming invasion – but being too obsessed with waging its forever-war against the rest of the Assembly, it simply didn’t bother to look behind its back.

Instead, the first people to see what was coming were the Apostle Acolytes – humble workers tasked with the job of receiving and cataloging apostles ’ messages. Spending most of their time in the remote and solitary radio-stations – some of which were just close enough to the edge to detect that something was going on.

From them, the news reached the Grand Network, and eventually the Founders – but it was already too late. For less than a century was remaining before the ultimate arrival of the Worm!

Through the tremendous efforts, the Founders manager to pacify the warring overlords and make a temporary Alliance with Drangobites – the one typically associated with the war on Atheus, even though Atheus was only yet to come.

In a vain attempt at counterattack, the united fleet was launched into the Relic Fields.

An armada of biotechnological vessels entered the void, led by the Founders themselves – and there, at the end of the universe, they had finally met their greatest nemesis face to face!

The Battle at the edge of Cosmos had begun!

But it didn’t achieve that much.

In the Fields, any known form of FTL travel was impossible, forcing the Worm to spent hundreds of millennia in travel – but here, in Assembly, it was no longer the case! So the moment it breached the defense, the wormholes were opened wide!

And through them, its worms proceeded to infest the still disrupted creation.

Enormous, gigantic leviathans no less than a kilometer each, augmented with all manner of cybernetics to the point where they were more warships than living beings! And from them, the offspring descended – mobile, sentient colonies of the wormlike organisms each acting as a one, wielding all sorts of arcane and technological weapons!

The Founders – while hastily retreating back to the Creacon – were baffled to see these beings, the ones they assumed to be mere cosmic scavengers, to use such advanced tools of destruction! There was no way – in the world or beyond it – that the Worm had invented all of them by itself.

And that – alongside its arrival from Fields – could only mean one thing!

The Worm managed to cross the void and reached one of the Lost Archipelagos, harvesting whatever was living there before!

Whoever those creatures were, they very clearly advanced enough to create some truly wondrous things! Maybe, they were already on their way to establish their own interstellar empire completely independently from the Founders – if not already had one.

And yet, despite all these advancements, they were still destroyed and consumed by the Worm!

Which meant that the Assembly, quite possibly, could be the next one to fall.

* * *

Struggle

For the next several millennia, the Assembly was roaring like a rabid beehive on fire!

In the shortest time possible, all the armies were gathered and all the elder gods considered at least somewhat reliable were summoned! The ancient god-slaying automata were awakened, and the old blueprints of the long-gone Archon were used to create the Legion of Titans, pushing the Creators’ Machine – the Great Forge of Creacon – to its absolute limits. Gigantic cannons were firing endlessly, and restless factories were printing soldiers by millions each day.

All resources and all possibilities were thrown into confronting the Worm – but the prospects were bleak!

The Worm had no end.

Its tail was stretching over horizon!

And with each new dawn, its wormling servants moved further and further into the depths of the Assembly, infesting everything on their path. In all of the previous wars – however chaotic and hellish they might have been – there was at least some sense of purpose! The points to capture, the leaders to eliminate…

But the Worm was uniform.

It had no commanders and no bases, no civilians and no cities! In was a swarm. A mass of conglomerated vermin governed by an ephemeral, ghostly force – which, despite, numerous attempts at negotiation, refused to answer any call. The bio-tech cities of Assembly – with all the energy they were able to store inside them – were like goldmines for the Worm, and having infested merely one of them, it was able to spawn new servants from it pretty much indefinitely!

And worst of all, it knew everything they knew!

Its very thoughts permeated the air – and if some single, miniscule wormling managed to observe something of importance, then in the mere hours, the entire swarm would know it as well!

And so the Founders had no other option but to resort to an infamous and rather dishonorable tactic to halt the rampant invasion – the “resection technique”. A forceful separation of infested regions by permanently disabling entrances of the portal webs…

Of course, it didn’t really stop the Worm entirely – as it still was able to produce its own wormholes – but at least it slowed it down enough for Founders to fortify the Inner Circle and to evacuate as much people in there as possible. But as the times went by, and the Worm proceeded anyway, more and more resections were required to postpone it and win just a little more time – thus removing more and more chunks from the Founders’ beautiful creation.

