Commission from Yivah of my Arhulian in a war morph. This came out amazingly!
Arhulians possess a 'living metal' inside of them called Arhdrargyrum. This material is able to be sculpted and manipulated by the Arhulian that created it. (This is "tamed" Arhdrargyrum where it's all but impossible to manipulate by anyone that is not the creator. Untamed Arhdrargyrum can be produced, but it is rare, and often used as a gift or ceremonial purposes.) This living metal can be used for a variety of dynamic morphs, blades, shields, reinforced bones, sub dermal armor, etc… how much Arhdrargyrum and Arhulian can control and how quickly they can morph it depends on their psionic ability and training. Blade morphs are regarded as the easiest combat morph due to their simple function and lack of reconfiguring more complicated parts of the vessel.
Down below is a vignette of a fully realized/mature Arhulian taking on a platoon of soldiers with roughly late 1800's level equipment. Although not explicitly a fan story, it draws a lot of inspiration from @chocodile's / @kwillow's Amaranthine setting. Perhaps it could exist in the same AU with Niadris.
It would have been simple to terminate their sentry and slay each soldier in their sleep. But optimal was not on this Arhulians mind. They had watched it all from the distance, They had a vow to observe theriantropes quietly from a distance to avoid undue panic and fear. A vow they now regret adhering to so strictly. Although Vorandrus had no formal connection to the hamlet in the tundra, the remnants of the hamlet and its inhabitants, filled the Arhulian with a maternal rage. What was this decimation for? If there was no language barrier, the truth would have done nothing to extinguish the Arhulian's anger, perhaps even inflaming it all the more. The villagers had been reporting of "monsters" yet these soldiers took such offense to the contradiction of their state sponsored truth, these people were put to death to silence their dangerous ideas. After all, if monsters were real, a missing hamlet would be perfectly ordinary.
Three. Those would be the allotted witnesses. The other twenty-seven would be slain, and they would be made sure to see their end coming for them. The assault had started slow and conspicuous at first, to ensure this collection of soldiers could bring their full might to bear - so they may be confronted at their zenith, and struck down for an ever louder statement. Rifle bolts clicked into place. The Arhulian could sense the spatial position of the bones in their arms as each shot was readied. For a fifteen foot long beast, the Arhulian were a damned hard shot as they dashed, leapt into the air, and even bounced in between the trees. A lavender halo shimmered behind their head. Vorandrus' veins tingled, - stung even - as power coursed though their body. Unlike magic, this power came from within. The soul. This power fed into the vessel to overcome the physical limits of the body and pushed it beyond. The comparatively few shots that would find their mark would be hollow victories, for Vorandrus had no vital organs to hit, each punctured vein pinched itself shut, the flesh itself defiant to damage as solid wood.
The Arhulian forelegs had been morphed into scythes that slice flesh and bone with cold indifference. Every slash would render its quarry cleaved in twain, and every thrust impaled as deep as the Arhulian could reach. The strikes were as precise as they were devastating - each felled soldier had their brain or heart destroyed with each attack, sometimes both. Their deaths having swiftness equal to their ferocity was the only mercy afforded to them.
The soldier's morale shattered completely once they were composed enough to recognise that half of their number was already dispatched in brutal fashion. They began to retreat on their snow mobiles, but those that were not quick enough found their means of egress tipped over or impaled through the engine with a mighty lance of tungsten. Others found the Arhulian's tail or a thrown object hurdling towards them at a deadly velocity. Eight managed to speed away on their snow machines.
There will be three, and only three that remain.
Vorandrus was fast and agile, unnaturally so even, but these noisy contraptions had the Arhulian beat in a straight line on deep snow while lacking the burden of stamina. Even with channeling psionic energy - power of the will and soul - into their vessel to draw upon impossible reserves of vigor, they still could only run down one target at a time. Wounding their pride somewhat, Vorandrus picked up the rifle of a dispatched soldier. The weapon seemed almost toy like in the Arhulians' large, three fingered hands. This particular rifle had been reloaded just before the skull of it's wielder had been pulped by a blunt strike. From how they counted shots in between reloads, this bolt action rifle had five shots with the assumption that it matched the others. The Arhulian operated the mechanism, and aimed. They hoped that this range and the steadiness of their large frame would compensate for any defects in the weapon. Fortunately the men had begun accelerating away in a straight line with little angular velocity. The first shot missed. Just a bit to the left of the windpane of the four seat vehicle. That was a close enough visual cue to compensate. The second shot found its mark in the back of the skull of the driver. Seven.
Without a second breath, the Arhulian turned to the other vehicle while the first one veered off its trajectory. The third shot missed. The Arhulian cursed in their mind as their hand was operating the mechanism, the brass flying through the air seemingly in slow motion. An Arhulians nervous system normally signaled and received information about ten times faster than that of a therianthrope, and hyperexertion pushed it even further beyond that. Unlike the Arhulian 'guns' that accelerated an inert projectile across a series of rails or coils, these weapons operated with comparatively unpredictable combustion. The fourth shot wounded the driver and their recoil of pain spelled doom for their transport and they collided with a tree. Before the tree even finished rattling and creaking, Vorandrus moved position and advanced to regain line of sight of the first vehicle. It had come to a stop, and it's three living passengers were just finished heaving the deceased driver. One shot left. They aimed for the center of mass of the group. Two of them were wounded. Lunging at full speed, the snow machine's cast iron engine casing was smashed open. No escape.
The two with wounds already were fully extinguished. Five. Vorandrus circled back to the crashed snowmachine as its occupants scrambled, leaving their wounded compatriot to die alone, as their mouth shouted shrill venomous sounds that could only be curses. The Arhulian's six eyes locked with his fearful two. Vorandrus could not admit to pity... but, this one has endured enough. The three dashing on foot shall only have one of their kin spared as a reward befitting their bravery. Three.
