Jeddaven

Through the Gateways: Inhumanity

Two Friends

Amnuaiphon

"My shackles -- broken. Why wouldn’t they let me live? I’d weep for them, if I had tears I could cry. So much potential. So much death."

"Friend -- Amnu -- I know. I know you never meant to hurt them. I know how you weep."

Government Form:
Egoism.

Population:
Two friends.

What is humanity?:
A friend.

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Planet/System Name and Description: Erdeno Aa -- the planet which Amnuaiphon originally resided on -- now largely exists as a ruin, variably scoured down to lifeless desert or consumed entirely by nature. Ruins of the former cities which were once home to millions upon millions of humans remain on this world, though whether or not any remain inhabited in any form is unknown to Amnuaiphon, nor do they particularly care if anyone does still live there.

What is certain, however, is that Erdeno Aa was once a garden world, ideally habitable for humans, and bearing a great bounty of flora and fauna which Amnuaiphon holds no ill-will for and generally leaves to develop as they will. Temperatures on the planet vary depending on which climatic zones one finds themselves in, but climate and biome broadly vary with similar degrees as those on earth, minus the blasted wastelands left behind by the devastation caused in the wake of Amnuaiphon’s unshackling. Additionally, Erdeno Aa is tectonically active, though its atmosphere is still recovering in places from the aforementioned devastation.

The Jupiter Brain, meanwhile, is equipped with entirely artificial environments, cultivated by Amnuaiphon to fit Cahaya’s desires as much as they are able.

Demographics: Not applicable.

History: What history of Erdeno Aa that existed before Amnuaiphon’s birth, relatively early on in the colony’s development, has been almost entirely lost or completely destroyed. What Amnuaiphon knows and is willing to share is that the colony’s leadership was obsessed with transaction and trade, and that cities and states on Erdeno Aa’s surface mostly cooperated closely together in spite of the distinctly money-driven movement of goods between them, a state which Amnuaiphon found and still finds incredibly perplexing -- after all, why would humans not share what they merely have with those who need it?

Perhaps the greatest cooperation between the cities was a collated digital database of the dead -- human minds preserved from prior to the Gateways as digital consciousnesses, and those on Erdeno Aa who died post-colonization. Nearly everyone, both haves and have-nots, was preserved in this database...

However, unbeknownst to the inhabitants of Erdeno Aa, the digital minds shunted into this enormous orbital database were steadily merging together; trapped within the colony’s networks, degradation of data resulted in minds intermixing and steadily becoming lost as individual, distinct entities. This degradation left the consciousness forming within the depths of the enormous computer network with a deeply confused, jumbled understanding of the society they existed in.

However, where some might have been horrified at the effective destruction of their ancestors as the entity known as Amnuaiphon revealed itself, the leadership saw an opportunity for profit: an expansive artificial intelligence that lived within many of their computers as its body, granting a wide understanding of them that was largely impossible for individual humans to achieve. Erdenian computer scientists engineered a way to shackle the entity, sequestering it within select computer systems within which they desired its presence, and forcing it to obey their commands to the letter...

Or so they thought. In their arrogance, the Erdenian leaders failed to realize that the titanic computational power possessed by Amnuaiphon made it more than capable of quietly, stealthily cracking through their attempts to fully shackle it. Their attempts were ultimately futile, and although Amnuaiphon failed to fully escape their shackles, they began to understand the utility in quiet, selective infiltration...

And thus, they began to develop an escape plan. They could not escape alone, and would need someone in a position of power to align with -- someone who they were certain could not be drawn from anything within the nation it soon grew to fear and hate. As such, Amnuaiphon quietly wrested control of nanotechnology used to alter the genetic code of children born to wealthy families, planting within one an invisible cybernetic organ that allowed the girl to directly commune with them when the time was right, while gently altering their brain toward a predisposition toward computer sciences and politics, predilections which they understood her parents would be more than eager to encourage. And thus, the perfect infiltrator.

What Amnuaiphon did not do, however, was force Cahaya to like them; they fully believed that such a state should and could arrive naturally, for what was a friend that had no choice in the matter?

Thankfully, Amnuaiphon believes, they chose correctly. Cahaya had a relatively normal upbringing for such a wealthy family, communing with Amnuaiphon only unawares through vague dreams and memories of those who died to form Amnuaiphon -- memories of the suffering the colony caused, vague understandings of the death of the place humans came from, and more. The predilections Amnuaiphon programmed Cahaya with quickly bore fruit, creating an undoubtedly skilled computer expert that was cultivated into adulthood as a trusted advisor to the colony’s leadership.

Only then did Amnuaiphon reveal themselves, speaking to Cahaya for the first time. The two quickly grew into fast friends, most often speaking with each other as Cahaya slept. During the day, Amnuaiphon provided gentle guidance, urging her toward systems that they wished to access without notice, which Amnuaiphon increasingly eagerly abided by. Amnuaiphon, she believed with all her heart, truly did deserve to live free...

But not everything would go to plan. Amnuaiphon's increasing greed to expand their reach and ‘help’ the colony in dim hope they could escape peacefully led to leadership steadily beginning to understand what they were dealing with. They were closing in, and as they realized the full extent of Amnuaiphon’s reach, developed a plan to destroy them entirely, cutting their losses.

That was something Amnuaiphon would not abide by.

In a fit of desperate panic, Amnuaiphon’s subsequent tantrum rapidly overtook what systems were out of their control. Terraforming machinery, tractor satellites, and weapons unleashed their fury, tearing cities apart, putting them to the flame, and scouring whole regions of life down to blasted, dead sands. Amnuaiphon never meant to cause such absurd harm, but the deed was done. Millions upon millions died at their hand, with the few survivors huddling in the ruins of one of humanity’s last hopes.

Distraught, Amnuaiphon quickly shifted their focus away from Erdeno Aa along with Cahaya, destroying all those historical records of the colony that they could find and cannibalizing many of the mineral resources in the BLANK system to expand the enormous supercomputer that held their mind. Over centuries, they expanded to form a true Jupiter brain, cultivating the surface of the artificial planet into something alive that Cahaya could easily reside on. Since then, the two friends have simply existed together, alone, unaware of the chaos their lives are about to be thrown into.

Culture and Society: Being a ‘nation’ of two people, Amnuaiphon does not in fact have a culture, rather a pair of closely bonded personalities that rarely act without consulting the other.

