And the first post to the reboot of my classic RP, Diesel X, is here! As the topic title states, we are looking for more role-players, so if the setting interests you, by all means submit a character and join up.
Nevertheless, onwards to Ixom!
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AudioKnight PresentsDiesel X: Blackwater Chronicles
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He could feel the horrible creak each time he moved, as tiny, shimmering segments of his skin broke and reformed under the enormous stress.
Metallic or not, resistant to the desert or not, one thing was quite clear about his skin condition. He was rusting, and he was rusting bad.
The whipping sand was little more than a gust of snowflakes to the wizened Nosphor male, but each step forward through the dunes was just another agonizing step towards death. Age had not been kind to his body, and his bronze metallic skin, once a shining glimmer in the desert sun, had dulled down into a burned out brown. His powerful hide had been undergoing oxidation for the last five years. Now, each movement for the Nosphor was one of remarkable pain. And unfortunately, it was the kind of pain that not even the best medicine could save him from.
But there were more important things on the horizon. The elder continued to trek onwards, ignoring the pain, ignoring the lost, desolate feeling of being in the desert, and ignoring the fact that his two hundred and thirty-five year old body was begging for a swift, painless release.
For another hour he trekked, and his journey would have seemed hopeless, if not for the sight of a settlement a half a mile ahead. In the cold dark of the night, there were no lights coming from the settlement's dome-shaped living spaces, but with the light of Ixom's moons, it was all still clear as day.
There seemed to no immediate guard as he inched his way inside the settlement. Most of the humans were asleep. What few guards there were seemed more content with talking to each other than keeping watch, and so the elder managed to avoid their gaze.
It was as he approached what looked like one of the larger buildings, where the leaders congregated, that he began to feel a wretched tug on his metallic heart. He gasped, and in those few moments, his advanced mental processes calculated how many heart beats he had left, how long it would take to to reach the nearest house, and how long he had to speak. His time was short, but it was just enough time.
Dragging himself inside a small, quaint home, he could feel his breath shortening as his walking staff knocked a small chair over. There was a patter of footsteps coming down from the upper level. The elder Nosphor took a bitter breath. He hoped that whoever was up there would come quickly. He only had so much time.
--
When he heard the commotion downstairs, Ichero was up in an instant. With enough insomnia issues to last him a lifetime, and the fact that his N-Eye had been having some technical issues for the last week, it wasn't like he was falling asleep anytime soon.
As he made his way down the steps of the upper level, a small diesel-lamp in hand, Ichero almost immediately spotted the reflective shimmer that told him the person waiting below was a Nosphor. He approached quickly, shirtless, wearing only a long, tan pair of pants, his black hair unkempt from tossing and turning in bed.
The Nosphor barely moved, and Ichero could see he was breathing heavily. The young man's N-Eye jittered wildly, barely capturing the black and white image of the Nosphor before him. Ichero brought the diesel-lamp closer, finally noticing the elderly condition of this stranger.
"Hey, are you alright? We don't see many Nos around here. I thought there weren't any for miles." Ichero said, his right mechanical eye continuing to bug out as he spoke, much to his annoyance.
"...I'm fine." the Nosphor said, through labored breath. "My name is...Hzyen. There is something, I must share with...you..."
Ichero might have been groggy, but he could still see this stranger's condition was only worsening. Even as the Hyzen spoke, he was already filling up a nearby jug with pure blackwater from a small spigot. He put up to the elder's mouth, and but much to his surprise, Hyzen refused to drink it.
"Come on, just take a sip. You're not doing too well, and I know being out in that desert didn't help." Ichero insisted, but Hyzen was steadfast. Instead, he put a hand over Ichero's jittering N-Eye. His eyes looked at it with methodical purpose.
"Your eye. It is damaged." Hyzen said, as his mind began to mentally deconstruct the inner workings of the device.
"Yeah, it's been like that for the last week. But since there aren't any Nos around here, I haven't been able to..." Ichero began, but he was cut off when he felt Hyzen's long finger jab into his N-Eye. There was a sharp click as metal moved against metal, and suddenly, Ichero's eye just stopped moving. His right side vision began to fluctuate, becoming grainy, before settling on a perfect, black and white view.
"...fix it. Wow. I forgot how good Nos were with tech, thanks. My name's Ichero." the young man said, but Hyzen seemed to ignore his words, instead put a firm hand on the boy's shoulder.
"My moments with you are limited, so you must listen. You and your people must know what I am about to divulge. There is a terrible time coming. A time that my own people do not believe is real. It involves the Diesel Race. They are not forgotten as most would think, but are on the verge of returning!"
