#rainworld ancient

Ancient Civilization creates the iterators to solve the Big Problem, Acension

Takes too long, kills themselves

The Local Group consisting of

Spearmaster: Sharpened Cross

Artificer: Crimson Seethe

Hunter: Hiding of Malady

Gourmand: Larger Than Life

Survivor: Settles From The Discord

Monk: Passing Golden Leaves

Rivulet: Swirling Sea's Pearl

Saint: Abstract Failing Of One Rainbow

Seven Red Suns-Spear

No Significant Harassment-Hunter

Looks To The Moon-Rivulet

Sliver of Straws-Saint

Five Pebbles- Artificer

Secluded Instinct - Gourmand

Pleading Intellect - Survivor

Chasing Wind - Monk

Seven Red Suns: The Tinkerer

No Significant Harassment: The Healer

Five Pebbles: The Experiment

Looks To The Moon: The Diver

Sliver of Straws: The Martyr

Secluded Instinct: The Visionary

Pleading Intellect: The Scholar

Chasing Wind: The Pilot

Sharpened Cross

Crimson Seethe

Hiding Of Malady

Larger Than Life

Settles From The Discord

Passing Golden Leaves

Swirling Sea's Pearl

Abstract Failing Of One Rainbow

Larger Than Life had recently been wanting to expand care towards outer species, but being an iterator, it's impossible to be able to descend outside of his puppet chamber

The overseers seem to unnerve passersbys as well, and the scavengers only attack them

One day, he saw an abandoned slugpup, barely a few cycles old, mewing desperately for their mother who clearly couldn't care for them

Larger Than Life used his overseers to guide them safely to his iterator can and began taking care of them, teaching them good values and to live in harmony with other species

When they were old enough, they went out to begin communicating and exploring with other species, albeit they were a bit awkward to other species due to their iterator tendencies, they weren't harmful

Because of Larger Than Life and The Visionary's work, they were able to construct a safe enviornment for the species to live atop of away from the heavy rain

Many cycles later, Crimson Seethe had reported to the local group that she had a severe issue. Her children had been infested with lizards, centipedes, and other such creatures, all attempting to use their cans as shelter from the rain after seeing Larger Than Life. No matter what she did, she could not rid them of the infestation and they were suffering.

Soon, their structures began to deteriorate and communications shut off until their cans collapsed.

The infestation then moved to Crimson Seethe, and although her can was larger, the sheer amount of them was overwhelming

She required urgent assistance to rid herself of them before she took drastic measures.

Many of the iterators sidelined their work on the Big Problem to assist her in this, spending ..many resources towards this project, though it'd take several, several cycles before a solution was viable.

During this time, the iterator siblings Settles From The Discord and Passing Golden Leaves had begun to de-isolate. Up until now, they had rarely communicated with the local group unless regarding what they believed were emergency omens from the heavens about the end of times. They were technically correct, although early.

Settles From The Discord had met an older slugcat named The Scholar, an ex elder tribes member for the slugcat tribe who decided to "take a stroll."

Settles From The Discord tried to explain that now was not a good time to be around this area and that he should evacuate himself and any other slugcats that came with far, far away towards Sharpened Cross. The slugcat only shook its head, stating he was by himself, that he wanted to enjoy an adventure for his last cycles. Settles From The Discord took empathy on the creature and allowed it to stay in the safety of his iterator can, though the slugcat was determined to take time outside, even when there could be predators lurking.

After some cycles, Settles From The Discord understood the wisdom the slugcat was trying to give him, wisdom that only a mortal creature like himself could teach. So he finally started to reach out to the others and join in the research to save Crimson Seethe.

Passing Golden Leaves had kept connection to his brother through this. Up until recently, he had been solely focused on solving the Big Problem, even when the announcements from Crimson Seethe came through, he couldn't trust it or himself.

Seeing his older brother go into work to help the others iterators, however, inspired him to do what he could. After some research, he had the idea of being able to target the creatures from the air, though it'd be complicated and take a skillful, intelligent small creature to operate. Lucky for him, the older slugcat's daughter had already come out looking for him and found her way to Passing Golden Leaves' can. Excitedly, Passing Golden Leaves explained the idea and plan to her. For whatever reason, the slugcat agreed to go along with it and after some training, went out to combat to lead away many of the creatures back to the wild, killing the rest with explosive spears and such. The Pilot.