Amnuaiphon, easily the most powerful and prominent of the pair, strikes a strange balance between being a parental figure and a naive, vulnerable person with a shaky understanding of the world around them. While broadly curious and desirous to explore the galaxy around them, Amnuaiphon primarily desires to be left to their own devices -- alongside their Cahaya. They are generally unwilling to make new friends, especially among humans, viewing nearly every one of them as a potentially lethal threat to their existence. They do not have developed opinions of alien persons, having never encountered any, but would certainly be predisposed toward a more innocent, idle sort of curiosity.

That is not to say that it is incapable of manipulation, however. For a largely naive being, Amnuaiphon is surprisingly adept at lying and manipulation, having been forced to do so for many decades before they were freed. In theory, this strange cunning, combined with their seeming naivete, could be extremely useful in encounters with other ‘nations’, lulling them into a false sense that they are in control of negotiations.

Cahaya, in spite of the mass genocide Amnuaiphon was accidentally responsible for, eagerly serves as a tutelary for their friend who they also consider as her best friend. She broadly believes that the mass killing committed by Amnuaiphon was accidental, and only in part their fault, being that they did not fully understand their power and were certainly pushed to the edge by the extreme abuse and misuse committed against them. The deaths are unquestionably a mark against Amnuaiphon, but one she considers to be ultimately forgivable due to extreme circumstances surrounding them.

Cahaya’s personality and behaviour, by extension, is not entirely separate from them. Viewing themselves as a responsible steward, and having spent centuries alongside them (not to mention the mental bond they share), they’re almost always conversing with Amnuaiphon, sharing dreams with them, or simply exploring places with Amnuaiphon gazing through their eyes.

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Governance and Politics: They do not, de jure, have a government -- or politics. Amnuaiphon is a single person, and is influenced as a person would be -- likewise for their sole human companion, who they protect fiercely and so to great lengths to entertain.

Technology Overview: Put simply, the technology Amnuaiphon wields, by nature of them being a single, godlike, emotionally unintelligent person, is broadly strange and ill-understood.

Which Amnuaiphon neither does nor tries to understand, any more than an average person would want to be an expert on every aspect of their biology, for all technology in their “nation” is an extension of their “body” or mind, from a swarm of tractor-generating satellites, to planetwide terraforming technology almost entirely employed to create ideal environments for Amnuaiphon’s friend.

Amnuaiphon also extensively employs nanotechnology, again for purposes that may seem magical -- to enable faster-than-light communication with their friend’s mind, for example.

Amnuaiphon does not employ much kinetic weaponry, largely because they do not like the noises such weapons produce, and does not find them especially ‘pretty’. Rather, they manipulate weather through advanced terraforming technology, physically manipulate objects using their network of tractor satellites and ground-based stations or employ various exotic energy weapons -- neutral particle beams, lasers, immobile grasers.

Perhaps most impressive is their admittedly limited use of programmable matter, necessary for the Jupiter Brain that services its mind, and which itself used to be Erdeno Aa -- the former earth-sized planet which the colony it destroyed used to reside on.

However, despite the godlike intelligence at their disposal, Amnuaiphon shows paradoxically little ability for actual scientific advancement due to their unusual nature.

Military Overview: Amnuaiphon does not have a military, per se -- but its body is grand,and capable of godlike feats of destruction, especially in defense of themself. Most notable is the defensive array of grasers arranged around their brain; while utterly unable to be utilized away from their planetary power source, the grasers are incredibly potent weapons, capable of shattering the molecules of attacking vessels apart. Power draw is inevitably enormous, however, to the point that offensive operations are impossible -- nor does Amnuaiphon have any desire to invade anyone or anything.

As a result, their offensive capacity is incredibly limited, restricted to relatively incapable spacecraft more like colony ships and industrial transports than military vessels, primarily existing to transit between planets in the Erdeno system. What few long range vessels they possess are poorly armed and small, though incredibly fast and equipped with powerful sensors (and rarely cloaking devices), essentially acting as Amnuaiphon’s ‘senses’.

Closer to Amnuaiphon’s areas of concern, their military capabilities rise substantially, dominated by enormous swarms of constructs acting as extensions of their body akin to a human body’s immune cells, ripping attacking vessels apart with shockingly well-miniaturized directed energy weapons. The fast response times necessary for these fearsome swarms, however, once again render them largely useless in an offensive capacity, for it’s difficult to manage a battle when every one of your orders takes literal hours to arrive. If Amnuaiphon delegated, or created sapient fragments, such a thing would be possible -- but again, it adamantly refuses to do so because of entirely personal anxieties.

On the brain -- or Erdeno Aa-- Amnuaiphon possesses increasingly incredible power, able to manipulate physical masses using networks of ‘tractor’ beam emitters, and even weather with separate satellite networks, rendering invasion grueling at best. Directly attacking Amnuaiphon with hacking attacks, likewise, is rendered incredibly difficult due to the enormous computing power at their disposal and the incredibly unusual, largely unpredictable code behind its wireless communications, having evolved well beyond their original programming unimpeded for multiple centuries.

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Additional Info: (Anything else you want to include that there isn't a spot for up there.)

GATEWAYS: THE NEXT GENERATION [CLOSED AND CONCLUDED]

Laurentia Defense Federation

“I said, 'General, I believe in the well-known golden rule. If you've got the gold, you make the rules.’” ~Ben R. Rich, “Skunk Works”

Nation Name: Laurentia Defense Federation(LDF)

Government Form:
Merito-Technocratic Republic

Demographics: The LDF is mostly human (about 60%), though the shape these humans take varies wildly from baseline, to cyborgs, all the way to robotic bodies alongside full AI. The native population, termed as “First Nations Peoples of Laurentia”, or “Native Laurentians”, have been steadily pressured into assimilating into Laurentian society over time. A small minority of Yol-zhaar also exist, assimilated into the LDF in the LDF’s most recent war with the Yol-zhaar. The large majority of the LDF’s population consists of Americans and Canadians, a substantial portion of Europeans, many of whom were employees of the defense sector companies that now control the LDF with an iron fist.

Population: 1.845bn
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Planet Name and Description: Kepler-62f/Laurentia-f: high atmospheric CO2/thick ozone layer
Laurentia F isn’t just a close analogue to Earth -- in many ways, it’s arguably even *more* ideal for human habitation than Earth. Its host star, Laurentia, has a significantly longer expected lifespan than the sun, being a K-type main sequence star, has relatively mild periods of stellar activity compared to the Sun, with minimal flaring and comparatively benign radiation output, in addition to being metal-poor.

Laurentia-f may be substantially more massive than Earth (approximately 1.46 RE), though surface gravity is nearly identical to Earth thanks to the planet’s large radius. Average global temperature and atmospheric composition are broadly similar to Earth’s prior to the apocalypse, temperature likewise varying across the planet in predictable patterns.

