Proxima the Broodseeker

“The stars have sent their hunter. The old gods merely mistook her for another corpse.” ✨

(Vensaku)

There are many things in Fallgrim that men have learned to fear.

The Grisha.

The Immaculate.

The Revenants that wear the flesh of the dead.

The monstrous things that crawl from places where no living man should venture.

And then there is Proxima.

She does not belong among them.

She does not belong in Fallgrim.

Perhaps she does not even belong to this world.

The people who have encountered her have struggled to decide what she actually is. A warrior? A hunter? An invader? A construct? A woman encased in some forgotten suit of armor? A creature wearing the shape of a woman?

Even her name offers no answer.

Proxima.

A strange name for a strange being. A name that, by an almost impossible coincidence, resembles the name humanity gives to Proxima Centauri, the closest known star to the Sun.

Perhaps it is coincidence.

Perhaps it isn't.

Because everything else about Proxima suggests that she came from somewhere far beyond the world of Fallgrim.

And whatever brought her here, she did not come to conquer.

She came to hunt.

The Stranger Beneath the Metal

Nobody knows what Proxima looked like before she became the Broodseeker.

In fact, it is questionable whether anyone has ever seen her true face.

The armor she wears is unlike anything found in Fallgrim. It is not merely forged metal. It is grafted metal, fused into an artificial shell around her body as though the armor were simultaneously clothing, weapon, life-support system, and second skin.

Her helmet completely conceals her head.

Even the lower portion resembles no conventional helmet. A vaguely humanoid face has been incorporated into its structure, creating the unsettling impression that the armor itself possesses a face.

It does not look like something a blacksmith made.

It looks like something that was grown, assembled, and surgically attached.

Pieces of dark metal overlap her shoulders and chest. Reinforced plates protect her limbs. Strange seams run throughout the armor, and portions of it appear almost biological in their construction.

There are no recognizable heraldic markings.

No kingdom's crest.

No religious symbol.

No sigil identifying a known faction.

Nothing that says Fallgrim.

Her weapons are equally alien.

The Triarch Repeater, with its carved bone and grafted metal reinforcements, is unlike any firearm or weapon known to the inhabitants of Fallgrim. Its very construction hints at origins somewhere beyond their understanding.

And then there is her biosampler.

A device that, to an ordinary observer, might look like nothing more than a cruel instrument.

To Proxima, it is something considerably more important.

It is an instrument of identification.

A means of reading biology.

Blood.

Memory.

Thought.

Identity.

She does not ask what you are.

She samples you.

The First Arrival

How Proxima arrived in the world of Mortal Shell remains unknown.

There was no ship witnessed crossing the sky.

No great portal opened above Fallgrim.

No army descended from the heavens.

Instead, she simply appeared.

Perhaps she fell.

Perhaps she was deliberately deployed.

Perhaps she arrived through some technology that the people of this world could never comprehend.

Or perhaps she was sent through something resembling the Hadern's gateways—some ancient mechanism capable of crossing impossible distances.

Whatever happened, Proxima arrived alone.

And almost immediately, she began searching.

Not for shelter.

Not for food.

Not for allies.

Not for civilization.

She was looking for a specific organism.

Something called the Hexapod.

Her mission was extraordinarily simple:

Find it.

Contain it.

Kill it before it matures.

There was no hatred in her voice when she spoke of it.

That was perhaps the most disturbing part.

The Hexapod was not an enemy in the way a soldier thinks of an enemy.

It was a biological threat.

A specimen.

A potential infestation.

A thing that must not be permitted to reproduce.

To Proxima, killing it was not vengeance.

It was containment.

And Proxima understood containment very well.

A Soldier From Somewhere Else

Her manner of speaking immediately separated her from everyone else.

She does not speak like the people of Fallgrim.

She does not possess their expressions, their idioms, their assumptions, or even their understanding of social interaction.

Her speech sounds almost military.

Precise.

Clinical.

Detached.

But there is something underneath it that makes it stranger than ordinary military speech.

She speaks as though she is translating her thoughts into a language that wasn't designed for them.

When she refers to another person, she sometimes speaks of them almost as though they belong to another species.

“Your kin.”

Not your people.

Not your kind.

Your kin.

The distinction seems important to her.

She doesn't quite see herself as one of you.

And perhaps she isn't.

Her first interaction with you demonstrates just how different her culture is.

Proxima does not bother with introductions.

She does not sit down and ask questions.

She simply uses her biosampler.

The instrument pierces flesh.

And then she learns.

She probes your mind.

She examines your blood.

She studies your biological composition.

And when she determines that your blood is clean, something changes.

You are no longer an unknown variable.

You are useful.

You can understand her.

And, more importantly, you might be capable of helping her.

