RYE Turn 14 - The Quango

Juvenile Colossus Examination - Quango

The Quango and its child had flown together for a time as they brought the icy wrath of the stratosphere down upon the uax infestation. The juvenile, while still larger by far than any other thing that flew in Mochantia’s skies, and growing larger with every passing day, had at the time not quite reached its full strength, and so sheltered under the frigid mantle of its forebearer when fleets of uax aircraft had attempted to shoot the titanic sky eels down. The solitary nature of the minds of the creatures riled at this, each Quango instinctively desiring sufficient space with which to exert their individual atmospheric effects. The slann had not allowed animalistic instinct to win out, however, forcing parent and child to stay together with sheer force of thought, lest ill fate potentially see the juvenile sky-eel crippled or killed before it could reach maturity. It was a struggle even for them to command such strong-willed creatures, and the moment Lord Mazdamundi completed his destruction of the continental [i]uax[/i], the toad-mages released their bonds on the two Quango, and the sky eels promptly peeled apart on separate jetstream currents.

The parent flew north, circumnavigating the entire stratosphere several times before proceeding into a holding pattern somewhere over the northern ocean, lazily coiling up and down through atmospheric layers. The younger Quango, however, seemed content to drift over the lizardmen’s cities for the time being, its presence heralded by abrupt showers of snow that fell even during the hottest of days. After experiencing one such miniature blizzard during a sunny afternoon’s meditation, Mazdamundi proclaimed that the behavior and anatomical makeup of the creature ought to be examined, for with the Quango on the cusp of maturity, whatever insights into its developmental process that could be gleaned by such observation would be far more valuable now, rather than when it had reached the baseline level of maturity for its species. He also commanded that the research for such a process take place elsewhere than over Hexoatl, and gently nudged the titanic creature’s mind until it sailed south, leaving the skies of the Solar City - and his meditation perch - once more uncovered by snow.

As the juvenile Quango coasted over the jungle, a trail of fractal cloud spreading in its wake, the spirits of slann from nearby temple-cities drifted up alongside it, touching questingly at its midnight-blue hide and radiant, shimmering fins with tendrils of thought. They could feel the thoughts of the creature shift like submerged knives raising ripples on the water, but they exerted no great pressure and so it did not react aside from rotating on occasion, sending ripples of cold out around it as the slann looked into and through its growing flesh and soul.

The Quango’s skin, unlike its Thunder Lizard counterparts, was smooth and supple, almost leathery. While it did have scales, they were miniscule, barely larger than those of a Kroxigor, and nearly indistinguishable at the creature’s full scale. This served to aid its movement capacities, allowing the Quango to loop over, under, and through its own coils if it so chose, tying itself into knots in the sky. For a creature of its size, it was monstrously agile, able to change its course with almost no warning and bring its snapping jaws to bear on anything that might attempt to shelter on its flanks. Its many eyes and tongue helped with this as well, for as the slann swiftly discovered, the eyes of the Quango were not only razor-sharp, but each of its many pairs was capable of accessing swathes of color the others could not, and specially-modulated receptors on its tongue were sensitive to the perturbations of electrical fields. This, combined with pressure-sensitive organelles embedded in its subcutaneous fat, enabled the Quango to sense weather events from halfway across the planet, and to perceive the movements of almost every living creature within its hunting grounds. The whirring whine of simplistic insectoid nervous systems and the rumbling pulse of industry in a lizardmen city were equally palpable to the Quango. The slann found that a particular organ embedded deep within the creature’s forehead was particularly receptive to these incoming signals, and could actually both generate and project electrical fields in response to the Quango’s thoughts. In this manner, the great eel was capable of tasting the heartbeat of an enemy halfway across the continent, and smiting it with a lighting bolt without ever meeting their foe’s eyes.

