LF Friends, Will Travel

Why we said yes - Litorian Horde

The sounds of fighting bellowed across the field as tens of people fought each other with various combat forms. The clash of weapons, as screams of exertion and pain were roared out into a grey cloudy sky. Victors and losers were made as multiple duels were being held, some by surrender, others by death. Corpses were scattered as far as the eye could see, over a field long since churned to mud during generations of fighting. Some of the bodies were centuries old, nothing more than fragile bones that shattered under Zantari's footsteps as they approached the meeting place. Others were freshly slain, laying where they had fallen mere hours or days before. The smell of death and decay hung rife in the air while various scavengers came to eat their fill of the morbid landscape.

Zantari finally reached the top of the hill rose from the centre of the field, taking a moment to look at the chaos below him, while the Litorian diplomat they had come to meet slowly approached his location. This was where disputes were settled, and the Litorian Horde tested their strength against each other. This was also a location where deals were done and diplomacy was to be had. It followed a well-known rule amongst the Litorian Horde: All diplomatic talks had to be done on the battlefield.

Zantari had been the most interested in speaking to this species. The Litorians were a giant mammalian race, although their dusty orange natural armour often gave them an insectoid appearance, their intersecting plates of chitin protecting them from head to toe with a barrier as tough as steel. Large sharp claws stood at the ends of powerful limbs, teeth set within a jaw that could break bone.

Zantari watched two fighters in particular while they waited, the two combatants throwing themselves at each other with bladed weapons as they fought under a giant gnarled tree buried in the mud. One of the pair struck a final blow, slipping the tip of his sword in between his opponent's plates of chitinous armour, shoving the weapon through the other's chest with a final moment of exertion. The loser gave a shocked silent gurgle, black blood pouring from the wound and their vicious bestial mouth, before collapsing dead to the ground.

The victor didn't seem to care that much, leaving the defeated Litorian to lay in the mud with the thousands of other corpses that had been left to rot and decay over the centuries. What had their conflict been about? Territory? Ideology? Power? A mate? Whatever it was, to the loser it no longer mattered, because in Litorian society, whoever was right was whoever was strongest. As their saying went, 'Strength leads Strength'.

"Welcome, powerful Ghirlinn representative. How can we serve ones of such strength? Are you here to finally take your place as our rightful leaders?"

The Litorian diplomat stood facing Zantari upon the hill, dressed with a single bright blue ceremonial sash denoting them as an ambassador, holding a corresponding diplomatic mace in one hand. Not that she would ever dream of using it against the Ghirlinn, who had changed their appearance to dwarf the 8 foot tall Litorian: 11 feet of muscle, teeth, claws and spikes, purposefully put together to be the ultimate apex predator. Zantari knew how to deal with the weird quirks of the Litorian society, and making themselves physically intimidating was one way to deal with it.

The Litorian Horde were a standard 'might makes right' warrior race, with a strange twist of not being hypocritical about it, looking honestly at their own power. Upon contact with the Ghirlinn, they had immediately realized the power disparity between the two races, and offered their own subjugation to the other as the weaker species. Which the Ghirlinn had politely but firmly declined.

"No, not that. I'm interested in the Terran Alliance. I would not have seen your species as one to join such endeavours, and we are interested in how this came to be."

Zantari had talked with 4 species so far, all of which had stated the same things about the cute little Terrans: their friendship and desire to help all. The Litorian Horde didn't fit in with this view, an aggressive species who had once subjected and conquered several worlds. Had being the important word: Since joining the Terran Alliance, the Litorian Horde hadn't started a war for the last 40 years, instead returning all of their previously conquered planets. This was not what Zantari had expected to find.