Spoiler
Sauron's World
By Leighton White
Prologue
In the airless void between planets it existed, but not much else could be said about it. A small wisp of some etheric stuff that was not quite matter and not quite energy that occupied a small area of space in a long, eccentric orbit around the star. It would pass through hydrogen atoms as it went, adjusting their velocity and vector by a meter per hour and a fraction of a degree or so but it would pass through solid matter with no noticeable effect. Even so, for all it's unsubstantiality it could perceive the world around it, it could think extremely complex thoughts and it could remember and recall a vast stretch of time with boundless clarity.
But mostly it seethed.
It was not always like this. Long ago it was something much, much greater. A being of immense power, one of those who had helped shape the world (or at least part of one that floated before him) and one that he had sought to bring Order to the chaos that most of his fellows not only allowed, but encouraged. He'd fought and struggled for millenia against the folly of his fellows in which which his adopted master was cast down. But by cunning, invention, subtle manipulations and careful manuvering he was nearly in a position to remake the world in his own image until, by sheer stupid luck he was undone by a single fatal blow by the most ridiculous of plays actually working and reduced to this. Milena had past, in which it's thoughts had mostly reduced to a steady cycle of smoldering rage and bitterness over the hand that fate dealt him.
To anything else that lived in this universe, the legacy of this former great being was all but forgotten. But never the less it was observed by two entities that existed beyond it, both vast beyond measure. One of said Great Being was aware of it as part of it's minor awareness of everything in what was it's domain which gave it no real consideration. It's part in the tapestry of fate had been plaid out. The adrift consciousness knew this being well and had directly interacted with it at times and knew that it was aware and unconcerned with it's plight.
The second being was another matter entirely, which observed the shade with a strange interest. It was an entity on par with the previously mentioned Great Entity, though it's powers in this universe were strictly limited to perception. There were many such Great Beings in truth, shaping universes as prime movers. The first Great Entity (the Elder of the two) took a more hands on approach, the second (the Younger of the Two, having arisen from a universe which gradually succumbed to entropy in some long distant past) simply set things in motion and watched them unfold and something stirred in its unfathomably vast mind. Part of it was pity, part of it was curiosity, part of it was it's sense of humor and there was much, much more to it. But sufficed to say it had an interest in this being.
And so a dialogue between Great Ones was made. It was a calm exchange between two masters of their respective crafts that never that were not above joshing those that they respected over their differences of opinion, well beyond the capacity of any mortal method of communication to adequately transcribe in all it's vast details. However, in the end an agreement was struck. For the briefest intervals Eru Iluvatar opened the gates of the world so that AC could reach in. And so where once there was something now there was just empty void.
Chapter One (Day Zero)
It was a warm night, even as the coming dawn slowly began to illuminate the Western Sky. It was somewhat muggy from a thunderstorm that had passed through during sunset, though now only a few clouds gently rolled across a mostly clear sky still speckled with stars, four planets and dominated by three moons. These lights were suddenly supplemented by another, a burning streak moving through the sky at immense speed and to any observer on the ground, steadily growing and most intense at it's head. As it neared the ground a small chunk of it broke off before it's main mass slammed into the ground like an artillery shell.
Though nothing with a mind sophisticated enough to appreciate it watched this was a most peculiar occurrence. Meteors fell from the sky every once and a while, but this one was different. First of all after impact it burned despite crashing into bare stone. For about half an hour it blazed, illuminating the small gully with flickering crimson shadows. Stranger still as time went by shapes appeared in the blaze, moving and shifting and the sounds which echoed from the blaze, groaning and hissing and reverberating. Then suddenly the blaze rose into the sky in a blazing pillar from which arcs erupted. Ten meters above the ground it distorted and flared out into a flat disc. At it's rim the swirling flames sturred like the crest of a wave while in it's center a swirl of black vapor blossomed up and solidified into a thin black almond shape. For a few seconds it turned about erratically, casting a harsh beam across the surface. It lingered on one smoldering patch for about a second before continuing on in it's search. Then abruptly the fires snuffed themselves out, leaving the black figure at the center in the air to fall to the ground with an resounding thud.
