Word. Don't screw with us Canucks. Thumbs up, dude!
I'd Kinda like to see a Rikti Survival Guide.
I'm going to be running one update a week until this is finished, I suspect I'm going to have about 50 or so entries.
If you're interested in having one of your characters appear in this, send me A PM on the forums or a tell to my Global in game (@Xylric). I'll be happy to discuss accomodation.
I apologize for the delay - my father has recently been diagnosed with Colon Cancer, so I have had multiple distractions of higher importance. Not to worry, though, they caught it really early, and it's yet to go anywhere.
I now present part Two of World War Rikti.
~~~
After leaving Paragon City, I was contacted by the Empath whom Keith Howard had mentioned. She invited me to her home in an undisclosed location, under the condition that I neither reveal her name nor her location.
It was mentioned to me that you were integral to the successful defense of the Destiny Institute. Something about establishing a mental network?
Not so much a mental network as most believe. I merely have access to the collective human unconsciousness, and as a result am capable of rapidly receiving and interpreting information from willing sources. It also gives me a relative amount of control over less than willing minds. As all of us were banded together in the common hope of survival, that allowed us to think and act with a single common Will.
But if you were united into a single Will, how is it you retained individuality?
Every time one human interacts with another, an echo of that interaction is left behind in the minds of both. The only one in danger of losing individuality was myself, and that is why I have moved myself out here. After the end of the First Rikti War, my powers had developed to the point in which I was mildly aware of all functional minds on the planet, both natural and artificial. It was then that I made a discovery about the Rikti.
A discovery about the Rikti?
Yes, well, I suspect that this discovery is already mostly public knowledge, but if it isn't it more than likely soon will be. The Rikti mind is, while significantly different from that of a human, more intuitively aware of other minds. What I had achieved on a small scale, the Rikti lived. In other words, the Rikti have achieved a wide-scale psychic network, one of which all members of their race has access. It was an accident, but at Destiny, I unknowingly tapped into that network.
Yes, I was aware of that. Having high level Vanguard access does come in handy, after all. You're saying you discovered that during the first Rikti War?
Yes.
Coming into contact with such a network at such a young age.... I can't imagine the relief you felt when help arrived.
"Relief" would have been an understatement. By that time, it was already too late for me - my powers had already over-reached themselves, and as a result, I haven't been able to control them to the same degree since. That's why I tend to avoid people.
I can understand that. I've read many reports suggesting that heroes who are Empaths suffer the highest rate of burnout.
Burnout? Is that what they're calling it now? No, we don't burn out.... we ignite. We lose ourselves to humanity, ceasing to become individuals and instead becoming nodes of our collective unconsciousness. Some of us, I suppose, adjust, but others like myself find a way to preserve some remnant of our individuality.
The Rikti War probably solved as many problems for us as it solved.... for once, we had definitive proof that we weren't alone. And of course, since we knew we were no longer alone, our species finally understood our strong inclinations to prejudice, paranoia, and other social ills. On the other hand... we also came direct to face with our deepest fears.
There are many places in the world where the wounds from the first Rikti War run deep. Destiny was merely one of them.
Nearly a month and a half over due, but without further delay, I present part three of World War Rikti
~~~
For the most part, the Rikti's target was that of the human race. But what of the members of the various other species who call Earth their home? Both Visitors from other planets and Travelers from other times and other realms found themselves in the middle of a war they did not predict. I met with one such being, who called himself Xylric. He spoke before I could ask my first question.
Before you say anything, let me make it perfectly clear that my involvement with the Rikti war is not something I am entirely proud of. Although I helped to defend this world and its people, it was not until its aftermath that I was allowed to consider it my home.
Apparently, in what you call the western world, dragons have long been feared and hunted. As my bloodline contains significant amounts of draconic blood, this prejudice crippled my ability to blend in with this world's society.
To your credit, however, unlike in my home realm, the inhabitants of this world are able to free themselves from preconcieved notions, and approach situations from different angles they would not normally consider. The humans of my home realm are also capable of such a feat, but not to the sheer level of audacity and resilience which you accomplish.
In conferring the pre-eminent biologists and scientists of your world as I attempted to learn as much as possible about my new home, I was constantly reminded that though humanity is in itself unremarkable compared to other species, it is by far the most adaptive species on any known world. For this you earned my respect.
Perhaps this is why the first Rikti invasion ultimately failed, and the second resulted in some enemies becoming friends.
I appreciate your sentiments about humanity, as it is not often we hear about how it is viewed by other species. Going back to the Rikti War, what would you say was the hardest thing you encountered about it?
Though I am quite capable of healing nearly any wound, it does not mean that I do not experience pain. Though I am not immortal in the truest sense of the term, the experience of dying several times over the course of a single day is not something I am particularily interested in repeating.
I will admit, however, the sentiment that whatever does not kill you (permanantly), will only make you stronger, is indeed true in my case.
Dying several times over the course of a single day? Surely things were never quite that bad.
