Battlevoid stories.

Schillae – the Beginning

Thousands of lightyears ago, the race of the Space Sirens was not yet born. There was an altogether different kind of race living on the Planet of the Sirens.

At that time, the planet was made up of great oceans and two grand continents, exactly as it is today. The continents were shattered in many small, beautiful and unique islands, each with their own inhabitants. The oceans were clear and blue, and the islands were covered in emeraldgreen vegetation.

The continents were homes to numerous tribes with tight interactions. Ferries crafted from white wood ran between the continents and large, colourful beetles shuttled messages from island to island. The planet was lit by two stars that caused there to be eternal day all around the planet.

The people on the planet were divided into two larger tribes, men and women, who lived on their own continents. They came together every now and then. In small groups, the women would travel to islands governed by the men, who did not keep ferries. Dancing, mating and celebrating, the group of women would spend a week with the men. They would then return home.    

A year later, another trip would be made to ferry all newborn sons to the continent of the men, so that they would be brought up according to their own culture. This was the way in which this world had existed for thousands of years. Each group had their customs, and their peace. War was unnecessary, for there was plenty of space and food.

One year, which otherwise was the same as every other year, an unknown delegation came to the planet. By chance, it landed on the continent inhabited by men, and started to familiarize itself with its people. For a long time, it watched and surveyed the peaceful and harmonic life. It saw women come and go, and it saw newborn sons arrive. When the women touched land, it hid behind the hazy green jungle. In a few generations, the presence of these foreign creatures on the continent became a self-evident fact for the men.

The planet had no history. It had not been documented, because the years followed one another without highlights, similar and happy. Now these strange folk began to tell their story. They weaved a story around the men, a story they had created for their own purposes. Nobody among the living can say what kind of a story it was, or what happened in it, but it was so horrible that the men gathered as a group and walked into the ocean. Since they did not know how to swim, they drowned when their feets no longer touched the white and sand-covered oceanfloor.  

The bodies of the men floated to the surface. They were carried by currents to the first islands of the womens‘  continents. More and more bodies came, so that in a few weeks the bodies filled all coves, rivers, and beaches. The women dug graves and buried the men, but still a raft of dead floated from the high seas. Desperation took over in the end, and the women gave up the battle for the shores and memories of men.

For years, it was impossible to travel between continents. Bodies were rotting everywhere, and in the water they swelled into shapelessness or gradually dried up on beachstones. The smell filled the air, fishing ceased, and out of agony, some women started to eat off the bodies. The ocean that used to be blue turned murky, and shores were contaminated. Entire species of animals disappeared, and in their place peculiar spineless creatures that bred in the decomposing flesh took life.

The women suffered greatly. They understood the hopelessness of the situation and formed an expedition after the bodies in the water started to soften and sink. The expedition left for its slow journey towards the continent that formerly had been the mens home.

The ferry advanced with difficulty. It bumped into bloated carcasses, and the women had to use wooden poles to shove them aside. The grief was overwhelming, for each of the men had been born and loved into this extraordinary world by one of the women. There were enough bodies to fill the entire horizon as far as the women could see. It was impossible to get used to the smell that continually shifted, from a decomposing sweet reek to a pungent scent of spoiled meat.  

Finally, the women saw the shores of the mens‘ continent from afar. Beaches were now deserted and empty. Buildings were derelict and instead of bodies, the white sand of the shores was covered with black, sticky seaweed. The women walked ashore and remembered the last time they were on the island. Until now, it had signified happiness and celebration. It had meant a break from the mundane chores, hunting and cooking, for on this continent all work was done by men. Now, with debarking the ferry, came only fear and death.

The cluster of women made their way inland. All life seemed dead. Trees towered as black spines towards the sky, and bushes were like bony grapples, with fingers that clawed at everything within distance. The grass had a yellowish grey colour, and no sounds from animals could be heard.

Having ranged forward for many days, the women found something that was not dry, sunbaked vegetation. They found a big opening where the ground was burned black, and where nothing could ever grow again. This was the place where something had landed, and the place from where it had taken off again. Very close to this opening the women found carvings in the bark of the trees, and they did not recognize the meaning of the symbols. That is how they understood that another people must be responsible for the devastation of their own.

