The Keeper of Tomorrows

A Blog of All Tomorrows, belonging to the growing fandom favoured "Mourners" and other characters in the more close canon. Art and drabbles will rest here. May it remain safe and pure. Forge Dog.

[angerlopestomorrow]

You dare approach a delegate of the Mourners.

[patiusarchivist]

So I have one question did your version of intelligent descendants of the mantelopes did classified each post human species across the galaxy based on how useful they are as well as the amount of racism between each other also I want a much longer detailed length about your answer on this question and yes I'm so sorry be speaking so much by directly apologized

The Mourners found the other human species here and there but never interacted with them, merely watched to see if they are of benevolence or not. Moreso than anything, they were looked over for any Qu interaction or recent activity before passing over them. In the early times of the empire, the Mourners are 125% in hunting down their transformers. It is when the other species started to be uplifted by their own merits and join into alliances that the Mourners became involved. They closed the massive gaps between the species and became the 'parent' more or less as the ruling power, introducing them to their long history and situation. Just in time when the Gravitals were starting to become a threat that the Mourners weren't allowing.

They are caught before they became a real super power with their gravity weapons overpowering everyone.

The social intermingling between species with racism and whatnot is just expected and overtime overcome with the help of the wise and culling of lacking mercy on the Mourner's part.

If anything, Mourners don't play with stupid. They had a early existence of being animals and remembering even before that, they are not having any crap from anyone.

[angerlopestomorrow]

Mourners are like angry capybaras; everyone seems able to connect with one, and be aggressively protected. Until you hurt or aggro one...then it is on.

[angerlopestomorrow]

Aggressive mourn-singing in the distance

[angerlopestomorrow]

YALL THOUGHT I WAS GONE FOREVER!?

Have a Wi'lli, a Forsaken freelancer. Formerly a fighter pilot before crashing landing on a Killer Folk world, surviving the wilderness and locals until a Mourner ship appeared to retrieve their missing herdmates. Since then, the rush of it all awakened an adventurer out of the mantelope.

And yes, he made friends with the local Killer Folk and got one in his adventure squad.

[angerlopestomorrow]

Colonial Assault

The compressed gravitial bombardment hammered on Ol' Remda, the black ships of such offensively obtuse design loomed in flotillas of threes. The ominous blinking red sensors like tiny eyes on leviathans, blind but hateful, all the same as they flattened facilities and homes with not a care, a mountain crumbling and crushed more innocence. Even as one of the most pacifist communities to the killer-thumbed ghal'hur, they refused to yield. A pacifist ghal'hur was truly an inward community and defense their prime, as their single-minded attackers learned by the sudden starboard explosion from ground-to-air cannons.

Rapid unloading of mass-reactive munition like oversized revolvers; the thunderous reports filling the air more than this alien assault. However, the drowning horror wasn't attrition.

That one wounded ship mere leaned inward like a wounded beast, and like all beasts, their rage focused on the one who dealt it. Red poured from those helm sensors, three massive spotlights upon the hillside defence - seeing the ghal'hur militia making a hasty run in clear awareness of what comes next. Hardly a sound before the great weapon crumbled to gravity's betrayal. The whine of its frame twisting and piercing into its last belt, causing the entire weapon to explode and consume several of the slower soldiers!

With all of the destruction, the flotilla itself was a disturbing silence. Looming death commanded by things that renounced all things flesh in the desire of something grand and cold. Orb-shaped near automatons housing the recrafted brains of those who were before; Gravitals.

Powerful, wielding the hatefully remaking of their ancestor and Great Enemy's technology to their own hubris.

<< Structural Integrity Compromise: Minimal. Shields depleted, recharging. >>

<< Prime, contact detected.>>

<< Coordinates?>>

There was a momentary pause. A tactical ineffective pause.

<< 67 Kilometers.>>

<<Confirm.>>

<<Strategic Superiority revising. Contact->>

The control center suddenly flashed into a chaos of electronic distortion as a great rupture of sonic interference bounced through the whole vessel. The Gravital vessel was cumbersome in appearance but its disturbing capability never ceased as it moved in a swift ascension, intercepted by just-as-fast projectiles hitting its anti-gravity repulsors.