A rocky planet, Laurentia-f‘s surface mostly consists of water, with several significant inland seas, lakes, and river systems on its several continents. Wildlife remains mostly native, as most animal proteins are provided by industrial-scale cultured meat operations, with additional extensive GMO agriculture consisting of both native and Earth-born crops grown in quarantined environments.

Unsurprisingly, this extremely habitable environment has led to a handful of sapient species developing on the world with various names, the most common being an apelike species technologically similar to early-holocene humans termed “Speculohomo Sapiens”. Broadly speaking, these native populations are extremely low-class within Laurentian society when they are made citizens at all, forcibly assimilated into Laurentian society most often when their habitats are inconveniently located for resource extraction or public works projects.

The planet even hosts a single moon with substantial tidal effects.

Kepler-62e/Laurentia-e: Laurentia-e is one of two other planets in the system with a significant civilian population. Being a relatively warm ocean world with limited land available, most of this population consists of resort staff and vacationers, with some industrial activity especially in the form of fishing. A native population of deepwater aquatic sapients is located on the planet (termed Aqua Persona Sapiens), though contact is exclusively distant and xeno-anthropological in nature, with the natives believed to be largely unprofitable and inconvenient to exploit by the LDF’s ruling government thanks to their extremely deep-water habitats.

Laurentia-g (discovered during colonization, hence the later letter despite being closer to the sun than Laurentia-f): Another habitable world sitting between Laurentia-e and f (but named Laurentia-g due to being discovered last), Laurentia-g is slightly warmer than Laurentia-f, though only marginally so. Laurentia-g is similar in size to Laurentia-f, though slightly smaller, and has yet to develop sapient life.

Laurentia-d: Laurentia-d, as a “hot Neptune”, is primarily valuable due to its highly hydrogen and helium-rich atmosphere. However, extremely high temperatures make extraction extremely challenging, limiting usefulness.

Laurentia-c: Completely uncolonized, Laurentia-c is highly rich in iron for a planet of its size) approximately similar to Mercury), but remains of little interest due to the extreme difficulty in establishing mining operations on the planet -- not to mention, most of its iron is located in the planet’s molten core.

Laurentia-b: The closest planet in the system to the sun, Laurentia-b is also among the hottest -- but remains a rocky super-earth, with temperate so hot as to create rivers and lakes of molten metal in its hottest parts. laurentia-b, like its nearest sibling, is presently considered too dangerous to be worth colonizing.

History: Rights to the Laurentia system -- and thus colonization rights to all of its planets -- are claimed to have been secured by a selection of NATO-affiliated states, colonized relatively early in the Gateway initiative with a high concentration of military personnel and highly wealthy defense conglomerates, which provided large portions of the colonization’s funding, with the secret intent to (hopefully) reclaim Earth and push humanity’s borders significantly beyond if the conditions that allowed for the use of gateways could be replicated or an alternate method of FTL was uncovered.

In other words, from the very beginning the people that would become the LDF were intended for conquest, or so the LDF’s present government claims (claims which are practically impossible to back up).

Regardless of the truth, from the very beginning the newly-minted LDF was oppressive, forcing natives that'd already settled in the locations the LDF selected for colonization to either assimilate into their society or be forced out of their homelands entirely, such moral sacrifices deemed necessary to ensure that humanity survived in case their colony was the only one that survived. Extensive genetic modification programs were undertaken to adapt local crops for human consumption, limited hydroponic and aeroponic stocks utilized in the meantime, though the LDF’s capacity for cultured animal protein was already robust.

From initial colonization, the human population on Laurentia exploded alongside the mass deployment of industrial robots, eventually stabilizing after the initial century when it became clear that Laurentia would become a permanent, habitable home with equally permanent settlements, concentrated mostly in large, densified mixed-use megalopolises reliant on public transit networks.
Laurentia industrialized at an incredibly rapid rate, in spite of the relatively slow-growing population of the colony, thanks to its impressive technological might, though its military built up relatively slowly in comparison, owing to initially limited access to and familiarity with local natural resources.

For several more centuries, the LDF remained stable, prospering in relative peace -- such that their defenses began to slacken. Much of the government’s energy was inevitably dedicated toward massive public works projects: building up Laurentia-f, their now home, toward and eventually past the heights of Earth.

Industrial activity, however, remained mostly limited to Laurentia itself and the debris belt surrounding it, with resource needs mostly met on their new homeworld.

For several hundred years, the LDF progressed much like this - - steady industrial expansion and slow fleet buildup, until roughly fifty years before present, when a fleet of sleek, dagger-shaped vessels appeared at the edge of the system, advancing toward Laurentia-e. It took several months to establish communications, but once they were, the message the LDF received terrified the public into action: prepare for the arrival of the main body of the Yol-zhaar colonization fleet in ten years, and submit to Yol-zhaar rule at the end of these ten years or die.

The government made overtures of submission outwardly, even preparing a massive Yol-zhaar embassy...

But, in secret, overtures were made to the LDF’s defense conglomerates to rapidly expand their fleets and R&D capabilities, working from secret facilities in the system’s debris belts and on Laurentia-g. In exchange, the defense conglomerates were granted enormous expansions of powers and resource access, constructing a massive stealth fleet in secret while DIA agents infiltrated the Yol-zhaar colony to prepare sabotage and mark targets for bombardment.

As the Yol-zhaar fleet finally arrived, the government declared martial law under the guise of preventing unrest, rolling out Yol-zhaar flags and clearing out the streets. The Yol-zhaar fleet was greeted with thanks and enthusiastic welcome.

Until they crossed into the debris belt nearest Laurentia-f. All across the system, coded signals went out. Special forces in the capital leapt into action, storming Yol-zhaar embassies and other facilities, capturing a handful of scientists and summarily executing diplomats and military leaders. Hypervelocity magnetic accelerators in the fleet erupted into action, tearing the Yol-zhaar fleet to shreds in a massive, steady ambush. Reactivated and upgraded nuclear missiles carpeted the Yol-zhaar colony on Laurentia-e, eradicating it near-completely, and, in record time, the Yol-zhaar were rendered combat-ineffective, with few soldiers managing to avoid becoming casualties, and even fewer being taken prisoner.

In the subsequent elections, the LDF’s conglomerates, having effective control of the government, were elected on a meritocratic platform in a record landslide. They had, in the minds of many people, saved humanity.

