Dear friends, as you know, I love Science Fiction. And a couple of days ago I discovered a most interesting call: SCI-FI "RPG-Writing Contest" #1. Unfortunately, I discovered it late and I couldn't reestimate it or vote for it (I'll make a post with the references of the project later on?). Anyway, I explain a little:
It's a video game that is being developed in steemit. According to @art-universe, who makes the call, the launch of the game is very close, and:
NextColony will be a massive multi player strategy game; BUT it can and will be much more. It is a whole universe with many many planets, species, heroes and much more. So YOU, yes WE ALL, can invent our own stories for this wonderful game. This contest wants to invite you to be a part of it with writing your first story in the NextColony-universe.For more information, you can visit this site: https://nextcolony.io/. It's an exciting experiment (and it seems very ambitious) and I'd love to be part of that world of fiction. Then, I'll dare to participate with the first chapter of a Science Fiction story focused on characters, to see what happens. I leave it for the goodness of your readings and I am grateful.
Armenta
Hidden in the cargo compartment, Armenta consumed her last supply of water. Anyone who looked at her would have seen a small girl, a crushed face and thin lips. Eyes like burning coals and fast like squirrels. Her hair was dirty and collected in two thick chestnut plaits that reached her heels, but now she had rolled up like a scarf to fight the cold. His complexion was dark, slightly blue, although somewhat lighter than that of the nomadic tribes of the Mador, where he came from. Centuries ago, after the Great War that had brought the radioactive rains, his people became nomadic and renounced their old name and any authority of the ancient days. It was a people free of gatherers and shepherds who traversed a small area of the western savannas, where life was still thriving and the land seemed to heal.
Hanging from her small muscular back, she had her fighting stick, dark and hard wood, with three red notches: one for each death in combat. It was just a twenty-inch stick, heavy, made from the hardest wood of the bogo trees, collected by the shamans. Like all fighting sticks, hers had engraved the symbols that a shaman had dreamt for her: the story of a rabbit that could jump to the Moon, beautiful and red in the sky of Mador. That's how she found her totem. She stopped being a puppy in training to be a hunting dog, a jackal, a rabbit that could jump to the sky. Armenta wore the braids curdled with small poisonous darts with feathers and wore a shirt and trousers of thick cloth with the colors of her troop (ochre, which means quick death; black, which means inevitable pain; green, which means pity). She wore bare feet, marked with training scars, calloused heels and dirty nails, even with dust from the Earth she had left behind. If anyone saw her at that moment, they would have seen a girl with teeth clenched by the cold, hungry, with eyes lit; but they would also have seen a warrior with a purpose. Armenta had not boarded the Sipu-I to colonize, nor as one more of the slave herd that led to death from toxic syndrome in the sulfur mines of Delta. She came to kill.
Why did Armenta take such a risk? Why had he abandoned everything he knew and cared about, his people, his troops, his roots, his planet? If someone had asked her, she would have said "Maka".
Maka, being dragged by slave hunters. Maka herded with electric sticks. Sweet Maka, the summer holiday dancer, her little sister. Her only living family member.
Since radioactive rains ruined the Earth, numerous colonization expeditions had been organized, but labor was scarce on a planet exhausted by radiation and ecological catastrophes. Only small territories offered enough sustenance for life. And those lands were much coveted. So the people of Armenta had decades scourged by resource exploiters, rustlers and slave hunters.
Armenta stirred her memories as her cage rattled along with the others in the truck.
Then, through the holes, as she was transported with the rest of the animals, she saw it: The main dome of the camp was gigantic. Planted against the horizon, it was a polished sphere that reflected a celestial fire. Beyond, a capricious and numerous grove crowned with yellow flowers rose. Did they graze on the pastures? Extensions of green pastures. To the right, cultivated fields, dotted with small domes that looked like family units; they seemed to have no end. Hundreds of slaves (many of them Madorans) did cultivation work on that land, and sang. She did not understand. They did not look sad in spite of the necklaces of subjection.
They deposited her cage in a large, noisy dome. Slaves separated the cattle. A Sirilite foreman led the work with precision. The slaves obeyed willingly and carefully. Armenta calculated the right moment: the bulk of the working group came to lead a small troubled flock to the exit ramp.
She left the cage and crouched behind the pile of sacks of feed. Everything was fine... almost.
Now there was a boy in front of her, looking at her with his mouth open. He was a warrior from Mador, clearly. Though he wore a dark robe, his long plaits betrayed him. For Armenta, his eyes were a slide through which her own fear fell. She held her fighting stick.
Posted from my blog with SteemPress : http://adncabrera.vornix.blog/2019/04/05/armenta-sci-fi-rpg-writing-contest-1/