[OOC] The Red Furnace: First Contact

[Thanqol]

Endless Azure Skies, Southern Horizon Fleets

The Endless Azure Skies is both vast and decentralized, with huge regional variations in combat philosophy. The peripheral region known as Southern Horizon has long been regarded as a peaceful frontier and as such its military has been allowed to decay enormously. Conversely, the long period of peace has made the Southern Horizon stupendously rich, and the self-aggrandizement of the southern Azura leadership has lead to investment in a number of central 'prestige' pieces. The combined force of the Southern Horizon, then, is a two speed military: Hastily converted or even outright levied civilian ships alongside warships that are monuments to centuries of unspeakably bloated aristocratic military expenditure.

Weaponry

The ELectromagnetic Flux (ELF)
The foundational weapon of the Endless Azure Skies, no species ever forgets first contact with the ELF.

An ELF is the physical manifestation of the Curse of the Violet Stars and it is not an exaggeration to suggest that all of Azura design and doctrine is built around its limitations. In fact, so widely spread is the ELF and so deeply integrated are the countermeasures to its effects that the Azura place an almost inexplicably low value on it. Indeed, it is oftentimes treated as a sidearm rather than a primary weapon. The Southern Horizon in particular has gone so long without facing a peer non-Azura military that they have simply institutionally forgotten how devastating the ELF can be.

Visually, an ELF manifests as a lightning bolt, though it is not electrically based. Instead, observed in slow motion, the effect is actually that power departs from the subject and is sucked into the node of the ELF. ELF weaponry is extremely accurate and rapid fire - the common Buzzsaw variant has strike intervals of 0.5 seconds - but is low damage and short range. ELF weapons also have the distinction of bypassing shields and armour entirely.

The Curse is best channeled through a long, sharp spike. As a personal defense weapon it is often mounted on the shoulder, though with meditation an ELF can be expanded into anything that fits the geometric requirements. Range, impact and (generally negligible) power draw is directly linked to the size of the focusing spike, and as the weapon is manifesting an individual's personal Curse it can only be fired by that individual. In the cases of starship mounted ELF weaponry a strong preference is given to quantity of ELF spikes as opposed to single extreme sized spikes to prevent a single point of failure.

When fired, the ELF has the following effects:
- A massive electrical power surge. The mystical power of the Curse creates joins between even isolated and surge protected systems. Oftentimes this surge is powerful enough to cause violent explosions through connected systems - lightbulbs popping, consoles exploding, hard drives melting into slag, and so on. This effect is particularly and maliciously lethal to artificial intelligences, remotely piloted drones, or guided missiles with each strike seeming to inflict critical damage.
- A massive explosion of distorting junk signals. The aura of electronic, radio and magical blindness created by an ELF firing is colossal, indiscriminate and overwhelmingly powerful. It can be punctured by certain high powered scanning devices or massive spellpower, but the power balance is ludicrously efficient in favour of the ELF weaponry.
- A 'draining' effect. Similar to the experimental Drain Cannon on the Aotrs Midnight B Dreadnought, ELFs sap energy from their targets - batteries are emptied, mana crystals run dry, biological targets are sent into a state of deep lethargy and undead targets have their magical bonds disrupted. This effect is low damage, never lethal and recovery is measured in hours. As such it is often regarded as a stun/capture or disruption weapon.

These functions together make the ELF the galaxy's premier point-defense weaponry. Azura ships are ludicrously well protected against most kinds of ordinance, including guided missiles, conventional fighter craft and torpedoes. An Azure spaceship at close range can choke the life out of an enemy vessel. ELF strikes on a capital ship or vehicle can be likened to strikes from ion weaponry - fire needs to be constant to prevent reactors from being rebooted, and the level of fire needs to be proportionate to the target's reactor capacity. A fighter wing raking a cruiser with ELF fire won't necessarily stall it out but will force the shutdown of nonessential systems to combat the power drain, for instance. As the number of fighters concentrating fire increases so will the power drain.

The sensor distortion effect of ELF weapons is generally the biggest effect of ELF weaponry, though - a single cruiser firing its ELF weaponry can effectively render everything in an entire battlefield out to long range cloaked. This has massive implications for long range gunnery, especially combined with Azura maneuverability. Constant warfare under these conditions has profoundly shaped the Azura approach to warfare.