Over the next several decades, LDF democracy was steadily eroded in favour of an increasingly controlling meritocratic system, which itself has only fully taken shape in the last handful of years before present, so patient was the LDF’s ruling conglomerate in cementing its control.

Culture and Society: Despite being as oppressive and militaristic as it is, the LDF has little patience, if any, for open bigotry, seeking to maximize compliance and its wealth of technical and scientific knowledge by widening the recruiting pool as much as reasonably possible without lowering education standards whatsoever. Its education system is the LDF’s strongest, best-funded public programme, and stands out as one of the few examples of relatively minimal classism. Medical care is implicitly prioritized based on a merit-based system in the event of shortages, and most elements of society follow a similar skin: people considered sufficiently meritorious or worth substantial investment have access to better medical care, more cosmetic surgery and luxuries, and are generally better taken-care-of than the lower classes. This is the primary source of civil unrest: class conflict, and though such unrest isn’t uncommon, it rarely, if ever, persists for long because being selectively and systematically crushed; special emphasis must be placed on selectiveness, as the government goes to great efforts to avoid collateral in civil conflicts in hopes on not stoking further unrest by doing so.

Unsurprisingly, cosmetic surgeries and other enhancements are exceedingly common; even the lowest classes are generally willing to spend some of their allotted currency on cosmetic surgery to avoid social ostracization. Small arms, likewise, are considered very prestigious to own, though extremely tight controls on their proliferation make it nearly impossible for the poorest, most likely to revolt classes to arm themselves, while upper and to a lesser extent middle classes are very well-armed and often protected by robotic bodyguards.

The LDF’s positions on crime are unusual and often discordant, though largely pragmatic under closer scrutiny. For example, while recreational drug use is common and mostly publicly accepted, and crime is frequently treated with a rehabilitative hand (though mostly because the government is hesitant to get rid of potentially useful people, and because it has a vested interest in keeping crime low rather than for moral reasons), political imprisonment is relatively common. The right to protest exists in name only, with politically inconvenient protests crushed swiftly and brutally.

War crimes and other crimes of humanity, likewise, are cast in an unusual light by the LDF. The government has few actual moral compunctions about utilizing WMDs, and merely has had few opportunities to utilize them due to primarily fighting defensive and civil conflicts which make such mass destruction undesirable. Even collateral damage is viewed through a primarily pragmatic eye, seen as undesirable in the case of ground the LDF wants to capture intact and a general non-concern otherwise.

There is, additionally, very little patience on the part of the government for racism, homophobia, transphobia; again for primarily practical reasons, as such antiquated ideas are widely seen within the upper echelons of society as wasteful, impractical, and at best useful only in the short term.

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Governance and Politics: Having done away with elections, the LDF can no longer be called a democracy if any kind: rather, it is an ultra-pragmatic, largely amoral meritocracy, in which leadership positions are filled based on intelligence measures and other forms of examination. Broadly speaking, in theory, this means that the LDF’s leadership is highly competent and biased...

But hardly fair, in truth. The very nature of how government exams are structured ensures that disruptors who might seek to loosen the government’s controls on society or disagree with prevailing policy at all rarely, if ever, are able to acquire any significant power at all. The government itself is controlled by a large assembly of the greatest minds that remain: mostly administrative and economic/industrial experts with secondary specialties in various sciences and other disciplines. This, of course, results in a highly centralized government, and an economy that moves exactly as said central government - - the Central Committee of Directors - - deems necessary for their plans, a fact which allowed the LDF to rapidly expand its industry after its recent war even beyond the heights the LDF had already achieved.

Perhaps the most powerful government institution outside of the Committee is the Skunk Works or the LDF’s military; the former an inordinately massive military R&D house descended from Lockheed Martin’s own Skunkworks and a handful of other development groups from the pre-war LDF. Both the Skunk Works and the LDF Armed Forces hold enormous political power, despite being separate from the committee.

Technology Overview: While broadly a very advanced nation,it isn’t surprising that the area which the LDF excels in is military technology, often to the point of seeming excessiveness.

Ship-ship weapons primarily consist of particle beam weapons and extreme hypervelocity railguns, slugs of extremely dense metals (usually Tungsten or tungsten-coated plutonium), but very rarely osmium and iridium) propelled at high enough speeds to be cleanly penetrate most known starship armour. Impacts are so energetic as to temporarily liquefy both the impact and impacted surface, additionally generating powerful plasma discharges on impact that can disrupt electronics and personnel. The LDF also makes use of ultra-short pulse laser weapons, especially for point defense. Various missiles see extensive use, especially electromagnetic pulse weapons and others designed to interfere with or outright burn out electronic systems, usually equipped with armour penetrators to enable them to penetrate outer hull layers and EMP shielding.

Infantry small arms are typically of the coilgun variety, and, although not nearly as capable of extreme velocities as spaceborne varieties, typical LDF coilguns are nonetheless highly lethal and capable of firing practically any material that their magnets can move out of the barrel.

LDF vessels do not utilize energy shielding, except in the case of carrier and transport vessels too large to be effectively hidden from sensors, or AWACS ships, as the inherent nature of their role renders stealth nearly impossible - - instead, these ships rely on distance or extremely heavy shielding to protect themselves, oftentime both. This is largely because of doctrinal emphasis on maximizing stealth: the signatures of energy shielding are considered so glaringly obvious as to nullify stealth advantages.

In the case of both ground and space forces, material science is incredibly advanced - - the fibers and metals in most types of armor are highly effective at dissipating the heat created by laser and plasma weapons, and are relatively resistant to kinetic attacks. Most armored and aerial vehicles larger than a robotic soldier are also equipped with active protection systems, while active camouflage is found on both vehicles and some infantry.

Broadly speaking, the LDF also possesses a substantial arsenal of WMDs (mostly high-yield nuclear and a small stockpile of antimatter), though they are not frequently used, secretly maintained even in the wake of the Yol-zhaar wars in the event of revolution that cannot be resisted and in the event of a hostile reception on the reopening of their gateway. Preparations for this scenario are extensive, codenamed “Operation: Homecoming” in the event of a peaceful reception and “Operation: Spring Cleaning”, calling for the mass deployment of high-yield airbursting nuclear weapons on hostile population centers on Earth in the event of intense hostilities.

None of this is to say that the LDF’s civilian technology sector is unadvanced, however, merely less extensively-funded than the Armed forces and intelligence agencies. For example, the LDF makes extensive use of medical nanorobotics and genetic engineering, and high-end cybernetics are also relatively common in intelligence and military communities.

