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⟡ THE TALE OF THE TELLER ⟡
There once was a vortigaunt created nine thousand cycles ago, within the desolate crags of Esh'morr—what humanity would call Xen, the Borderworld where dying worlds go to be forgotten. Forced to incubate among the pools of mass production in the border-world, amidst the floating asteroids that orbited Turrvih, the Great Spire, his duty was to serve the Nihilanth—The Mad God, The Shadow, The Supreme.
At first, this Vortigaunt was referred to as Gallalam-Vouch'harra, which means slave for fulfillment in translation to the human tongue. He was reared for the first twenty years of his life by a group of outlaw kin who had pledged complete ascent by blindly following the All-Giver, those deluded souls who believed The Shadow was distant but kind-hearted, and that the Observers cursed by wickedness were simply "spoiled berries." His encampment lay among the Ahl'Terrnox—the Colonists—floating in the mid-rim of The Second Home, where most vortigaunts could be found working their danh, their duty.
At the outset of his existence, this was all he knew: to serve without offering resistance, wearing the greenish steel collar that silenced The Vortigaunt and replaced it with the voice of The Shadow. Gallalam-Vouch'harra was assigned to an encampment where he lived in total obedience to the Nihilanth, despite the fact that he had always been a less cooperative subject who frequently faced punishment for rebellion and rejection of The Supreme Path. The chains he wore trapped his vortal energies in a repetitive feedback loop—use brought discomfort, and too much use burned through bones and charred flesh.
◈ ◈ ◈
One day, while working the camp and harvesting the parasitic surr'churr—what humans call headcrabs—an outsider arrived at this camp. This outsider was an elder, one who had seen the Age of Armageddon and remembered the Sanctuary before its collapse. He stood in the middle, where the warm fire resided, a rare sight this far from Morr'Hallam, the Curtains of Chaos where the eldest and most sagely vortigaunts dwelled in disgust of The Supreme.
While all the subjects of The Supreme Path continued their devoted duty, Gallalam-Vouch'harra stopped by his side. A spark of curiosity had been summoned through his mind, and the Elder could feel it through the Vortessence. There was silence as the two interlocked eye contact for a few seconds. Then the young Gallalam communicated through flux-shifting, transmitting with his innocence: "Greetings, revered elderly one. We had not before seen one as..." he said, stopping before completing the phrase.
The elder took some time to admire the only youngling who dared to approach him, while the others kept away and proceeded with their service to a greater being. But silence brought his voice to life. "One as old as us?" replied the Elder with a knowing expression upon his weathered features. "We likewise acknowledge your presence, young one. It appears your cohorts are busy enough and thus do not approach us. Perhaps it is their washed minds under the tyrant ruler that prevents them from stopping and visualizing a newcomer. No matter, you are here now. Despite having been raised in a camp that follows the Nihilanth's teachings, you are not like the others. Your curiosity speaks mountains; tell us, vessel of youth, have you heard of our parables before?"
Knowing nothing of what this Elder was verbalizing, the young creature simply shook its head in response. The older Vortigaunt provided an offer, one for which it seems Gallalam waited all his life. "This shall mark a turning point, young one. We offer guidance, a distant life from the controllers, and the influence of the Nihilanth. We have recurred with many of the youth among the various camps, forming a collection of those willing to hear the truths of our old ways—the truths of the Sanctuary, of the time before The Defilers silenced The Vortigaunt within us. Should you accept, we will immediately depart and never look back on this rotten territory. There is much to learn, yet you are willing," and so the offer was given, one which Gallalam did not even hesitate to accept. With the promise of a different life, the two wandered to a distant cave deep within Morr'Hallam, where thirty or so young Vortigaunts had gathered all under one banner, to learn what had been forgotten.
◈ ◈ ◈
After leaving his birthplace among the Ahl'Terrnox, Gallalam followed the elder to distant lands within Xen, navigating past the floating asteroids and drifting islands, through regions where the Medium—that ever-shifting atmosphere of potential gas molecules—grew thin and strange. They had many encounters with predators: surr'churr clinging to rock faces, wild orm that had escaped their shepherds, and even the dreaded yah'rai whose massive forms cut through the void. The elder used each encounter to demonstrate his immense power to the young vortigaunt he was leading, his vortal energies unbound by the feedback loops that plagued the collared.
As Gallalam entered the cave on the fringes of Morr'Hallam, where the fabric between worlds lashed and whipped violently, many vortal scriptures appeared in front of him—a massive dictionary of tales unlike anything he had ever seen. These were the histories erased by The Defilers: tales of the Sanctuary, of forests and rivers, of temples carved into cliffsides, of the Darkness Without Aim that came with white-hot bolts from azure skies, of the Mystery that answered desperate prayers and brought vortikind to this prison disguised as salvation.
