Chapter Eight

Elder Noah watched the change that had taken place all around him, there was now great activity throughout Alocarta. The world had become stagnant after its conquest, the people had become dull, but since the erection of the Arbol de la Noche Academy, or Tree of the Night Academy, things started getting stirred about.

The Alocarta family had always been secluded and self sustaining venting its warrior nature needs through mercenary works. There had always been little need for development. The family retained some of its roots in the sense that they took care of one another, unlike other worlds and civilizations you did not really have to work for food or buy and sell anything. Most things were done through a system of bartering that includes favors and efforts...for example, I want this and in return i give you this, do this for you, make this for you, etc.

What was the point of the Management Guild? What currency were they using if the Alocarta don’t actually use money? Well...Alliance Credits. Most of the food stuff they sold they were used by the traders to sell off system using the trade frigates from other worlds to transport their goods. The credits earned by the family could then be used to buy things they themselves couldn’t make or develop such as the fuel for the warp engines of their last remaining Great Spire. What the academy gained in return was recognition and finished products, in this case cooked food.

The credits the guild gained were given away as they saw fit.

Recognition is a big thing in the family, more valuable than credits or material things, the more recognized you are the more important you are. If things are as such then how do they pay rent? buy food? pay bills?

A landowner may do as he please with his land which includes building homes or apartment buildings using his strength and effort. Being psionic they are more than capable of mining out rocks and stacking them together until you got something that is habitable. They then offer the space to another and those who take it give recognition to that individual. They are under him giving him importance. They maintain his lands and insure that the owner is fed and pampered, in other words the residents of his lands pay rent in favors.

Being a warrior family land could be fought over legally...but that is a whole different issue.

Food...yes...a most important topic. Without it you shrivel and die.

Lands were given to people who fought hard during the conquest of the world, these lands were of varying sizes in accordance to their efforts and have shrunk or grown through time according to the bloodline that controls that land and how they have fared in maintaining it. To seed and cultivate the land they call on people to work the lands, those that do answer the call have a right to be fed by the land owner. He feeds those who work under him and they give him importance in return. People that do not work for him may barter for the fruits of the land with the merchants who buy from the farms(farmers have the biggest and greatest of homes with things many do not have because of their importance in the world).

The merchants themselves only use a small portion to feed the populace of Alocarta, while it may be millions of citizens the production of the lands is many times greater than the needs of the world’s people.

The skills taught in the academy inspired many to develop their own abilities, while many found their growth stagnant and resorted to enrolling in the school to attempt to find some form of growth others found advancement through effort or genius.

In his own home his sons and daughters enrolled into the academy without the behest of their father. He saw their growth flourish exponentially, it was no surprise to him that his eldest son quickly surpassed him in skill and ability but it did not end there. Even his youngest son and daughter began displaying high levels of skill and ability in the few short months that they enrolled and the school had not even been officially opened.

The changes, while wrought a great deal by the academy, were not limited to just lifting the stagnation. The average way of life was starting to take a new shape.

Due to the fact that most of humanity gained the ability to use psionic abilities during the earth invasion sports had become greatly focused on and around the abilities exercised by the mind. The students that learned at the academy exercised greater skills and control over their abilities in a few short months gaining a mastery that should have taken decades. One sport in particular allowed for the display of just how great they were, it was called Orbital Drop Ball.

Noah’s eldest, Frederick, headed the five man team dubbed the Ghouls and the thing about Orbital Drop Ball or ODB is that there are no age limits just skill and strength requirements. Reaching high orbit is not easily done and sustaining that height is even harder with the lack of oxygen. One must exercise an incredible amount of control to pull on the thin oxygen around them to constantly feed their lungs while maintaining a stationary position in the lower high orbit of the world.

The teams then fight to capture the ball using only the strength of their mind to take hold of the ball all the while dropping towards the ground below. The objective is to be the last man standing holding the ball, it ends at a draw if both teams fail to hold on to it. Down below near the ground are multiple rings of neutral catchers that go after the unconscious players catching them and taking them out of play. When the teams reach a certain distance from the ground the game ends. Those that remain standing may play again to end the draw, an official draw is made when all are unconscious and/or are unable to play.

The ODB game drew so much attention that Noah’s son gained worldwide fame in a matter of days for leading the best team of them all. It became so popular that cities all around the world started forming teams to play in different leagues from local to continental to planetary to interplanetary as other human worlds also took an interest in the game and developed their own skills to play on par with the Alocartan psions.

The ODB trainer’s guild had a hall built in its honor in the central quadrant of the academy.

In one year’s time ODB with its merchandise and tourism had opened a whole new frontier to the traders and merchants of the Alocartan family. Many gained such great fortunes that they began to form their own space faring fleet of merchant frigates. The family also gathered enough credits to buy a Warp Gate for the system which cut down on their travel costs. A Warp Gate is rather expensive and only the worlds with large populations and flourishing economies have them.

At the age of two the infant pilot, whose name Noah did not still now, left for the academy having erected for himself a home there. A farewell banquet was held in his honor though most of the guest who had little to no contact with the infant simply believed it to be a birthday party, which it actually partially was.

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In the year and a half since the establishment of the academy Santiago had built the first of his legions, his first six thousand warriors. He took in only the best six thousand in the entire academy and taught them many of the old war techniques that were now lost to the family.