The ship rippled again by another blanket of high-frequency sound waves from the appearance of another vessel; a great black orca-like vessel followed by schools of different smaller castes; from a handful of battle cruisers to many more frigates and destroyers under the belly of the mother carrier.

<< The Interlopers.>>

That was the last center-mind report to the flotilla commanding unit before the destroyer was sundered from back to stern to bow by the sword of thermal energy hissed by the great carrier's main weapon. The failing systems saw the Gravital vessel hanging a moment before a short barrage of compressed sonic torpedoes atomized the thick-hulled vessel and its users.

Aboard the carrier, standing in the center of his bridge while operations officers hum in distorted unity of their vessel's controls, the Chambermaster of the Dirge's Tome clicked his teeth together once. Whiskers flickering in contained disgust. Since the report from the Whispers' inquisitions, the Mourner Council has been adamant about crippling this new threat.

The Sixteen Great Fleets were scattered across the empire to inform the client-races and prepare them. This was not the time of reclusion and selfish pretense of technologies in a manner that could spill the doom of the empire in all. As the Chambermaster looked at the destruction wrought in the four colonies before this one, he desired one thing - total annihilation and humility to these treacherous Gravitals.

[angerlopestomorrow]

Howdy! I’m really in love with your Mourners! I have 2 questions

-Can I use your Mourners in my headcanon?

-Can I use them as profile pictures on various social media?

Heyo ello, I am glad you enjoy them. You can both! Just pass a little credit my way of these collective grumps. Not like I get any money or anything for them in the realm of fan enjoyments; I would like people to know where this little 'subspecies' come from in the fandom!

[angerlopestomorrow]

Hey.

[Forsaken civilian waving with his hardlight collar]

[angerlopestomorrow]

There will be more Mourners and other All Tomorrows things soon, just been distracted with IRL. Thank you all who have been following and enjoying the content so far! If you have any questions, just throw them down to the Taker-of-Queries. He's a good listener.

[angerlopestomorrow]

A Mourner and Forsaken

Even with the inevitable caste and mental differences, the Forsaken are a respected and cared-for 'species' of the Mantelopes' evolved descendants. While they are more pure in terms of the Mourners' more personally-modified bodies and reclamation of functions, the Forsaken - the collective name to the many subspecies rediscovered and elevated from their feral doom - are still functional on a social level.

Compared to the Mourners, the Forsaken are more simple in culture and ambitions. They see nothing more than to live and the peace of work, enduring and sleep among their community. It is a simplicity that the Mourners respect and almost envy in their own heated view of life.

In that note of contrasting kindreds, they are fiercely protected by law and bodies under the Mourner Empire. To ill-treat a Forsaken is a crime that is more often committed by other Posthuman races and each time, it was a grave offence corrected.

Of course, even in their simple ways, there is always an exceptional Forsaken who is smarter or more malevolent than others. Most Forsaken are seemingly unaware of their past situation and simply live on happily with their lot. Then there are those who experience the same existential crisis and horror that inflicted many first-generation Forsaken and shaped the Mourners so profoundly. Those later generations react in many ways as one would expect.

One such Forsaken risen a suicidal rebellion in hopes of 'ending their pain' in an event called the 'Last Cry' that changed the Mourners' already elevated concerns in their uplifting projects. Despite the sad antagonist's damage to the empire during its middle-100s, their body was memorialized and emtombed on the Mourners' First Shrine World.

Since then, the herds of Forsaken already absorbed were watched over the Empire and tended to ensure their simple lives were comfortable and respected for all of their possible suffering and laborer work already committed to the greater stellar empire.

The big siblings tending to their youngers in hopes, maybe one day - when their sworn vengeance was finally given, all of their spirits may rest in true peace.

[angerlopestomorrow]

The Mourners' Composition of War: Armour Pattern - Infantry

The Mourners' armour/barding appear highly complicated and detailed but in truth, have a simplistic start. From its chest-harness and faulding, telescopic armour fold out to cover the body in distinctive serrated plating over typically a zero-g undersuit.

