3rd Hellworld: Bloodmoss

The Krith slept as much as possible before the hellworld, this was the most intense trial they hand ever faced, but the blood of their late parents burned in them all, they were determined to go as far as possible. Xerkhon seemed to have changed more than the others, he seemed a bit war hardened & slightly feral. Seems his first hellworld experience triggered something primal within.

The harsh cold of Bloodmoss was unlike, anything else the krith faced before. They had never been in cold weather before. Formics don’t train for full exposure to the coldness of space until they have reached a certain level in their physical & psionic ability. Usually several years after they have reached maturity.

As soon as they landed they all activated their organic armour under their uniforms to preserve as much heat as possible. Their first objective was finding or making shelter. After some time they came up on a cave some creatures had dug at the base of a hill. Xerkhon was the first to assault the cave swiftly killing the first 2 creatures before everyone else entered the cave, from there they engaged in a brief but intense battle. When it was finished they realized they killed a whole nest of creatures, father mother & babies. Most of the Krith seemed sad for a few moments when they realized what they had done but Xerkhon seemed un-phased. Using their psionic powers, strength, & help of several Diyel they dug even deeper into the hill & lined the cave with moss to help insulate heat.       

After setting up their temporary base, Tarakith & Sivtress linked their minds with every soldier they could locate helping them find any form of shelter possible. Some covered themselves moss & huddled together, others killed creatures they encountered & crawled inside their body to stay warm. The first few days consisted of finding shelter & warmth, scavenging food, & searching for clues.

In the days to come the Krith Queens link helped everyone operate quickly & efficiently together, to share information on the evacuation ships locations quickly, & also to learn from everyone’s mistakes, especially those who died as a result of their mistake. Some were raided by packs of nocturnal arctic predators, most fought them off successfully, some became food in the darkness of the tundra. As their survival instincts kicked in more & more, the link caused the Krith to act as if all the Diyel were there hive. At one point they tracked down several creatures that had killed & eaten their comrades.

After a few days several temporary bases had been established. The Krith & Diyel stayed in the bases in a rotation to prevent frostbite & to keep the team as healthy as posiible. As this occurred everyone else scouted the Tundra looking for clues to the evac ships & supplies. 2 teams of Diyel soldiers were the first to find 2 underground bases by following clues they found on the side of a hill & hidden under moss. The soldiers all quickly filled the evacuation ships & left, but the Krith noted the bases locations enabling themselves & others to migrate to the bases taking advantage of any supplies & warmth they found.

The entire second week passed before the next base was found. This time all the Krith convinced Xerkhon to go, they were worried about him because his feral state seemed constant. Sivtress went with him to make sure he left.   
Tarakith, Valgorr, & Tegedar led the rest of the Diyel through the Tundra. They seemed locked in a constant cycle of hunt, fight, find shelter, find clues, find supplies, eat moss. The day before the deadline they finally found the last base they needed. Aside from the pilots flying the evacuation ships, everyone was huddled together for warmth as they finally left the planet.
-_

The Krith prepare & sleep as much as possible during the break. When asked if they wish to continue, they all look at each other & then respond with a resounding yes.
Tarakith: “The training is physically more rigorous then anything we have done previously, but we will continue so that our future hives will be powerful & we will be able to make the swarm stronger.”

---Hellworld: Insanity Woods---

The Insanity woods reminded the Krith of some of the forest areas in their own territory giving them a comfortable feeling initially, but the fact that they were given full armour & weapons worried the Krith. Each of them thought of all the organic defences of Nuzeikurga, making them somewhat paranoid of the pants. They moved through the woods very carefully & silently, staying high in the trees avoiding any plant that was unfamiliar, & covering themselves with mud & or dirt to hide their scent & heat signature. The Queen Kriths used their psionics to analyse each planet & animal, everything seemed somewhat dormant & calm for the time being but they kept silent searching for the dummies. The Male Krith stayed in the trees as well remembering their training before becoming Hive Guardians, they killed small animals & set bait for any flesh eating plants or predators in the area. A few plants seemed to move slowly towards the bait but it was always nabbed by some other creature. So they moved silently as well feeling somewhat confused that nothing was attacking them yet.   