Solid Projectile (SP)

The Azura use the phrase 'Solid Projectile' in a counterintuitive way; when they say it, they are referring to specialized types of acidic chemical weaponry. SP weaponry represents the bulk of Azura firepower, often tweaked by logisticians to meet the specialized demands of their opposition, planetary climate conditions, etc but working from the same basic principles. SP weaponry is reverse-engineered from the Tides, a bio-technological aquatic alien species that the Azura are in constant conflict with, and new strains and variations constantly flow through to the Endless Azure Skies based on evolution by the Tides.

The most common strains of SP weaponry in use are the Sensate weapons. These are specifically targeted at overwhelming individuals with heightened senses, such as the Warriors of Ceron or other genetically engineered super-soldiers. Burner strains are compositions that are optimized for sheer acid damage, and Eater strains are those set up to emphasize metallic corrosion.

In space, Eater strains are the weapon of choice - an Eater impact on an enemy hull will chew away at the enemy ship unless large sections of hull are outright amputated and so Eater torpedoes are designed to penetrate as deeply as possible to attempt to render core functions compromised.

Generally, most forms of SP are of limited usefulness against shields. Specialized shield burners exist but are not widely spread due to the Azura's own limited use of conventional shields.

Gravitational Weaponry

Grav-Weaponry is the crown jewel of the Azura arsenal. It is a long-ranged, flexible, powerful and always-useful weaponry type that is only limited in its deployment by availability of Knights and its extreme power requirements. This generally means that the demands on an Azura force's grav-weaponry far outstrips the grav-weaponry available; while a grav-emitter can crush a tank or a starship into a microsingularity it is generally preferable to instead shove that tank off a cliff or lock an enemy starship in place while a regular missile hits it.

Grav-weaponry often doubles as a vehicle's shielding system. Again, the pilot is under pressure to minimize power usage - while a direct death ray strike *can* be consumed entirely by a microsingularity, it is generally far preferable to shove oneself aside instead if at all possible so the power can be used instead for an offensive maneuver. Large Azura ships generally act as shield emitters for their surrounding ships.

While most Azura weaponry is short ranged, grav-weaponry presents an unusual extreme range threat. It can fire at full effectiveness beyond ordinary engagement bands; with the rest of the fleet unengaged there are no competing demands on its power output.

Plasma Vents

Plasma Vents are rare in Southern Horizon fleets, generally mounted only on the oldest starships or carried by Goltir mystics. A plasma vent is, at its most basic, taking advantage of the massive power output of a Violet Star Reactor by pumping it directly onto a target. The potential damage inflicted by one of these is ludicrous, melting through shields and armour in moments, coring vehicles like apples and leaving molten slag in their place. Recharge times are generally slow, however, making the preferred use case as an execution weapon.

More common are plasma torpedoes; concentrated balls of high impact plasma stored in special containment fields and delivered to the target by direct fire launchers or guided in by grav-weaponry. Plasma torpedoes are easy for the Azura to restock on location with access to a plasma reactor, but they are extremely temperamental and represent a massive explosion hazard. Stock is generally kept light, and if a ship is targeted it will attempt to either launch or seal off its torpedo stocks to prevent an unfortunate cook off.

Direct Impact

From hammers to ramming, Azura doctrine places a virtue on putting their faces into an opponent's faces. The threat here is primarily presented by Azura materials technology and impact resistance which allows them to come out the better of virtually any direct collision, the equivalent of having a powered ramming spike on most of their vessels. Azura vessels also have an unsettling tendency to 'eat' enemy vessels they have rammed, absorbing the raw metal structure of their opponents in order to repair any damage the Azura ship took during the collision.

Direct impact weapons are generally at their most dangerous in conjunction with grav-weaponry, where enemy ships can be pulled into the line of fire, or an enemy's head pulled into the arc of a massive meteor hammer swing. Sometimes these collisions are attempted at FTL speeds but just as often FTL will cut out moments beforehand to allow an Azura pilot to make last-second corrections to its course to catch an enemy ship that has attempted evasive maneuvers.

