ASTASHICA: The Rise of Tlandar
ASTASHICA: THE RISE OF TLANDAR
Sci-Fantasy · Epic · Ancient Machines · Planetary Consciousness
Astashica is not a dead world.
Known to outsiders as Planet Ross 128 b, it appears desolate from orbit—storm-scarred land, scattered ruins, and silence. In ancient Xothek star maps it was cataloged as Leonia Prime, a world believed dormant and uninhabited. This belief was wrong.
Long before recorded history, Astashica was shaped by an elder civilization known as the Ancient Acherons. They were architects, not conquerors. To inhabit and steward the planet, they created the Ancient Acheron Constructs—towering, thirty-foot-tall humanoid machines, intelligent and autonomous, designed to live as the planet’s people. Billions once walked the surface.
Then a catastrophic plague struck the Acherons.
Unable to save themselves, they deactivated the Constructs and withdrew into vast underground caverns and hidden temples. There, only a few hundred survivors remain, preserved in advanced suspension vats filled with a life-prolonging substance—their final creation. The surface was not destroyed, only placed into long-term dormancy. Monumental Xhalaks, ancient planetary regulators scattered across the world, remained barely active, silently maintaining the atmosphere and keeping Astashica alive.
The planet waited.
Centuries later, the Xothek Galaxy collapsed into civil war. Long before its final destruction, Chieftain Cosmus secretly orchestrated the hijacking of a colossal warship—the SV Defiance Vanguard—as a contingency for total collapse. The Vanguard carried more than refugees: ancient books and knowledge, servant humanoid robots, Temsek slaves (biologically pure humans), food, seeds, vast Xothek technologies, and the last remaining reserves of Kuprix—a substance that exists nowhere else in the universe. If Kuprix is depleted, Asemeri civilization ends.
The ship plunged into a collapsing wormhole. The transit would last twelve days.
On the fifth day, the Asemeri Overlords Council convened inside the Vanguard’s navigation chamber. Drawing on known Milky Way star maps, Chieftain Val’katl proposed landing on Ross 128 b. Salgar agreed first, followed by Meiannia, Uxnall, Ixtiel, and Gorak. Cosmus refused to vote, arguing instead to extend the journey toward Earth—Oasis. When the others consented, Cosmus stood apart.
Seven days later, the Vanguard emerged above Astashica.
Its landing on the northern continent carved massive crater scars into the land as the ship’s energy barrier met the surface. The Asemeri embedded the sentient AI grid XENOVIS beneath the planet, rationed their irreplaceable Kuprix, and carved vast underground dominions—unaware that their presence disturbed ancient planetary systems never meant to awaken.
Dormant signals stirred.
Buried thresholds resumed evaluation.
The Ancient Acheron Constructs began to rise.
Generations later, Tlandar Varn, a quiet cattle herder from the subterranean village of Verdantis Nexus, loses everything when marauders destroy his home. In the ruins of his life, Astashica responds.
Chosen by the Spirit of Astashica, a planetary consciousness intertwined with ancient systems, Tlandar is drawn into a war spanning civilizations, machines, and memory itself. Guided by Akashma Xil’ha, he discovers his blood carries a rare Asemeri resonance—allowing him to interface with Kuprix-based systems without domination.
Where others command machines, Tlandar listens.
As Cosmus prepares to unleash the last Azurevat weapons and claim absolute dominion—consuming what little Kuprix remains—Astashica stands on the brink of annihilation.
Tlandar does not seek conquest.
He seeks integration—strength guided by compassion, technology tempered by spirit, and a future chosen by the world itself.
ASTASHICA: The Rise of Tlandar is a sci-fantasy epic of awakening worlds, ancient intelligences, and one unlikely protector at the center of a war where even survival has a final cost.