And so began the period of the war known as “Fragmentation” – a time when the world got shattered, split into hundreds of pieces violently torn away from each other!

And it is in one such tiny piece, the event had occurred that managed to change to course of the war once and for all…

Description

PART I
PART III

* * *

Precautions

It didn’t take more than a few centuries for Founders to actually find the Worm.

Well, its dormant underground cysts, at least.

Discovered deep underneath the lands of Iona – first planet with intelligent life ever encountered by Founders, and therefore the first candidate for searches – they were thoroughly examined and dissected, both confirming and expanding Founders’ preexisting understanding of the Worm’s life cycle. But unfortunately, these cysts were completely unconnected to the greater hive-mind, and bore no memories related to thereof – so no useful information about the Worm’s future plans was gathered.

After they were destroyed, the extracted samples were used to develop methods of detecting Worm’s presence on the explored planets – and with its help, a few more cysts were found, but the results were similar. The cysts refused to tell the secrets of their master, and even attempts to artificially make them hatch and receive adult specimen this way had failed – all of them just mysteriously self-destructed during the procedures.

And so the Founders decided – in order to uncover the plans of their enemy, the adult worms must be found!

Within the Godhunters Order, the specialized Helminthology Division was founded – armed with the worm detectors and tasked with the sacred mission of searching for any signs of the vermiform fiend! And as the portal webs grew, as apostles recruited more and more races into the ever growing Assembly – they were searching, restlessly!

But searches these were fruitless.

As for multiple centuries, no adult worms were ever found anywhere in the universe.

People started to doubt Founders’ concerns. Many had left the Division, switching to the more pressing issues. And not without reasons, to be fair. Because during the middle of the so called “Golden Age”, the Assembly’s state of affairs was in fact far from golden. The feral elder gods – once exiled into the far wilderness – were how heading back, bringing ruin and destruction on their way. Multiple factions were rebelling and turning against each other. And the Assembly’s main rival – the Drangobite Empire – was already on its rise to power!

The threat of the Worm was forgotten by many.

And only the most diligent and sharp-sighted adherents of Division still acknowledged its presence.

For indeed, there were a lot more to acknowledge than met the eye at first!

The gods that that returned from the far reaches of the world – they were not natural! It was hard to notice, especially in middle of a battle – but upon capturing and examining some of them, the traits were revealed that pointed towards someone’s intervention. Some unseen force that bred them to be more warlike, more violent and aggressive!

The leaders of warring factions were blinded by gossips and lies – as if someone was intentionally trying to play them against each other! And even the mysterious entity that contacted Drangobites and aided them with the creation their empire was probably not an elder god at all!

The Assembly was in disarray indeed – but in its dark corners, the thin, vermiform shadows were seen pulling the strings all along!

Thus, the Helminthology Division was abolished – and in its place, a conspiracy of shadow agents was established to work in secrecy, resisting the Worm’s corruptive influence from within until it finally decide to reveal itself for good!

* * *

Arrival

But of course, when the time had finally come, the Assembly was already mired too deep in senseless warfare to notice.

Just as predicted by one of the Founders, the Worm had come from the Relic Fields – a realm of vast, empty nothingness that surrounds Assembly from all sides. The Drangobite Empire, residing primarily on the edge of these Fields, had all the chances to notice its coming beforehand and prepare for incoming invasion – but being too obsessed with waging its forever-war against the rest of the Assembly, it simply didn’t bother to look behind its back.

Instead, the first people to see what was coming were the Apostle Acolytes – humble workers tasked with the job of receiving and cataloging apostles ’ messages. Spending most of their time in the remote and solitary radio-stations – some of which were just close enough to the edge to detect that something was going on.

From them, the news reached the Grand Network, and eventually the Founders – but it was already too late. For less than a century was remaining before the ultimate arrival of the Worm!