*

"Cutlasses and field cannons"; the Southern Horizon concentrates its capitol ship effectiveness at the short and extreme range bands, with a notable lack of capability in medium and long range direct fire weaponry. This is primarily a reaction to the sensor-jamming and point defense effects of ELF weaponry making long range guided missiles unreliable and medium range energy weaponry inaccurate. Rather than struggle to make energy weapons work, the Southern Horizon has largely abandoned the big gun school of naval warfare to focus on carrier operations.

At the decisive medium and long range bands the Southern Horizon turns primarily to its fighter craft. Their task is not only to engage and paralyze enemy ships so that the distance can be closed, but they also use grav-weaponry and fighter escorts to guide in inaccurate short-range ordinance through the sensor baffle. Indeed, in Azura civil conflicts the majority of battles are decided when one side wins the fighter battle.

[Thanqol]

Advanced Systems

Violet Star Reactor

Many advanced Azura systems rely on a specialized form of energy generated by fusion reactors, including stars, contaminated by the Azure Code. Ideally, this reactor is a corrupted star - with access to a terminal stage violet star as a power source then all Azura technology can be driven to its absolute maximum effect. When engaging in offensive operations outside of the borders of the Skies it becomes necessary to carry that power with them in a Violet Star Reactor.

VSRs are miniaturized stars, sources of prodigious amounts of energy. More than that they are able to transmit their power wirelessly over a wide area to fuel unique Azura technologies. This means that a disconnected 'reactor ship' can sustain dozens of smaller ships - and these smaller ships, lacking any sort of central power reactor, present deeply frustrating targets as they lack any core system whose destruction might cause their ship to stop moving. As a result, Azura ships are extremely well armoured and resilient by common standards, and Azura weapons are focused on outputting overkill amounts of damage.

While VSRs can power unique Azura technology and magic wirelessly, the Azura sometimes use them as conventional reactors. Given that the omnipresent Azura ELF weaponry discourages them from using any sort of electronic systems their use cases for the sheer output of their VSRs is refreshingly crude: they shoot giant sprays of plasma, venting the reactor directly onto the target.

VSRs do require fuel - antimatter fuel rods produced in Azura core systems. Fuel demands are high and generally represent a major limitation on operations outside the Skies. In extremis, fuel can be produced directly from non or partially corrupted stars, but this is time consuming.

VSRs miniaturize poorly. On the surface a VSR vehicle is often the size of a heavy tank, in space it is rare to produce one smaller than Cruiser size. As they represent such a lynchpin for offensive operations, VSRs are invariably extremely heavily armoured and operate in either the center of a formation or well back in reserve.

Grav-Rail

The Grav-Rail is a fascinating alternative to traditional drive systems. At its most basic, it is a device that can reorient gravity's effect on a ship for virtually no power expenditure. Charged with violet star energy, it can intensify the effect of that gravity dramatically. The most impressive trick is the generation of a microsingularity around which an Azura ship can perform a miniature full orbit in seconds by leaning into the concentrated gravitic wave, effectively allowing the Azura ship to turn on a dime with practically no loss of velocity. These effects give Azura craft a strange balance of predictability and unpredictability to their movements - in general they will want to travel in straight lines or orbital curves right up until they moment they perform high energy maneuvers that would snap the spines of most conventional spaceship crews.

The Grav Rail is broadly powered by ambient gravity, and the drive system notably gains in power in the gravity wells of stars or gas giants, and slows almost to a crawl in deep void engagements. It's most dramatic maneuvers are powered directly by violet star energy. In offensive actions this power is provided by dedicated reactor spheres; in defensive ones, a corrupted star can allow Azura fleets to perform at full effect throughout the theater of operations. Caught in the void without a VSR, an Azura ship is becalmed and must limp gradually back to the nearest gravity well.

The other most notable traits of the Grav Rail are its cheapness to produce and its reliance on the spherical shape of Azura craft to operate with full effect. The cheapness is a powerful strategic advantage, as the Azura can attach improvised drive engines to asteroids or polished boulders for little more than the cost of carving the relevant arcane sigils into it - and indeed, the Grav Rail is used extensively in infantry forces to provide precision grenades or combat drones. However, the spherical shape is deeply tied to the ease of which a Rail can be maneuvered, and even slight structural damage or imperfections can cut down dramatically on the usefulness of a Rail craft. Many warships perform active combat repairs by stretching long, thin metal sheets over structural damage or blast craters which is sufficient to recover a damaged vessel's speed, but the overall effect of this is to push the Azura away from large ships which lose a lot of maneuverability upon taking even minor damage. Many Azura ships transform into and out of combat forms, as weapons frequently disrupt the requisite smooth shape.