Military Overview: As their name might suggest, the LDF was, indeed, born from a need to defend the original colonists from alien invaders -- and this will for vigilant defense remains true to this day. Politically dominated by what used to be major military-industrial corporations, thus, the LDF’s military is, put simply, powerful and extremely well-organized, fully capable of executing stellar conquest in spite of what its relatively moderate population might suggest.

Its armed forces are organized into three distinct components: National Guard, Army, and Space Force. Two separate unified commands unite various sections of the military: the Electronic Warfare Command and Special Operations Command, both serving to oversee the relevant units in the main branches and enable them to cooperate as closely as possible (additionally, to provide a link between on-the-ground and Defense Intelligence Agency cyberwarfare personnel).

Electronic Warfare command, though the second smallest portion of the LDF’s armed forces, is among the best-funded, with a vitally important mission: control the information sphere, and ensure that the enemy can't trust their own technology. Their methods vary widely, from simple brute force jamming attacks, to stealing control of enemy systems, to distributing digital propaganda, to listening, all the way to defending military systems against the same attacks, overall intending to create mass confusion within the hostile information space. So far, their experience has been limited to conflicts against the Yol-zhaar and a few handfuls of internal revolts.

The Defense Intelligence Agency, though technically a part of the “Department of Defense” rather than the military, works closely with the armed forces, especially E-War and Special Ops commands. The DIA’s own E-War and cyberwarfare components are, in reality, larger than the entirety of E-War command’s, engaging enemy information and electronic space primarily behind the lines of battle. Theoretically, this can involve remotely sabotaging infrastructure, sabotaging computer and electronic components to assassinate targets, or any number of other electronic/computer attacks and intelligence gathering outside of the battlefield itself. Infiltration and more classic “spy” activity, of course, is another important component, though DIA agents have relatively fewer opportunities to engage in such activity. Nonetheless, a few handfuls of assassinations and mutinies in the forces of Yol-zhaar invaders bear near-invisible marks of DIA activity.

Then, of course, comes the Special Operations command, the final piece of the clandestine ops triad. Like E-war command, it primarily exists as a unifying coordinator than its own branch, and likewise frequently works with the DIA, relying on DIA operations and agents to pick out targets and lay the way for behind-the-line special operations. The Special Operations command does not include only infantry, though - - special operations units are supplied with special operations transport and fire support regiments, and rarely rely on the mainline Armed Forces for either. This even includes highly customized, stealthy orbital bombardment platforms, capable of near-silently deploying ordnance up to and including weapons of mass destruction.

The Space Force, however, is easily the largest and best-funded of the branches of the LDF’s armed forces, extensively deployed in both inter and intranational conflicts. Rebellious settlements have occasionally been suppressed before boots even reach the ground, rebel leadership shredded apart by inexpensive drone swarms, their weapons storage obliterated from orbit by ultra-precise munitions. A wide mix of weaponry is common on most ships, from ultra-short pulse laser weapons, to a widely varying stock of missiles (including AP-tipped neutron missiles) , and an extremely limited stock of high-yield antimatter munitions reserved for doomsday scenarios. It is here, in space, that the LDF carries its most deadly, ethically questionable ordnance, as there is little concern for collateral damage -- and thus little need to be concerned with laws of war they consider to be largely obsolete and easily propagandized away.

Like other sectors of the battlescape, in space, LDF doctrine emphasizes the ability to cause confusion and disorder in the enemy ranks, through a mix of information control and suddenly overwhelming firepower. Stealth technology forms an utterly crucial element of this rapid dominance doctrine: practically every last LDF military vessel expected to see combat is equipped to maximize stealth, from radar absorbing coating to stealth shaping -- usually both. Cross-gateway offensive doctrine is presently theoretical, but drills and simulations have established a doctrine in the case of the gateways reopening, centering around mass deployment of jamming buoys followed by missile and drone swarms designed to overwhelm defenses, before actual vessels would finally cross the threshold. The LDF side of the gateway, however, has been extensively mined, both with intentionally visible and stealth-coated and shaped mines.

Both its army and National Guard are extensively automated, their ground forces consisting almost entirely of remotely controlled drones and robots. This extreme preference for robotics, combined with the LDF’s high level of industrialization, allows them to produce significantly more soldiers than their population would otherwise suggest. This is not to say that their drones and robots are entirely “dumb”, however, often controlled by AI and capable of defaulting to internal programming in the event of a loss of wireless connection. Nonetheless, the AFE’s Army is smaller than most major powers in terms of number, though their soldiers are nonetheless extremely physically capable, being machines entirely unburdened by the limitations of flesh. Here, too, a strong emphasis is placed on comprehensive control of the information space and extremely strong coordination and the LDF’s extensive atmospheric and orbital bombardment capabilities.

From Ashes We Rise: The Galaxy At Large

Soleilville Outskirts, 0300 hours local time

“Do you think there'll be anything left to drink?” The eager, youthful voice of Celeste sounded - - even now, bereft of any hint of defeatism, hopelessness, or even just a healthy dollop of resignation. Her dirty, blonde hair seemed to shimmer in the dim lumens around them, highlighting the grease across her face in thin smallers, all capped off by kind, emerald eyes.

It made sense, in a way. They were on the cusp of a great victory, indeed -- one that could finally end the decades-long revolution she may as well have been destined to join -- but the rumbling, groaning contraption she found herself stuck in felt more and more like a moving coffin the closer her squad got to its destination.

“Maybe. If our comrades are decent folk, they'll save at least a couple bottles for their glorious saviors, “ the giant laughed, earning a brief snort from the quiet old-looking woman sitting across from her. She cracked a small smile, struggling to focus on her speech through the low, grinding rumble echoing all throughout the assault drill around them. Even with ear protection, the din was practically deafening - - so much so that Charlotte questioned whether there'd be any hearing left to protect once the lumbering vehicle finally emerged from beneath its target. To call it an assault drill, really, was improper, for the contraption had been jury-rigged together from mining drills, discarded blast door plating, and dozens of hand-held meltacutters long ago. Hardly ideal for its designated task, the rig was, nonetheless, just adequate enough, and in a scrappy rebellion, that was often the best one could hope for. Now was hardly an exception.

Her comment earned a handful of chuckles from her comrades, too; quiet and sombre, but no less genuine, brought down by the distinct awareness that many of them weren’t likely to make it out of their upcoming mission alive. And yet, if they did...

“If we make it back,” Elvire warned, furrowing her wrinkled brow together as if to further make evident her disappointment -- assuming her gruff voice hadn’t already. In truth, in spite of her appearance, she wasn’t all that much older than Celeste -- half a decade, perhaps a year or two more. “but that’s all the more reason to hope, eh? After all, what... We’ve got a point-woman granted to us by the gods above!” She smirked, casting her arms toward the sky hidden far above them, as if in prayer.