The first week passed with no sign of danger or the dummies. The Krith listened carefully to each broadcast wondering what had killed the soldiers. Overtime the Krith noticed subtle but increasing pheromones filling the air, Sivtress was the first to notice it was affecting her, so she activated her organic armour to try & filter out the air she breathed. Tarakith caught on after she felt alittle faint. The males activated their armour as well after they saw the forest becoming more active. Do to the amount of energy the armour required to stay active, the Krith took breaks from its use so they could ready for what lurked in the forest.   

A few days into the second week the carnivorous fauna started waking up. The Krith managed to filter out most of the hallucinogenic pheromones, but they were still having hallucinations. Staying in the trees helped them from the initial onslaught of the carnivorous plants, but they noticed they the paths they had cleared for safe travel have changed & have been covered again. Being that the pheromones were not working as well on the Krith, the plants seemed to take it as a challenge. Though the Krith masked themselves the plants could still detect their presence when they moved, often reaching their vines up into trees looking for this peculiarly elusive prey. 

The Queens started flying to further elude predators, & flew over lakes to get water. The males however had to continue jumping from tree to tree. At times they got desperately thrusty, jumping down as close as possible to water sources fighting their way for a drink & then jumping back into the trees. Sometimes the Krith find themselves fighting things that weren’t real, so they tried to extended the activation time of their organic armour, helping them keep the hallucinations at bay but causing them to use up more energy.

The Kriths strategy was working well until the plants in the 3rd week released a separate set of pheromones attracting predatory animals causing the trees to no longer be as safe as they once were. Animals started crawling up the trees following the pheromones the plants were releasing in the Kriths direction. They fought in the trees killing & injuring every creature that assaulted them, the hungry plants below were greedily devouring all who fell from the tree tops.
During one of her battles Sivtress spots a dummy, she immediately takes off into the air & then dive bombs through the tree line grabbing the dummy & then taking off into the sky. Flying for some time she finally came upon the evacuation area tired, hungry, & covered in dirt & blood, some of the blood was her own, most was not.
Tarakith had gone somewhat feral, she was too tired to keep her armour active during battle so the hallucinations started getting to her somewhat, fighting real & imagined creatures she started unleashing the fury of her powers. She started by sending out a high frequency waves causing several of the animal predator’s brains to rupture, for the ones that survived that she fired out psionic bolts piercing through bodies, trees, plants & parts of the ground. At the end of her rampage she had levelled a large area of the forest. She activated her armour to filter out the pheromones & then disengaged her armour as she started walking towards a tree at the edge of destroyed forest. As she walked she found a dummy, whose body was torn in half but its pass card was still in working condition. Too tired to immediately fly she climbed a tree to rest awhile, afterwards she slowly flew in the air. Reaching the evac zone she landed on the ground almost falling on her face, she picked herself up, used the pass card, handed what was left of the dummy over, & went to the first corner she could get to & passed out. She made it 8 days before the deadline. 

The Krith males had a rough go of it, their Hive Guardian training had granted them more endurance & physical strength then the Krith Queens enabling them to have their armours active for longer periods, but since they couldn’t fly they had to fight for longer periods.
Valgorr had just finished a vicious battle when he jumped in a nearby lake with his armour still active, he let himself float for a few moments to rest. Afterwards he slowly started swimming to the otherside, suddenly he was dragged underwater by a crocodile like creature, Valgorr used all 4 of his arms & hands to break the creatures jaw & swim back to the surface. He was alive & some how uninjured, after he made it to the other side he jumped back into the trees, he wondered if that battle had been real or not. A few days later he found a dummy & eventually made his way to the evacuation zone.