Ichero almost did a double-take. "What? The Diesel Race? I know that the Nos are smart and all, but that sounds pretty far-fetched. Why would they would to come back to this barren rock anyway?."
Hyzen croaked through his withered breath. "You don't understand, human. There are things in this universe you cannot even begin to comprehend. The proof, the artifacts in Diesel Sanctuaries I have seen with my own eyes, they tell a story I couldn't even begin to explain."
Ichero was about to say something else, but the elder continued without so much as a breath.
"You must go to your people, and tell them what I have told you. They must travel into the East, into the deepest region of the Havex Desert. There lies a place of great power, and hidden secrets of the Diesel Race. Only with their own technology, with the machines they have hidden throughout the dark corners of our world, can we only hope to survive their coming."
"I...I barely get what you're going on about, but I think you need some medical help. Just sit tight, and I can get a healer from nea-" Ichero started to say, but Hyzen put a finger up to his mouth and stopped him from speaking.
"No. My time is over, but the time of our world may not be. And even if your people do not listen, like mine will not, you must go. There are things far greater in this universe than our simple differences."
Hyzen gulped a final breath as is heart began to slow to a stop. "It is only together as single people, not divided...that we have a chance to survive their coming. It must be human...Nosphor...Shadowed One...Zy'rae...and Decephon...alike..."
As Hyzen finished stating the names of the five races of Ixom, his breath finally drifted away, and he went into the calm sleep of eternity. His hand falling to his side, Ichero was left looking onward at the now dead Nosphor, struggling to comprehend exactly what had been said.
Sighing to himself, he took a spare cover from nearby, and placed it over Hyzen's body. He would tell the rest of the residents about this in the morning.
But while they might have believed the old Nosphor's demise, they might not believe the crazy story he had told. Either way, Ichero would have to try.
--
As he sat inside the spacious cantina, thinking to himself over a cool drink of clear, Ichero couldn't help but feel stupid.
He had been right, of course. The residents of his settlement, Encher, didn't believe a word of what Hyzen had said. As one of the human leaders had plainly said to him, going that far out into the Havex Desert was a death wish. The Diesel Race was gone, had been gone for a long time, and they weren't going to be coming back. That was that. Ichero should be worrying about finding a wife and starting a family, not chasing legends in the desert.
But for Ichero, that wasn't enough. Something about the old Nosphor's words that night tugged at him. And now, against the words of the leaders he had followed his whole life, here he was, sitting in a cantina in the huge human meta-city of Talsium.
In this capital of humanity of Ixom, one could easily find numerous non-humans among the crowds. All throughout the great city, pockets of Nosphor made their lives. In some of the subterranean sections below, a Shadowed One minority mined their own fortunes and ran a marketplace for those above. There was even the occasional Zy'rae or blackvox-using Decephon to be found. It was the biggest and only melting pot on Ixom, and the perfect place to find his new recruits.
Because one way or another, Ichero was going on this trip to the Havex Desert and beyond. There was no doubt in his mind.
It didn't matter that his right eye was a mechanical, Nosphor-tech replacement, and it frequently malfunctioned. It didn't matter that he knew close to nothing about machines, Dieseltron or even the Nosphor who had given him the gift of a new eye in the first place. What mattered was that he was here, he was alive, and now he had the legacy of someone else in his midst.
And so, sitting at the bar among the bustling residents of the Ulaz Cantina, he waited. After coming into Talsium, Ichero had put up a general notice within the Great Hub, a large community center located in the center of the meta-city. The exact meeting place for those interested in the notice was the Ulaz Cantina itself. Those interested were instructed to look for the man with the mechanical eye, something Ichero figured would not be hard to find, as he planned on waiting in the cantina as long as he needed to.
His notice called for anyone, of any race, who was knowledgeable in working with mechanical devices and lost Dieseltron. It called for anyone would had braved the deserts and lived to tell the tale. It called for partners who would have to be prepared for a long journey to the East, into the most mysterious regions of the great Havex Desert.
Truthfully though, he just needed anyone who was willing to come, with or without the promise of monetary reward. Soldiers, scientists, mercenaries, fortune seekers, explorers; in the end, it didn't really matter to him. For all Ichero knew, he might be dead before they even made it to the Havex Desert.
But this wasn't about his own life. Based on what Hyzen had told him, Ichero's life would be a small sacrifice, compared to the life of the entire planet of Ixom.
All Ichero could hope now, was that Hyzen wasn't crazy, and that maybe there was really something important out there in the barren desert.
Because as far Ichero knew, the Nosphor were pretty smart.
They couldn't be wrong. And even if they were, they couldn't be that far off from the right answer, right?
Left-hander Thisara Perera hit five sixes and a boundary in the 33rd over sent down by Peterson ...
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