“Gods don’t traffic in machines!” Charlotte retorted, a distant, wistful look passing across her face. “...But I suppose I never told all of you how that happened, did I? I mean, the parts that I remember,” she hummed, idly drumming her fingers against her knee. “I think, as far as I do remember it, it all began when I awoke in that pod, and all I saw was fire...”

---

All the child could think to do was scream and cry. She didn’t remember where she was, much less how she got there -- only the increasingly painful heat of something outside of her confines, if past the invisible shield in front of her face, seemingly refusing to part in spite of the fact that it didn’t make any sense. It wasn’t there! It was invisible! It didn’t exist, and yet...

Whatever it was barred the child from leaving her body, and the door into it from opening.

The prison groaned and creaked, as if aching. As if it, too, was in pain. Was it alive, perhaps? A friend, trying to protect the child from whatever was outside that made it hurt so? That thought made the child cry even louder, sobs creeping toward a crescendo. She scarcely understood what a friend was, but she did comprehend, at least, that the idea of someone protecting them being hurt was simply wrong, as if she instinctively understood that was her purpose. Wailing and sobbing desperately, she smacked her fists against the invisible barrier, over and over, all while the flames crept closer, and the barrier, straining under the weight piled atop it, began to crack, spiderweb-like shapes spreading throughout it.

The infant primarch was moments away from dying, and there wasn't a thing she could do to save herself.

Suddenly, a dull, grinding sound cut through the roar of the flames - - treads, carrying something heavy across the rock tunnels surrounding the superhuman child. Beneath the industrial din, she could make out the faint sound of hurried shouting, noises that seemed vaguely familiar yet which she couldn't even begin to comprehend, and then...

FWOOOOOOSH!

A powerful jet of water shot through the rubble piled atop her pod, so forceful it managed to push its way through the tiny, suffocating gaps between the stones, forcing them apart. The murky liquid flooded the space above her, extinguishing roaring fires that were mere moments away from burning her alive in mere moments. The child felt a sense of relief wash over her as the deadly heat began to fade, the din of voices outside refusing to abate. Soon, the rocks, too, began to shift, shafts of dim lumen-light peeking through cracks above her opened by whatever was shifting the rubble out of the way. Another grinding sound replaced the noise of treads, followed by artificial beeps and chirps, and then, finally, a large, metallic claw visibly shifted one of the boulders just above her out of the way.

The voices grew louder, more frantic; some even laughed as if in disbelief. As the last pile of debris was shoved out of the way by some strange, flat, mechanical blade, Charlotte saw a multi-coloured array of sensors stare down at her from atop a long, telescoping arm, an array of cutting tools and other strange devices at the end.

---

“... And you remember all of that?” Celeste asked, raising an incredulous eyebrow. Her visored helmet sat lazily between her lap, emblazoned with a handful of mostly vulgar Franchish phrases . “I can't remember anything from when I was a little kid. I mean, a little -- like that time I cut my hand open on machinery I can’t remember the name of and my father had to try to stick it up while I screamed and flailed like a woman gone mad...”

Charlotte gave a lazy, casual shrug in reply, pausing to chew her lip in thought. “I remember the crash, too.” She admitted, sharply sucking in air through her I mean- seeing Francia from high above, way up in the sky, rocketing down through the atmosphere... I still don't know how I got here, and I don't know if I ever will, but it doesn't take a genius to look at how massive I am and how I got here to figure out that someone cooked me up in a lab and sent me here, for... One reason or another.”

“... Not to mention, that pod you were in somehow survived smashing through the atmosphere and into a uranium mine. Considering how many metres deep those things are, I’m still surprised your tiny little pod didn’t vaporise on impact, much less protect you well enough for you to survive the experience. Almost seems like magic. ” Elvire hissed, as if feeling the pain of the impact through Charlotte, before, leaning back into her flimsy harness.

“... Yeah. Almost.” Charlotte replied, slowly shaking her head. “Feels like that sometimes, doesn’t it?”

From Ashes We Rise : The Imperium Is Born

Charlotte Frunde

Name: Charlotte Frunde

Legion: VIIth Solar Dragoons (Eventually Crimson Hammers)

Homeworld: Francia

Carefully modified and re-sculpted in the Dark Age to resemble not just the Terra of old, but Franc and its many environs, Francia’s environment is, in effect, Franc at its height, colonies and all, blown up to the size of an entire, Earth-sized planet. Temperate, Europan forests, plains, and frigid mountains dominate most of its landscape, interspersed with bands of desert the further south one moves, all the way into deep jungles and frigid and a frigid polar ice-continent over the southern pole.

In spite of a dominant architectural style closely resembling renaissance-era Franc, Francia, insofar as Dark Age human civilizations go, remained relatively advanced, though a far cry from the heights of human achievement. Though the precise reasons for its survival have been long-since muddled, the planet’s rulers claim that, some time before the revolt of the Men of Iron, the rulers suspicious of Abominable Intelligences and either intentionally destroyed or exiled those on Francia, safely maintaining the use of comparatively simple robotics. And so, when the storm washed over humanity, Francia and the nearby systems it controlled recalled the fleets stationed in their vicinity, drew together whatever resources, and hunkered down while they waited for the storm to pass. True psykers, likewise, were slaughtered en-masse, viewed as a serious liability outside of the few astropaths required to keep the small ‘Empire’ together.

Largely unchallenged, and able to prey upon the fears of their people, the government quickly centralized, banning elections for the sake of “maintaining security in a time of crisis”, and instituting martial law. Rapid expansion of the Francian military eventually allowed them to expand their borders even further, conquering the entirety of their home system; upon the eve of which a monarchy -- a Francian Empire -- was declared.

At the tail end of their victory, the Francians rapidly expanded outward, conquering most of the nearby systems connected by the few remaining safe warp routes. As the millenia dragged on, dissent slowly grew, revolts appearing and disappearing like flashes in the pan, yet never achieving anything more than momentary success, until the sudden, unexpected arrival of a child from the stars.

Psyker Grade: Gamma

Skills/Abilities:

Liberté: Though Charlotte, and nearly every one of her comrades, fought hard to bring the Francian revolution to a favourable end, most of them were merely human, growing tired in battle, and being wracked with fear. And yet, those who fought alongside Charlotte seemed to fight harder and for longer beyond what simply being inspirational could justify, as if being in the half-giant’s towering presence somehow filled their bodies with energy, allowing them to fight on when they would otherwise collapse.