Of course, the majority of time for the creature was spent high up in the atmosphere, its iridescent fins spread out to their fullest extent to soak up cosmic radiation from the sun and stars. As the slann ran their minds through the titanic eel’s nervous system, they found that this behavior served multiple purposes. Firstly, it was evident to anyone with mage-sight that the Quango’s luminous sails acted as massive reserves of magical energy, with intricate filtration processes within the diaphonous membranes allowing the creature to convert both stored and received energy into a partially-crystallized form that could dissolve and hang suspended within the viscous fluid that filled said sails. In effect, the Quango’s fins literally stored magical energy of the different Winds, which the creature used both to sustain its flight and to power its more esoteric behaviors. This process of conversion, however, was also extremely energy-intensive, which was where the second function of its biology kicked in. The Quango’s circulatory and nervous system were one and the same, filled with a fluid that was so cold it could turn air to ice. This supernatural chill allowed for the Quango’s metabolic processes to function at a rate that, for all intents and purposes, was close to zero for the majority of the creature’s life. It felt no need to hunt, and only ‘fed’ upon cloud and jetstream in order to replenish its water reserves. When the Quango exerted itself, particularly in combat, excess heat slowly built up in its tissues until it reached the point where its fluid came close to reaching above that point of absolute zero. It could utilize the reserves in its fins to keep itself cool, but eventually would run low. Once this happened, the sky titan would ascend the atmospheric layers to feed, and the process of converting thermal and electromagnetic energy into aethyric crystalline gel would actually assist in cooling the Quango down - the transfiguration process sapped heat from the sky eel’s body, bringing it back to its supernaturally-cold baseline. The Quango was also capable of selectively emitting this fluid, bleeding cold into the world in selective patterns that allowed it to alter the weather around it, to infuse its electrical attacks with a corona of frost, and to passively speed its travel by halting the currents of air around its body in such a way that it was able to slide through the sky easier. Once it had passed and some measure of heat creeped back into the air, the moisture within it crystallized and condensed in ways that mimicked how the Quango had altered it, which created its distinctive fractal cloud trail.

The slann busily studied the juvenile Quango over the course of a decade, carefully measuring the slowing rate of its growth, teleporting samples of its internal fluid down to their temples for long-term observation, palpating the overlapping fields of electromagnetic energy it projected around itself, and capturing a great many mental images of it, which they had copied down onto burnished gold tablets by skilled skink artisans. When all was said and done and they had collected as much data as they could, they had each filled an entire room with tablets, all of which were chock-full of the cramped notes of their skink attendants to whom they had dictated. It was only when all of these tablets were brought together for comparison before they presented their findings to the rest of the Communion that the slann abruptly realized something - neither of the Quango had been given names.

This presented a momentary dilemma to the mage-priests, who were all of the Fifth Spawning, and thus quite young at under nine millennia. The closest parallel any of them could point to was that of the Thunder Lizards, all of which had names that followed principles laid down by precedent tracing back to the first of their kind, which had all been named by slann of the First Spawning eons before. It thus stood to reason that the Quango and its descendants should also have names gifted to them by those most ancient of mage-lords, but the issue of all of those venerable elders being quite dead posed something of an impasse. The option of venturing into the Relic Tombs to consult their spirits was raised, but at this point the time by which Lord Mazdamundi had requested their report was quite soon, and none of the gathered slann wished to risk missing their deadline due to the infamous disregard the Tombs possessed for the constraints of linear time. A decision would have to be made amongst them, or at least a temporary designation until the Old Ones were located and could give everything its correct moniker.

Pressed by the constraints of time and the need to impress their elders, the slann did not debate the matter nearly as long or thoroughly as they ordinarily would have. A unanimous agreement was quickly hammered out to leave the original Quango unnamed, for as the first of its kind it could only properly be named by those who had made it, and the Old Ones had not seen fit to leave any recommendations to that effect upon any of their tablets. Its spawnling, however, was under no such restriction of precedent, and indeed, the name the slann gave it would likely inform and guide the themes along which more of its kin would be named. The toad-lords spent some time in contemplation of this, and ultimately decided upon the name of Kosamalotl, a word that was primarily used by lizardmen to describe the refracted rainbows seen in the mists generated at a waterfall’s edge. A brilliant, shining word that warned of danger and majesty alike.

Quango examination completed! Appropriate discounts will be levied to eventual Titanic Spawning projects. The Quango’s offspring has been given the name Kosamalotl.

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((I’d meant to release this in conjunction with the action where you had Isendral search the jungles for a warbeast for you, but some IRL stuff came up this week that cut fairly sharply into my writing time, so we’ve just this instead. I have that part all outlined, however, so it won’t be long.))