After touching down, the black form slowly resolved itself. It bent in places, split in others, narrowed, widened, twisted and took on color and texture. After a few seconds a male humanoid figure lay on the ground. It was taller than most men at two meters, had pail skin, reddish blonde hair, pointed ears and a thin athletic figure. After stirring for another minute he opened its eyes. For a split second they glowed like windows into a forge before the calmed down. The first thing that he saw as his arm feeling up against the rough sandstone taking in it's texture. Both being able to touch and feel solid things and having arms and legs after millennia adrift in the endless void was incredible. Things that he had previously known that he would never have again. He soon scrambled to his feet (spending a few seconds to marvel that he had feet and legs again) and felt up the rest of his body. He inspected the rest of this new body that he had and found it in better condition than it had been for more than three millennia before his ultimate downfall.
For the first time in eons, he felt something other than boiling rage and hatred: first confusion, then fascination, then wonder, then joy. For the first time in an even longer span, he wept. Sobbing tears rolled down his cheeks as laughed. "Is this? Can it Be? I...I can't believe this! I don't believe this!". He wondered what else he could do. He turned to a random hunk of sandstone and punched it, shattering it into a rapidly expanding cloud of gravel while he remained unscathed. He concentrated and felt a silken robe appeared. Then a suit of monstrous spiked armor. Then he took on some other forms. A human soldier clad in fine armor, an empty armor suit with hooded robe, a woman in a silk dress, a pirate captain, a peasant, an orc warlord and more. All the while he laughed at the simple joy of it all. Then he turned into a wolf and ran along, then he turned into an giant bat and took to the air on long leathery wings as the sun crept over the horizon.
As a bat, while still exultant, he took in his surroundings in finer detail. He noticed the moons, the sun rising in the west with an orange color and the landscape beneath him. As far as The Eye could see there was a barren field of sandstone, sand and gravel. It looked a lot like a desert, save for the muggy humidity and the various and streams that were surrounded by greenish blue mats. A few of which sprung up away from the water. He recalled some glimpses he'd taken of the Moon, Carnil, Alcarinquë and Lumbar after the Downfall and how things had changed up in the heavens (as well as some more up close and personal views of things after his fall) and some musings he had of other stars. Even so he'd never had expected something like this.
Regardless eventually he focused his attention to a small blackened spot not too far from his landing site. The giant bat flew in and then resumed the original elvish form in traveler's clothes and walked over to the impact sight near one of the pools. It was easy to find find as it had burned away the surrounding plants, whatever sort of plant they were. They were short stubby greenish blue stalks about as the size of a man's toe topped with a bulging sphere. Occasionally one of said spheres would pop in a brief haze of greenish blue dust. Even stranger were the small "insects" that floated around. These were bug sized, but were built like wagon wheels, had four wings and spun through the air like tops. 'What was Yavanna thinking when she made these?' He thought as he paused for a second to take a look after touching down before continuing on. What was more surprising was a stone near the crash sight. It was a lump that was close to flat across one side which faced the small crater, but into it's surface were etched a simple message in neat tengwar script...
Mairon of Aule
I have released you into one of my worlds in restored condition. The world of your origin is beyond you forever. I shall not give you further aide, nor shall I interfere in your affairs. Consider this a Fresh Start.
-AC
Sauron stepped back in fear. Whoever or whatever this AC was it had a power well beyond him, the Valar or even Melkor. Did Iluvatar make greater beings than the Ainur that he concealed? Were there more beings like "The One"? The ramifications of this were incredible and his mind raced with implications of this. He had only this being's word to work on, but what if this world held perils that a thousand Melkors could not overcome?
Even so his graze drifted over to the crater and it's center. Inside sat an mass of newly made igneous rock the size of a loaf of bread, but he also caught a glint of sunlight off of it. He picked it up and then crushed it in it's hands. Among the crumbling fragments fell twenty lustrous objects. He knelt down, picked one up and held it in his hand.
He smirked as he slipped on The One Ring.