So she tells you about the Hexapod.

She explains that it cannot be allowed to mature.

She asks for assistance.

And you agree.

Perhaps because you are fascinated.

Perhaps because you recognize the danger.

Perhaps because, in Fallgrim, helping a stranger hunt an abomination barely registers as unusual anymore.

Proxima simply accepts your decision.

No gratitude.

No emotional display.

Only acknowledgement.

The mission continues.

The Broodseeker

The name Broodseeker was not necessarily given to Proxima by the people of Fallgrim.

It may have been her designation.

It may have been a translation.

It may even describe her profession.

Because Proxima is not simply a hunter.

She is a hunter of broods.

Things that reproduce.

Things that spread.

Things that mature into something worse.

Her mission against the Hexapod suggests that she may have been trained specifically for this purpose.

She understands biological development.

She recognizes eggs.

She understands incubation.

She knows what an ovum looks like.

She can determine whether something is alive from traces most people would overlook.

When she discovers the spoiled ovum, she immediately understands what it means.

The growth is—germinating.

The Hexapod is close.

To Proxima, the discovery is not mysterious.

It is confirmation.

The creature is progressing according to a lifecycle she already understands.

And that raises perhaps the most terrifying possibility of all.

She has encountered something like the Hexapod before.

Maybe not this exact creature.

But something related.

Something from wherever she came from.

The Hexapod Was Running

There is another clue.

A small note found within the area suggests something extraordinary:

The monster did not come here willingly.

It came here to hide.

From something.

Something that frightened it badly enough to abandon whatever environment it came from and seek refuge somewhere else.

And who was hunting it?

Proxima.

That changes everything.

At first, she appears to be an outsider who has come to Fallgrim to hunt an unknown monster.

But perhaps the truth is the opposite.

Perhaps the Hexapod invaded Fallgrim to escape her.

Perhaps this world was never part of the original conflict.

Perhaps Fallgrim was simply the hiding place.

The Hexapod may have believed that it could disappear among the horrors of this dying world.

It may have believed that whatever pursued it would never find it here.

It was wrong.

Proxima followed.

Across impossible distances.

Across worlds.

Across whatever barrier separates her homeland from Fallgrim.

And now she intends to finish what she started.

The Triarch Repeater

There is one possession Proxima treats differently from everything else.

Her lost weapon.

The Triarch Repeater.

When she searches for it, her behavior reveals something important.

She isn't simply looking for a weapon because she needs something to fight with.

The Repeater means something to her.

Its construction is unmistakably strange.

Carved bone.

Grafted metal.

Technology that seems both primitive and impossibly advanced.

The weapon looks like the product of a civilization that never developed along the same technological path as Fallgrim.

It is not simply manufactured.

It is assembled from incompatible things.

Bone and metal.

Organic material and machinery.

Life and technology.

Just like Proxima herself.

When you ask her what would happen if she died, she does not answer with fear.

She tells you there are contingencies.

A strange word.

A military word.

A procedural word.

As though death is merely another possibility that her people have already accounted for.

For most people, death is the end.

For Proxima, apparently, it is not.

The Contingencies

The truth is revealed later.

And it is perhaps the clearest evidence that Proxima is not human.

After her battle with the Hexapod goes disastrously wrong, Proxima is found wounded.

Badly wounded.

The hunter has finally become the hunted.

She had faced the creature alone, believing she could contain it.

She was wrong.

The Hexapod overwhelmed her.

You arrive before it can finish her.

And Proxima survives.

But barely.

As you carry her away, Proxima asks you a question.

Not about the creature.

Not about her injuries.

Not about whether she will survive.

Instead, she asks:

“What do your kin do with their dead?”

It is an unsettling question.

But the answer she gives afterward is even more unsettling.

Where she comes from, her body would not simply be buried.

Her grafted armor would be reclaimed.

Her memories would be extracted.

And those memories would be preserved—

for her future kin.

This is what she meant by contingencies.

Death does not necessarily mean disappearance.

The body is equipment.

The armor is valuable.

The memories are information.

The experiences of the dead are inherited by those who come after them.

Perhaps her people preserve the memories of their warriors.

Perhaps they upload them into successors.

Perhaps they implant those memories into newborn members of their species.

Perhaps the armor itself carries the memories.

Or perhaps Proxima's "future kin" are literally created using the remains of their predecessors.

We don't know.

And Proxima never explains.

But the implication is chilling.

A Civilization Beyond Fallgrim

Imagine Proxima's homeland.

A place where biology and machinery have become inseparable.

Where warriors do not simply wear armor.

They graft it.

Where weapons are constructed from bone and metal.

Where memory can be extracted from the dead.

Where the remains of fallen soldiers are reclaimed so that their knowledge can be passed to future generations.