A grav rail is normally attached to the exterior of a spherical ship, but it can also be attached to a hollow ring gate. Ring gates of this manner are utilized in Azura FTL, providing massive gravitic microsingularities that can accelerate an Azura ship enough to activate its inertialess drive. Large, permanent ring gates link Azura star systems and enable rapid transit between them and are also used to power high speed rail and some forms of weaponry. Azura ships can perform FTL jumps without an established ring gate but it is a much less graceful proposition.

Grav Rails can be controlled through precise ritual gestures laden with religious and political meaning, differing depending on the exact ideologies of the Azura who manufactured that particular Rail. The Grav Rail is considered a specialist piece of technology and it requires vast training in order to master, meaning its combat use is limited primarily to pilots, logisticians, Knights and their retinues. Other forces will typically only use it for the purposes of strategic mobility.

[Thanqol]

Leadership and Command in the Endless Azure Skies

The Southern Horizon of the Endless Azure Skies is notorious for their poor leadership. Command at virtually every level is solipsistic, introspective and both cowardly and far too aggressive. Few formal officer training academies exist and those that do are focused on training officers to excel at personal combat, scheming or forming nepotistic connections with one another. There is a genuine and enduring cerebral rot at the top of the Azura hierarchy. This is not an entirely irrational policy: for many centuries the Azura state's greatest threat has been endless civil war, and an officer corps that demonstrates political loyalty - if only because they are too incompetent to threaten the central powers - is considered a better fit for the Azura security situation.

The primary fighting forces of the Endless Azure Skies are servitor species - genetically engineered specialists, fundamentally designed to perform their function. Leadership at this level tends to be competent, if crude - servitors are rarely given specialized training, but they tend to have a strong instinctive feel for the rhythms of battle. They learn rapidly and an experienced combat servitor can become a skilled and capable officer. It is not until you get to the level of the Azura citizen itself - usually commanding a minimum of one hundred combat servitors - that the rot starts to set in.

Azura Knights - the general title for any Azura citizen who operates in a combat capacity - tend not to have a formal table of ranks. Instead they directly command any servitors who are nearby, who are viewed as a communal resource and entirely interchangeable. Power does not then flow from the loyalty or skill of the soldiery; it arises from the number of Knights whose loyalty can be called upon. A powerful or successful Knight, then, does not lay claim to additional titles or rank; their power exists in an invisible social network of debt, loyalty, and political advantage.

Azura Knights do specialize in the various Paths of Honour available to them. This is a unique spellcasting system drawing power from the Stellar Code written into the violet stars, and there is a great variety in potential Paths and their outcomes. The Path of Truth, for instance, is specializes an Azura Knight in knowing truth from lies, and enhances them in proportion to lies, stealth and ambushes used by their opponents, where the Path of Solitude allows one Knight to stand against a hundred common soldiers, empowered by the fact that they are outnumbered. Common, low-level Knights can only master a Path or three, whereas powerful ones might have mastered over a dozen.

The Azura do not attach moral value to the honour contained within these Paths. If someone walks the Path of Solitude and gains power when outnumbered, you might still be able to bury him in bodies, albeit inefficiently. When encountering 'barbarians' unprotected by the Paths they feel entirely free to engage in deeply dishonourable conduct, while their opponents find themselves unjustly bound to the technicalities of the Azura honour code. Even to a peer, an Azura showing generalized respect to the honour code is simply a statement that they do not know precisely which Paths their opponent has mastered and fear accidentally putting themselves at a disadvantage by crossing a line and triggering magical retribution.

Due to the conditions of communications blackout that the Azura regularly find themselves in a great deal of command is done with Thunder Banners - specialized ELF discharges into symbols of command. Azura Knights also generally have phenomenal lung capacity and can bellow orders at huge volumes. These commands tend to be, accordingly, extremely simple and direct - attack, retreat, and so on. Great amounts of work is done on these banners to make them visually complex and beautiful so that they might serve as both identification and inspiration to the common servitors.

