» Wed Dec 08, 2010 9:05 am
Sacrifices: Tower Trouble
It was convenient that the Setites took me to Mordrid and locked me in a cell next to his.
In other cells were other strange things including what appeared to be a giant tapeworm. I looked around briefly and concluded that this could be some sort of zoo almost.
There was only one Super Mutant and he hadn't torn the bars off and pulverized his captors with them so I was certain that this was the one I sought.
I vowed to learn more about the Setites imediately. I was overwhelmed with the spectre of an unknown intelligence besides humans. Of course intelligence had a way of cropping up like a batch of Sporeplants in a neglected vegetable garden.
Intelligence appeared at random in Molerats and giant stone heads and almost invariably allowed the host to speak. I had even heard from the chosen one of a talking plant in Broken Hills and even a chess playing Radscorpion. But these, like the intelligent Deathclaw race, had been given their intelligence artificially.
Sadly none of the non human intellects had survived to the present with the exception of myself. The Setites were unheard of yet clearly they weren't entirely human. And since they had rebuilt factories, collected a zoo for some reason and could speak they were obviously an intelligent race.
"Is that you Mordrid?" I asked, knowing by the power of deduction that it was him.
"Me Mordrid, yes." He sat up. Super Mutants are big creatures. He wasn't even standing and he already was taller than myself, a Silver Deathclaw.
"Chaiyya sent me to get you. She misses you." I told him.
"Mordrid misses Chaiyya." He nodded.
"Good because they are sopposed to let you out of here in exchange for me." I told him. "Do you understand?"
"Mordrid smart. Mordrid understands what you tell him. Mordrid thinks alot too. Mordrid thinks you are not funny little man in robes like you appear."
"Right." I stammered, taken aback. Aside from referring to himself in the third person Mordrid had an obviously uncanny capacity for observation. Interesting. "What do you think I am Mordrid?"
"Mordrid does not know what you are. But you are not a man." Mordrid leaned back and put his hands behind his head and put on what could be called a look of smug satisfaction. I was baffled.
"How is it that you come to have such a keen intelligence Mordrid?" I couldn't help myself. Everything that had occured since I agreed to help Chaiyya find her friend had been condusive to putting me in a mood of obsessive inquiry.
"Mordrid not know what 'keen' is." Mordrid frowned.
"It means you have uncommon wit for what I expected to be a dumb brute." I replied.
"Oh, Mordrid not dumb brute. Okay." Mordrid considered this. "Mordrid got dipped you know. Things not think right as they did before."
"What sort of 'things' were you into before you got dipped?" I pried.
"Mordrid not...it not...no...um...Mordrid does not think it...uh..." He struggled for the right word. I decided to help him out a little before he gave himself a stroke.
"Remember?" I offered.
"Yeah. Mordrid does not remember." He explained his lack of a satisfying answer.
"Okay, how about after you got dipped? Surely a Super Mutant with a dizzying intellect such as yours has a story for me?"
"Mordrid have story, yeah. Do not get you dizzy though, you get Mordrid dizzy." He complained.
"Sorry Mordrid. I will take it down a notch. Tell me your story please." I apologized and begged.
"Mordrid walk out of place. Super Mutants going in with people who are sad. Mordrid feel sad. Mordrid go live at mountain." He began his story. "Mordrid make home and wind leave Mordrid alone. Then Mordrid get name back. Name and Home. Mordrid get happy then."
"Then what happened Mordrid?"
"Oh yeah. Mordrid go out one day and get moo moo to eat. Also Mordrid like to eat crunchy bug and tasty things and nose tasty thing and the good sand and little green thing..."
"What next." I pulled him back to the story noting he had begun to drool.
"Mordrid come home and men are there making it a mess. They break Mordrid's home and they call him other name that is not Mordrid's name."
"What did you do about them?"
"Mordrid see they no find anything to eat. They hungry and find nothing. Mordrid sad for them and give them moo moo. They seem dizzy and then they go away." He explained. "Then it get dark and wind come to be mean to Mordrid. Mordrid cold. Mordrid have no home and no name. Mordrid see shiny light far away. Mordrid like pretty light. Mordrid think about light and sad he could not give pretty light to men with moo moo."