Although officially not acknowledged by the military, this incident has been declared the Massacre of West Pass. The accounts of the three men were written off as a vivid hallucination brought about by trauma, yet those in the field - those who saw the aftermath - knew deep down there was no state provided answer that could explain the situation with any satisfaction. Animal attack? The damage inflicted is consistent of an edged weapon. And what animal could take on thirty men with rifles? 'Self defense' from hostile locals? The idea that a hamlet with only hunting equipment to their name at best could inflict devastating nintey percent losses on trained soldiers would be a hideous emberassment. Militant hostiles? Nevermind the impossiblity of damage inflicted, there was nary a single casualty of the enemy or even a damned boot print at the site of the incident.
Perhaps most concerning of all, even if extremely hypothetically the military did entertain the idea of the culprit being "not of therian nor nature", the wounds were too targeted with a startling amount of decapitations and punctured hearts, along with the snow mobiles having their engines singled out. However, this refusal of the truth had a different undercurrent than incidents before. Those were simply not belived. This incident, did not want to be belived, for what it would mean. Either their idea of monsters - if they existed - was completely wrong... or more distressingly, there was something other out there that was beyond even the monsters.
A bust of my Arhulian species by @papabirdurskeks! What could they be so smug about? Feel free to give wrong answers below!
The real answer: Arhulians are much more cunning than their monstrous appearance would suggest. After being taught the rules of the game "chess" by a brave individual, they blossomed from novice to master in just a week. They could have progressed even faster were they not "throwing" matches to dissect failed strategies.
When asked about their meteoric rise skill, the Arhulian simply replied they have been playing shadow matches with themselves. All the so-called "masters" have commented on the impossibility of this, and there must be some other cause for their profound development, everything from being a "dumbsmart" by brute forcing successful moves from raw cogitation (like how a computer would do it if they existed in the low fantasy setting I usually depict them in) to simply lying about being a novice.
The Arhulian is speaking in earnest! For this particular example, Vorandrus, is a "mature" Arhulian. One that has practiced the ritual of Arhel-Val; a ritual where the Arhulian absorbs the consciousness of being(s) hosted within their body. Unlike assimilation where the host is effectively destroyed as an independent entity, the merged being exists within the Arhulian. The absorbed can either interact with the Arhulian directly as it's own entity, or the merged can lay dormant in a dreamlike state, and have their knowledge and memories at hand by their host.
In this case, Vorandrus has "amalgamated" with other members of their kind, and even a "donor" or two. By willingly partitioning the consciousness within them, they can do shadow matches with "themselves" and even have the other consciousness play against each other. After a sufficient amount of time, all the minds are reunited an put into dormancy, with the host assimilating the memories experienced.
In essence, this "one" Arhulian has accrued the lived experience of several people all playing against each other for hours on end. Depending on how one defines it, they probably are cheating in some capacity or is at least going against the spirit of the game. And they're happy to keep you in the dark about how stacked the odds are against you :3
Spooky Lore Below
CW: Body Horror // Maybe
Needless to say, challenging an Arhulian to any sort of mental skill game is a bad idea, let alone actually trying to cheat at one, never mind being a sore loser about it.
One upon a time, sly anthro fox by the name of Thistlebald had the bright idea to try and cheat during a card game against the "badgerpede." Between their extraordinary senses, and their ability to know probability, it was easy to tell the fox was playing unfairly. When called out upon it, several high stakes players refused to sit down with a known cheat, costing the Fox a lot of money. In a fit of rage, Thistlebald pulled out a revolver and shot Vorandrus with all six chambers.
His first mistake was shooting at a creature that he did not know where the heart was located. The second was assuming Arhulians had a heart to shoot. The third was assuming Vorandrus would just leave it at that. Just because he failed to do meaningful damage does not excuse deadly force. The fourth was thinking he could run. The fifth was not firing the gun only five times, as he would have saved the last bullet for themselves had they known their soon-to-be-fate.
The Fox had ran, thinking themselves safe from their unfazed and pissed off victim. Little did Thistlebald know, Arhulians possess a life sense that allows them to detect the auras of living beings around them. Like hearing, it is omni-directional, and penetrates through solid material. Quite literally, Vorandrus saw right through the Fox's sleight of hand.
Hiding somewhere alone would be Thistlbald's last mistake, as his frantic, panicked aura was trivial to identify. Vorandrus had swallowed the comparatively tiny cheat and would-be-murderer whole and alive. To Thistlebald's horror, it was not the end. Instead, the hot-blooded cheat became a temporary 'guest' in the Arhulians mind sphere.
With numerous organic tubes interfacing with Thislebald's body as natural life support - including right down into his lungs and esophagus, the Fox could not even release so much as a whimper from his vocal chords. Entombed and restrained, all Thistlebald could do was hear the crowd milling about outside, completely unaware of his plight, much to his horror.
The only one that knew of the Fox's whereabouts was the Arhulian imprisoning them within their flesh, strutting about in broad daylight as they went about their business as usual - save for their chuffed demeanor. In time, Vorandrus would release their detainee after a valuable lesson has been learned, but until then, their Psychic energy made for a handsome treat.
Weeks later, Thistlebald returned after his mysterious disappearance. Most did not give it much thought, as being run out of town was normal for most cheaters. Yet, the once sly Fox seemed different, and not in the groveling "oh please let me back in" kind of way. When pressed about the matter, he insists he was plagued by horrible nightmares for his crimes he committed. That the he guilt caused him to undergo some kind of "vision quest" that brought him enlightenment, vowing to never cheat again.
Most would dismiss a dime-a-dozen story about turning over new leaf; but it was clear the Fox had the fear of the gods put in him - which was strange, as Thistlebald had never been a religious type.