The helmet itself is a separate device that is armour as much as 'heart' to the many capabilities that it is capable of. Typically, it have a familiarity to Qu facial shape as a daemon thing of fear that strike an near instinctive fear in many Mourners during the early age of unification and the rare moments of separation between the herds.

Despite their single-minded hatred, Mourners are still people and there are herds who wish to let go and live. The greater power of their empire disallows in the belief; if they let go, then their momentum will falter. Those who break away from the Great Herd is no longer of the Eternal War and exiled, stricken and forgotten by the greater public. It is only by the Third Civil War did they renounce from genocide, the Song of Forsaken Release composed.

Over the growing technological strength, the Infantry pattern remain the foundation to the other specialized variants. From its surprising light but resilient material to the adaptability even as self-defensive protection to the martially-competent emissaries and civilian militia.

[moosethren]

These guys have become my favorite thing to doodle now. Best result today. Think I settled on an actual appearance for this guy too; even though I hate drawing braids HFHF

Based on @patiusarchivist ‘s mourners. 

[moosethren]

Doodled a quick Mourner; it’s sloppy work but I’ve wanted to for a while now but can never find the focus/time to properly draw.

Mourner credit to @patiusarchivist, I just love their idea of mantilopes becoming Mourners despite everything they went through. Can they be scruffy and beardy? No idea. xD

Mantilopes are from the book All Tomorrows, by C.M. Kösemen.

[patiusarchivist]

The Whisper of Silent Ruin stepped over the last of these interlopers. Talons curling in an oppressive grasp on its skull and between the shoulder blades, the tips cutting hardy flesh. The dark skin radiated against the padded sole of the Mourner's former hooves. Whiskers curling around its thick neck in a threatening taut, feeling the vibrations of its seething curses while its long staff-like rifle was held aloft.

It took a moment to feel its vocalizations and adapt into his specialized brain, then with a offhandish strength turned the creature's head off the dirt. Snout towards its triangular ear before with disturbing accuracy, spoke its tongue.

<<Squirm anymore and I will crush your skull like a rotten fruit. I have questions and you will answer them according. Resist and it will be of pain, do you understand?>>

The creature, another fallen cousin of a far-spanned species and perhaps the closest to their mutual ancestor, froze. It did not expect its own voice to speak to it and the smell of fear was more ripe than defiant anger. It took a moment before making a motion.

<<Do you understand?>>

<<...Yes.>>

<<Good. First, tell me why you stalk these Qu-tainted halls?>>

<<...To Ascend like the Others.>>

[patiusarchivist]

General Mourner Body Structure

The overall stance and visual aid of @saltybean03

The Mourners have remarkably changed very little in their evolution, whether it was by some cruel stability by the Qu or their own gene-manipulations to keep themselves in physical memory. They have grown taller and predatory qualities to their own herbivore-like appearances. From the pronounced fangs and canines to the clawed fingers that were mere hooves before, the Mourners are omnivores. Their stomachs regained tolerance to meat consumption and later implemented mourner-made intestine bacteria to further gain nutrients.

Mourners' disturbingly long limbs enable them to move comfortably on quadrupedal locomotion. They find it culturally demeaning and only perform such things privately, resorting in the former Mantelopes to take a somewhat swooped gait when walking on their back legs. With the layers of clothes they typically wear, their arms are normally folded to give the illusion of shorter forelimbs.

Hands have an appearance to them. While normally of the thumb being a closer neighbour to the index finger, the Mourners' thumbs are further behind the wrist and give off the appearance of longer hands than they actually are. With the use of their 'palms' and bending wrists, they can still grasp onto items with mild indexterous difficulty. For finer motor skills, the Mourners make use of biotic attachments or robotics.

Their 'whiskers' have grown into their distinctive length and noticeable flexibility, moved by nerves that share with their tooth roots. It is highly advised not to grab it, especially in a rough manner. Both are due to their sensitivity and cultural respect. Snatching at them is a sign of extreme disrespect and wanting of violence. Some have been noted to have the strength to strangle individuals among the military caste, perhaps by use of further fleshshaper involvement.