[CENTER]Chapter Two (Day 10 to Day 12)[/CENTER]
While Sauron had acquired a respect for the powers of AC, that did not apply to whomever made it's plants and creatures. After raising a monolith at his landing site he took to the air as a bat (with a small belt and pouch for the rings) flown out from his original landing sight on in an expanding spiral and had seen more and more of the landscape beneath him and develop a map of his surrounding, touching down to examine things. All he found was more fields of stone, sand and patches of greenish blue plants popball plants and by some of the larger pools there were segmented plant with tufts growing out from between the segments. Most of them were clustered around mud puddles, though a few were on valley slopes or other odd places. A few patches were growing up and other patches were withering. There were also some brown patches that had failed entirely. From what he could work out, these the things needed a fair bit of water survive and dried out fairly quickly. The animals were evens stranger. There was a wide variety of the pinwheel bugs (some of which simply crawled along) as well as strange two shelled clamlike things with crawled about on tentacles among the rim and hinged themselves closed around prey. All of which could fit in the palm of his hand. So far the only use he'd found for them was as a snack.
On the easternmost part of his eight circuit he noticed that the vegetation was getting thicker on the ground. Less bare stone and sand and more plants. When he went back south on his ninth circuit he noticed that this trend continued further east. He saw more pools of water, as well as streams. He also heard something which filled the evening air, loud belching sounds. That was enough to get his interest so he landed to investigate. He flew in eastward for a short distance before he found something moving and so landed, went back to human form. What he found was this...
It was about half a meter long, had soft wet Greenish Blue to Blue skin and crawled about over the wet ground with six legs eating popballs and tuft-tube chutes between belches. He noticed another pair of them on the far side of a stream, burping as they wandered towards each other and then began to tackle each other. Then he realized that it was not a tackle. There were more of these creatures either sluggishly crawling about eating, belching or swimming about in the mud. Smaller versions about half to a quarter the size of what were presumably their parents crawled about around the adults. The swamp was positively thick with the beasts, including a few rotting corpses host to swarms of pinwheel bugs and creeper-shells but ignored by their living kin.
The creature he'd come to investigate regarded sauron for a few moments, bringing it's forward eye to bear on him. It had never seen anything like the form he'd taken and it was outside it's limited frame of reference. It's mind eventually regarded the elvish figure as being a cluster of Tuft Tubes and it went back to eating and belching. As it did so, gobbets of half masticated plant were spewed out of his mouth onto sauron's shoes. That was more enough to raise Sauron's ire and so he kicked it. It flew up into the air for a few hundred meters, spinning about until it crashed down into the water.
He spent the next day investigating the surrounding area, a large swampy area hope to vast fields of popballs, clusters of tuft-tubes, several other varieties of plants and millions of these Hexacrawlers crawling about grazing. Around mid day they went into pools, ponds and streams if they could and into shade if they could not. They were somewhat more agile in the water than they were on land. But while as far as Sauron could tell these creatures were the only living things that dwelt on land, the waters were another storey. He often saws saw thrashing out of the larger bodies of water as an hexacrawler was bitten and taken under by some larger creature, which would send the rest of them scurrying to the shoreline, only to return a few minutes latter. Once he saw one of these predators follow the hexecrawlers out of the river. It was at least three meters long, had a flat triangular head with a slight bulge in the center for the topmost of it's three eyes, a long that tapered from the horizontal in the front o the vertical in the back tail with a leaflike fluke and three sets of fins on fleshy growths that allowed it to crawl a short distance onto land, grasp a hexacrawler in it's jaws and then slowly make its way back to the water, meal in mouth in lurching motions that made it's prey look graceful.
This was a step up from spinning bugs and free range clams, but Sauron was still not impressed. Three eyed Killer Fish and Catfish Salamanders with too many legs, was this the best they could come up with? The damn things could barely spend a few hours away from water by the look of it. There had to be something better than this somewhere on this blasted rock.
Chapter Three (Day 1,737)
It turned out that the Hexacrawler was the apex of life on this world. At least on land.