He looked at me, but did not see me. It was as though he were looking through me into the past.
"Bad" would not be the term to describe it. Before I arrived in Paragon, I had spent many months exploring this world. When the Rikti attacked, I was in the nation you know as Japan. I often felt far more welcome in the East, due to how differently their mythology handled my species.
I have read up on the wars of your last century, and what I experienced over in Japan made me greatly appreciate the spirit that dwells strongly within your species, even if it leads to such horrific devices as your nuclear weapons.
The Japanese did more than earn my respect. In the few short days I fought alongside them, they earned my friendship and gratitude.
He gestures to the glass case mounted just behind him on the wall. Inside it was one of the most ornate blades I have ever seen.
To my understanding, blades such as this one are considered to be national treasures in Japan. The fact that they gifted one such as me, an outsider to their realm as well as to their world, with such a blade says much about the intensity with which we fought alongside each other.
As far as I know, Japan was not hit as hard by the Rikti invasion as many other places in the world.
This is true. I attribute this fact to the manner of their culture, but I have never seen any being fight in as such as a paradoxical manner as the Japanese melee experts. They were controlled, and yet completely unrestrained, unpredictable, yet completely fluid in their motion.
The hardest fight would likely have been Hokkaido. I was cut off from any communication at this point, because I took an energy blast from a Rikti cruiser that would've killed nearly anyone else. As far as I knew, everyone I had previously fought with had either been killed, captured or worse. I was in no shape to offer any resistance should the Rikti find me.
I was fortunate, as an old blind man who had heard my fall pulled me to safety inside a cave while Rikti drones flew overhead. It took me a few hours to completely heal, and by that time the area was filled with Rikti. I am not sure how many there actually were, but what happened that day will remain burned in my memory forever. The old man, despite my insistance that he'd be safer if hidden, went out of the cave to try to make contact with any allied forces in the area. Unfortunately, the Rikti found him first. He managed to take down a few when they attacked, but a normal human body is not capable of surviving such an assault.
Needless to say, the fact that I am sitting here talking to you now does well to explain what happened next. By the time allied forces reached my position, the Rikti has abandoned the area. Apparently, at the time, they feared magic, and upon seeing what unleashing Primal Chaos can do, many of them broke rank and fled.
I was later told that the old man had died years ago in that very cave, and that he remained in the area because the Kami, or whatever it was he was referring to, bid him to stay where he had died to help a fallen soul.
I do not know where that spirit has now gone to, but I am eternally grateful for his help, and gladly call him my first human friend.
I apologize for the delay in updating, I have recently started my second year at Sheridan, and do not have as much time for writing as I had thought I would.
Much has been said and written about the actions of the metahuman population, both heroic and villainous, but there are many other "heroes" who have been sadly overlooked in the aftermath of the Rikti War. I stopped by to chat with Professor Madison James Issacs, the head of the Humanities department at the University of Toronto, one of the campuses devastated by the conflict.
Professor Isaacs, it is most certainly a pleasure to speak with you.
Please, call me Maddie, most of my students do. The Rikti war caught us almost entirely by surprise here. By the time we had realized what was going on, most of Toronto was in ruins, and there were Rikti drones and soldiers everwhere. The majority of the students barricaded themselves in lowest levels of the school. We may have had one of the most advanced campuses in the world, but once the power and communications lines were cut, we were unable to do anything of merit.
Pretty much all of the students and faculty of my department managed to take shelter, away from the heaviest bombardment. Although, it pains me to say, we all took the losses above ground seriously. We were holed up in our shelter for almost the entire length of the war, dependant on the hopes that the Rikti wouldn't take a close look at the ground they held.
If it weren't for the Institute's "distraction," it's a fair bet we would've all been found before the end. As it was, we only got out alive because of luck.
When it comes to an alien race out to exterminate our entire species, there is ultimately only one thing spelling the difference between victory and extermination. The human spirit has never shone as brightly than those dark days.
I'm no hero, but I wouldn't be here today if it weren't for my students. We salvaged pretty much everything we could from our library and storage rooms, so that even if we were destroyed, our history would at the very least remain.
In the books we recovered from the library was a full copy of some of the more legendary musical pieces. One of my students, Sandra, (who was brilliant singer, and I think now works with the RCMP in forensic psychology) found a full score to Handel's Messiah.
In the third day, with no heat, no water, no power, and probably likely dwindling air supplies, our morale was pretty much shot. We had no idea what was going on outside. Then she started to sing.
Sing? How would that have helped you?
It was the "Hallelujah" chorus that she started to sing. There were about three hundred of us who'd taken cover in that shelter, and the walls weren't the best for acoustic purposes, but when one person with a voice of an angel like Sandra starts to sing, everything stopped.
There were no more tears, no more anxieties, no more fear. Just Sandra and her music. She saved us, she really did. I think we would've just given up if it weren't for her.
Then something even more remarkable occurred. People started to join in. We spent the last week of our hiding singing and telling stories. By the time we were found after the end of the War, most of us were tired and sore, but we looked to our rescuers with hope.
