#capricoat

[dru-plays-starbound]

The Capricoat

Made for the Winter '22 Starbound Prompt "Capricoat"

Photo credits (all from Unsplash.com):

Mountain: @/markusspiske

Ibex goat: @/robingaillotdrevon

Changthangi(?) goat: @/biancablah

Tree: @/christinem

[nyotasaimiri]

Arc Two (redux) 76

Nyota tried not to visibly bristle as Arjun followed her back through the cold room. Something about the air was wrong here. She couldn’t quite place it. It felt somehow less wrong when she was moving, and that felt like a clue, somehow. But that wasn’t an answer. And it did nothing to ease her growing—not fear, but apprehension.

“Huh, there’s grass,” Arjun said, drawing her out of her musings. “Guess there is enough light for it after all. Really makes you wonder.”

Nyota hummed in agreement, a habit she was picking up from Lumen. “Anything specific catch your wonder yet?”

Arjun snorted and waved broadly at the area. “You mean besides this whole place or including it? Give me a lifetime and a team of engineers and we still couldn’t get all its secrets. Hell, even a full Floran lifetime couldn’t pry it out. It’s a marvel.” He gestured at some of the closer creatures who had wandered over to watch them, a pair of sheeplike animals with curving, branched horns. “And biologists for that matter. Those capricoats there, never seen any with horns like those, outside of fossils. That’s an ancient throwback for sure. And all of them have that.”

“Then I will try not to cause too much damage,” Nyota told him. She closed her hand over her spear’s shaft and bared her fangs at the nearest capricoat. It backed off. “But we may have to fight them. That was not a friendly posture.”

“Right, right.” There was something almost wistful in his voice, a tone Nyota had heard only very rarely from the old man.

She offered a small smile. “When we can spare it, I can bring you on a survey or two on the planets I visited before. I was only able to give them a cursory examination before. It would be nice to see deeper.”

His eyes weren’t visible behind his visor, but he gave her a curt nod. “Buying my vote, ma’am? I’ll hold you to that.”

“I know.” Nyota spotted stealthy, hunting movement in the snow ahead. “I would have offered either way. But brace yourself. I see trouble.”

He almost snorted as he followed her gaze and readied his heavy wrench. “You’re a rare one if I’m to believe that. But I’ll take it.”

Nyota almost chuckled. A wispy creature that seemed made of air and snow popped out of the snow and spat a chunk of ice at her; she leaned aside and let it crack against the wall. “I know. Trust my deeds, not my words.”

Arjun ducked back behind her as she gestured for him to watch her back. “Wispers, huh? Nasty nuisance. All over on arctic worlds.”

Nyota nodded and braced herself, blocked a charging capricoat. Looks like they’d been waiting for any sign of weakness, distraction. “I remember. Father used to hunt them.”

There was no more time for talk. Two more wispers popped out of the snow.

Nyota ducked under a spat ice ball and swatted the next out of the air before it could crack against Arjun’s arm. He returned the favor with a sound crack over the capricoat’s head as it backed up to have another go at her. Its thick skull took most of the force, but it still staggered, caught off-guard.  

“Get on, you bastard,” he muttered, grabbing it by one horn and tossing it lightly into a snowdrift. It bleated at him, dazed, and wiggled its legs in what would’ve been a comical manner if it hadn’t been trying to take his legs off at the shins a few seconds ago.

Nyota gritted her teeth. Doubts held her back from striking at the wispers, even as they attacked her again. She couldn’t get the robed stranger’s words out of her head. You cherish life. It felt wrong to just kill something in this place, this vault that was meant to preserve life… If she could just stun them, or drive them off… Her spear was ill-suited to that task.

“But I cherish our lives too,” she snarled, and knocked away another frozen volley.

Something clicked. Isn’t that the way of it? Nyota realized. She lunged forward and spun her spear like a quarterstaff to knock one wisper for distance. The other was treated to an iceball from Arjun that sent its light body tumbling down a slope and out of sight.

“Well thrown,” Nyota told him, offering a hand as he walked gingerly over the icy floor to join her.

“Don’t mention it.” Arjun rotated his shoulder a bit. “Nothing like your cannon of an arm there, but it’ll do. What was that about? Couldn’t find an opening?”

Nyota hesitated before answering, struggling to find an answer. “I was not sure if it was right to kill them,” she admitted slowly. “But whoever built this Vault must have had that in mind.” She gestured around them at the ageless stone walls and the stars beyond. “These creatures are wild. They have been fighting, eating, coexisting for eons. We are just two more animals thrown in.”

Arjun gave her a funny look. “Did one of those snowballs catch your head or something? Should have Sonny take a look at it.”

She turned a glare on him before she realized he was just trying to get a rise out of her. There was a faint smirk visible under his visor.