"Is that it?" I asked after he had paused for a long time.
"Mordrid go to pretty light and find Chaiyya. Chaiyya see Mordrid shiny doggy tag and get Mordrid back his name. Better name. Mordrid like name. Mordrid like Chaiyya. Sleep now." He yawned and rolled over. He let out a sour fart and then was seemingly asleep shortly thereafter. I thought in depth about his story. I soon recalled a tale similar to his that I had read:
Ryoken, a Zen master, lived the simplest kind of life in a little hut at the foot of a mountain. One evening a thief visited the hut only to discover there was nothing to steal.
Ryoken returned and caught him. "You have come a long way to visit me," he told the prowler, "and you should not return empty-handed. Please take my clothes as a gift."
The thief was bewildered. He took the clothes and slunk away. Ryoken sat naked, watching the moon. "Poor fellow," he mused, "I wish I could have given him this beautiful moon."
Was it possible that his previous life had been lived in a peaceful and harmonious manner so well that as a Super Mutant his capacity for violence was greatly diminished and his intelligence increased? As I considered this the Setites came to visit me.
"Welcome to the Tower District, Deathclaw" The one who seemed to be their leader greeted me. He wore a conical crown that had trailing flaps off of it that rested on his shoulders. It reminded me of a pharoah's.
"I am Goris. How do you know my nature?" I asked him.
"My name is Omphori, I am the master of my people. We are few in number and knowing the nature of things is what we do best. We have already learned the nature of men and their weapons and tools. We settled here and restored factories and manufacture things for them. In return they have made us rich and to them wealth is equal to power. You could come to realize that between the two powers in this desert that you have undoubtedly already met, we are the third and we are far more powerful than either." Omphori, like a classic villain, gave me the entire lowdown unbidden.
"What do you want?" I asked him.
"We want to survive. We, like ghouls, cannot make more of our kind, nor are we going to age and collapse any time soon. In fact, the longer we live the stronger our bodies and minds become. So we want to ensure our survival. Out in the desert we were being killed off one by one. Here, keeping to ourselves except to sell things to the humans, we have thrived." Omphori smiled a canine and devil like smile that made a Deathclaw's mouth look like a Cherub's.
"What are you exactly?" I asked.
"Look around you...what do you see, wise one? Each here is the product of mankind playing God. Each has been radically changed from their original form. If these are what happens when man decides to emulate the Devine...look closely at us and see what the devil to that would look like..." Omphori held his hands up as if embracing the reality of this atrocity.
As a Deathclaw that had been altered by evil men I knew that good existed in me, in Gruthar and Xarn and all the rest. So much good that one might doubt the evil in the Enclave except that they had come and exterminated us to remove any doubt.
Yet here were creatures that I could sense no good in.
Nor did the universe really need them to pale chaos.
Never had I met fouler demons in all my days.
I wished I hadn't met them.
Noone deserved to see.
Better as a secret.
"You make me sick." I exposed my thoughts.
"Yes. Of course we do. You sense the beast within us. But fear not. We could kill all your precious humans if we chose to...but we are content to watch them die off slowly. Eternity will be dull without them, after all." Omphori nodded and one of his companions went to release the Super Mutant.
"You will remain our prisoner until we sell you to her."
"Who?" I asked. I tried to keep the growl out of my voice.
"The Sky Queen of course. Selling things is what we do. Innocent enough right? We would burn their crops just to raise the price of the remaining food even if many starve. But they might catch on to that. Do you think we would ever show the humans our true power over them? Forget it. We grow bored too quickly and this game of cat and mouse has proven infinetely amusing." Omphori laughed and the sound coupled with the splinter of loathing they had lodged in my mind nearly sent me into a rage. But I held onto my sanity and watched Mordrid get released.
"Goodbye Mordrid. Take care of Chaiyya."
I think he knows where it's going, too. Poor guy cannot get a break, ever.
