This account by Silverius was originally posted to to Sergio's longstanding forum in GoKrida, told from the point of view of the people of Red Catastrophe, minor souls who think of major souls as gods. The narrative discusses the environment, culture, and government of this imagined planet, including stories and rules for games. Some of the details were inspired by events and discoveries in GoKrida, while others must have been inspired by Silverius' other interests. The GoKridan planet Red Catastrophe Earth, commonly known as Legendary Red Catastrophe, was named in honor of this tale.
The Tale of the Dread Lords
This is an account of what happened long ago when I did some note taking in a small exploration group of the army.
It was early Voorwinter in the tempos of Tenth Dust. The night was dark, the moons were thin and even the little bit of light it gave were adsorbed by the clouds in front of them. It was during this night that our greatest battle yet was fought.
First we heard the howling of wolves, then our birds started to screech, the earth started to rumble and we thought we saw spirits dancing the dance of the dead. Suddenly lightning struck a great tree, splitting it in half. In the short shine of the lightning we saw great armies on the horizon.
We prayed to Symo, we prayed to Arzeyka, we prayed that our fears hadn't become reality and that the Dark Three had come to take our souls. Lightning hit again. The armies had moved closer. In the flash we saw unfamiliar markings, not the black sword that is the symbol of the Dark Three. For a moment we were relieved, then the attack started.
In war it's conventional to attack when there is sufficient light, either daylight or torches. These armies didn't bring torches and just wielded their swords against everything that moved, often themselves. In this chaos we got away, many of us holding on to the claws of our eagles and falcons because there weren't enough to carry all of us on their backs.
We travelled that way for about a tias until we reached the nearest fort. First they did not believe us, saying we drank to much Violet Beer. Then the armies started showing up there too. Pidgeons were send to warn adjacent forts and the central city where our Lord resided.
Our fort was well equiped and it housed some of the finest most courageous troops I've ever seen. We weren't going to surrender. By the time the enemy was in range the barricades were well manned, the cannons were put out and the birds were up in the air.
First they just tried to storm us. That failed miserably, thanks to the oil distribution system of my college Brandblaar and our excellent archers. Then they tried to shoot through our walls with cannons. As our fort was made from hardstone from the blue mountains that didn't really work very well either. Next they started storming us again and after that wave they used their cannons again.
It seemed our opponents didn't care about losses and soon we discovered why. Our archers and eagles took out many men. Our cannons delivered blow after blow. Yet for each men, each army we destroyed another one took it's place.
This lasted for a septal, then two septals, then three septals. Though we were very well stocked our supplies went down and we had to do with half rations, then fourth rations, then eight rations. Our men died too, though for each of our men a hunderd of our enemies died.
After a whole tempos few of us were still alive, but we hadn't lost yet. Then, in the morning of the tempos of Sun we witnessed something truly amazing. Out of the fog a white light seemed to shine. As we looked through the telescope we saw what appeared to be an army marching.
As the army came closer we saw that it was all in white. The leader sat on a white horse with wings which could easily beat any of our winged horses in a beauty contest. He had long sligthly silver hair and wings coming from his back. All of the men and women in his army has wings too. Looking further we saw a lightning draw on their shields.
When the white army approached the enemy armies the leader shouted something, from what we heard he told the enemy soldiers to surrender or die. Some surrendered but most didn't seem to think about giving up now that they were so close to victory.
A lord of the enemy army began to speak. He bragged about his strength and about how he would never be defeated and how his army is infinite. The reaction of the white leader was as suprising as it was effective. First his hands began to glow in a white light, then lightning came from the tops of his fingers and struck down half of the enemy army. Only a few moments later lightning struck again. Only a few men survived, and those were quickly dealt with by the white army.
When the work was done fog began to surround the white army, when it was gone again they were gone too. No more enemies appeared. A quatern later our lord came to visit us. He told us that we had done well and that not many forts had lasted as long as we did. He also told us who the mysterious white leader was, it was the Archangel of Lightning himself. To be honest, we already suspected that.
Birds
Red Catastrophe already had a well developed fauna before we arrived. The king of nature in Red Catastrophe is the Gigantica Rex in it's various forms. The Gigantica Rex, or Giga as we call them, comes in three forms, distinguished by color.
The White Giga or Whita is the largest variant, with a wingspan of 10 ra. Whita's hunt for the big animals like cows, which they can devour with ease. With their large wingspan they can travel enourmous distances, unfortunately they lack manouverability which makes them fairly worthless in close combat. We mainly use Whita's for transport as they can carry a quite a load over large distances.
The Red Giga or Rega is a whole lot smaller than the Whita. These birds have a wingspan of 'only' 6 ra and can only travel medium distances. However they eat a lot less and can carry pretty heavy objects with their claws, which makes them pretty good bombers.
The Brown Giga or Broga is the smallest of the Giga's. It's wingspan is 5 ra and it's range of flight is rather short compared to the other Giga's. However it's very fast, manouverable and extremely well trainable so that it's perfect for close combat in the sky and quick reconnaissance.
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