The old man shook his head slowly, raising his hands in a peace gesture. “I almost get it, I think. It’s a weird place, weird rules. Like in the stories my grandmother would tell, the ones about little spirits in the rocks and woods. But I’ll follow your lead on that one. You’re the one who had the key. They let you in. Just don’t pause too much, ma’am. I’m not on the menu today.”

Nyota smiled. “Of course not.”

[fromsiberia]

I built an avian bridge in the mountains, but there was a capricoat’s spawn place! Avians won’t be impressed...

[dru-plays-starbound]

Starbound Winter Prompt List 2022

Steamspring

Snow (ball/ Man)

Festival

Capricoat

Wattage Potage

Igloo

Fireplace

Diodia

Cosy outerwear

Aurorabee (a bug)

This isn't an event as such, as there's no time limit, just a list of Winter-themed prompts you can use to build, create, draw, or write something Starbound-related as you fancy.

If you do make something and post it, you can use the tags #sbw22 and #starboundprompts22 to show it off - or tag me directly so I can rb your lovely creations.

Happy Starbounding 🌠

[nyotasaimiri]

The Warden Wakes

The door led to a small chamber, smaller than Nyota had expected after witnessing Big Ape’s room and the Avatar of Kluex’s den. The floor was strangely free of ice, but not for lack of trying. Creeping ice climbed down the walls and tried to overtake the floor with a thousand tiny cracks and hissed as it turned to steam on contact, turning the air so cold and humid that frost whispered along Nyota’s cheek fur almost as soon as she set foot inside.

Nyota’s earpiece rang quietly in her ear.

“Captain?” Lumen sounded worried. “Yer signal’s sharper’n it was now. Did ya turn back?”

“No.” Her voice held half a question to it, but she had a guess at why. “It must be the vault guardian’s influence. We found the frozen warden’s lair.”

Lumen hissed softly. “Ain’t that a doozy… Ya got a heck of a timin’, Captain. I was ‘bout to call ya anyhow. SAIL’s spotted some small craft hangin’ ‘round the asteroid belt. They ain’t doin’ much yet, not close to the gate or nothin’,” he said, anticipating her sharp throaty growl, “but we ain’t too sure what they’re out here for. I’m doin’ a closer scan. Got Namina on standby in case they ain’t friendly.” He whistled; his microphone turned it into almost a sigh. “I sure don’t like this, ma’am.”

“I don’t like it either.” Nyota swallowed the low snarl as she ran a few short calculations. The timing was almost too perfect… But nothing else had come through here. Sheer foul luck? The drone. She inhaled sharply. Its owners must have received a warning. Or noticed it stopped responding. “Lumen, tell me the moment they make a move toward the gate. We don’t know for sure if they are trouble, but we will be ready if they are.”

Am I getting soft? she wondered as she turned her focus back to the rest of the room. Agent Saimiri would have destroyed them on suspicion alone. But… I am not the agent now, am I?

Arjun was watching her. She couldn’t read his eyes. It did not matter. She was Captain. It was her decision, and no one else’s.

No further time for musing. Nyota felt the warning in a surge of warmth just under her collarbone, just before Arjun’s hand touched her arm.

“Think I found the warden,” he murmured, voice low and tense. “Those carvings aren’t flush with the wall.”

Nyota followed his gaze; a stone figure twice her height and half as broad again sat halfway up the wall. Dark lines ran across it, glinting faintly in the gloom like glass. Her eyes were not sharp enough in the half-light to pick out the shadows, but she knew he was right. The warning rose again, and as if responding, the carving came alive.

Light flooded along the glassy lines, surging white and blue. It pooled in two hollows near the top, like eye sockets in a stony skull, and the figure wrenched itself free with a shuddering crack. It drifted out into the middle of the room, hovering nearly Nyota’s height above the floor without any apparent support or means of flight, shedding ice that in thin sheets that shattered on impact with the tiles. Its head was almost leonine, except for the stone tusks that jutted out of its carved open mouth. Two more lights drifted out behind it, eyes set behind stone carved like the hooked beaks of birds.

Its silence was more unnerving than any battle cry she had ever faced. The warden looked down at Nyota, and she knew she was not welcome.

It wasted no time on ceremony or speech, if it was even capable of either. Nyota grabbed Arjun’s arm and hauled him back as energy bursts shattered at their feet, spreading frost wherever the shards touched. One of the birds smashed into her shoulder and sent her reeling backward. Arjun’s wrench cracked it away.

“This thing has problems,” he panted as he ran after her to avoid a second volley.

“We’re interlopers,” Nyota told him, not caring where the certainty came from. It wasn’t important. “It sees us as a threat to its vault. All change is a threat.”

The old man whistled—he reached the same conclusion as her. “The ancient capricoats.”

“Exactly.” Nyota deflected the second bird with her spear as it tried to ram her like its comrade had. “I would guess that the warden has weeded out anything that… changed too much.”