Six years (which were a bit shorter here than they were on Arda) worth of searching, going around the five continents and all he found was more of the same. There were deserts, mountains, plains, rivers, lakes and swamps. Vegetation was sparse and spotty at best away from bodies of water and thick near them. There was some variation among the plant life which included fuzz cones, tendril clusters and on a smaller continent a type of tuft tube that could grow up to eight meters tall and who's topmost tufts got thicker grew fronds of their own. There were Hexacrawlers living in the lakes, swamps and rivers of the biggest continent and a few islands off it's northern coast. Some of which were a bit bigger or smaller or had longer barbels or had some different color but these were all still unmistakably variations of the same creature. On the Northwestern Continent there was a species of small armored fish which spent most of it's time on coastal mud. But that was all for higher life-forms on land. There were some interesting sea beasts underwater some of which could get up to 12 meters, some predators which he could respect on some level and other sea creatures that had some novelty if nothing else. For all that even with the form of a shark with the ability to carve through even the largest wedge headed monster fish of this Ulmo free world he was never truly comfortable underwater and did not linger long beneath the waves. Nowhere did he find any road or building or tool intact or in ruins. There were still areas he missed, but he doubted that they'd reveal anything beyond a few as-to-yet overlooked species of plants.
Sauron sat on a bolder overlooking a swampy valley and thought about his situation as he considered what to do next. He was alone. Even more than he was when he hid during the Second Age when he knew there were others comparatively nearby. AC by all appearances was even less involved with the managing of worlds the Iluvatar and any Valar of this world was just as disinterested in it's management. There was no one to threaten him but no one to rule. Just him and some half baked cow newts that did nothing but eat, belch and bred until they ate their swamps bare of plantlife and starved in mass so a few survivors could breed up the population again.
But in the end that's what he had to work with. Might as well get started. He got to his feet, took to the sky and came down near the edge of the swamplands and nearby one of the creatures. He reached down and grabbed it's head. With that he had a glimpse into it's mind. It was a simple thing of basic appetites and fears which concerned itself mostly with eating, keeping itself moist, finding mates and avoiding predators with enough memory to map a rough map of it's immediate surroundings. Still it was enough, the creature turned it's head up so that it's topmost eye could look upon Sauron's face. He pointed to a rock and calmly said "Go". Unheard but along with that command was the appropriate thoughts that the simple beast comprehended enough. The Hexacrawler turned to face it and began to crawl over to the stone.
Sauron spent the rest of the day trying to see what else he could order the thing to do. But while it did not show any resistance it could not do much with it. It could understand simple instructions relating to movement, eating and basic movements of it's body like wiggling it's tail or lifting it's right central leg or curing the toes on it's left rear foot but ideas such as picking up an object in it's mouth and not eating it were well beyond it's feeble mind. He'd have to work on that. Then again he ad all the time in the world.
Chapter Four (Day 1,954)
It had taken him a surprising amount of time to complete, even with his old power where he could lay down his hands on the ground and make stone rise from the ground and shape it as he willed. Never the less The Complex was completed. It was not a mighty fortress like Barad Dur was, but it would serve Sauron's purposes.
It was situated on an expanse of mostly barren plains in the foothills of mountains and was the size of a small town, though most of it's structures lacked roofs. It began a fair distance away up in the mountains where water fed into an aqueduct, which carried it into a large stone cistern. From there it flowed through clay pipes into a set of pens enclosed by four meter high stone walls. A variety of sluices were installed to regulate this flow as needed. There were 125 pens in total arranged in a roughly bow like shape. Most of them were square, twenty meters across and formed two rough triangles with five tiers. The first tier of each had 32 pens, the second 16, the third eight, the forth had four and the fifth had two. The second was circular and more than fourty meters in radius with a smaller pool with a gate on it's. Each pen had a small pond and soil where popballs and other such plants had taken root. A set of drains were in place to prevent overflow which emptied into culverts which sent waste water to a nearby valley. In addition there were a few unpenned garden plots with irrigation systems set up and twelve pens set aside.
In many ways this affair was crude, he had done much better on Arda. Even so there was an elegance to it and it could be operated by a single Maia of Aule. A more sophisticated version of it would have needed a workforce which would have largely rendered the setup redundant. Everything had been tested and it all worked as desired. Now it just needed to be put into working order. As such Sauron put on an odd harness and changed form, this time into a wolf. He'd considered doing this as a bat but that was just too awkward. In any case the lupine form did have a good clip. Soon enough he was at the swamp, he shifted back to his more comfortable elven form and set the harness down. It was mostly made from woven tuft tube shavings, but had a pair of ceramic jars. He filled them with water and in a few seconds found what he was looking for, a juvenile Hexacrawler. Hexacrawlers could be either mother or father and did not lay eggs, but like salamanders and frogs they gave birth to large numbers of aquatic larvae that that they abandoned to swim about for a few months before growing legs and walking out onto dry land. He picked up the squirming thing and put it into one of the pots, then he caught another, and another and another. Their was no shortage of them and as they had no predators on land (excluding the occasional oblivious elder) they offered no resistance.
