Archive for November 22nd, 2011

#19 – Starsmith

The Big Bang.

Contrary to popular believe, the Big Bang was not an immediate event. Instead of a sudden flash of heat, matter and energy, the Big Bang took almost 3 million years to fully form, with the “creation wave” as super-scientists with level 57 minds or higher call it, the reach of the Big Bang’s promethean fire as it spread in the vacuum, giving birth to our universe, still believed to be expanding upon the unending blackness, creating even more life.

Within the span of those 3 million years, when the pregnant mass of the Big Bang was the only titanic sun in our universe, many civilizations rose and fell, nothing like them ever to be seen again, as if the light of creation had given them a divine spark missing from creatures the universe would later produce. Out of these, the Starsmiths were without a doubt the most advanced and respected of all.

The Starsmiths were not even a race, per se. They were a gathering of all the different races and cultures that had been born around the Big Bang that united into a single people. They worshipped the Blast, the Light and the Fire. But they also studied it and researched it and it is through their work that they learned to weld stars out of the raw material of the Big Bang. They learned to harness the white liquid fire and give it shape in their giant black matter anvils with all sorts of different tools. Instead of sparks, rare atoms and particles would fly with each strike of the dwarf-hammer and from the completed star; cosmic residue and dust could sometime form miniature solar systems around them, the most delicate craftsmen even able to do so at will, creating sequences of stars and planets until they’d confectioned a pocket-size galaxy.

And though this masterfully crafter stars, solar systems and galaxies were tiny in comparison to the Universe being birthed by the creation wave, the power they were able to produce was not, in fact being able to produce more raw energy than a regular star due to their unique design. These became the base for all Starsmith technology, enabling all of their creations to work almost eternally on the power of the stars.

The Starsmiths were a peaceful people. They believed in creating just for creations sake, only to discover more of the mysteries of the Universe and deepen their bonds with the Blast, the Light and the Fire. However, they were certainly a selective people, only letting a few carefully chosen to join their ranks and always guarding the secrets of their trade with the utmost zeal.

The rest of the then expanding Universe fell on the Starsmith’s home planet fast and hard, making as much display of their brutality and their mercilessness, trying to shock the peaceful crafters into handing over their secrets and their technology, each race eager to use it in order to slave and subjugate the others. But what the J’Ungians, the Firrodyians, the Pthaegoraeans, the Mrxsti and many others did not count on was the means the Starsmiths would be willing to adopt in order to protect themselves and their sacred teachings.

To the most orthodox Starsmith anvil-meisters, the Furnaces were an abomination of everything they believed in: They were weapons. They were very powerful weapons, powered by their microcosm technology and using the same principle as the Big Bang’s creation wave effect to produce a weapon so effective that it immediately adapted to the wielder’s size, age, fighting style, atmospheric conditions, the adversaries numbers, their age, their size, the weapons they were using, their fighting patterns in order to come up with the optimal attack and defense solutions for any and all situations.

A single Starsmith wielding a single Furnace had enough power to stop the advance of the various alien armies marching against their planet in a matter of seconds. An entire army of Starsmiths was capable of completely decimating them and leaving no trace of the defeated. So terrified were the allied races of the destructive power they’d just been witness to that they lost all interest in ever wielding it and afraid of any creature that could do so willingly and with the same abandon as the Starsmiths. The 7 original races scattered to the seven corners of the Universe, bowing an unbreakable oath to never again come together as one as they’d done that day for fear of history repeating itself.

And so, the Starsmiths were left alone, in the center of the Universe, amongst the wreckage of their home planet and the unending debris of their recent struggle. All of these they saw and realized they had lost their way and given in to the temptation of power. The Furnaces, once their greatest achievement had now become the symbol of their hubris.

And so it was decided that the Starsmiths could not continue. All of their tools, their technology and their discoveries was taken to the core of the Big Bang and was destroyed there in the burning crib of existence, every single Starsmith making a sacred oath never to craft again for as long as they lived. But this was not enough to make up for their great sin. Not to them, or to the Universe, or to the Blast, the Light and the Fire.

From within their ranks a single one would be chosen. He with the purest heart, the noblest disposition and the bravest spirit. He alone would have to carry the collective weight of their shame. He would have to carry on living, feeding on the power of the Furnaces grafted to each of his arms, an eternal reminder of their sins now repurposed as a tool to spread peace and understanding through the Universe, as the Starsmiths had always intended.

And so was Ahn Lu chosen. Chosen to forever roam the Universe in penitence.

The Last Starsmith.