The women returned home and told the others what they had seen. Tales of an unknown people began to circulate. The legend grew year by year while the aggressiveness and bitterness in it multiplied, and this infertile nation shrank.

At last, all that was left was a small group of women waiting for the end. They sat on the shore and stared at the ocean that had never recovered from the current of bodies that had washed ashore. The water was muddy, and grew foulsmelling weed. Creatures that could not be used for sustenance fed from the weed. They had a hard and thorny shell, eyes jiggled at the ends of long stalks, and they had an uneven number of limbs. The small amount of flesh that could be found inside the shell was poisonous. An odd twenty women, all that was left, sat on trashy sand covered with chalice crust and dried leaves of water plants.  

Then the first of the women stood up. With unhurried, confident steps and without speaking a word, she walked into the ocean. Instead of carrying her, the muddy water sucked her in and she vanished into the depths. The other women stood up one by one and did the same in silence. In the empty, lifeless space she left behind, the collective question of why they had not done this before remained hovering. Why had they waited and forced themselves to witness the destruction of their planet and their people?

Nothing moved for a long time. Every once and again a bubble would rise to the dark surface and burst with a faint sound. A few of the darkbrown spineless creaturess paced across the sand, flicking their deformed extremities. Then, very suddenly, one of the stars that lit the planet died, and very slowly the first night of the planet fell upon the shore. It made visible millions of other stars, their icecold shine flickering in the distance. Their weak light illuminated the empty shore.  

Sluggishly, something rose from the ocean. First you could see a head and the upper body of a woman. The rest of the body was inconceivable, with black proturberances that to anyone from Earth might resemble a spider with stingers. Mud had coloured the female skin black. This horrifying creature came to shore and stayed there waiting. While it waited, it grabbed a spineless from the ground, tore its shell apart and ate the flesh.  

The remaining star started to colour the shore of the sky the colour of a bruise. The light was pale and yellow, and reflected back from the cold eyes of the female. Then another head, another torso and another abhorrent body rose from the ocean. When the first rays of the star turned the sky red, these female figures numbered ten. Without expression they stared at each other, until the first one began to sing.  

Others who waited on the shore joined the sorrowful melody, and every female who rose from the ocean sang it too. The song was about love, betrayal and hope, but mostly it was about revenge. These women, abominable sirens, had been betrayed in a horrific manner. Their love and their hope had been taken from them, and they had been shoved to hell. Now that they wanted revenge,  they needed a plan. They needed help, and they needed technology. Most of all, they needed to know who had done this to them. Until they knew, they were ready to doubt everything.

When the only star shining on the planet went down behind a bleak ocean, history had begun a new chapter; the era of the space sirens. These women were looking for men, but they were also looking for the power that had pushed them into this hopeless ravine, where they were doomed to wander their destroyed planet with their deformities.

It was now time for the first war, and although it was the first, the women knew exactly what to do.



The Story of the Great Unknown

The fact that this species, throughout this story, remains unknown and that it has been named simply "the Great Unknown” is justified. Very little is known about the species today, and where this story begins, the knowledge is close to non-existent.

It is possible to form a picture of the history of the Unknown to some degree, but the picture is more resembling theory than fact. Some of these events have certainly been experienced; some of them have even been verified to a certain extent. In the end, it is all mostly speculation.

In order to approach and understand the Great Unknown it is necessary to begin from afar, from a time before the universe.

Before there was time, there was a vacuum. In this void of nothingness, a universe was born. It was not the first universe, nor was it the last, and there was nothing unique about it. This new life exploded in extreme heat, and started to expand. In the birth of the universe, something else was born too. This something else held onto particles of life that in the explosion were catapulted to everywhere. It spread with the universe and when the particles formed atoms, and later galaxies, the Unknown was already part of everything.

From the very beginning, the Unknown was alive. It was just beginning a long and meandering evolution, but from the very first fraction of a second it felt, that it was alive. Its habitation expanded at the same rate as the universe. Galaxies swirled and condensed, and stars were born to them. On each star, the Unknown was living a silent and unpretentious life. With curiosity, it kept track of the development of the universe, not intervening. It saw everything that happened, and every newborn star or planet belonged to it by heritage.