During the whole commotion, sometime before the Pilot came down, Crimson Seethe had been developing help for herself out of materials from the corpses and collapsed iterator cans. She had somehow managed to start the rot and revived the body of a slugcat, creating The Experiment, a half rot, half slugcat abomination. Creating this, however, created a second issue on top of her animal infestation- The rot.

In a private channel, she embarrassingly turned to Sharpened Cross and Hiding of Malady for assistance. By this time, Hiding of Malady had finally created The Healer, a helping slugcat who could spawn out attacking neurons and pearls. Their journey is far from Crimson Seethe so they need many pearls to get past tolls. His neurons are able to eradicate anything, including rot areas, killing it instantly but not curing it, meaning he wouldn't be able to save The Experiment, only clean up what was left around Crimson Seethe. One of the neurons was also coded with improved defensive methods which led to Crimson being able to burn out and destroy anything unwanted in or around her compound. The Healer's journey took a long time, so it was cycles after the Pilot left before the Healer could start destroying the rot.

When Healer came home, however, most of their body had been injured and infected with the rot, their broken cries echoing through Malady's compound. Hiding of Malady couldn't handle seeing their own creation in this state and made a deal with a echo residing in their compound to trade their own health for the Healer's. The echo warned that this would be irreversible, but the idea of watching their own pup died was worse than any consequence they thought.

Meanwhile, just across a few cycles of a journey, Sharpened Cross had just finished their creation. Well, they'd had them finished for a while during Healer's journey, but Crimson had already been repaired and was currently undergoing grief and finally processing her children's death (through anger).

The Tinkerer, Sharpened Cross' slugcat, had been adopted from the same tribe as the Pilot, though somewhat experimented on.

Up until now, it was very difficult for the other iterators to understand what Sharpened Cross was saying most of the time, his messages coming out in the written language of the ancestors and some modern scavengers. Giving the Tinkerer the orb of communication was now their best form of verbal communication between the other iterators, though it was somewhat funny hearing a slugcat meow in warped iteratian (?, whatever their noises are) scientific research. The Tinkerer was also a very good adventurer and soon clung to Hiding of Malady's messenger, which is how Sharpened Cross found out about Malady's action, soon alerting the rest of the iterators, now starting the new era. (Passing Golden Leaves: I FUCKING CALLED IT)

Many, many cycles later, The Diver was a stray slugcat ordered by an echo to search out Swirling Sea's Pearl's chamber to assist her before disappearing suddenly, forcing Diver to wake up in a shelter.

When reaching Swirling Sea's Pearl's chamber, she confesses that shes been worried about Sharpened Cross as he's an older model iterator who is somewhat close towards Hiding Of Malady's can. Though she feels silly for it, she'd still like the Diver to check. If there is rot, Sharpened wouldn't be able to sense it and by the time they do, it'd be too late.

The Diver has to traverse all the way to Sharpened Cross and finds rot dangerously near the core and has to dispose of it

Using Tinkerer's and some of the other slugcats help, they help fix up Sharpened Cross' sensors

By now, many of the old slugcats have either died or left back to their tribe, leaving only Tinkerer, Healer, Diver, and Experiment left. They shared information often, as the group still worked to cure Hiding Of Malady, though Sharpened and Malady were certain it was impossible and were beginning to come to peace with it.

The last iterator of the local group, Abstract Failing Of One Rainbow had been the face of the local group for work towards the Big Problem. During everything, Abstract has worked on the Big Problem, whilst still keeping daily connection to the other iterators through their messengers and periodically, the actual radio signs they send. They are extremely intelligent and have written many pearl articles that have helped their research to supporting the messengers, so they're still beloved though distant and serious.

In secrecy, Abstract Failing Of One Rainbow has been building and developing a slugcat of their own, The Martyr, the solution to the Big Problem they'd been working tirelessly at for cycles. They'd been slowing testing the ascension ability of the slugcat on meager creatures, not wanting to push the slug too hard and still understand the personality of it. The slugcat seems.. eager to ascend creatures. When faced with the choice between the same species, one sick and one not, they ascended the sick one immediately. To allow this thing in the wild could mean bad for the ecosystem depending on what the slug thought of as "sick."

One cycle, Martyr had managed to escape containment, of course setting off many alarms which auto triggered distress messages to all iterators. A form of the triple affirmative, but the solution is unstable and dangerous and must be captured immediately with caution.