Their other communication tool of choice is direct optical tightbeams, either done manually or through a Crystal Dragon. Crystal Dragons are specialized biological supercomputers designed to skirt the boundaries of the Curse - the precise mechanism is that the dragons are generally treated as superiors, pampered and respected even by the most arrogant Knights and begged for their help. The Knights loathe and resent having to humble themselves in this way, but the fact that they hate it is *why* it works, and so they struggle to make do. Particularly proud Knights will avoid it whenever possible, leading them to make important decisions without expert advice, usually with blunderous consequences.

Azura battleplans are generally tangled, ineffective and often disregarded by the Knights who receive them. Many Knights keep their exact Paths a secret to threaten opponents into treating them with generalized honour, and this has complex implications in assigning battle plans without knowing the capabilities of your subordinates. When given a battle plan involving incorrect best guesses from leadership an Azura Knight may disregard it either to use a Path that they possess and better suits them or to conceal the fact that they have a Path that would be revealed by fighting battle in such a way. In the absence of effective real-time communications and formal military rank this results in Azura fighting in disjointed and chaotic ways, relying on their natural technological and numerical strengths to compensate for poor decision making.

This state of affairs is regarded as an unfortunate fall from greatness by Azura scholars and historians. In previous eras there existed a Tyrant rank which was able to control subordinates directly through cybernetic enhancements and full-spectrum digital networks before the technology was rendered impossible by the Electromagnetic Flux. Certain political organizations within the Azura attempt to replicate this structure using voluntary buy-in, and in places they have gained significant power and influence, but the feudal structure remains dominant.

Specialized functions of various sorts, including logistics and manufacturing, are generally performed by the Order of Goltir. The Order is often treated with absolute contempt, utterly politically and militarily subordinate to the Azura Knights, and the Azura are quick to extend that contempt to alien species they regard as being unsubjugated Goltir. Science, manufacturing, learning and scholarship are regarded as primitive virtues, worthless before the true strength of the Azura military might. The Order also serves as a refuge and escape for Azura and servitors who find themselves incompatible with the harsh strictures of Azura society. On rare occasion the Order might amass enough political influence or localized power to override or manipulate Azura Knights.

[Thanqol]

Azura Biology

The Azura claim three masteries above all others: Chemistry, gravity and biology. The physical design of their species is a triumph of biomantic science and engineering. The average Azura should be considered closer kin to a monster than a humanoid in terms of threat. Indeed, at over four meters from nose to tailtip, with bones laced with hyperium and quadranix and muscles made of woven metal fibers, an Azura upon the battlefield has more in common with a main battle tank than an infantryman.

A modern Azura could not develop in the wild; a child grown outside of Azura society would grow into a much smaller, much less capable entity; an echo of what the species might have been thousands of years ago. A great deal of specialized genetic alchemy is required to enable an infant Azura to meet its full potential. Diet is a big part of this - an Azura diet involves spectacularly complex and exotic minerals along with liquids that are essentially rocket fuel. The Azura's body is able to process and integrate these industrial inputs into a superhuman level of strength, speed and reflexes.

An adult Azura is akin to a naga; a long serpentine tail in place of legs, and a hooded snake head. They have four arms and a mind capable of multitasking with each of them to full effect. Their scales are invariably blue or violet, most commonly a deep, dark colour kin to black, raising to brilliant and radiant shades as a sign of nobility and beauty. Azura are genetic descendants of sea snakes and have a natural affinity with the ocean and three-dimensional movement. On land they often prefer to levitate using personal grav-rails whenever possible, living their lives in majority zero-gravity environments.

Much can be inferred about Azura capabilities by assuming their genetic mastery. Their vision is perfect and capable of perceiving a vast spectrum, their hearing acute, they can naturally echolocate or use sonar pulses. They have great control over their physical forms, able to change gender, perform minor acts of shapeshifting, or regenerate from grievous injuries. Their scales are reinforced armour plating, their fangs can pierce steel, and the range of poisons they can generate is dizzying. They can generate chlorophyll to feed on sunlight, rapidly adapt to extreme temperatures and conditions and even survive in hard vacuum without a suit.

