Empires!7- A Bigger Fish: Event Thread

[Potato_Priest]

Report: This amalgamation of nodes is self-defined as Deep Blue. Query: What is God?

Hmm, the King puzzled, this must be a young god, to not know its own nature."A god is a mind of great vastness and great power, like you. Now, for the story."

The shark king grabbed onto Darling's webbing as she passed by, and the other shark riders gathered around him, curious which he might tell. The sharks took off from the seafloor and circled together as their king began.

Spoiler: The story of Uncle Jack

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A long time ago, when I was a child just taming my first dogsharks, my father's group were raiding and hunting in much warmer waters. My father's brother Jack was a brave leader of a fine group of raiders, but pride comes before the fall, and one day he was too slow in leaving the site of a raid. His entire raiding party was captured by a local merfolk noble lady, who was quite annoyed by our raids on her land.

Not merely content to execute the raiders she had captured after the atrocities they had perpetrated on her land, she instead bound them in chains in a cave, and one by one would unchain them and take them into the darkness to be tortured to death. Those waiting on the wall could only hear the screams of their brethren as they waited for their fate. As the leader of the raiding party, the Lady had made sure Uncle Jack was the last in line so he could suffer through the screams of everyone he failed, so he waited and agonized, as each of his warriors died in the darkness beside him. Finally, his turn came. When the merfolk warriors came to unchain him to meet his end, he spoke.

"Take me to your leader. I want to make a deal." The guards laughed, sure that nothing that Jack said could possibly change his fate. But because they thought it a fine joke, they brought him before the Lady, who was equally amused. "What could you possibly offer me?" she asked, laughing at the pathetic groveling of the once proud raider.

"I have traveled to many lands," Jack began, his voice desperate, "and seen and learned many things. One may interest you: very far from here I learned of a gel cream that can make one's skin impervious to blades. But this information is worth far more than merely my freedom. I want everything you found on my compatriots, a two-weeks' supply of food, and my shark."

The Lady scoffed again, but Jack's ambitious demand brought some doubt into her mind. Perhaps there really was such a formula. She eyed the pile of trinkets her soldiers had collected from the Chelonians. There certainly were some strange things among them. Then again, perhaps not.
"And what guarantee I have that you aren't trying to cheat me?" she asked, one eyebrow raised.
"Simple," replied Jack, "you can test the formula on me first. What do you have to lose?"
Indeed, the Lady thought, there was very little risk in allowing him to try. And on the off chance he wasn't just stalling for another day alive, she would have the formula for an incredibly powerful weapon and still be able to torture him to death afterwards.
"Very well," she nodded her acceptance, stifling a grin.

Over the next few days Jack remained a prisoner, but he was constantly giving instructions to the Lady's soldiers to gather rare ingredients from around the region and abroad. Sea urchin spines, nudibranch venom, brain coral flakes, manatee milk, sulfurous rocks from the hydrothermal vents, and more. Finally, they were all collected. He spent a full day precisely mixing the ingredients according to the recipe in his head as the Lady and her best alchemists watched, eager to learn the secret. Finally, it was ready.

"As we agreed," Jack proclaimed, "you may test it on me before granting me my terms." He rubbed some of the gelatinous, oily paste on his head, and gestured to the Lady's champion soldier, "Have your strongest soldier pick up that spear and thrust it with all his might into my forehead," Jack commanded. The Lady, eager to see the paste in action, ordered it done. Her champion came forward, raised his spear... and impaled Jack right through the brain, killing him instantly.

The shark king's color shifted to a dramatic black as he delivered the story's punchline. His entourage fell very silent, until slowly they began to laugh, twinkling in a rainbow of a thousand different colors to each other.