Ninth Jump (Light of Terra Part 2: Part 5)

Terraforming-------  (0 TP) Who let me handle the terraforming!?

Atmosphere: Terraformable (-1 TP): A little thin, but nothing that we can't fix with a little time and a lot of plants.

Terrain: Mountainous (-1 TP): Mountains... Mountains... Tiny valley... Mountains... Plenty of mineral wealth and easy to defend. Good enough.

Flore/Fauna: Terran (-1 TP): Very, very earth-like... Easy to deal with... Most of the time. At least it is familiar.

Hostile Natives (Tarellians) (+3 TP): They're walking lizards and they really hate us. I can understand why, but it is still going to be an issue.

Character Point Stuff------

None. Keeping it.

Final Character Points: 1250cp

Companion Stuff: Dark Reapers (I don't need to say anything.) and an Exodite Dragon (It's a freaking dinosaur! Great gift!)

Paperwork and Reunions

            It was three full years before I ever saw Carwyn again. Granted, he/she was an Eldar… I don’t doubt that they thought of time as a bit irrelevant and what was a decent span of time to me was barely even a day to them. Still never could figure out what physical sex they were, but that wasn’t really important. At least it gave me some time to work around the settlement and get everything in order.

            The council and I had took a vote within the first few weeks to decide upon who would handle settlement-wide affairs and anything that required leaving the planet, both allowing others to leave once we were able to get ships operational once again and actually going with them to accomplish certain tasks, such as trading with new groups. As an outsider who did not have family or long-time friends on the planet, I was voted to handle such affairs.

            The old man who led the Kin of Iron, who actually retained their name as they also handled their form of religion, physically stated that ‘As someone who knows not of our ways and brought us together to begin with, it harms fewer for you to handle neutral issues.’, which I could not disagree with… Besides, most of them did vote for me to do so.

            As things got underway, we had to handle the natives who we could not physically communicate with, sadly. The attacks slowed our progress, but the mountains did help in providing us with areas of reprieve and defense by building into nooks and crannies that they could not easily get to. We took the time to tunnel our way through the rock and stone, the mineral wealth making the building of various defenses, tools, the production of materials, and simple buildings was quite the boon.

            To circumvent the atmosphere, we used the starting supplies and a few of the Void Walkers, who handled exploration due to their hardy constitutions and experience being off by themselves, with a few Wargar and Pale Sons for protection and testing (The Pale Sons could handle toxins and radiation to the point where they could detect such things without truly being harmed by it.), to find already existing plantlife to farm and to thicken the atmosphere. As a side note, the atmosphere did make our lungs stronger, heh…. Though, we did lose a few due to terrain issues.

            At least the flora and fauna were recognizable and not too alien… More earth-like than I was expecting, honestly. Within those three years we were able to build a solid settlement with proper defenses and infrastructure that kept us relatively safe. The tribes were working together, most of which stayed within specific roles depending on their skillset, but they were free to intermingle… Something that had not occurred in who knows how long.

            Kin of Iron handled construction, research, and general crafting… Void Walkers were explorers, Pale Sons helped in more dangerous environments (Primarily the mines, though, they were free to do other tasks), Wargars provided protection from the natives and other hazards, and the Lejens helped with all four tasks to provide, primarily, order and training in tasks that they might not be used to handling. Though, that was the case for everyone, the Lejens were used to stabilize everything as a form of leadership, but they held no actual power over the rest.

            At the three year mark, give or take a few months, I was working around the edge of the wall observing a few of the workers putting together a gun emplacement over the gate when I heard the march of what sounded like a small war party from the clicking of equipment to the nearly-synced sound of their footsteps landing at the same time. My worries were put at ease when one of the workers called out ‘Sir! Your friend’s back!’. I turned around to see Carwyn walking along with a party of Eldar. They were all clad in what appeared to be black and bone colored, heavy armor that held a rather disturbing skeleton motif with various rocket launchers and other heavy weapons in hand as they advanced. Beside the Eldar that I knew, who was now wearing the armor of a Farseer… Seemed someone got a handy promotion… was a nine foot tall dinosaur-like creature with a harness. It was obviously a carnivore, but it seemed fairly tame… I couldn’t remember the exact species is was like, but it had fairly solid pigmentation and, while it was like a T-Rex, it still had functioning arms.

            All I could remember was that the thing was from the Exodite Eldar and they called them dragons. The Farseer stepped up as I waved a hand. “Ah, long time, no see… To me, anyways. You would think with your webway, you would be back before supper. Leaving me with all the work.” I grinned, obviously just trying to make a joke… A racist and/or insulting joke, but a joke either way. They responded by handing me the lead on the harness. ‘For you. Not… not because I like you or anything.’ I could just feel the word “baka” straining to sound out… But, they didn’t know that word. ((OOC note: That was actually in the jump PDF, I did not write in that statement about what they said.))

            I accepted the leash with a hum, my lips curling up just very slightly. “Thank you. Though… How much do I feed it? I don’t think we have that many animals…” They simply glanced off, blushed a hint, and muttered what sounded like the word ‘Idiot Mon-keigh’ under their breath and went toward the settlement. I simply led the freaking dinosaur into the settlement along behind them. “Baka-baka-baka-baka.” I repeated as a joke to myself, earning me a huff and a glare from my friend(?) as we went along.

            At least that was taken care of and with the new troops, our troubles with the natives became much easier to handle with fewer attacks now that we had rather heavy weapons on our side… And properly trained soldiers. Though… I had a really odd feeling that I was going to hate something… I didn’t know what, I didn’t know when, I just really felt troubled by something… and then someone came running with a radio stating they were getting destress signals. Never a break around here.