Shot Heard Round the Universe: SQUAWK! (A Krill's Tale)

The Krill High Council; (L to R)Builder Bird Jacob, Cohesion Bird Ian, Talker Bird Noah and Fighter Bird Greg. (Image Courtesy Jacob S.)

What follows is the Fighter Bird's perspective of the running of Shot Heard Round the Universe in Dallas, TX on 9/7/24.

Pregame

We are Krill.  I am the Fighter Bird, charged with leading our war parties. We, the Krill, are many and through our hive mind, we are one. Our home, The Nest, is a massive ship with an enclosed sun. It provides all of our needs. Through cohesion we prosper, through cohesion we grow closer to the Source of Life, through cohesion we survive.

Our Guide leads us back to the source through a series of cryptic messages and it is up to the Krill High Council to find our way to cohesion, prosperity and the Source. All while dealing with these human Lessers who clutter our universe with their trivial pursuits and conflicts.

We know the language of the Lessers, we simply care to speak our own language and feign confusion when interacting with those below us.

Turn 1

The Guide’s messages are vague and concerning, the High Council can agree on this. To the best of our ability, we believe the Guide is telling us to explore and build.

The Guide sent the Krill ink blot tests as a means of communicating its intent.

First, the High Council visits our existing colonies on Monmouth, Helen’s World and New Angeles. With the traditional SQUAWK of formal greeting, we assure these worlds the Krill in those colonies are only there to live peacefully.

After these visits, the Council visits the other worlds; Yang 3 seems to be no good for our kind AND want us to pay them for the privilege of our presence, Kentai is open to a settlement in the future, Elizabeth insults or lineage by claiming we are a new species (how rude), Matisse may be open to us constructing a shrine in the future to add to our colony, Jasmine wants us to give them something for the pleasure of living on that dusty world and the Lessers on New Angeles agree to let us build our first Shrine to the source on their world. Praise the to the Source, SQUAWK!

The Builder Bird of the Council is able to get a number of donations from the Lessers and we are able to complete the construction of the New Angeles shrine.

Suddenly, we are approached by the Minister of Finance who is requesting something called ‘taxes.’ Upon consulting the hive mind, we determine that this means they need food so we provide the Minister with the finest seed the Nest has to offer. The Minister seems unimpressed and confused by our gift

The Krill present their favorite seeds. (Image Courtesy Zachary Read)

Turn 2

More unclear messages, it feels like our only cohesion is with ourselves and not the Source. We must get better.

From what we can tell, our Guide is telling us to travel towards our colony on Helen’s World and do something.

The High Council knows the Lessers are combative and aggressive without reason. We continue to SQUAWK and keep our vocabulary limited in our interactions. Gaining their trust.

Again, the Builder Bird is using the confused generosity of the humans to build our pile of shinies on the diplomatic ship.

Finally, through many squawks and limited communications, the people of Jasmine allow us to build a settlement on their world and the Voice of Thel, some kind of Lesser guide (we think?), blesses it for their deity. Whatever that means.

Turn 3

We believe the Guide’s signs are more clear. We think we are closer. Place a Shrine on Helen’s World and defend its trade routes! The message seems so clear! But the Guide just shakes his head in sadness as the hive mind from Helen’s World calls out to the collective ‘One of our own has gone missing, we need your help.’

The Guide wasn’t telling us to defend Helen’s World. The Guide was telling us to defend the Krill on Helen’s World.

We mobilize our fleet and send the Alpha fleet into one of the trade hubs just outside Helen’s World. We will arrive on the planet soon.

The High Council presents one of the Helen’s World leaders with the Feathers of Fright. Their intent? To instill fear into the people of Helen’s World. We further reinforce this intent by repeating their word defend. If the lost Krill is not found, we will defend our own and they will pay for any harm that comes to this Krill.

To help with our search, we build a shrine on Helen’s World. Their leader’s must know the power of the Feathers as they grant our request with open arms and what they call ‘smiles’ all around. They even share in a celebratory SQUAWK with us, though their accents make it sound slightly offensive. Lessers…they’ll learn eventually, right?

As the keystone is set on the Shrine, an Imperial agent approaches the shrine with the lost Krill in tow. The youngling was simply lost while gathering seed.

Turn 4

The Lessers continue to talk of some kind of war against the Bugs? We must have gotten distracted by the Lessers’ news broadcast and we misinterpreted a message from the Guide. We are shamed by our confusion.