I don't know if there is a God in the world or not, but Sandra is an angel regardless.
I have not abandoned this, I've just fallen behind in many things that are ultimately more important.
Having recently finished Max Brook's books, the Zombie Survival Guide and World War Z, I've come to consider how much fun it would be to take a look at the Rikti War through such a lens. The following is my first attempt at such an interpretation.
~~~
Keith Howard is one of the Nuclear 90. #68, to be precise. While he has the same heart mutation as al the others, he also possesses a vocal mutation. A Dual Canadian-American citizen, I met the Nanotechnology major in Atlas Park.
You're both Canadian and American?
Well, no, actually. I didn't get my American citizenship through normal channels. It was honarary, and I got it at the same time as my parents. I'd helped them save your ambassador in Ottawa after that major power failure in 2003. Some people just hate your country so much, you know. Although, I think they partially gave me the citzenship in recognition of the whole Destiny Institute affair.
The Destiny Institute?
Canada's major centre for Metahuman Affairs. Education, Support, Research, if you can name it, it was responsible for it. Fully funded by the government and the major Hero groups active in the nation. Naturally, of course, it was a key target for the Rikti. Once they learned where we were, of course. Up to that point, they were content to just bomb the hell out of the Golden Horseshoe. You know, the major Urban Nightmare around Lake Ontario?
I'm familiar with it. I did my Doctorate in Toronto. So, how'd the Rikti learn about the Institute?
You have a doctorate? Cool. Anyway, the Rikti learned about the Institute the hard way. They'd already completely destroyed all of our above ground facilities, so we'd lost quite a few good people... some of them could be considered remarkable. It was only natural that they bombed us, since Southern Ontario was the hardest hit area of all of Canada, as it was our major population centre.
They only had the one mothership over us, but they managed to take out a good quarter million people in the first hour and a half. They pretty much destroyed any hope of a traditional counter attack, which left the Heros to take care of things. It was brutal. They managed to trace the origins of our counter-attack and pretty much wiped out entire hero groups.
It was about then that Ashes remembered that linear accelerators and mass drivers are essentially the same thing. That's how they found the Institute... we pretty much made ourselves a prime target.
Consider the effects of a couple nanograms of matter temporarily shielded and accelerated to probably a good .6c slamming into an energy field specifically designed to deflect physical attack. It wouldn't have helped them any. We didn't care that it told them where we were. We were prepared.
My God...
Yeah, pretty much. That was the idea. We took down a mothership with a single shot, unfortunately, the side-effects resulted in an explosion that killed Ashes and most of the remaining faculty.
Who was Ashes?
Ashley Stuart. He was my mentor, the one who originally used the power armour I use. He's the reason I'm here in Paragon, you know. Without his influence, I'd still be bored out of my mind.
Of course, after we took the shot, most of the intelligence the Rikti had made far more sense - they realized that pretty much all of the next generation of Canadian heroes was in the Institute at the time they attacked, so if they wiped it out, they'd break our morale.
Of course, they were wrong.
Why would they have been wrong? That makes a fair amount of tactical sense.
Very simply. In all known life on this planet, what's the most important instinct, but the preservation of the species? Attacking the offspring of Canada's heroes was tactically the worst decision the Rikti could have made. Don't get me wrong, they made it incredibly hard on us. Out of the 1200 or so of us at the Institute, 891 of us didn't make it out. I could give you the names and powers of each of them, if it makes things clearer.
No, that won't be necessary. So, how did you make it out?
My parents taught me to be a leader as well as a follower. I may have been 15, but I was considered to be a genius, a polymath. I was a natural at pretty much everything, so everything came together to get as many people out alive as possible. That's where my mutations came in very handy. You see this device on my neck?
Yeah, I do. What is it?
It's what lets me converse like a normal human being. Otherwise, my voice pretty much screws up molecular bonds. Very useful with nanotechnology, but really annoying at times. Anyways, I collapsed almost all entrances to the Institute except one, bottlenecking the Rikti ground forces.
At this point, I threw on Ashe's armour, which quickly adapted to my neural patterns, and quickly gathered those of my age group. It was nothing short of epic.... eight 15 year-old kids with only moderately developed powers against an entire complenent of Rikti. Drones, Monkeys, Heavies, everything.
I think it was the Empath who helped the most. She established a network between all of us, so it was eight concious minds operating as one. We operated seemlessly. It took us a while, but we managed to hold them off until help arrived.
What kind of Help showed up?
Everyone. And I mean that, everyone showed up. Every single Canadian Hero that was able to get there showed up. At that point it was slightly lopsided. I suppose it goes to show, if you want to get yourself in serious trouble, go after a Super's kid.
Yeah, no kidding. Is there anything else?
Not that you need to know, no. I hope I helped clear up a few of your questions. You should go look up the Empath, she's still around, and she'll be able to add more to the story.
Thanks for your time.
No problem, it was my pleasure.