She could feel the slow horror in him as he processed that through the lens of an archaeologist. “That’s not life,” he said slowly, “that’s just stasis. That’s wrong.”

Nyota looked up at the looming warden. “I don’t think it will listen to that.”

Arjun squared up beside her, more determined than Nyota had seen him before. “Then we fix that.”

[nyotasaimiri]

Scuffling in the Snow

Nyota tried not to visibly bristle as Arjun followed her back through the cold room. Something about the air was wrong here. She couldn’t quite place it. It felt somehow less wrong when she was moving, and that felt like a clue, somehow. But that wasn’t an answer.

“Huh, there’s grass,” Arjun said, drawing her out of her musings. “Guess there is enough light for it after all. Really makes you wonder.”

Nyota hummed in agreement, a habit she was picking up from Lumen. “Anything else catch your wonder yet?”

Arjun snorted and waved broadly at the area. “You mean besides this whole place or including it? Give me a lifetime and a team of engineers and we still couldn’t get all its secrets. It’s a marvel.” He gestured at some of the closer creatures who had wandered over to watch them, a pair of sheeplike animals with curving, branched horns. “And biologists for that matter. Those capricoats there, never seen any with horns like those, outside of fossils. That’s an ancient throwback for sure.”

“Then I will try not to cause too much damage,” Nyota told him. She closed her hand over her spear’s shaft and bared her fangs at the nearest capricoat. It backed off. “But we may have to fight them. That was not a friendly posture.”

“Right, right.” There was something almost wistful in his voice, a tone Nyota had heard only very rarely from the old man.

She offered a small smile. “When we can, I can bring you on a survey or two on the planets I visited before. I was only able to give them a cursory examination before. It would be nice to see deeper.”

His eyes weren’t visible behind his visor, but he gave her a curt nod. “Buying my vote, ma’am? I’ll hold you to that.”

“I know.” Nyota spotted stealthy, hunting movement in the snow ahead. “I would have offered either way. Brace yourself. I see trouble.”

He almost snorted as he followed her gaze and readied his heavy wrench. “You’re a rare one if I’m to believe that. But I’ll take it.”

Nyota almost chuckled. A wispy creature that seemed made of air and snow popped out of the snow and spat a chunk of ice at her; she leaned aside and let it crack against the wall. “I know. Trust my deeds, not my words.”

Arjun ducked back behind her as she gestured for him to watch her back. “Wispers, huh? Nasty nuisance. All over on arctic worlds.”

Nyota nodded and braced herself, blocked a charging capricoat. Looks like they’d been waiting for any sign of weakness, distraction. “I remember. Father used to hunt them when they grew too bold.”

There was no more time for talk. Two more wispers popped out of the snow.

Nyota ducked under a spat ice ball and swatted the next out of the air before it could crack against Arjun’s arm. He returned the favor with a sound crack over the capricoat’s head as it backed up to have another go at her.

“Get on, you bastard,” he muttered, grabbing it by one horn and tossing it lightly into a snowdrift. It bleated at him, dazed, and wiggled its legs in what would’ve been a comical manner if it hadn’t been trying to take his legs off at the shins a few seconds ago.

Nyota gritted her teeth. Something held her back from striking at the wispers even as they attacked her again. She couldn’t get the robed stranger’s words out of her head. You cherish life. It felt wrong to just kill something in this place, this vault that was meant to preserve life… If she could just stun them, or drive them off… Her spear was ill-suited to that task.

“But I cherish our lives too,” she snarled, and knocked away another frozen volley.

Something clicked. Isn’t that the way of it? Nyota realized. She lunged forward and spun her spear like a quarterstaff to knock one wisper for distance. The other was treated to a snowball from Arjun that sent its light body tumbling down a slope and out of sight.

“Well thrown,” Nyota told him, offering a hand as he walked gingerly over the icy floor to join her.

“Don’t mention it.” Arjun rotated his shoulder a bit. “Nothing like your catapult there but it’ll do. What was that about? Couldn’t find an opening?”

Nyota hesitated before answering, finding the answer. “I was not sure if it was right to kill them,” she admitted slowly. “But whoever built this Vault must have had that in mind.” She gestured around them at the ageless stone walls and the stars beyond. “These creatures are wild. They have been fighting, eating, coexisting for eons. We are just two more animals thrown in.”

Arjun gave her a funny look. “Did one of those snowballs catch your head or something? Should have Sonny take a look at it.”

She almost turned a glare on him when she realized he was just trying to get a rise out of her. There was a faint smirk visible under his visor.

The old man shook his head slowly. “I almost get it, I think. It’s a weird place, weird rules. But I’ll follow your lead on that one. You’re the one who had the key. Just don’t pause too much, ma’am. I’m not on the menu today.”

Nyota smiled. “Of course not.”