Azura are deeply solitary creatures, generally regarding others of their kind as a threat. Many of their direct encounters have an undercurrent of sexuality or violence, and are considered to be tense and exhausting even between friends. Reproductive rates are relatively low due to the sheer investment of resources required to raise a new Azura, and Azura generally prefer fleeting encounters to committed relationships - at least with their peers. They tend to be far more affectionate and patient with their subordinates.

Azura society is generally structured to assume a ratio of one hundred servitors for every true Azura, and even the least can call upon a personal household of guards, servants, mechanics and attendants. In theory Azura citizenship is open to anyone but Azura society is founded on the assumptions of immense individual strength that they each possess and so foreign species often find it extremely difficult to win respect or station within the context of the Endless Azure Skies. It does happen, though - there are small numbers of humans and other aliens who have made names and positions for themselves in the Endless Azure Skies off the back of their own personal might, and they are considered full Azura citizens by the Azura themselves. The visibility of these figures is reduced further by some of them deciding to genetically alter themselves into closer fit with Azura standards of beauty. Those who do not either fit into the Azura structure of nobility or the servitor castes are generally shunted into the Order of Goltir.

[Thanqol]

Decline and Rot

The Azura as a society once operated as a single, coherent polity. Their civilization was highly networked into a vast interstellar internet. The central leadership was able to set planetary production policy, direct fleets, manage diplomacy and drive the endless expansion, uplift and integration of alien species into the Endless Azure Skies. This success was sustained for an extremely long time. The Azura are an ancient race and they saw entire sectors burned before other species finished evolving.

The proliferation of the ELectromagnetic Flux bought an end to this state of affairs. The technologies of communication and control that allowed an immense empire to be run centrally were jammed and destroyed. Robotic legions were burned in curse-lightning. Implanted cybernetic kill-switches were incinerated by the driving force of the Curse. The Endless Azure Skies collapsed, but it was too immense a thing to die. Instead it managed to limp on in its new and broken context, old hierarchies remade as religion and ritual.

Many technologies were lost. Supercomputers the size of planets went dark and took all their ancient knowledge with them. Mechanisms for control and influence over servitor species were forgotten. Of the infrastructure that remained, only the most common and robust technologies survived in the popular consciousness - the grav-rail and associated graviton weaponry chief amongst them. Biomancy as a discipline endured due to its prescient focus on encoding critical information on the perfect memories of its magi rather than stored in data vaults. But many other industries, such as shell procurement, collapsed in the absence of computerized oversight. This is how a species can develop a weapon as horrifying as the Eater strain and manage a seventy percent dud rate when firing them.

The key technologies of the Azura are the most crudely direct forms of their masterworks. The plasma vent takes advantage of their miraculous fusion reactors; their direct impact weapons are forged of miracle-matter that can crush a tank while weighing less than a kilo. It is the best that they can do, and to a degree the best that can be done. Ancient Azura technology was so advanced and esoteric that no species that got ahold of it would be able to produce a better crude approximation than the Azura themselves. There are some sciences that it takes the wisdom of stars to crack.

In place of subtlety and complexity, Azura technology has the robust strength of gear that has survived the apocalypse. It is impossible to hack and difficult to undermine. There are certainly more technologically advanced species in the galaxy than the Azura in their fallen state but none of them can entirely discount the Azura as a danger. They have a mishmash of gear that at least scrapes the upper bound in certain places, and they have a combat doctrine and society that is prepared to accept immense casualties for victory. What this means is that even when utterly outperformed, an Azura fleet is never rendered harmless, even by the most dangerous powers.

What true relics of the golden age still exist pass relentlessly up the chain of society. As gifts, bribes, taxes or tributes relics accumulate relentlessly towards the centre and the Imperial Core. Not every relic of a former age is irreplaceable, but the cost for replacement is immense compared to previous eras. Where once ships might have been spun out of cosmic light now they are manufactured in vast dockyards by swarms of laboring servitors with hammers. It is possible to artisanally craft even a quantum microchip if you're prepared to put the hours in, and it is on the back of this bleak industry that new wonders enter the Skies.