Soon there was a dozen of them squirming in each jar and so he capped them off with a woven lid and ran back, arriving at one of the triangular banks of pens. Once he was back, he opened the jars and inspected their contents So far, so good. All of them were alive and so tossed each of them into a first tier pen. Three more trips saw all the base tier pens filled with a live hexacrawler, which took to their new home quite well.
The first stage of Sauron's Plan was done. Now the real work began.
Chapter Five (Day 2,066 to 2,068)
The Hexacrawler laid still on a bolder, feeling miserable. Up until recently it's life was mostly as good as it could get, not that it was much for reminiscing. It had dim memories of life in the swamp eating algae and decaying plant matter while avoiding the many larger things which it shared it's home with, growing it's six legs, crawling out onto land eating popballs before it came across a Red Grove, was bitten by a fish that carried it up into a dark fish with other hexacrawlers, then shaken about and released into the swamp which now had rocks around and was empty, not that it minded. It continued to eat, swim and grew. It saw no predators in the swamp and as it grew it began to belch and occasionally it saw that Red Grove up on the surrounding rocks. None of which overrode the instincts which had seen it through life, but two days ago the Red Grove appear, touched it on the head and a new thought came to it: go onto the rock in the middle of the pool and sit there. It did so and laid there not doing anything. At first it sat their content, then it got uncomfortable as the sun beat down on it's skin dried out, then discomfort gave way to pain and hunger. It saw cool shimmering water a few centimeters and wanted nothing more than to slip down and cool off. But it just could not seem to do it. There was always something in it's mind which always quashed any action of going down off the rock.
Then it heard a faint splash and saw some rippling in the pool's surface. Pain and hunger soon were mixed with Terror. It knew instinctively that Predators lived in underwater and occasionally came out onto land for a short distances and that it should dash for cover. Yet still it could not move from the rock. It heard a few strange murmerings and felt a few proddings. Then to it's surprise a mass of popballs was put in front of it's mouth, which it greedily ate. Then there were some strange sounds and with them an overwhelming compulsion to get off the rock and into the water for a good long soak. Over the next day it's skin softened an healed nicely as it returned to it's normal routine, which it continued the day after that with. As evening fell, it began to belch. It had heard other Hexacrawlers belching, but they had yet to come it's way. To a more sophisticated being it would have wondered as to why they had yet to show up, but Hexacrawler brains were nowhere near that complex. Especially since after a splash he saw another adult hexacrawler crawl up out of the water belching in reply. That put it's mind on other things.
All of this was observed by a lone humanoid figure which etched some notes on a clay tablet. Sauron was pleased with how Hexacrawlers Batch 1 Generation 1 Number 13 and 1/1/21 had done, even if he did not like manhandling the Amphiboids. They held up the best to prolonged sunlight exposure in his reckoning, though a few others had done alright as well. So far twelve hexacrawlers had died from drying out and eight more were on death's doorstep even after being let back into the water. Two more had kicked it before this experiment happened, but then again one of the control group did so as well. The corpses, the sickly and a few more that were not doing that well were simply removed from the complex. If the rejects lived or died he cared not, what mattered were the 32 success cases even if a few of them were damn close to the best of the rejects.
In any case in a few months time he'd have plenty of juveniles, from which he'd select 64 from which Batch 1 Generation 2 as well as half of Batch 2 Generation 1. They too would be subjected to the same dry spell and hopefully would perform better than their parents, though he did not get his hopes up on that just yet. The stupid things had no shortage of deficiencies, but their vulnerability to drying out was one which needed to be sorted out as soon as possible if something better was to come of them. But that was still a long way off. Sauron had always lacked the power over life that the Valar and Melkor had, he could not change it at will as he could dead materials. If he wanted to make something out of the Hexecrawlers, he'd have to do it The Hard Way.