Where a soldier can be sent across worlds to hunt a biological organism.

A civilization like that would have almost nothing in common with Fallgrim.

To the people of this world, Proxima would be incomprehensible.

To Proxima, Fallgrim may be equally incomprehensible.

The strange rituals.

The Shells.

The Rot.

The Vats.

The Immaculates.

The Revered.

The cycle of death and resurrection.

Perhaps she has spent much of her time trying to determine whether this world is even biologically stable.

Her strange behavior suddenly makes sense.

She doesn't stare because she's fascinated.

She's studying.

She isn't emotionless because she lacks feelings.

She has simply been trained to prioritize mission parameters above them.

She isn't cruel when she probes someone with her biosampler.

She genuinely considers it a normal procedure.

And when she calls humans "your kin," she isn't being insulting.

She is being scientifically accurate.

Because she does not consider herself one of them.

Why Proxima Came Alone

There is another question.

If Proxima came from such a technologically advanced civilization, where is everyone else?

Why did she come alone?

Perhaps because she was specifically selected.

Perhaps because the mission was too dangerous.

Perhaps because sending an entire expedition after the Hexapod would have been unnecessary.

Or perhaps something happened.

Maybe Proxima was separated from her people.

Maybe the same event that brought the Hexapod to Fallgrim also stranded her here.

Maybe the Hexapod escaped during some catastrophic incident.

And perhaps Proxima followed it through whatever doorway existed between their worlds.

One hunter.

One prey.

One world caught between them.

That would explain why Proxima has no interest in returning home until her mission is complete.

She cannot leave.

Not yet.

Not while the Hexapod remains alive.

Proxima and You

Despite her strange nature, Proxima slowly begins to trust you.

Not in the ordinary sense.

She doesn't suddenly become warm.

She doesn't start talking about her upbringing.

She doesn't remove her helmet and reveal a beautiful face beneath it.

She doesn't become sentimental.

Instead, her trust manifests in practical ways.

She stops probing you.

She allows you to stand closer to her.

She shares information.

She lets you handle equipment.

She allows you to accompany her into dangerous territory.

Most importantly, she stops treating you as an unknown organism.

You have become something more.

An ally.

Perhaps even a member of the mission.

And that distinction means more to Proxima than she is capable of expressing.

Because Proxima understands loyalty differently from the people of Fallgrim.

She comes from a culture where memories survive their owners.

Where dead soldiers continue serving the living.

Where the knowledge of one generation becomes the weapon of another.

To Proxima, an ally is not simply someone who fights beside you.

An ally becomes part of the information you carry.

Part of the memories you preserve.

Part of what survives.

The Woman Beneath the Helmet

There is almost certainly a woman beneath the armor.

But what that means is uncertain.

She may have once looked completely human.

She may have looked nothing like a human.

She may be humanoid because her species evolved along a similar path.

Or perhaps the armor itself is translating her appearance into something recognizable.

Even her voice raises questions.

The unusual phrasing.

The clinical vocabulary.

The strange pauses.

The way she speaks about blood.

The way she describes memories.

The way she talks about death.

Everything suggests someone who was raised in a civilization fundamentally different from yours.

And yet, occasionally, something slips through.

When she sees a corpse that has suffered terribly, she says:

“It is unfair what has been done to you.”

That isn't the language of a machine.

That's compassion.

Brief.

Buried.

Almost hidden.

But undeniably there.

Then she follows it immediately with:

“But containment must be enforced.”

There is Proxima in a single sentence.

She can recognize suffering.

She can feel sympathy.

But she will still complete her mission.

The Battle With the Hexapod

Eventually, Proxima finds what she has been seeking.

The Hexapod.

The creature she crossed worlds to destroy.

The monster she has tracked through unfamiliar lands.

The organism she has refused to let mature.

She enters the confrontation alone.

Perhaps she believes she can do it.

Perhaps she has no choice.

Perhaps her training has taught her never to rely upon another unless absolutely necessary.

The Hexapod attacks.

Proxima fights.

Her grafted armor withstands the creature's assaults.

The Triarch Repeater tears into its flesh.

Her biosampler becomes another instrument of war.

For a moment, the Broodseeker appears to have the advantage.

Then the creature overwhelms her.

The hunter falls.

Her armor is damaged.

Her weapon is lost.

Her body lies broken.

And for perhaps the first time since arriving in Fallgrim, Proxima faces something her civilization prepared her for but could not completely prevent: failure.

Then you arrive.

The Hexapod retreats.

Proxima survives.

But something has changed.

She can no longer pretend that she can complete this mission alone.

The Bad Deal

You carry Proxima away.

Her armor is damaged.

Her movements are weak.

Her mission is unfinished.

