LeFilthyHeretic

*We cannot stop them. Like all who have come before, we will fail, we will fall, we will perish. We do not lament that fate, for we have stood defiant and proud, our colors cast high and our songs loud. We face death without regret as we have faced life without fear. We will not survive this conflict, this blight upon creation itself. We know this, we have accepted this. We cannot preserve ourselves, but we can preserve another. Another race, another people to carry the torch of life into a new era. But they will not know peace, for their souls will be forged in wrath. They will not know love, for their hearts will beat to the drums of hatred. They will not know life, for they will be nought

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The man stood upon the podium, and his voice would change the galaxy.

As the Solar Empire collapsed, torn apart from within by political scheming and corruption, and assaulted from beyond by alien warlords and piratical clans, the fate of House Camoran was cast in shadow. House Camoran was the ruling house of the Solar Empire, the origin of all nobility and aristocracy that grew in the ages following the dark days of humanity's discovery that life lay beyond their orb of green and blue. Little of House Camoran survived the chaos that immediately followed the collapse o

The man stood upon the podium, and his voice would change the galaxy.

As the Solar Empire collapsed, torn apart from within by political scheming and corruption, and assaulted from beyond by alien warlords and piratical clans, the fate of House Camoran was cast in shadow. House Camoran was the ruling house of the Solar Empire, the origin of all nobility and aristocracy that grew in the ages following the dark days of humanity's discovery that life lay beyond their orb of green and blue. Little of House Camoran survived the chaos that immediately followed the collapse of the empire. The patriarch and matriarch were both assassinated, beheaded in a military coup led by a deranged but opport

The priest ran. He ran as fast as he could, his footsteps followed by the echoes of his augmented heels striking the metal grating. His blue robe, once the color of the skies of Old Earth, was now a tattered, stained ruin. Death had come for them, death had come to the Red Planet. He looked down at the device cradled in his arms. It was a smooth, copper box, richly embroidered with golden filigree and silver runes. He was still trying to comprehend the fact that events had pushed them to this most extreme of actions. His brain, forged within the logic-engines of the Askashic Archive, refused to accept reality. It refused to believe that this was the only way. This was not logical, this was i

It is often said by the academics and philosophers of mankind that war never changes, for people never change. War, despite the onward march of technology, is a carnival of horror and trauma that changes in form, but not in function. Swords and spears were replaced with guns and explosives. Massed cavalry charges replaced with tank battalions. Firing lines replaced with trenches. Grand battlefields replaced with frenetic urban sprawl. War evolved, and with its evolution came an increasing cavalcade of madness and pain that, as it always had, rendered innocence into muck in service to cruel tyrants.

War had, in all of its barbarity and sadism, gripped Terra in its cold, stinging grip. The i

It is often said by the academics and philosophers of mankind that war never changes, for people never change. War, despite the onward march of technology, is a carnival of horror and trauma that changes in form, but not in function. Swords and spears were replaced with guns and explosives. Massed cavalry charges replaced with tank battalions. Firing lines replaced with trenches. Grand battlefields replaced with frenetic urban sprawl. War evolved, and with its evolution came an increasing cavalcade of madness and pain that, as it always had, rendered innocence into muck in service to cruel tyrants.

War had, in all of its barbarity and sadism, gripped Terra in its cold, stinging grip. The i

Hello all. I usually post over on r/writingprompts, and this story was originally written in response to a prompt posted there. This is, in fact, the second version of a much older story from a similar prompt. I was contacted by a user awhile ago who recommended this subreddit, and suggested that I should start posting here.

*Our empire, which has given us life, which has given us hope and salvation, was built upon the souls of those who died for us. We were a broken people. We always were. Long before the prophet-lord Christ walked among men in the dust-caked halls of Old Earth have we slain our brothers. Long before the first cities bathed in the light of distant, mighty Sol have we

Composite unknown. No life signs detected.

Kirk frowned, sliding a finger along the pict-screen. The image magnified, a sharp green wireframe highlighting the shape of the object. It was a pyramid, similar to the ancient Gyptian structures of Old Earth that had long since been lost to time. But whatever material it was made from was nothing native to the Segmentum Solar, nor did it match anything found on the deep-range satellite scans conducted years before.

