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He didn’t remember the silence. 

He remembered the raised terraces and the thatched arms of those Elders who seldom left the Synod grounds. On that perfectly maintained soil, Sideroxylon Tenax remembered standing before the Synod many times before; standing among them too. 

He didn’t remember how quiet it was.  Even the rustling leaves of the Synod itself seemed muted.  Tenax lowered a branch to touch the hard, metal knot imbedded in his torso.  He felt the now-familiar thrum of Dust within the Endless device that had infused him with newfound urgency.

The silence in the Synod was more than just physical.  The Noema, normally buzzing with thoughts and emotions, was mute as well.  Tenax could feel that it was a silence suffused with tension.  A straining bough just before the snap.

Silence…  and then…

“Blasphemy!” Slamming her heavy roots to the ground, Magistrate Excelsa Alianthus unleashed a cacophony of voices in the Noema.  The Synod devolved into deafening chaos.  Again, the Magistrate cried out, “Blasphemer!” The explosive shout chased the chorus back into rapt attention.  “Forerunner Tenax, you have overstepped the bounds of your authority and centuries of tradition with this testimony.”  In the physical space, her branches entwined before her, fury evident in the quivering of her leafy mantle.  “The Unfallen are many things, but we do not seek what is not ours.  We do not consume.  We do not bend to such baser instincts as… animals.  To do as you suggest would be the undoing of our very way of life.  The Council of Magistrates will not stand for this!”  Her thought-forms were clear and harsh, evoking a murmur of assent from the rest of the Synod. 

A second voice cut through the Noema, “Magistrate Alianthus speaks from a place of deep concern, Forerunner.  For her people, and for her position” High Arbiter Integra Salix’s thought-forms were measured, but strained. “Perhaps she is right.  Perhaps not.  But this is the Synod and your voice will not be silenced because of your heterodoxy.” An image of Teanx’s relic joined the thought-form in the Noema. “I can feel you straining not to shout, sapling,” the old Arbiter’s thought-form chided Tenax privately.  Voices of careful assent joined Salix’s before his wizened presence once again hushed the Synod.   

Tenax spread his branches wide, pausing a moment before opening his thoughts to the Noema. “I know what I have said is difficult to accept, but it is the truth.  I have shown you the thought-forms of our distant cousins.  I have shown you the infestation of those who consume.  The threat is real.” He paused, letting a ripple of concern propagate through the Noema.  “But we are Unfallen for a reason.  We have always reached towards the sun.  Now we must reach further.  We must stretch our branches to the very stars themselves.  Members of the Synod, mark what I say here.  If we do not reach for the stars, we shall most certainly topple under their weight.”

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Thank you for taking the time to read this.  The word count is 495.  I owe a huge debt of thanks to Rune the Red who helped me workshop this and hit me over the head with a crowbar about sentence fragments.  And to Hammylicious for proofing and reining in the titles. A little.  

I'll probably post a follow-up with some notes later, but for now, thank you again.  

Very good narrative and conversation. I enjoyed how you described how the Unfallen communicate using thought forms. I wish it was more descriptive of the threat. 

Question, are your Unfallen inhabiting a single planet facing a planetary threat? As for your thought forms, they seem to carry not only meaning but also emotions. And with that, these thought forms are also complex as they can be composed of a collective's thought forms. Or am I confusing thought forms with overall emotions of the consensus?

Very theatrical, enjoyable submission.

Thank you! 

While I wasn't explicitly going for a theatrical style, courtroom/forum drama is a tidy shortcut to drama when working under a strict word count. 

The goal of this submission was to provide subsequent designers as many tools as possible for fleshing out the faction:

Naming conventions - Characters draw their names from the scientific names for real-world trees.  Currently these have been arranged in 'correct' order, with the genus listed before the species.  Characters are referred to by their species name in formal speech, which is slightly counterintuitive, but sounds better to my ear.  This is easily reversed as well if a more logical order of operation is preferred. 

Roman Influence - I drew heavily from Roman Republic culture for titles and the general shape of the Synod.  The Arbiter serves as the administrative head of the body, providing leadership and tempered, if not entirely unbiased, procedural guidance.  Magistrates would be roughly equivalent to their Roman counterparts; individuals with governance over regions and a necessarily conservative worldview.  The Forerunners are the ambassadors and explorers.  I drew on the more historically correct definition of the word, meaning someone who goes out to the fore.  Our hero, Tenax, is the ultimate Forerunner in that he is one of the first Unfallen to see the galaxy beyond their home system.  

The Noema - Taken from the Greek, Noema literally translates as 'thought' and is an extremely flexible iteration of the shared consciousness of the Unfallen.  It's focused on sharing ideas and thought-forms for better, more diplomatic communication among their species, while still having elements like privacy, individual conversations and organized 'speeches.'  It's not intended to be ground breaking or radically inventive, but functional and easy to write around.  

As a final thought, I felt very strongly that, while the hero should be a disruptive presence, it was equally important to have him still be aligned with the interests of the faction.  While Tenax sees more than his fellow Synod members, he isn't advocating violence or something wholly antithetical to the original concept of the faction.  He's voicing a need to expand, so that the Unfallen will have the resources to defend themselves in the future.  Of course, his good intentions could be twisted with time, but that is for the player to choose.