After backlash from the guide, we move our Alpha fleet towards the Imperial’s seat. We must thank them for their help on Helen’s World.

After a brief stop on Helen’s World to retrieve the Feathers of Fright from a confused Helen’s World official, I personally drop off a large shipment of our Ceremonial Seed. The most delicious seed the Nest has to offer and, through my display of plumage, they must understand the significance of this gift.

Elsewhere, our Builder Bird and Talker Bird build a Shrine on Matisse. The Cohesion Bird and I are approached by a strange swashbuckler from something called Free Beyond who offers us two planets if we join some kind of rebellion? Apparently, some of the planets of Beyond have broken away from their Empire. I give them Ceremonial Seed as a token of my gratitude and they stare in, what I must assume is, awe as I leave.

The Hive Mind simultaneously receives a signal from the Guide.

RECOVER THE UNBORN

Somewhere,unborn Krill children are lost, scared and helpless. We must help them.

I speak with leaders from every planet, asking if they found a ship. No one knows where the Nest is located. The only answer is that a lost colony ship was discovered.

Through an unexpected show of trust, the Elizabeth leaders allow me to personally inspect a ship they found. Unfortunately, no eggs are found onboard.

Turn 5

Krill sounds emanate from the Imperial seat-planet of Scafell. One of the flock is in trouble. The fleet that was outside Helen’s World is scrambled and heads toward Scafell.

Elsewhere, it is discovered that Matisse discovered a ship with unknown alien eggs on it and Jasmine ended up with our eggs. Through a deft act of diplomacy (promising that giving them to us now would pay off later), we retrieve the lost children and bring them home.

The eggs hatch and, as is our custom, they are instantly given the knowledge needed to thrive. As a show of faith to Jasmine, we reassign these Krill to our settlement on Jasmine and the settlement grows in stature and production. SQUAWK! It is a great day for the Krill…other than the one who cries out from Scafell.

Turn 6

Through any means necessary, retrieve our kin.

That is our message. That is our directive.

After initially being turn away by this Lesser Governor, I am able to rally together the Editor-In-Chief of the Imperial News Network and a Minister of Finance to allow us to land and I follow the screams of pain directly to the office of the Minister of Security who claims to be trying to heal this injured Krill. My rage is nearly uncontainable.

To his credit, the Governor instantly reprimands the Minister of Security and releases the Krill into my custody. The Minister of Security tries to cover for his crimes; claiming the experiments were to try to help but help is not painful.

The Governor offers to do something to make up for this transgression and, after some convincing, allows us to build the Grand Shrine to the Source on the Imperial seat-planet. It is massive, it is beautiful. The Guide is pleased. The Source must be pleased.

Elsewhere, a shrine is built on Jasmine. Our squawks of delight can be heard across the galaxy.

Until.

Every Krill is racked with mental pain. The most mind splitting pain of all time. We simultaneously cry out in pain and learn that the sparkling new shrine was destroyed. Defaced.

They will pay for this.

Turn 7

We mobilize the entire fleet. The Bravo fleet of Light Cruisers meets up with Alpha fleet in low orbit of Scafell and commence bombardment, causing devastation across the world.

I storm into the Governor’s Office and find him with an arrested Minister of Civil Stabilization, or something, who was the one responsible for the heinous act. The time for feigned confusion is done. In clear Lesser Basic, I demand he be released into my custody so I can publicly execute him on a simultaneous INN and Free Beyond broadcast. At the mention of Free Beyond, the Minister makes a series of gestures in his cuffs and a bullet from another nearby guard executes the Minister on the spot. Unphased, I cut off his head and mount it to the prow of our flagship The Source’s Light is Always the Most Bright.

Turn 8

As I reconvene with the High Council, the Builder Bird has learned something dire. The leaders of Helen’s World have learned of the Nest, of the Hive Mind.

It was discovered that the Talker Bird granted them access to a deceased Krill and the scientists of the planet wanted too much knowledge, they wanted to know too much. Though we have grown close with the world and its leaders, they must be undone.

With the help of an Imperial fleet, expediting our exit from their atmosphere we are able to bring the might of the entire Krill fleet, including the Charlie fleet rear guard, into lower orbit of Helen’s World.

Through intimidation and threats of destruction, we convince the leaders of Helen’s World to delete all records pertaining to and related to Krill knowledge from their databases. However, Lessers still remember. We cannot delete their memories, so we must delete them.