Through the tremendous efforts, the Founders manager to pacify the warring overlords and make a temporary Alliance with Drangobites – the one typically associated with the war on Atheus, even though Atheus was only yet to come.

In a vain attempt at counterattack, the united fleet was launched into the Relic Fields.

An armada of biotechnological vessels entered the void, led by the Founders themselves – and there, at the end of the universe, they had finally met their greatest nemesis face to face!

The Battle at the edge of Cosmos had begun!

But it didn’t achieve that much.

In the Fields, any known form of FTL travel was impossible, forcing the Worm to spent hundreds of millennia in travel – but here, in Assembly, it was no longer the case! So the moment it breached the defense, the wormholes were opened wide!

And through them, its worms proceeded to infest the still disrupted creation.

Enormous, gigantic leviathans no less than a kilometer each, augmented with all manner of cybernetics to the point where they were more warships than living beings! And from them, the offspring descended – mobile, sentient colonies of the wormlike organisms each acting as a one, wielding all sorts of arcane and technological weapons!

The Founders – while hastily retreating back to the Creacon – were baffled to see these beings, the ones they assumed to be mere cosmic scavengers, to use such advanced tools of destruction! There was no way – in the world or beyond it – that the Worm had invented all of them by itself.

And that – alongside its arrival from Fields – could only mean one thing!

The Worm managed to cross the void and reached one of the Lost Archipelagos, harvesting whatever was living there before!

Whoever those creatures were, they very clearly advanced enough to create some truly wondrous things! Maybe, they were already on their way to establish their own interstellar empire completely independently from the Founders – if not already had one.

And yet, despite all these advancements, they were still destroyed and consumed by the Worm!

Which meant that the Assembly, quite possibly, could be the next one to fall.

* * *

Struggle

For the next several millennia, the Assembly was roaring like a rabid beehive on fire!

In the shortest time possible, all the armies were gathered and all the elder gods considered at least somewhat reliable were summoned! The ancient god-slaying automata were awakened, and the old blueprints of the long-gone Archon were used to create the Legion of Titans, pushing the Creators’ Machine – the Great Forge of Creacon – to its absolute limits. Gigantic cannons were firing endlessly, and restless factories were printing soldiers by millions each day.

All resources and all possibilities were thrown into confronting the Worm – but the prospects were bleak!

The Worm had no end.

Its tail was stretching over horizon!

And with each new dawn, its wormling servants moved further and further into the depths of the Assembly, infesting everything on their path. In all of the previous wars – however chaotic and hellish they might have been – there was at least some sense of purpose! The points to capture, the leaders to eliminate…

But the Worm was uniform.

It had no commanders and no bases, no civilians and no cities! In was a swarm. A mass of conglomerated vermin governed by an ephemeral, ghostly force – which, despite, numerous attempts at negotiation, refused to answer any call. The bio-tech cities of Assembly – with all the energy they were able to store inside them – were like goldmines for the Worm, and having infested merely one of them, it was able to spawn new servants from it pretty much indefinitely!

And worst of all, it knew everything they knew!

Its very thoughts permeated the air – and if some single, miniscule wormling managed to observe something of importance, then in the mere hours, the entire swarm would know it as well!

And so the Founders had no other option but to resort to an infamous and rather dishonorable tactic to halt the rampant invasion – the “resection technique”. A forceful separation of infested regions by permanently disabling entrances of the portal webs…

Of course, it didn’t really stop the Worm entirely – as it still was able to produce its own wormholes – but at least it slowed it down enough for Founders to fortify the Inner Circle and to evacuate as much people in there as possible. But as the times went by, and the Worm proceeded anyway, more and more resections were required to postpone it and win just a little more time – thus removing more and more chunks from the Founders’ beautiful creation.

And so began the period of the war known as “Fragmentation” – a time when the world got shattered, split into hundreds of pieces violently torn away from each other!

And it is in one such tiny piece, the event had occurred that managed to change to course of the war once and for all…