This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/Enough_Code_4358 on 2025-06-26 12:31:33+00:00.
"Vael-Zin stood in the sphere of pale light that marked the speaker's platform. The circular council chamber towered above him like a stone womb, walls inlaid with memory-metal and pulsing data veins. High above, translucent rings of archivists floated in silence, recording every gesture, every breath.
The young analyst inhaled sharply through his throat flutes. His mentor, Izel-Tarn, stood behind and to the side—silent, impassive, but present.
Councilor Rhel-An adjusted their perch, voice clipped and dry. “Proceed.”
Vael-Zin activated the sequence.
A soft hum overtook the chamber. The holospire bloomed upward from the floor, coalescing into a blue sphere. At its center, the planet Earth spun slowly, its cloud bands swirling over the deep blue seas and brown-green landmasses.
“This world,” Vael-Zin began, “was logged in a previous expansion survey as a biological failure state. Its atmosphere is oxygen dense. Its hydrosphere is corrosive. Its native magnetism unstable.”
A flicker of amusement ran through the Council. Councilor Ishen-Tel leaned forward, tendrils lightly brushing the railing.
“We are familiar with the archive summary. Why has it resurfaced?”
“Because it is not barren,” Vael-Zin said. “It is… inhabited.”
The planet dissolved. Replaced by a downward feed: rows of dark soil, churned and broken, sliced with linear cavities. In those cavities, bipeds in crude protective gear crouched in filth, clutching elongated metallic objects.
“This footage was captured from a long-dormant probe, reactivated after orbital drift correction. It documents a period of mass conflict on the surface. What you see is their form of warfare.”
He hesitated, then he ran the sequence.
The images moved in silence. The probe had no sound pickup in this era, so the violence unfolded like a hallucination. Muzzle flashes bloomed like short-lived stars. Explosions lifted bodies from the trenches. Thick clouds of yellow mist floated over the soil, absorbing all visibility.
Councilor Tayil-Mer narrowed their pupil membranes. “Are those… toxins?”
“Correct,” said Vael-Zin. “Chemical weapons. Deliberately released to break nerve function.”
A breathless murmur spread through the chamber.
The next reel played.
A mechanized beast—heavy, armored, tracked—lumbered across the battlefield. Projectiles ricocheted off their shell. Inside, living bipeds operated controls, steering it forward while it spewed fire from an iron snout.
“They build these constructs,” Vael-Zin said, “not to defend… but to force motion through stalemate.”
Ishun-Tel whispered, “There are millions of them fighting.”
“There were,” Vael-Zin confirmed. “In this conflict alone, over twenty million casualties.”
No one moved.
Councilor Ven-Ris pulled back, almost recoiling. “Why would they do this to themselves?”
“They form factions,” Vael-Zin explained. “Ideological, territorial, economic. Those who do not submit are neutralized.”
“And they built all this,” Tayil-Mer murmured, “on oxygen?”
“Yes.”
The next segment played.
Rain fell—blackened, acidic from fire particulates. The bipeds tried to shield their fallen comrades with thin sheets of cloth. Medics wrapped torn limbs with strips torn from their own uniforms.
One soldier carried another on his back through the mire, both limping, one missing an arm. Behind them, an explosive erupted, throwing up mud and corpses. They kept moving.
“They preserve even in collapse,” Vael-Zin said. “When pain overwhelms, they adapt. When systems break, they improvise.”
“They adapt to death?” Rhel-An asked. “That’s not intelligence. That’s… that’s something else.”
Tayil-Mer gestured. “You said they form factions. Are these... wars against other planetary species? Rival organisms?”
“No,” Vael-Zin said. “They do this to their own kind.”
That broke the chamber’s silence.
Councilor Ishen-Tel stood, the containment field rippling around them.
“That’s not possible. It makes no sense!”
“It is,” Izel-Tarn said quietly. “We've reviewed the full sample sequence.”
“You want us to believe,” Rhel-An hissed, “that a species evolved on a lethal world, learned to survive corrosion, radiation, and magnetic instability, and then turned its aggression inward?”
“Yes,” Vael-Zin said. “And yet…”
He cut to the next feed.
The trench battlefield dissolved, replaced by a grainy probe-capture from within a torn building. A biped lifted a child from rubble. Another—clearly injured—hauled a broken water container toward a group of the wounded.
“...they also heal.”
Footage from a makeshift hospital played: rough hands mending wounds, crude blood transfusion devices, amputations performed with grim precision. No anesthetics. Just will.
“They cry when others die. They remember the fallen. They record stories. They bury. They grieve.”
The chamber shifted, revulsion was giving way to confusion.
“They cannot be both,” Ishen-Tel murmured. “This is cognitive paradox. One cannot destroy and comfort. Hunt and mourn. This is impossible!”
“But they do,” Vael-Zin said. “They had to. Otherwise, they would not have survived.”
More footage. Crowds gathered in open fields. Small monuments were raised—inscribed stones, flowers placed with purpose, symbols repeated in strange patterns.
“What does that one mean?” Tayil-Mer asked, pointing at a symbol—two intersecting lines, vertical and horizontal.
“It appears in grief sites frequently,” Vael-Zin said. “Unknown cultural significance. Possibly spiritual.”
“They assign sacred meaning to death?” Ven-Ris asked. “No. This is error. The data has been contaminated.”
“I thought so too,” Vael-Zin said, pulsing forward a packet of validation metrics. “But I ran full checksum against the probe’s archive. The file chain is intact. We cross-checked orbitals with surface telemetry, and language patterning matches atmospheric transmissions.”
“Then the probe is malfunctioning. This footage is fabricated. Perhaps the species became aware of being observed—perhaps this is performance.”
Izel-Tarn stepped forward, for the first time.
“Councilors,” they said gently, “if this is performance, it has continued uninterrupted for several of their planetary cycles, across hundreds of locations, with no detectable coordination or technological cross-signals.”
“You are saying this is authentic?” Tayil-Mer asked. “This madness is real?”
“Yes.”
Rhel-An coiled their digits tightly around the railing. “Then we are not observing a culture. We are observing an abomination.”
“No,” Vael-Zin said.
All heads turned toward him. He took a breath, pulse surging. “No. This is not madness. This is… paradox.”
The chamber held its breath.
Silence did not exist among the Velari; their minds hummed, bodies pulsed with trace vibration, their thoughts connected through resonance fields. But now the network ran static. No one spoke. Vael-Zin held the moment longer than necessary. He had them now—not with authority, but with awe. Not with certainty, but truth.
“These recordings represent only a narrow slice of this species’ historical activity,” he said, voice firming. “The data is limited. The conclusions are not yet scientific. But I present it because it must be addressed.”
“You present carnage,” Ishen-Tel said, each syllable sharp, “as a form of discovery.”
“I present data,” Vael-Zin replied. “The conclusion is yours to make.”
Councilor Tayil-Mer narrowed their eyes. “And what would you have us conclude to? That war is a sign of intelligence? That unpredictable behaviour signals potential?”
“No,” Vael-Zin said, “but resilience does.”"
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