Colossus By Choice: B1V16 Side Story - Nomads to Nowhere

[Book 1 Verse 16 – B1V16]
[Side Story]

“Nomads to Nowhere” – Record by Yun-Tao, Steel Crushers Forge-Widow

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What am I doing with this recorder again?

My husband is gone, so I won’t be siring any children anytime soon. Social creatures we Oxbuls are, capable of moving on we aren’t. My unfinished quest to avenge my beloved Geng is a testament to this species-wide tendency of ours. So why have I started this recording now when my current objective goes counter to this device’s original purpose?

If a piece of tinkered equipment serves a purpose that isn’t useful to what you need, you either scrap it for parts for another creation or give it to someone else who may find it useful for their purposes. That’s why my mother and father taught me, and their parents taught them, and everyone else that came before them.

Maybe it’s that damn youngling’s influence, Taum. That little guy is bright and thinks well on the fly. I can appreciate being adaptable when working with new material. Well, while him and that annoying Radent smuggler sleep off the excitement behind me in our room at the inn, I suppose I might as well at least make good use of this recorder now that I’ve started the recording. Perhaps I’ll share these audio logs with the clan’s surviving younglings when I return from my vengeance quest.

=

This journey that I will embark on to drive my Greatsword through that awful ape commander’s torso reminds me of the great journeys that the Oxbul people first undertook at the pinnacle of creation under the watchful eye of the gods.

Technically speaking, the main governing body of our glorious race is centralized on the planet of Dragon’s Metallicore. However, it’s only like this because this world contains the highest concentrations of Nanometal ruins, precious ores and metals in the crust and various deep layers, and the sacred Elder Dragon known as Zorah Magdaros. The actual government doesn’t have a designated location on Dragon’s Metallicore, for they’re constantly on the move to seek out locations to set up new forging and blacksmithing operations. For these operations, they will only stop when 1 of 3 things is found: a high-density pocket of ores and metals, a large ruin that once belonged to Humanity, or a stationary Zorah Magdaros. That last one in particular is the most prized out of all, both for religious reasons and for their wealth of rare and useful mineral deposits and magmatic runoff.

The tendency of the Scorching Mountain Dragons to live underground or deep underwater means that the main Oxbul governing body is almost always difficult to actually track down.

The fact that this is our most centralized and populous world should tell anyone listening all they need to know about us always being on the move. The war with the Radents on Shadow of Sunder at the beginning of the era was the main starting point of our extended journey through the stars.

=

The details are kinda fuzzy, but most Oxbul chroniclers agree that we started exploring the universe more extensively in the dawning years of the Reclamation Shadow War.

Before this time, we mostly stuck to our home solar system, the Minos-Taur System. But even back then, we didn’t exactly have a singular home, for we were nomads who went wherever precious forging materials could be found. However, our scope was relatively limited in those early years when the True Titans were still actively managing all of creation. Oh sure, we had been exploring every planet, asteroid, and moon there was on the off-chance we could start up new mining and smithing operations, but these expeditions never took us anywhere past the reaches of the system’s rim.

There was another reason beyond simple convenience for our relatively small reach back then, though.

We were set upon by the more technologically advanced Catzfin race. This sapient species hailed from a planet called Australoceania, a world that was almost entirely covered in a singular vast ocean. They were a people who resembled the common Gajau that roam the shallow and murky waters of freshwater passages across existence.

They had whiskers and wide heads filled with needle-like teeth, albeit they had slim bodies and bright coloured scales ranging from vibrant blues to iridescent violets, as well as the ability to breathe in both air and water. They came from a neighbouring solar system whose name currently eludes me, but it was obvious why they came. On one of the many moons some of the clans set up shop on, one of them happened to contain a vault of ancient Human technology and ruins, all of it obviously composed of the legendary Nanometal that the patron Titan spirit known as Mechagodzilla had created.

We Oxbuls had naturally laid claim to this treasure trove, but the Catzfins went on the offence and contested this claim with their advanced pneumatic weapons. At the time, our people only had our hammers and blades, which put us at a disadvantage even with our physical superiority and horde tactics. Despite this disadvantage, the many clans came together during this time of need and kept the enemy at bay, one of the few times where we as a species were almost entirely united for a single cause.

The Catzfins deny that this war party was officially sanctioned by their main governing body at the time, that these were just a rogue pirate group. But pirates don’t wage war against an entire species for such a long time over Mechagodzilla’s Nanometal. Bunch of slippery hoof-lickers, they are.

Anyways, it took the intervention of a flock of Elder Dragons to finally put an end to it all, the pairings of Teostra and Lunastra.