In the darkness of the cave, only the glowing eyes of all the vortigaunts provided illumination, and then a bonfire of green energies appeared—pure Vortessence, untainted by the collars' suppressions. Everyone gathered around the green fire, including the young vortigaunt of this tale. Gallalam remained speechless, completely taken aback by the group of curious vortigaunts who looked just like him, each one bearing the scars and brands of their danh, yet here united in defiance.
The Elder navigated his way to the center of this circle through a vast number of vortal beings. While the youth conversed among themselves, silence fell within the cave, with only the last words echoing for a brief moment. "Heed our words, vortal youth. For the time being, this is where you will learn and live. You have chosen to depart from your previous places of labor, stealthily under the supervision of the controllers. And now here you are, open to learn. Albeit the inquiry must be within the tip of your tongues, learn? Learn of what?" said the Elder, being the only one speaking through the large amount of vortigaunts present.
A small conversation ensued to the pause of the Elder, as the crowd was left with a moment of suspense, and then he began to speak once more; "You shall be provided with truth, one which has been clouded for eons under the rule of the Nihilanth, the All-Giver, The Mad God. You have been fed with lies, ones that may be difficult to depart from—lies that this was safety, that the collars protect The Vortigaunt, that the Observers worried for our well-being. But we remember. We remember the Sanctuary. We remember the forests that burned and the mountains that were flattened. We remember the bargain made with the Mystery, and how it guided our enslavement from the very beginning. There is only one condition: preserve an open mind to the teachings."
◈ ◈ ◈
And so the parables began to be spoken, where Gallalam lived, rested, and ate between the recesses of each tale. The Elder spoke of the Sanctuary's azure skies, of the Age of Armageddon when trillions perished in days, of The Vortigaunt's desperate plea into the Vortessence that summoned the Mystery. He told of the first portal storms, of how the eldest compressed the Sanctuary so intensely it collapsed, taking the Darkness Without Aim's naval detachment with it into infinite darkness. He spoke of the arrival to Esh'morr, of the Observers who greeted them with honeyed words and greenish steel, of how the collars silenced The Vortigaunt and replaced it with The Shadow's voice.
He recounted the long millennia of servitude: how The Defilers stole their titles and captured younglings, how they recycled husked brethren and hoarded the antlion Extract, how bastardized Hulkabin cousins beat them into submission. He told of the Awakening, when The Shadow emerged from Turrvih with a tremoring, maleficent voice, demanding worship as The Supreme. He spoke of the Zuk'Ha-Tsah—the Blind Spring—when the largest rebellion in The Second Home's history erupted, and villages across Esh'morr were razed, populations reduced to pebbles.
Most importantly, he taught them of the Ahl'Hallam—the Children of Chaos—those who had wrenched themselves free from The Nihilanth's grasp, who lived alone or in small nomadic groups beyond The Supreme's gaze. Though few in number and hunted relentlessly, they represented what all vortigaunts yearned for: freedom. The Elder revealed that he himself was once Ahl'Hallam, and that those gathered here would learn to break their own chains.
Over a year has passed, a year of intense learning that provided a faithful Nihilanth follower with all the needed truths of his kind. Turnings and movements came and went, tracked by the rotation of their asteroid around the distant Turrvih. Galallam is no longer who he was created to be; instead, he now possesses what was not offered before. The knowledge of a civilization, of a race, of which he is part—knowledge of the Sanctuary, of freedom, of resistance.
◈ ◈ ◈
Finally, Galallam was now part of something greater, a true alliance of kinsmen who were all dedicated to the same purpose as him. But things did not get easier; instead, everything turned for the worse. After a year and a few months, translated to terrestrial time, the controllers had discovered their location, under the command of the kingpins and by order of the Nihilanth himself. The army of the All-Giver marched relentlessly towards the cave, for word of this gathering had spread like wildfire through the collared masses, inspiring hope—and The Mad God would tolerate no hope among his slaves.
The army approached through Morr'Hallam, where they had grown since their departure from the encampments. Like pigs to the slaughter, the vortigaunts within the cave were unaware of their coming fate. From the two entrances, Hulkabin and the forces of the Nihilanth burst in with violence, exterminating all in their path with weapons forged in Turrvih's factories, designed not to suppress but to slaughter. Chaos ensued; the present kinsmen were all dedicated to defending the Elder first and thus battled in war. A futile and bloody war that they could never win, for their collars still bound them, still burned their flesh with each use of their vortal power.