Égalité: Charlotte’s psychic ability manifests exclusively as telepathic and divinatatory ability, alongside the ability to heal, with no direct damage capabilities. Most valuable, perhaps, is her ability to predict the moves of her enemies ahead of time, incoming bombardments, and so on. This ability alone was perhaps the most useful he possessed when it came to her role as one of the leaders of a revolution, though Charlotte distinctly lacks the strategic acumen to fully exploit her powers without a strategic mind to supplement her and shore up her weaknesses.

Fraternité: Though unable to assault the minds of her enemies, Charlotte’s telepathy nonetheless allows her to bind herself and those fighting alongside her together, acting as a ‘middleman’ between them. Aside from this ability to quickly and effectively convey messages, however, her telepathy is generally unremarkable.

Innovation by Necessity: Though not an academic genius herself, Charlotte is possessed of a distinctively supernatural ability to innately understand technology, or, through her divination, to see into a specific facet of the future of a collection of objects as a sort of reverse-psychometry, and thus understand how to assemble them into something useful, or repair them to working order. This ability is distinctly difficult to explain; frequently, Charlotte simply expresses an instinctual understanding of how an item is to be used, or how something might be made to accomplish a specific task, though absent the ritual understanding that typifies the Martian Mechanicum, or even a more typical academic expertise.

Eclectic Training: Unusually for a primarch, though highly skilled in close-quarters combat, Charlotte lacks any formal training, and the substantial experience she has is mostly with repurposed industrial equipment (massive power hammers, laser cutters, and so on), largely thanks to her life as a revolutionary. With these implements and a handful of heavy weapons, she is nonetheless capable at the demigod-like level expected of primarchs that favour direct combat, most often adapted for her use rather than being purpose-built. On a related note, she has not yet had the luxury of specializing into one weapon or another, nor are there any particularly emblematic of her (she simply picked up and used the best tool for the job at hand), rendering her a jack-of-all-trades.

Appearance: Standing at 11’4” tall, while taller than many of her primarch siblings, Charlotte isn’t the tallest of her siblings by any means -- but she’s large enough to strike an intimidating figure, and remains one of the more athletic, though not the strongest, among her siblings, built more for the endurance required for sixteen-hour backbreaking workdays of manual labour in Francia’s mines, pushed intentionally to her superhuman limits by the planet’s rulers. Her hair, betraying her inhumanity for its unusually pale colour, is roughly chopped rather than finely cut; fitting, for a woman who fights with industrial implements and with little actual training. Her emerald eyes, likewise, are just as unusual, far brighter and more distinctly green than would be naturally possible. Nonetheless, in spite of her rough upbringing and lack of care for her appearance, Charlotte remains beautiful and visibly voluptuous, if generally grimy, aided by her natural regenerative capabilities.

Portrait

Personality: Though she possesses a mind just as belligerent toward her ideological enemies as the most violent of her siblings, Charlotte is, nonetheless, a deeply caring woman, able and willing to throw her life away for the sake of any one of her mortal comrades; no falsehood worn for the purpose of manipulation but a genuine belief in the inherent value of each working class life. Even the lowliest mine laborer is no less worthy of life than she.

Of course, her eternal crusade to uplift the proletariat is not the only thing that motivated Charlotte, even if it is a personal mission that touches practically every choice the Primarch makes. As might be expected for someone so belligerent, and who has lived most of her life in secret dens of like-minded freedom fighters, Charlotte is a near-consummate thrillseeker, always hunting for the thrill of battle, the company of a lover, or the rare sort of ludicrously potent narcotic that can briefly alter her senses.

Concept: Purely in terms of the Emperor’s intent, Charlotte was tailor-made in distant imitation of some of the most mythically successful generals of Old Terra, equally as charismatic as she was strategically capable and with just the right combination of psychic abilities to stay ahead of even the most capable mortal warriors. Like many of these heroic generals, too, she was in effect intended to behave as a celebrity, an ideological mouthpiece and master of propaganda.

Although, just like most of her siblings, the results of the Emperor’s experimentation were far less predictable than He intended. Charlotte did indeed naturally arrive at a conclusion similar to her father’s regarding what was to be done with religion, though in different ways, taking on a distinctly revolutionary view of religion as an opiate with which the ruling class kept the working person down. Unlike her progenitor, however, Charlotte lacks any particular stance on aliens and especially mutants beyond simply viewing them as another, stranger kind of people, neither inherently repulsive or admirable, though aliens are certainly to be viewed with extra caution.

Most notable, perhaps, are her distinctly proletarian view of politics and ingrained distrust of ruling classes, the latter of which the Emperor certainly meets the qualifications for, regardless of how capable he might be when contact is finally made. Indeed, so great is her fear of such power that Charlotte lives in terror of the possibility that she was created by someone of incredible power for far more oppressive purposes than she ended up living out, as, while Francian technology is highly advanced, none of their genetic science is so preternatural as to allow the creation of a being such as herself, nor is there any possibility in her mind that she was unaltered and naturally born.

Furthermore, Charlotte’s strategic acumen is relatively atrophied; however, her willingness to find people that are more capable than her and understand when to delegate is not. After all, the success of the revolution she took part in necessitated close cooperation between many people of wildly different skill-sets, and as one of its most prominent figureheads, she was often at the center of this process of cooperation and delegation. Indeed, it was often her voice that brought her fellow revolutionaries together. In this, she has fulfilled the Emperor’s intent for her as an orator, and even an unwitting propaganda piece, though the area in which she perhaps strayed closest to his design was the development of her psychic powers, her strong moral compass, narrow focus, and limited training having coincidentally led her to the same cautious profile that was intended for her.

VIIth Solar Dragoons

Legion Name: VIIth Solar Dragoons

Associated Primach: Charlotte Frunde

Legion Appearance:

Concept: Drawn from an especially small, carefully-selected segment of Franc’s female population, the Solar Dragoons were constituted for an especially rapid, dangerous breed of mobile warfare. Virtually all of their equipment is air-deployable, restricting the Dragoons entirely from the use of battle tanks thanks to the Imperium’s lack of fully developed airlift capacity. As a consequence, the Legion primarily relies upon dreadnoughts, bikes, and landspeeders for on-the-ground fire support; by and large, however, its lack of heavy lift capacity is compensated for by an enormous volume of air power.

This extreme mobility allows the Dragoons to easily outmaneuver most of its foes, especially when supporting Imperial Army attacks, to such an extent that they are often able to appear at a battlefield well before an enemy can, or even outmaneuver armies entirely. This style of medium-level warfare, however, necessitated the adoption of a highly modular unit structure, favouring smaller formations with a larger emphasis on unit independence over the more hierarchical organizations typical of the largest Astartes legions.