Tegedar fought all manner of horrors, both real & imaginative. He kept his armour active as long as possible between intervals. At one point he was knocked out of the trees by one of the animal predators, & found himself fighting plant & animal predators who were also tearing each other apart. He survived but was injured kinda badly. He climbed the trees again & went back to jumping from tree to tree, eventually he found a place to rest falling asleep. He woke up to the sounds of screams near by, making his way over there as quickly as he could he found a large plant swallowing down a Diyel victim. Lounging out of the trees Tegedar came crashing down on the creature tearing chunks of its body off & then gribbing its base roots in all of his hands he tore it in 4 halfs. The Diyel soldier was alive but he was horribly mangled being partially digested & riddled with broken bones, the soldier pointed to a dummy he was trying to secure, Tegedar looked at it & then the soldier, the soldier begged for Tegedar to give him a clean death a warriors death. He picked up a battle sword the soldier had been using, he sat the soldier up so he could have some dignity & then bid the soldier farewell.

Tegedar: “My fellow warrior, & brother in arms, I honour you this day for your bravery & service to your nation, may your forever find your place in the great plains of your kin.”

Tegedar thrust the blade through the back of the soldiers neck & into his body swiftly killing him. He then burned the soldiers body so the creatures wouldn’t have the satisfaction to feast on his body. 3 days before the deadline Tegedar makes it to the evacuation zone, once there he asks one of the captions if he could have a custom sword made for him to fight with.

Xerkhons behaviour at times seemed like the very animals that were hunting him. He killed & feasted on all sorts of creatures. He found a dummy early in the second week but lost himself in the forest, he strapped the dummy to his back & focused on survival. He had become another predator of the forest at one point. A few days before the deadline he & a Diyelian who had gone crazy squared off nearly killing each other, but during the fight they snapped out of their primal trance, they looked at each other & then went their separate ways. Xerkhon made his way to the evac zone after regaining some of his sanity. The days seemed to run together, he didn’t even know what day it was when he finally made it to the evac zone, he made it 10 hours before deadline. 

The Krith slept for nearly the entire first week of recovery. Tarakith & Valgorr cuddled together as much as possible while they slept & studied for the next trial.

---Hellworld: Death Dust---

With the days existing his raging heat & nights in deep artic frostbite, the only time the Krith & their team found they could travel on the surface was during sunrise in the very birth of the light, & at sunset in the fading light. Initially the kriths huddled their pods together until they found underground shelter.  Their first temporary base was cleaved in half during the night by a massive creature, they fought with everything they had to bring the beast down. After the beast died they went down into the hole the beast dugout & huddled for warmth after blocking off the entrance to their small corner. As sunrise broke the horizon they retrieve their first piece of technology from the creature’s belly.
The team moved constantly from base to base, hunting the giant creatures whenever they could, sometimes retrieving tech, sometimes not.
Just over a month into the mission the Krith lost half their team on sunrise while raiding an underground base. They were attacking one monster but 2 others converged on the same area, the monsters fought each other of the Kriths crew. Using their psionics & weapons they eventually slew all 3 but at a terrible cost. The base was so unrooted & dismantled that the Team hid inside one of the creature’s bodies under the surface to survive the heat & dust storms of the day. As sunset hit they retrieved the other technologies from the other 2 creatures which enabled them to finish the mission. They activated their beckons for evacuation, when the ship came they found half a crew who were starved, sun burnt, & ready for rest.
The Krith slept for 4 days straight, & then started planning for the next mission.

-Lamirtiasch-

"You are very welcome. We come from a group of planets outside of the Diyels territory, our home is a few days journey from here. No we do not come from that planet.”
Zagara answers all the Urkun-iash’s questions as clearly as she can. As she speaks to them she lightly reads their minds & brain waves to see if they have any psionic abilities or the potential for it.
“If you don’t mind I have some questions of my own. You see we Formic’s have mainly organic technology & devices so metal devices are still new to some of use, well mostly just me being the old lady I am, so I would like to know how you came to use metal tools & weapons?”
“I would like to know about your ways, history, & how you came to unite all your clans?”
 

(There you go! Can your men still move after all of this? And also what names do you need?)
(maybe…, like an eye lid or 2 lol, male names, Sivtress is going to name her first son after the fallen soldier. :-P )