Respect Your Elders Turn 13 - A Thoughtful Query

Preemptive note here, I’m not a geologist so a good chunk of this is probably inaccurate - don’t think about it too hard if you notice anything amiss.

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Kanyon Repair- Hazardous Materials Retrieval (3 city actions, 1 Third Spawning slann, 40 Fifth Spawning slann, same group as before)

The skies stretched blue and clear above Dee’po-Maat’s head, the sun shining warmly down upon his verdant green scales. The air was filled with the trill of Mochantian birds, the snapping whine of invisible gnats, and the subtle, everpresent rustling that bespoke the movement of ambulatory plant life. Moisture hung heavy on the breeze, accumulating in heavy dewdrops upon the scales of the Saurus emissary as he watched his kin at work in the chasm far below. The wind blew at just the right speed to alleviate the moist heat without bringing a chill. It was quiet yet lively, serene yet energetic. A perfect day, by all measures.

It brought Dee’po-Maat no comfort, for every day at the Kanyon had been like this for months. Isendral would allow no variance. Despite the apocalyptic battle being waged across the breadth of the continent, the ground-shaking march of the Waaagh!!! and the calamitous struggles being waged by the lizardmen, not a single disturbance to the idyllic rhythm of the jungle ever manifested inside the Eldar priestess’ chosen place of labor. The Ayacmanik, which had been near omnipresent in the region of the Kanyon only a few years ago, had vanished utterly, moved somewhere else in eerie unison.

Today, like every other day, was beautifully, relentlessly, and implacably peaceful.

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The grand ritual that had created the Kanyon had done so by splitting Mochantia’s crust along the potential line where a continental fault could manifest, and exerting a vast amount of pressure in the planetary mantle underneath. Lava had rushed to the surface like blood bubbling out of a wound, and while this had done the job of stymying the orkish advance admirably enough, it had also left vast dregs of heavy metal and other toxic elements strewn over great swathes of ground, and embedded in large nodules all over the Kanyon itself. Being what it was, the Mochantian ecosystem had swiftly adapted to the presence of these materials in the environment, generations of plants developing internal filtration systems to process the substances they took in and either expel or make use of them. Several species of prickly vines had started to coat their thorns with slivers of lead, and the patches of barren ground that had formerly existed around deposits of particularly toxic materials were hardly present at all anymore.

Per Isendral’s will, the lizardmen assigned to the cleanup project set claw to soil, using heavy digging equipment ordinarily used to excavate mass graves or embed the foundations of buildings to move vast quantities of earth and extract streaks of slag and debris left over from the conflicts of past decades. Chamon skink priests transmuted these deposits into simpler elements before they were extracted, using their ferrokinetic abilities to collect thousands of spent ork bullet casings and dilapidated vehicular skeletons that had been all but swallowed by the jungle, transporting them back to the nearest temple city for disposal. Humming Arcane Engines were placed atop pockets of gases that had been trapped underground, filtering vast quantities of sulfurous fumes into a composition that matched Mochantia’s ordinary atmosphere.

In the Kanyon itself, the damage had been rather more extensive. Streaks of slag had been left smeared all across the craggy walls of the divide, and in many places had fused with the rock. Pockets of underground gas and oils had been punctured by the chasm’s opening, and leaked their contents into the abyss as an acrid mist that filled the air, obscuring sight and corroding unprotected flesh. Multiple aquifers had also been breached in the process, and their contents had been contaminated by exposure to the hazardous mixture of compounds brewing in the depths of the Kanyon.

The lizardmen descended once more into this lightless place, working with Isendral’s arboreal golems to scour away the traces of the magmatic upswell. Having worked together for more than a decade without pause, the two workforces were well acclimated to each other by this point, and were able to quickly and efficiently clear large sections of the Kanyon. The waste materials were largely transmuted into clean water, which was pumped back into the tainted aquifers in order to flush them out and prevent any further tampering with the groundwater.

”You’ve my thanks for being here,” Isendral told Dee’po-Maat one day. ”It speaks well of your kind that you’re able to look past an immediate danger, and not forget yourselves in the struggle for survival.”