The largest Krill bombardment on Imperial record leveled society on the scholarly planet. The Free Beyond honors a long ago promise and ‘grants’ us the world and a recently discovered colonizable planet for our help with the difficult world.

Additionally, our Builder Bird has gotten our kind an extra large plot of land on the surface of Yang 3. Unbeknown to the merchants of that world, it is perfectly hospitable to us. They lied earlier…how rude.

Unfortunately, our colony and shrine on Matisse was destroyed with the surface of that world was turned to glass. We will deal with that transgression soon enough.

The Guide is pleased. The Krill again feel the presence of the Source in everything we do. The High Council has accomplished its goal and the flock is stronger because of our work.

SQUAWK!

–

Wow! I don’t know I can ever properly put into words just how fun this game was.

My team came into the day with one goal ‘have as much fun as possible, without hurting the play experience of the other players’ and we far surpassed that goal in every way.

Early on, we decided that we were going to play our Krill as a selfish race who just wanted to improve our standing with our deity. To accomplish this goal, we wanted to build settlements and shrines. Unfortunately, we made no resources. We made no goods. So, we decided to lean into the ‘we don’t understand each other’s customs’ aspects of the lore and limit our verbiage to one/two word phrases and bird sounds. We thought of the humans as Lessers, why would we use their language when ours was great? So a SQUAWK and ‘homes?’ or ‘construct?’ was enough to get the planets to agree to let us build our various things on their planets. Also, a QUACK and an open hand was enough to get SO MANY planets to give us gifts and patronage (shinies).

I brought along a bag of sunflower seeds because, of course, birds need seed. I quickly turned this into our greatest gift that humans just didn’t understand. The Minister of Finance wanted taxes? Sunflower seeds. The Free Beyond wants resources to help with the war effort? Sunflower seeds. Someone tries to return those seeds a turn later? The greatest offense possible as you just tried to regift our favorite food. How dare you.

We were also able to change our language patterns naturally alongside the game. As we needed the humans more and our situation became more dire, we spoke more and more ‘normal’ because we needed the Lessers to do something for us. Cohesion was in our prompt and we were so cohesive on how we played as a team.

I can’t thank my team enough for totally buying into the bit. All of us read the bits of lore, read the prompt and had the same thought ‘Let’s be as silly and goofy as we can, while making sure we’re still playing the game.’

This meant; doing the HeiHei scream during team introductions and that being our only introduction to the room, the team simultaneously screaming in pain and then sitting on the floor when we learned about our shrine being destroyed and flocking together as a team almost everywhere.

It made the day so special and so fun.

Some additional notes and shoutouts:

The Krill loved the Helen’s World team. We interacted with them so much throughout the game, so destroying them late was such a tragic end to a tale of friendship. Luckily, they also really enjoyed their story as well. They went from ‘what is happening, why are there birds on our planet’ to ‘they are our friends, I guess?’ to ‘we kind of love them and we want to learn as much as we can about them’ to ‘we have learned to much and they destroyed our entire society.’ One of my favorite moments from the game was having the Krill team Squawking in victory when we built the Shrine on Helen’s World and one of their leader’s joined in. I suddenly got very serious and said ‘You watch your tone.’ For a split second, fear washed over the leader’s face before we both started to cackle in laughter (‘I almost forgot this is just a game and you guys are making bird sounds’).

I rarely ever interacted with the INN. By our prompt, there never seemed to be a reason to. But I was trying to secure patronage so we could get our captured Krill back and someone said the media had shinies. I went to the Editor-In-Chief and explained what I needed from him and what I was doing. The excitement and shout of ‘THE SCOOP OF THE CENTURY’ and went off to find the patronage we were missing. When he showed up moments later with the Minister of Finance and a handful of shinies, we were all so excited to expose this major thing.

Lastly, the moment I thought of the seeds. At the end of turn one, the Minister of Finance walked up to me and asked for 2MC in taxes. We had none. I had no resources at all. The minister was just staring at me and I didn’t really know what to do. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted the bag of sunflower seeds. I asked for a minute, got two seeds and placed them in the minister’s hand. The look of confusion, disappointment, slight resentment and understanding was so great.

Thank you everyone for such an incredible, memorable day.

SQUAWK!

The High Council squawks together over an important issue. (Image Courtesy of Zachary Read)