The ability of the Unknown to survive the tumultuous birth of the universe was based on its endless ability to adapt to new circumstances. It could use anything for sustenance. It did not suffer from the cold, or the heat, and for breathing it could use all gases and combinations of gases of the universe. The only place where it could not survive was in the vacuums in between galaxies. The deepest need of the Unknown was to find something to cling onto. In nothingness, it was nothing.

The universe continued its expansion as the Unknown, who had been immaterial and ever-present, started to lose its power. It was still the only life-form that could exist in this early universe, but as nothingness expanded, the Unknown grew smaller. An ever-increasing proportion of the universe consisted of matter that the Unknown could not survive in.

This gave birth to an early form of anger in the Unknown. From the very beginning, it had tied itself into particles and substance, and now it depended on those. On its own, it had no capability to transport itself from one place to another, and it had to obey the slow movement of particles in the vacuum. The Unknown was in need of energy. It needed to grow a capability of transporting itself from particle to particle. With constant movement, it might be able to conquer the voids left between galaxies. As all suitable forms of energy had yet to be born, the Unknown had to wait. It was impatient.

The Unknown had to wait for a long time.

Billions of years into the future, there was a gradual birth of life that the Unknown clung onto, just as it clung onto anything solid in the beginning of times. As a consequence of this fixation, the Unknown began its next developmental phase in its own infinite history. Instead of evolving energy of its own, it started to use the energy of other life-forms to transport itself. The original character of the Unknown would have made an independence from everything possible. It could have lived a free life everywhere, but by clinging on to particles when the universe was born, and by using the energy of others, it twice made itself dependent.

The first life-forms that the Unknown encountered, and parasitically glued itself on, were unavoidably quite primitive. The energy they generated was so insufficient, that it did not help the Unknown to travel between particles. It had to continue waiting, and it was forced to trust that the life around it would evolve towards more complicated life-forms.


Gradually, life was born both here and there in the universe. It was rare, but because the Unknown was everywhere, the density of life was not a problem. The Unknown penetrated the first cells and sucked as much energy as it could without destroying its host.

Everywhere in the universe, life followed very similar principles of evolution. Unicellular life was followed by multicellular life, life in the water was followed by life on land, and the reign of reptiles was usually followed by an increase of mammals. The more life evolved, the more the Unknown was able to suck up energy. It was most efficient at utilizing the electric impulses travelling between cells. It caused a decrease in the reaction time of the hosts, but because the Unknown had been doing this since the beginning of times, no hosts ever noticed.

Finally, there was such an abundance of energy that the Unknown was capable of becoming material. It created a body for itself and thus begun the third stage of its evolution. In the forming of the body it used the same pattern that it had observed to function so well throughout the universe. Slowly, it developed from one cell to many cells, from gills to lungs, until the Unknown once again was at the top of the universe.

The Unknown still existed everywhere, but it decided to develop only one body. This way, it could continue its existence in all particles of everything in the universe, and still suckle endless amounts of energy from others. The body gave it many new opportunities. It was now able to communicate with other species and to use physical equipment, but in the process it also became vulnerable for the first time.

The Unknown chose to construct its body on the outskirts of the universe, far away from others. It did not like to show itself, and nobody knew its true appearance. When it chose to reveal itself, it made sure that nobody lived to speak about it.

As time went on and the Unknowns need for energy increased, it gradually started to show in the other life-forms. In the short run it was not noticeable, but when the Unknown lived in the cells of the host for many years, the organism would start to degenerate.

It was only now that the collective consciousness of the universe became aware of the situation. The Unknown had always been careful, and though it was clear that something was wrong it was hard to pinpoint the exact nature of it. The Unknown used all physical activity that went on inside and between living cells, transforming everything to energy. It was capable of siphoning energy from the photosynthesis of plants, the contraction of muscle-cells, and the division of bacterial cells. The most useful source of energy for the Unknown was, however, the electricity between nerve-cells.