The Saurus emissary inclined his head to the Eldar priestess, speaking in a voice that was reminiscent of two sheets of rock grinding together. “The Slann bend their mind to xaqua’go’loquax, but duty here stays alive.” He pronounced the Eltharin words with impeccable accuracy, enunciating the slight subvocal lilting tones behind the words that gave them much of their context. “You own this world. We will preserve it, while we are here. It is what we are.”

Isendral nodded. ”There is much that I could say about your people’s willingness to devote everything that you are to your duty, but I will not gainsay your commitment to keeping your word. With the work we’ve done here, we will be on track to mending this wound in the next decade, perhaps. A good pace.”

“Why?”

Isendral frowned. ”I don’t understand.”

Dee’po-Maat clicked his jaws together, staring at the Eldar with the flat gaze of a butcher breaking down a carcass. “You do not display your full strength in this work. Your tlazhuanti are not dependent on your presence, but you deploy them only under your direct command. If you allowed them to act, you could have mended this breach long ago.” He blinked, a gesture used by Saurus to request clarification. “Why delay?”

Isendral was silent for a time. ”I could see it done in a trivial manner if I allowed the psychomatons to act to their full extent,” she admitted, conjuring one up from the ground with a negligent wave of her hand. The thing resembled a jaguar in the loosest possible sense - it was a writhing bundle of vines and leaves in a vaguely quadrupedal shape, with a fanged skull of gleaming crystal at its head. Isendral gestured, and it marched down to join its brethren, walking by growing new limbs where it intended to step as its old ones withered and fell away.

”I’d not need to lift a finger myself, or even be aware that such a wound had been inflicted upon the earth. They could arguably safeguard this entire planet in my stead, and would have resolved the … problem that your people are in the process of solving before it ever grew to the degree that it has. It could be done now. I could snuff out that storm raging against you with little more effort than turning over my hand.”

There was quiet, broken only by the noise of the jungle as Isendral’s words hung in the air. All the lizardmen that had died, all the destruction the orks had wreaked, the lengths the children of the Old Ones had prepared themselves to go to, all rendered irrelevant before the passing whim of a single Eldar. She could have prevented all of it - could, by her own words, break the siege of Itza, end the fighting at any time.

Isendral’s face soured as she stared off at the expanse of the Kanyon, a spark of some foreign emotion leaping into her eyes. ”And what would be the point of it all?” Her lips turned down still further. ”Nothing. Nothing whatsoever.”

She broke her gaze off the Kanyon and looked at Dee’po-Maat, and it was the Saurus who suddenly felt pinned under the attention of a predator much larger than him, his fate subject only to its volatile whims. ”Tell me, emissary,” the priestess said, her voice as flat and calm as the ponds Mochantian loqtzahuantli liked to lurk in. ”What would you do in my stead? If you were able to solve all your problems with a snap of your fingers, could let yourself never worry about anything again … would you do it?”

Dee’po-Maat remained silent and stock-still as a sudden maelstrom of thoughts that were not his own swirled inside his head. The attention of the Sublime Communion was primarily focused upon the war against the Uax, but Isendral had been deemed a subject of importance by Mazdamundi, and the attention of the slann was drawn by her words. A debate was held inside of Deepo’maat’s skull, discussions that would have taken hours or days to complete resolving in seconds as the Sublime Communion considered their response. At last, the mental clamor died down, and Deepo’maat spoke.

[] [QUERY] Write-in - what do the lizardmen say? Meant more to illustrate outlook and reasoning rather than having a ‘correct’ answer. Quotations or general lists of points are both allowed, but the former is unlikely to make it into the next update unaltered - explain your reasoning!

Vote will open in 24 hours (after this is posted publicly) and will remain open until discussion is concluded - please take some time to discuss, as this will affect lizardmen characterization going forward.

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Glossary:

Xaqua’go’loquax - Vengeful Fate Marching To The Death of the Green Flood, roughly. Refers to Mazdamundi’s ork detonation ritual.

Tlazhuanti - Living-Jungle Servants/Beasts. Used to refer to Isendral’s plant golems.

Loqtzahuantli - Death-Water Hunter Beast. Lizardmen name for the prehensile-jawed Mochantian Death Crocodile, an ambush predator as large as a Carnosaur.