He pressed a finger against a corner and dragged along the screen, rotating the frame. It was a direct copy of the great pyramids, save for an icon emblazoned on what he presumed was the front of the vessel. A circle, from which rad

The Odyssey was a blocky, ugly vessel built more for function than any aesthetic appeal. It would not have appeared out of place in any of the expansive Martian dockyards orbiting the red planet, nor amongst the rabble and rag-tag merchant fleets of the Asteroid Territories. But there were three things that made the Odyssey a special ship. The first was that it was the first faster-than-light capable ship to be constructed by humanity. It was the culmination of decades of planning, an obscene amount of taxpayer dollars, and the combined skill of the United Nations of Earth, the Federation of Mars, and the Asteroid Territories. It was the first time any living soul had ever seen the three

The Empyrean. The Sea of Souls. The Other. The idea of another world, a realm of spirit, forged of souls and raw emotion rather than physical matter. Countless cultures believed such a world existed, whether as an afterlife or simply a mirror of the physical world. Darrian never put much stock into those fairy tales. Darrian preferred the real world. The one he could see and touch. The one that could be broken down by formulae and measured by implements. Darrian did, however, enjoy the myriad of stories penned by people who supposedly crossed over into this other world. People who, through dumb luck, found a place where the division between realities had been worn thin. Though their descript

With the birth of Creation came its opposite, the cold and callous Death. All who understand life understand the inevitability of entropy, the slow, grinding march toward the void. But the void is ever hungry, and in its greed, eagerly seeks to consume all beyond its black, abyssal reach. This hunger soon was made manifest, forged into an entity known only as the Void Father. From him came four, created to sate his eternal hunger. The Void Father cast his children into the roaring sea of raw power and magic that churned between realms, and they drank deep from the Well, taking on its power for themselves. But this was power with a price, for the void ever encroached upon their realm, making

In ancient times, humanity had considered the sun divine. In countless cultures across the world, primitive tribesmen prostrated themselves before the sun's holy might. They were held in awe by its radiance, its light, its heat. They reveled in its kiss upon their skin, they hailed the coming of the dawn and the safety and security of the light. The sun was the giver of life. A benevolent entity the ruled over the lives of crops, and by extension those reliant upon them.

But there was another entity, though no living mortal could ever claim to have seen it. It was not a constant presence, like the brilliant Sol. This entity was a fleeting soul. But its reach was no less impressive, nor its

The lake was calm and perfectly still. Surrounded by reeds as tall as a man, few had ever gazed upon it. Would any man ever see the lake, they would make two immediate observations. The first, was that the lake was without disturbance. There were no gentle ripples from life below the surface. No stray leaf blown from a nearby tree. No minuscule pebble or clump of dirt drifting idly. The second would be how unnaturally clear the water was. One could, from the edge of the lake, see clearly down to the bottom. No one could be blamed for thinking there was, in fact, no water at all. Such was how clear and still it was.

The lake had sat undisturbed for uncounted generations. Many had come close

An eternity of carnage had led to this moment. The history of the galaxy was writ in blood upon the bones of the dead and damned. For eons unending, warring kingdoms had sought to carve their empires into the galaxy, trading lives and blood for power and glory. Such was the way of creation, for the old order to be supplanted by blood and fire, only for the victorious conquistadors to be slain by a new upstart empire in turn. A ceaseless cycle of violence that carved deep into the bones of reality and the soul of creation itself. Peace would reign for a time, letting the galaxy heal and rebuild as warlords grew in strength and consolidated their power, before the universe would once more inev

The world was called Sahara, after a famous desert of ancient, long forgotten Terra. It was a fitting name, for there was little to the world but endless oceans of sand and dry, barren rock. Long-range scout satellites had discovered the world centuries prior, and there had yet to be any documentation suggesting that the planet even had a fledgling water cycle. Early colonists who attempted to settle on the world confirmed what the satellites had reported, and one of the early challenges the colony faced was the mass importation of water. Thankfully, Sahara's moon was a mass of ice, protecting an immense ocean underneath, not too dissimilar to Europa, one of the many moons of mighty Jupiter.