While the black tree did its best to seed the future of the legions he had managed to plant only enough for thirteen centuries, barely a little over a sixth of the legion. One century is one hundred soldiers, not including officers which would be team captains who lead five each and centurions who lead the century. Ten centuries comprise a Decade and six decades comprise one legion. In the future Santiago hopes to fill in the spaces of three legions that compose a Tercero (teh-rrr-seh-row) and the two to ten Terceros that compose an Ejercito (Eh-he-rrr-see-toe) and the two and up Ejercitos that compose a Regional Theater, and the multiple theaters that compose a Force.

The legion was garrisoned in the academy, but there was in fact no actual garrison and though the legion was technically official it was not yet a purposeful one. The legion basically trained and trained and trained some more on the sports field using war skills and techniques.

While there were many requests by the many mercenary groups formed by the family for the legion to join them in their tasks or offered solo tasks Santiago refused them all. The legion was not ready and while his legion did have a considerable number of tree bonded soldiers it was not up to standard of what a legion should have been. Instead of wanting to make it grow strong by having them experience combat through missions and such he had another idea. There was an entire continent on the planet, small as it may be, with the perfect conditions to turn it not only into a very big battlefield but one in which his legion would make or break itself.

Some of the elders even grew restless with such a great force doing apparently nothing that they constantly badgered the school but usually found themselves talking to a big black tree that would mostly ignore them since none actually knew whom to talk to. At one point even elder Noah had come to the academy to talk with Santiago, but found himself talking to the black tree because no one actually knew Santiago so he didn't know where to find the babe in the quite considerably vast land claimed by the academy.

Those of the legion, however, were not as restless as the rest of the family.

From the foot soldier to the officers, they were all enthusiastic to be part of the legion as they were always growing. For them the strengthening of their legion was their top priority. There was always something more to learn and always something more to experience.

Those of the legion studied in the arts of unit combat from small to large scale, tactics, combat techniques and skills etc. There was even a division called the Medical Legion composed of those students who hoped to become battlefield medics learning techniques of even higher grade difficulty than their battlefront companions. They learned skills to control the functions of not only the major body parts from the muscles to the organs but to control the very cells in them. They learned sensor techniques that allows them to see into their patient and identify all that ails them so that they may best repair them.

The Medical Legion inspired the erection of the Healers Hall, Doctor’s Guild, School of Biomechanics, and business ventures of varying kind which inspired the erection of the School of Extra-Xenoform Biomechanics and the School of Bio-Modification and Alteration.

The Academy itself was growing as quickly as the students were learning.

The legion also prompted something unintentional the Hall of Warriors and the Bloodline Guild which was often called the Cupid’s Guild. What they did was study the bloodline from the oldest surviving records to the present and started matchmaking with those of marrying age. Surprisingly it was a mostly male guild, not that they discriminated against the female gender, but the ideology of the guild was not about forming couples but making random Joes and Janes aware of who would make their bloodline stronger.

Random individuals would receive a package detailing their potential matches with whom their genes would blend best. It was pretty cut and dry which was why many women didn’t join the guild since the guild didn’t take into account similar interests and how well they would match up relationship and personally wise. It was more of an awareness program, one that many men would take seriously and search out their female partners.

The guild prompted an era of confusion for the women and a golden age for marriages and baby births. Because the family valued recognition the most the guild’s ideology rang deepest in men who wanted strong sons instead of just beautiful babes. With women no longer as greatly valued for their visual prowess the less confident half of women found themselves encountering more and more interested male suitors and as these women usually tend to want the family life marriage and children would quickly follow.

When Santiago finally entered the academy after its initial construction the first of the babies born out of the matchmaking efforts of the Bloodline Guild were already reaching their first months of age.

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Nearing the second year of the academy’s conception the first of the main schools were being finished, the elementary school was the first and it was quickly filled. Even though the school was a boarding academy, many parents had been lining their young children up for the opening of the elementary school. Thousands upon thousands rushed to register and the dorms were quickly filled to overflowing. Many more had to be erected and the school itself expanded, though the expansion would be a continuous work in progress.

Gran Domingo supported the Academy by providing basic teachers for caregiving and basics teaching; Math, Science, and Language Arts/Writing. The Teacher’s Guild provided teachers for the rest from basic telepathy/telekinesis to advanced applications depending on the ability and skill of each individual student. A fifth year old could be learning skills such as subsonic flight among others ranging from their fifth year to as old as fifty or more. In turn a fifty year old could be learning basic telepathy among five year olds. These classes were outside the main school building.

For the safety of the young students, as well as for the weak, the first skill they were taught by direct telepathic implantation is the Psionic Scream, a scream of alarm that cannot be stopped or suppressed except by exceptionally talented psions ranking close to Santiago’s ability. This scream, once used, would alarm all nearby that the screamer was in danger, it was really a call to battle.

The first to use it had been a bullied child, a boy of seven who was being beaten by a group of boys a year older who had been humiliated by the boy individually in their telekinetic classes, finding that together they were stronger than he they mounted their ambush. The first to respond had been a five year old girl who entered the boy’s bathroom, where the boy was being bullied. The thing about psions is that you never know who might be stronger or weaker than you, in that instance the girl was an exceptionally skilled child who excelled in the Thunder Step technique. Thunder Step is a technique that allows the user to sift through the air like a bullet and stop almost instantly by transfering their kinetic energy to air particles touching the body.

The bullies were literally struck down by walls of air, the little five year old never had a need to directly touch them.

The boys were expelled and barred from the academy permanently, there was to be no leniency for hostility against another member of the family. After the events of that day everyone knew the implications of causing another to use the scream, many problems were from then on settled more diplomatically or in the Disputes Arena where those of similar strengths and durability could duke out their problems on each other and settle their differences.