The Twelve Incident
“Day of No Suns”, “Taan h’H’ko-gheh”
The disaster that occurred in the Earth year of 1975 in the northwestern forests of South America, where all twelve sons of Odd Crest Patriarch Halkrath perished.
Halkrath’s adolescent litter of four, triplets Dusk, Crisis, Abyss, and lone child Kudos were nearing Blooding age, and so it was arranged to take place at a temple built for such on Earth. Halkrath’s adult children, under his supervision, made preparations and collected the sacrifices to be placed in the sacrificial chamber in order to provide the needed xenomorphs. Seven humans were chosen to produce seven xenomorphs, so the four would not be outnumbered 2:1, but given a decent challenge.
Halkrath’s only daughter and youngest child at the time, M’hsi, wished to attend as the other adult children did, but her mother Vosandi made her stay, as she was too young and would see them back soon.
The Unblooded four would personally enter the temple for their trial, and their Blooded siblings and Halkrath would observe remotely from a nearby facility through their biomask feeds.
Through still uncertain means, the sacrifices produced far more than seven xenomorphs, resulting in the Unblooded becoming overrun and outmatched. Halkrath then led his Blooded children into battle on a rescue mission, abort the trial, and kill the Queen and her nest to investigate the cause and stop the invasive species from spreading to the human-populated areas.
With his newly-acquired plasmacaster, Dusk shot at xenomorph drones running down a hall, fatally hitting a hidden Sly, whose body then avoided any xenomorph desecration or injury. During this, Kudos was impaled from behind through the chest by a drone, that Crisis then killed. No longer fit to fight, Kudos clung to Crisis and convinced him to stay and defend him until they had the clear to escape, hunkering down behind some temple architecture.
Shriek armed his wrist-nuke and began running the opposite way from the Queen chamber and exit, using his call to attract as many drones as possible, with Sniper picking off the crowd rushing after Shriek. During so, Sniper was ambushed from behind and dragged off to the nest, and the growing swarm of xenomorphs began to overwhelm Shriek.
Halkrath commanded Hookclaw, with Dusk as his back-up, to destroy the nest and Queen. As Halkrath sent his sons Fearless, Gouger, Spartan, Ruthless, and Abyss to maintain exit control, Ruthless was impaled before his father’s eyes and taken into a serpent vent to the nest, where he fell from the platform and onto a cluster of ovomorphs, dying of acid damage.
Hookclaw confronted the Queen while Dusk slew the defending drones. Dusk was overwhelmed and torn apart by the growing numbers as Hookclaw was impaled by the partially freed Queen. By then, Shriek’s wrist-nuke activated, vaporizing him and the surrounding drones, destroying the temple wing he was in, and billowing down the halls until the blast radius hit the Queen chamber, engulfing Sniper (who was still alive), Dusk’s body, some of the drones, Hookclaw, the Queen, Ruthless’ body, and the nest.
As the explosion distracted the two, Crisis was impaled through the chest and thrown across the room by a drone, dying in the corner. Kudos was ignored by the rushing numbers of xenomorphs past him, as he slowly bled out.
Meanwhile, Halkrath and his surviving children were outside on temple grounds to contain the infestation and secure exits, which was abandoned as xenomorphs surpassed their roadblocks and escaped onto the grounds and surrounding forest. The group scrambled all over the ground to catch and kill any drones they saw, gathering in smaller pairs to back each other up.
Spartan was sprayed with acid while attending to Halkrath, before being stabbed from behind and torn away from his side. Weakened, he couldn’t prevent the swarming drones from killing him with a pharyngeal jaw to the cranium.
Shriek’s explosion destroyed the left wing of the temple, causing structural collapse, the debris from which crushed Abyss, and rained down upon the combatants, Yautja and xenomorph alike. In the chaos, Gouger was headbitten from behind.
The lone two, Halkrath bore witness to Fearless attending him, only to be impaled from behind and torn in two at the waist. Halkrath, furious, attacked the offending drone which then bled all over his right side before expiring, being buried along with the patriarch in rubble.
After the initial reports and radio silence, Half-Heart sent a recovery team as well as clean-up effort to investigate, where Halkrath was found clinging to life underneath rubble, missing both his right limbs, body marred with acid burns and partially melted to the floor. He was taken for medical attention as the clean-up focused on hunting the escaped xenomorphs before any could attack a human settlement or establish a new nest.
Over time, the bodies of the twelve and their masks were removed, if and when possible, from the ruins of the temple, which was then condemned. Ruthless’s body, which was still acidic, was left in place in wait of a time when he would be safe to handle.
A clanwide service was thrown for the twelve, despite the Odd Crests being an unpopular family, for the great loss of Half-Heart life.
The events of that day was pieced together by authorities through salvaged mask feeds and what information Halkrath could offer in his gravely injured and near-catatonic state.
As other clan territories and Hunters were already pre-established near the site of the disaster, the procedure afterwards was a matter of many clans and individuals, resulting in the Council of Ancients taking part in the matter. Half-Heart Clan Leader Kandore advocated for Halkrath as not being the cause of the incident, with further research leading to the conclusion that it was likely due to a mutation in the ovomorphs laid by the Queen already captive in the temple long before the Odd Crests arrived. These mutations possibly made the facehuggers implant multiple viable chestbursters instead of the standard one per sacrifice. Kandore insisted that neither Halkrath nor his sons were responsible for, or could have known about this, or prevented it. Saved on a whim due to already being alive, Halkrath was kept so with his future fate undecided, to be based on the findings.
With that conclusion, the Ancients agreed with Kandore and no further punishment was handed down by them or Kandore to the disgraced patriarch. Despite this acknowledgement of his futility in the cause of the incident, Halkrath was in command of the operation and oversaw the precautions taken, and most importantly to the council, failed to contain the problem when made aware of it. Thus, he was held responsible for the disaster’s development and his mishandling of its containment.
The twelve were buried in their designated tombs underneath the Odd Crest home, and the recoverable masks hung in their living area. All but two mates left Halkrath in the aftermath, those who stayed were the mother of his only surviving child M’hsi, and the other, Luar-ke, pregnant with his next and now only son.
Halkrath the Half-Shadow was cemented in the infamous history of the Odd Crest Bloodline as its sixth most recent disgrace. Unable to Hunt, he is currently Retired and works as a hardware technician and consultant.
Ruthless’s body would lay on Earth for fifty more years, its recovery considered a low priority, until his grown half-sister M’hsi recovered him personally and left him for a scout ship to take him to Yautja Prime for proper burial.
Investigation is still on-going.