The weakening of the nervous system was most problematic for the race of the humans, who had only just begun to conquer their own universe. For a long time now, humans had functioned as the main source of energy for the Unknown. Throughout the evolution of the human race the Unknown had lived in every single human being, suckling energy from every human reaction. This caused intermittent periods of decline in the history of humans. At such times, the Unknown would withdraw and allow some time for the humans to recover. The destruction of the human race was not yet very high on its list of priorities.

At this time, the race of the humans slowly weakened again. Illnesses afflicting the nervous system were diffuse, and the symptoms varied widely from human to human. Nobody had ever seen the physical body of the Unknown, but every human had carried the Unknown throughout history. Since they did not understand anything about the forces eating them from inside they thought, that they themselves were to blame for the decline of society. They were keen to blame each other as well, which further exacerbated the problem.

This, for the Unknown, was a wake-up call. It knew that it could not keep on robbing humans of their energy forever. So it withdrew, and again allowed humans some time for recovery.  It did not abandon the humans altogether, but merely shifted the main focus of energy-sourcing elsewhere for the moment. It begun to use a species that in many ways resembled the humans but that was calmer, and had somewhat weaker synaptic impulses. There was no need for the Unknown to travel in between planets; it could simply activate itself wherever it already was.

The Unknown had allowed itself to grow so big, that satisfying its energy needs required an immense amount of physiological reactions in the cells of the hosts. It slowed down all reactions the host was capable of, and particularly influenced the neural pathways. Maintaining a physical form was a challenge for the energy-deprived Unknown. This made it difficult for the Unknown to control itself as it begun to milk a new race. The Unknown chose a small population and in a few weeks, caused the nervous systems of the new hosts to shut down. One by one, the population of an entire continent lost their minds.

What happens to the Unknown when the host dies is a mystery. It is believed, that the Unknown holds on to the particles in the ground as the body decays. From there, it is thought to wait until it finds another suitable host. It is also possible that the Unknown leaves the body a little before the nervous system loses its last functionality. The Unknown is always everywhere at the same time. It is not bound by the same physical laws as other species of the universe. It is infinite, endless, and boundless. It has no mass, and yet its influence on the universe is greater than that of any other species.

It is not possible to win over the Unknown, and it does not negotiate. It is possible to survive with it, to accept its existence in reality, and to try to slow it down. As long as the Unknown chooses to uphold a body it is also possible to hurt it.

This is a fact that the Unknown slowly came to understand. Maintaining a body required massive amounts of energy. It had to suckle entire species into madness just to keep one body alive. At the same time, it had to fear for the body and protect it. Still, it could no longer exist without one. The Unknown was growing so large, that the life of the entire universe would become insufficient to keep it alive. The Unknown faced two choices. It could either begin to shrink, and accept its own vulnerability, or take a risk and evolve one more time.

The physical body enabled the paradox with which the Unknown might gradually be able to rip itself apart from the dependency it had developed on other races. With its body, the Unknown might be able to generate its own impulses and sustain its own vital functions. It could feed on itself and thus gain enough energy to stay alive until the ends of time, even though it would no longer be able to grow. In order to keep its place as the most powerful race of the universe, it would have to destroy all life around it. After that, it could use its body to independently generate enough energy to survive and travel from one particle to another. It would rule the universe in loneliness and nothing would threaten its power.

It would take a long time to destroy all life by milking energy from cells, and the Unknown was tired of waiting. Now that it had concluded it could survive without other races it was ragingly annoyed by the life it saw around it and that it still had to depend on.

The Unknown decided to end life everywhere, and fabricated an army. On the first ships it created a consciousness that could obey simple orders. It gradually developed this consciousness so that it grew more intelligent, and at the same time developed the ships to be more efficient. Somewhat recklessly, the Unknown placed pieces of itself onboard the ships. Its sole purpose now was to destroy everything, and it no longer needed to focus on growing. After total destruction, it could use its own cells to create itself again.

Gradually, the Unknown retreated from the cells of living beings. It gathered its forces and, for the first time, accustomed itself to living self-sufficiently. Fleet after fleet of ships was sent out into space in metallic waves, with only one sole purpose: to destroy everything.