Mourners have highly-developed brains, both in apparent photogenic memory and quick cognitive reactions fit from their prey 'origins'. It has allowed them to adapt to their level of technology as they did, learning from each past generation and growing even further with the song-notes and later recordings by their predecessors. The history of other founded Mantelope colonies in first explorations had been discovered to have stopped their songs, having lost their past knowledge until there was nothing left but ferals walking on fields. Furthered proven with the cold, almost emotionally stunted, Forsaken from the ancestral loss of existential reason. Recent years have started a stronger reaction from the Forsaken who have been with their Mourner kindred and their belief for generations now.

[patiusarchivist]

I am glad you all have been enjoying the Mourner, or Angerlopes as they are rightfully called by yall so far, and the implications. This one in particular is becoming a quick favorite and character.

I thought; what if the Mantelopes survived. If not all devolved further into their painful existence until they truly came nothing but the animals they've been shaped into. Instead, they climbed the agonies by pure human spite. As many of their species manage to survive evolution and become something more, the Mantelopes hobbled and fought with every inch of their being until they became one of the great superpowers in the galaxy. With memories long sung in painful accuracies, by the remembrance of the Star People they were before and the cruel whispers of their Qu tormentors, the grazers carried on.

On their shoulders, they carried the anger and sorrows of a wronged species that may never be the same ever again. However, they refused to die. That would have been the last victory by the Eternal Enemy, the name of the Qu forever damned. With hooves that were once great fingers, they dug and pushed. Hardened nails stomping and kicking. Teeth pulling and screaming backs as they broke underweight. Crude tools are made by the physical pain of many. Try and try again. They hacked and smashed. Into ancient pyramids and cities that have long been abandoned in a world once ruled by their Masters. These 'harmless herders'. These 'domesticated remembrancers'. A species meant to die as the last scream of a beaten species took tools left behind. Over the ages, these stubborn herds stretched across the planet. Clans that sung their songs until they became parts of a single great voice. "We Live." The taboo of the same fleshcraft was used over and over until limbs regained resemblance of taloned fingers. Thumbs, once thought to be vestigial, regained use. Yet, their bodies remained. The one memory is long gone. They were new people. One that sees a new dawn. Homely caves became huts. Huts became stable-houses. Stable-houses became cities-states. Cities-states arose ships. Over millennia of a singular desire to be done by a thousand ways. A thousand vengeances cried out to each other, wars were made and alliances were forged until finally a global empire was born. The Mourners stretched from their cradle-world, occupying worlds and found scattered herds of their species. Dumb and lost, this only became kindle to their flames. They've tried to restore sentience with their powerful technology. After several herds were resurrected to be known as the 'Forsaken', who emerged nihilistic and apathetic. With agony, the Mourners took their brothers to be labourers and recorders to the herds. Mantelopes afterwards, were put out of their misery by a long historical debate in the Council of the Imperial Choir. It is recent to the meeting of the second Human Empire have there been signs that the Forsaken was regaining emotional cognition.

With a spanning empire that had dotting jewels of restored cities and spliced technology that took after the Qu and Star People, the Mourners will become one of the most powerful among the Posthuman civilizations. Something that the Gravitals in the far future would learn with grievous consequence.

The Mourners' language is that of the Song. With vocalizations that were powerful and carried in various distances, their dialects were plentiful and each as woefully beautiful as the last that were different among the clan-herds but their bridge language is known as the 'Imperial Hymn'. Furthering it was the use of their sensory whiskers that have evolved into a further emotional expression and, some rumors - poison barbed weapons. As militarily competent as they are, the former Mantelopes were noticeable in their affinity to artisanries. From tattoos to decored appearance, even the use of dumb robotics to further assist them in their doings.

There is more lore to think of, but I shall not smother your eyes with it all.

[patiusarchivist]

They survived and worse, They remember.

Never Again. To them or anyone else.

[angerlopestomorrow]

The Forevoice of Severing Writ; commanding officer of the Longstrider-class Severing Writ and her interracial crew of chosen elite to hunt for renegade elements and investigation to Qu activity.