=

These royal Flame Dragons had come to us with a warning and ultimatum, for as it turned out, the distant Radent people had stolen huge quantities of Human technology without the jurisdiction of the gods. They and other Elder Dragons, still loyal to their ancient Human caretakers, had been gathering up the various sapient species to confront the rats and stamp out this affront to the pantheon.

This heresy against our direct creators wouldn’t stand. We Oxbuls immediately and unanimously decided to cease aggressions and join our fellow sapient brothers and sisters in creation against the thieving rodents. The Catzfins reluctantly agreed to the ceasefire, though tensions still remain high between them and us Oxbuls to this day. They’re still a bunch of hoof-licking slimy fish, but we could tell they mostly wanted a chance at claiming the riches that the Radents had stolen and tried to make their own. And to be honest, so did most of the species that joined this cause, including us.

It was simply too good of an opportunity to pass up. And so, our first foray out of our home system began.

=

I’ve been told it was a breathtaking moment, stepping out of the either desolate or highly volcanic worlds we were used to and into the Cloak & Conceal System.

There were all these worlds barely touched by sunlight and thus lit up almost entirely by bioluminescent microorganisms in densities so high they could be seen from the middle of the system. But the brightest of them all wasn’t due to life, but the perversion of the gods’ tools. This one, Shadow of Sunder, glowed via shining cities that were built up thanks to the Radents’ reverse engineering of the Human technology. I must admit, renditions of what their world used to look like are absolutely stunning. But it was all still an affront to the gods, so the strongest clans of the Oxbuls joined forces with the Catzfins, Draconi, Rapteaglets, and a few other sapient races.

We hailed from various cultures and technological backgrounds, and though we outnumbered the Radents, it wasn’t by a large margin due to their fast reproductive rate and their own advancements allowing them to negate many of the hardships that used to lower their survivability. However, we were united in our cause to punish their heresy and take back that which they stole.

Although there were difficulties in cooperating with the other species, we Oxbuls proved invaluable both on the ground fighting alongside our siblings in arms as the fiercest warriors of the blade and as tinkerers and maintenance engineers that could help fix and upkeep equipment and armour for the other races.

However, the Radents proved an equal for this coalition, and the Reclamation Shadow War would wage on for almost a decade before the True Titans stepped in, Godzilla in particular. She set upon them a lesser god as punishment for their crimes, Varan the Unbelievable.

The Elder Dragons who had gathered us up made sure we stayed back while Varan did his work. And dear Godzilla, did he do work. What we failed to accomplish in years, The Unbelievable finished within mere hours. Entire cities razed to the ground, precious stores of ancient Humanity’s technology freed from their prisons, and Radent populations routed and forced into surrender.

In a single night, the entire planet had been decimated and placed back under the control of the pantheon.

=

While this was devastating for both sides, we Oxbuls came out of it better than ever before. The war had tempered us, endeared us to the other sapient races as reliable allies of the forge.

We still wished to remain independent nomadic clans afterwards, and so the Ruler of All gave us the tools to be the best we could at this. Godzilla gave us gifts of technology and knowledge to better traverse the stars, and even helped us improve on our forging craft with secret techniques she herself used in crafting the Slayer Crucible. Just like before during our initial creation, the goddess of all things saw beauty and strength in us, giving us this parting gift before bidding farewell to all the creatures in existence.

This alliance proved to be particularly lucrative with these newfound enhancements to our ability to travel and tinker. Because of our efforts and actions, we were given free reign to come and go as we pleased or needed within reason to any of the other worlds, core or otherwise, for free trade and services. As long as we respected the laws and traditions that the other sapient species adhered to when they didn’t contradict our own ideals and methods, we would be welcomed like any other people would. The Draconi in particular ended up becoming one of our closest patron clients, for they had a similar quality of taste in armaments and equipment that Oxbuls did, even if they lacked an eye for the finer details of the craft of forging and smithing.

For this very reason, Pyrestar and the Draconi’s colonies have the largest Oxbul presence in the universe aside from our own home system.

The Catzfins weren’t so welcoming, though they didn’t explicitly forbid us from free enterprise in and around their territory. However, we mostly stay away from each other, as old wounds don’t heal easily. You won’t catch me dead next to one of those fish’s homes anytime soon, that’s for sure. I think there might be an odd clan or 2 out in their home system, though they’re very much a minority. I’d love to see what they might’ve come up with working in such a vastly different environment, though.

It would only be a few more decades after the Reclamation Shadow War before the True Titans left the universe to their creations and disappeared, going off to wherever the mighty gods rest.

No one has seen them since.

Okay, ending recording now.