Deep below the curdled and scorched crustal wastelands of Ain-4, beneath even the fetid shade-swamps and crag bubblements there are deep tunnels and abandoned mine shafts left-over from the hey day of wildcatters and geological exploitation that ripped millions of tons of raw kiloov crystals and other riches from the uneasy bedrock of this world. Many of these places have been sealed-up, with now dim and whispery psi-casting warning signs and gaudy danger-tape that has mostly peeled away from the dank and mold encrusted walls. Few go this far down into the old sites any more.
It is said amongst the scrapmongers and scavenger-clans of the dustlands and crater-rimtowns both that there are
things that have made homes for themselves down amongst the alkaline pools and blackspace galleries and subsidance caverns.
Former slave-laborers were often left down below when the major geo-exploitation corporations pulled-out. This is one of the dirty little open secrets all who dwell upon Ain-4 know all too well. Most of those slaves died out, their alien physiologies were not able to adapt or cope with the harsh conditions deep below.
But some did survive.
Troggu and
Vomph and the horrid
Glingtish have become the stuff of urban legend and moralistic bed-time tales, having long ago displaced the
Vrilyu and Hlutrim-progeny as bogeys that go bump in the night. The ultra-poisonous
Garbler Fish have become a much sought after delicacy, despite the potent toxins saturating their flesh and the fact that they are the mutated tad-pole stage of a formerly intelligent species. Everyone knows of the tiny bands of
Pasquine and
Jerboans that all the Company Reps denied existed for decades before they burned down a string of settlements. Then there are the Filter Worms. One of the most indispensible unnatural resources upon Ain-4, the Filter Worms are the single most sought after free-range life-forms loose upon this world. They are living filtration systems. One modest-sized Filter Worm can keep a typical dome settlement or bubblefort livable for months, even longer if they are properly cared for, but who are we kidding?--this is Ain-4; nothing here has been maintained or properly cared for in centuries.
But worms and fish and rat-like pack-hunting pseudo-mammals aren't the only things down below in the black regions of the old tunnels.
One particular species has only lately been discovered, entirely through chance and happenstance. They are the
H'lannikari and they are the degenerate descendants of a failed colony of beings from a distant star. The H'lannikari are vaguely bat-like, but entirely wingless, flightless and extremely cannibalistic. Their long isolation in the deep regions has changed these once gentle, conscientious laborers and technicians. They have mutated, degenerated, become a new and awful thing unto themselves that only vaguely resembles what they once were. Like so many things down below the curdled, pock-marked and toxin-riddled crust of this dismal planet...
