Kitin Events Part II : Kitins of the Depths

As I said it the previous post (an eternity ago, I must admit), we expected that the fact of slaughtering many Kirosta patrols in the Prime Roots and, even worse, killing Klaarch, a major Kitin General, wouldn't make the Kitins very happy. And they did retaliate, very strongly.

The White Ones

It started quite slowly. A few white and blue Kitins of the Depths were sighted in Oflovak's Oasis. They weren't normal kitins. Aside from being albino, they were also agressive and highly social. They came in packs of three : if you hit one, the two others would immediatly come to assist their comrade. There were various kind of them : the usual kinchers, kirostas, kipuckas and kipestas but also the kinreys and kidinaks that one would normally never see outside of a kitin hive.

 Sakezan fighting three Kinchers of the Depths

As we were killing them, we collected samples, pieces of White Kitins that we brought to the Kitin Observer who stood at the Eastern gate of Pyr. This triggered a reaction that hadn't been seen since a long, long time. That guy usually stood there saying that nothing special was going on or to beware of the Kitins growing restless. Now he was alarmed, and requested us to slay them all when we could; he would reward us according to the number of pieces we brought back. The samples had become hunt trophies that would be traded for "heroic" titles such as Kitin Hunter, Kitin Slayer, Kitin Exterminator and so on.

These pieces had to be collected in massive numbers to obtain the titles.

Of course, from the Kitins' view point what we were doing was nothing but barbaric mass murder, but we had no other choice. We were getting invaded, the only option in order to survive was to defend our land. The Kitins never showed us any mercy, and we couldn't afford to give them any, now that they were slowly spreading across the whole continent and to the others as well. The Jungle, Forest and Lakelands were affected as well. Hominity was in danger, the only zones that weren't touched by the Kitin plague were the Capitals and their surroundings. Everywhere else, travelling had become a nightmare and regular hunt or forage activities were interruped.

We thus regrouped our strenghts and set forth to exterminate as many white Kitins as we could, and divided the Kitin pieces as fairly as possible between the hunters in the party. At first it was very doable to clean whole regions out of their albinos, but eventually they multiplied way faster than we could take them out. The invasion was massive and out of control... temporarly, of course.

A Plan !
In front of such a catastrophic emergency situation, the Leaders of every homin nation decided to build guard towers all over their lands. Thus, it would be necessary to harvest and deliver material resources to the new camps that were built next to the capital cities.

This is the Fyros Imperial Camp

Then, one would take their mektoubs and leave on a pretty dangerous journey to deliver the merchandises to the construction sites. This had to be repeated over and over in order to get the towers up. Unfortunately, in some places of the Jungle and Forest, the towers weren't finished on time.

Then, it was necessary to provide food rations to the tower guards. The same harvest and delivery system were in place. Of course, one would not risk his life for no reward. To feed the Mektoubs, one would receive dappers upon delivery in order to buy foddr. Also, for every successfully accomplished task, one would be rewarded with precious civilisation honor points.

Those points could be traded in at some special merchants against special forage Picks with Focus bonus on them, Choice Generic Raw Materials, Sap Recharges for enchanted weapons (q100, q250 and even q500!!!), and Experience Catalyzers at a ridiculously unaffordable price.

This is an example of what can be traded for Faction Points

Seeing that the eradication of the Kitin invaderss wasn't progressing fast enough, a large operation was launched to get rid of them once and for all. The leaders of each nation set a common date and time when strike forces lead by the armies generals would leave the four capitals and start wiping out the kitins of the Depths, pack after pack, region after region, until there remained none of them. The assault was so efficient that none remained afterwards in the regions that had been visited by the strikeforce and the others quickly vanished, defeated.

The Gigantic Ones

Eventually, we came across some colossal specimens, one per continent, and it was clear and obvious that they were out to get us. They had sent out the legendary Exterminators, Kitins as big as Klaarch that require massive firepower to take down. Four different types, one for each land : the Fyros Exterminator is a Kinrey, the Matis Exterminator is a Kincher, the Zoraï Exterminator is a Kipucka and the Tryker Exterminator is a Kirosta.

You can see how big they were

As usual, risk wouldn't be taken without being rewarded substantially, and slaying an Exterminator wasn't only rewarding by itself. It took a minimum of 3 teams full of homins to take them down. The pieces of Exterminators, precious and rare, were shared to the ratio of one per participating guild.

That's what those pieces looked like:

Those fragments could be traded to the Kitin Observer against Guardian titles : Fyros Guardian, Tryker Guardian, Matis Guardian, Zoraï Guardian and once you had the four of them, you gained the Atys Guardian titles. The ones who couldn't receive a piece would still be rewarded with supreme Prime Root kitin materials of quality q250.

Homins gone missing
During the infestation, just like in the past, homins have disappeared from the bark; some have returned, some might never come back. Maybe they fled the danger like our ancestors, because they weren't strong enough to confront the threath. Maybe they have collapsed once too many and their seed has broken. Maybe they have been kidnapped by the kitins and dragged to their lair to be held as war prisoners and are desperatly trying to flee their captors... Well that would be surprising, I must admit. Kitins are known to keep cattle, but prisoners ? I've never seen that before.

Let's just all pray Ma-Duk and Jena so they can come back to us alive and well. Bless their soul if they have passed away.

My thanks go to Sakezan for the Kinchers of the Depths and Hearts of Thunders for the Tryker Exterminator pictures.
For more information about the invasions, you can can look up the archives here.