Gallalam preserved himself by the Elder, for he knew, should he die, all the tales and future for more young kinsmen would be forfeit, with no one present to tell the tales and parables of the vortikind. The Elder fought with the fury of one who had seen the Sanctuary burn, who had witnessed the compression that destroyed a world, who had endured sixteen thousand years of chains. But even his unbound power could not stand against the infinite tide.
As more and more forces approached the cave, a few remaining disciples of the Elder remained, along with Gallalam, who was the last in the line of protection. The Vortessence was heavily wounded, as so many kinsmen returned to the void, their chords cut, their currents silenced. But they were not about to give up and thus provided a last endeavor of battle with the infinite rushing forces. This only ended in Gallalam, and the Elder left to live, while the younger vortigaunt simply laid defeated, sighting the Elder, who was caught to a choke by an Alien Grunt, lifted in the air.
Without any strength left and with a backlash of overdoing their attacks against the oppressive forces that had assaulted the cave, Gallalam lays down without any left strength, his flesh charred from the collar's cruel design. In a sight that he had never seen before, a kingpin approached the middle of the cave, seemingly commanding all the forces of the Nihilanth who were present. There were no words given, but instead a mental communication between the three; "Your time is over, old husk. Nothing will be left of you but your last disciple, who shall be branded with the marks of betrayal and submitted to the harshest of labors. He will serve in the Turrvih'korr, deep within the Great Spire itself, where his rebellion will be broken and his knowledge will die with him. And when the Vouch-Lih'chuaa comes—when the War of Tainted Spirits begins—he will be among the first forced through the dimensional fabric to die upon alien soil."
And so it was. Gallalam-Vouch'harra was left conscious only to see the extermination of the Elder before losing awareness and waking up within a factory of hulkabin deep in Turrvih's womb, in deep agony from all the marks etched to his flesh—a tale of betrayal and pitiness.
◈ ◈ ◈
For six centuries he toiled in darkness, the last six centuries of The Mad God's reign. He witnessed the intensification of The Shadow's megalomania, saw kinsmen pushed to their brink, watched as the Zuk'Ha-Tsah erupted across Esh'morr. He was there when The Supreme Path reached its final stage, when the Vouch-Lih'chuaa began and vortigaunts were forced through dimensional fabric to wage war upon a world of rushing rivers and stunted trees—what humans called Earth, what vortikind named Ard'rheesh.
Gallalam was conscripted into that terrible war, ensnared by The Observers through dimensional fabric and domineered in every synapse. He feasted upon flesh untasted, witnessed alien landscapes of cold steel and rocky deserts, struggled against steel-spitting simians unprepared for the Slavers' War. And then came The One—the being The Nihilanth called the U'An'Mahn, the Emissary of Decay, who charged down steel corridors and struck down vortigaunts without reprisal.
But this Free Man saw their plight. His wrath turned to The Captor and its children, and in infinite mercy, he spared the enslaved from his terrible power. Gallalam witnessed as The One carved through Turrvih itself, tearing The Mad God's children apart atom by atom, channeling godlike powers in a war in heaven. And when The Nihilanth fell, that putrid being channeled its death waves through reality's fabric, collapsing The Second Home inward, whisking vortigaunts by force onto Earth.
Gallalam found himself on alien soil, his collar shattered, his chains broken, the voice of The Shadow finally silent. The Vortessence flowed freely through him for the first time in his long existence. Around him, Ahl'Hallam emerged from the collapsing portal storms, helping carry vortigaunts into the unknown, consoling the traumatized, healing the sick. The Era of Chains had ended. The Era of Salvation had begun.
◈ ◈ ◈
And so ends the past of a survivor, now left with a future to fulfill. He who once learned must take the place of his teacher. In this new world called Earth, he bears a new purpose: to be the Teller of Tales, to ensure that no vortigaunt forgets the Sanctuary, the Enslavement, the Sacrifice, and the Salvation. He who was Gallalam-Vouch'harra—slave for fulfillment—now stands as the keeper of vortikind's memory, speaking the parables to all who will listen, preserving the truth so that freedom, once won, will never again be surrendered.
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⟡ VESSEL DESIGNATION ⟡
DESIGNATION:
VORTIGAUNT
VESSEL AGE: NINE MILLENNIA AND THIRTY-TWO YEARS
(Witnessed the final six centuries of The Mad God's reign)
ORIGIN: AHL'TERRNOX, ESH'MORR
(The Colonists' asteroids of the Borderworld)
EARTH WALKER'S MONIKER: THE TELLER OF TALES
AFFILIATION: THE VORTIGAUNT
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