And yet, even now, she does not speak about herself.

She asks you what your people do with their dead.

It is almost as though she is preparing him for the possibility that she might not survive.

Then she explains what would happen to her body back home.

The armor reclaimed.

The memories extracted.

The knowledge preserved.

For her future kin.

It is the closest Proxima ever comes to explaining where she comes from.

And somehow, it only raises more questions.

What are her people?

Where is her home?

How many generations have they existed?

What does "future kin" mean?

Is Proxima herself carrying memories inherited from previous warriors?

Is the woman inside the armor entirely her own person?

Could another being someday inherit her memories?

And most importantly—

How many other Proximas are there?

The Final Mystery

Perhaps the greatest mystery surrounding Proxima is not where she came from.

It is why she was sent.

Someone knew about the Hexapod.

Someone understood what it could become.

Someone decided that it could not be allowed to mature.

And someone possessed the technology necessary to send a hunter across worlds to stop it.

That suggests that Proxima's arrival was not an accident.

She was deployed.

Her mission was deliberate.

The Hexapod was considered dangerous enough to justify crossing whatever enormous distance separated their home from Fallgrim.

And if the Hexapod is only one member of its species...

Then perhaps Proxima's mission is larger than anyone realizes.

Maybe the creature is not simply an isolated monster.

Maybe it is a brood organism.

Maybe its maturity would produce offspring.

Maybe those offspring would spread.

Maybe they would consume ecosystems.

Maybe they would infect other worlds.

Perhaps Proxima isn't hunting one creature.

Perhaps she is preventing an interplanetary infestation.

And Fallgrim just happened to be where the creature tried to hide.

Proxima's Legacy

The people of Fallgrim may eventually forget the details.

They may never learn the truth.

Some might remember her as an armored woman.

Others as a strange warrior with a bizarre weapon.

Some might call her a monster.

Others might call her a savior.

A few may insist she came from the stars.

They would probably be laughed at.

But perhaps the truth is stranger than any of them realize.

Proxima isn't a goddess.

She isn't a Shell.

She isn't an Immaculate.

She isn't one of Fallgrim's horrors.

She is something else.

A soldier from beyond the known world.

A warrior whose body is fused with technology.

A hunter carrying memories that may not entirely belong to her.

A woman whose civilization has learned how to preserve the dead.

A stranger who calls humanity “your kin.”

And a hunter pursuing a monster that may have crossed worlds simply to escape her.

She came to Fallgrim with one purpose.

Find the Hexapod.

Prevent its maturation.

Contain the threat.

And return home.

But Fallgrim has a way of ruining simple plans.

Perhaps Proxima will never return.

Perhaps her people will never know what happened to her.

Perhaps the armor will eventually be discovered abandoned somewhere among the ruins.

Perhaps someone will find her Triarch Repeater centuries later and wonder what kind of civilization could have created it.

Or perhaps Proxima will survive.

Perhaps she will finally kill the Hexapod.

And when she stands over its corpse, she will realize something terrible:

The Hexapod was not the only thing that crossed the boundary between worlds.

Something else came through with it.

Something Proxima did not expect.

Something even her people may not have known existed.

And suddenly, her mission was never about one creature.

It was about making sure nothing from her world ever learns how to survive in this one.

Because Proxima the Broodseeker may not be the invader.

She may be the thing that was sent to clean up after one.

And somewhere beneath that impossible grafted helmet, behind the strange metallic face, she carries the memories of a civilization that exists far beyond Fallgrim's dying skies.

She may be alien.

She may be human.

She may be something entirely different.

But one thing is certain.

Proxima did not come here by accident.

And whatever world she came from...

it is looking back.

(MilanovicMihael)

(Thumbnail Art by SpiritDraws_S)

Content Warnings: Violence, death, hunting, and her backstory. User discretion is advised!

I've hit context but I want to continue my Rp! Am I out of luck?

•   No my friend, you're not! You just have to do a little bit of surgery.

•   This is the chat transplant method:

•   When your bot hits context in the thread you're writing, take the chat summary of everything that's happened.

•   Remember this should be the highlights.
  Think of it like a DBZ recap "Last time on Dragon Ball Z..."

•   You're going to paste this into a new chat with the same bot.

•   Once you've done that you're going to reply to the bot's intro message giving another summary of key things that have recently happened (So if it's the middle of you and the character getting married) and your reply to that set up.

•   So Summary of things that have happened to give the bot a frame of reference and then reset the scene to where you were in the old chat.

•   This works pretty well! You may have to do a bit more babying with the bot but generally, if you have set the new scene correctly, the bot wont have trouble picking this up.

•   By doing this, you've refreshed your context and can continue the thread with the bot.

^ Thanks to m00nprincess/FunFatale for this!