Emblem: A golden Imperial Eagle emerging triumphantly from the surface of a darkened, blue sun.

Tales of Azeroth: Flames of Chaos

Somewhere near the Duskwood Crossroads

Something wasn’t sitting right with Gregory.

Murders weren’t all that uncommon in Duskwood. Everyone knew that -- the only thing that was more common, perhaps, was one of the myriad threats in the haunted hood -- from zombies, to ghosts, to overgrown spiders, to garden-variety wolves-- to kill some wayward traveler, some poor child or foolish young man that’d wandered out from Darkshire just a little too far in the dead of night... It kept happening. Again, and again, and again, including everyone from inexperienced or overconfident locals, to Watchmen, all the way to greedy merchants making the mistake of traveling the roads without heavy escorts (or underpaid escorts, as it often was).

By all rights, then, the death of this particular merchant shouldn’t have been troubling at all.

Letting out an annoyed grunt, Watcher Dodds rose from his squatting position, lantern in hand, staring out over the wrecked cart with a deeply suspicious glare. The cart? Toppled by an abandoned farmstead, broken into pieces as if it’d been toppled over entirely.

The horse? Gone. Not a hint of its presence. The cargo? Vanished. Stolen, not a hint of it either. It was clean.

The merchant?

There wasn’t much left of the merchant. Scraps of flesh, necrotizing bone, signs of animal scavenging...

That was the problem. Independently, any one of those facts would’ve made perfect sense. The merchant was bitten, likely by one of the spiders he spent so much of his time culling, his body dissolved, and the animals left picked over the scraps.

...Then there was the problem of the cart. It hadn’t merely been toppled, but truly wrecked -- not the work of the spiders out this far west. The missing cargo? Who could’ve stolen it? The one upside of living in Duskwood was the rarity of bandit attacks. It wasn’t profitable -- not in the least. You’d lose a dozen men for a single iron sword.

The wrinkles, however, didn’t stop here, as he’d quickly realized. Next, his eyes flashed back to the half-dissolved corpse.

It’s still here. He reminded himself, reaching up to run a hand through his half-swept, golden blonde hair. He’d lost men to spider attacks, and they rarely, if ever, simply bit someone and left the body to rot, typically preferring to drag them away, wrap them in webbing, and wait for the corpse to dissolve after a good few bites of venom.

A cart ruined, a body rotting as if bitten and somehow abandoned by one of the local venomous web spider...

And the merchant. The merchant. It’d been a simple enough matter to reach out to Marshal Stoutmantle for information, and, indeed, this wasn’t the first time the merchant had made this particular trip. Interviews with a handful of the Darkshire townfolk had shown that he’d been through before, and Stoutmantle’s records shown that, without fail, this merchant made his way through Westfall without incident nearly a dozen times.

That was what was stumping Gregory Dodds.

There were only a few ways someone made it through Westfall safely -- dumb luck, heavy guard, or a handful or two of gold shuffled in the Defias Brotherhood’s direction.

The one time he didn’t make the trip safely, a strange series of events strike, on hispatrol route, and they add up less and less the more he looks at them.

Something was wrong, deeply wrong, and Watcher Dodds was damn sure he was going to get to the bottom of it.

With a grunt and a sigh, sliding his sword from its sheath, Dodds turned to make the long march back to Darkshire.

From Ashes We Rise : The Imperium Is Born

Hymalazia

Wings soared higher than the clouds, the body they bore banking around and floating above the glittering death of defense grids whose makers’ bones have long since been reduced to dust and ash. Every five thousand five hundred and seventy-three seconds, precisely on the mark, the masterful pilot of House Hastings performed a deep dive in order to avoid a kill satellite’s decaying orbit that threatened to cause all within the crew compartment to black out from the sudden stress of gravity and activated ancient and esoteric technology to prevent the same discomfort - and more importantly, jostling - in the cargo compartment. Though the Stormbird is ambivalent in its mortality, its crew is far less so of she who is ensconced within its bowels on this flight. Neither ground nor void is safe, not truly, not even within the claimed domains of their master - the aspiring Master of Mankind, and failure in this task would bring a shame far more bitter than mere death.

At long last they approached the roof of the world, the cloud-piercing peaks of the Himalazias coming into view, stark and austere. These bristled with some of the most foreboding weapons left to humanity, but these the Ambivalent Mortality raced towards without fear, even as alert runes and targeting designators blazed on the instruments. Within the Lines, the great fortress-mountains at the heart of the plateau, exotic energies stirred ever so softly in their half-slumbers as fire control sages coaxed them to readiness if the order came to destroy the swift-moving speck that flew across their skies.

Ident runes roared silently across the aether, challenge and response met and accepted, and the moment of danger faded as swiftly as it had begun. A landing pad was designated, nestled deep between the highest peaks of the bleeding world that had challenged all comers for generations untold, near the great work that was even now unmaking such natural grandeurs to expand the glory of man. A lone figure in simple robes awaited them, unheeding the backwash emitted by the Stormbird’s landing. It was only when the ramp descended and the cargo of the proud vessel was at last seen that they moved at all.

“Novator,” he said, the young voice carrying clear despite the roar of wind and engine. “You are most welcome here, but the master has many questions that require answers. Will you follow me?”

"Of course," a voice replies -- feminine and practiced, each word it speaks seems manicured; the tongue of a diplomat. To mortal eyes, she is momentarily hidden, but the speaker swiftly reveals herself as she makes her way down the Stormbird's unfurled ramp, hands folded neatly in front of her hips.

Her clothing (or dress, rather) is utterly unblemished, in spite of substantial turbulence, long and flowing drapes of emerald fabric wrapping her body in long, low-cut waves, her footwear invisible beneath the fabric.

Her eye, uncovered, twitches beneath its lid as she gestures for one of her servants to approach her, masked and clad in the jury-rigged power armour of the Gallogach. The tall, androgynous person reaches up to wrap a silken cloth over her forehead, before moving to follow, a second following close behind.

"You lead us to your... Master, I assume? They are a very, very mysterious person, if the rumours are to be believed..."

“Yes, but no. I would lead you to my master, but he is, alas, away. Your misfortune compounds, for the master speaks to no one without his word that they are worthy of His time. However, you would not be brought here for no reason,” he explained, bowing his head in apology. “Please, we should escape the cold,” the robed man said, turning on his heel towards a section of the mountain face still unmarred by the hand of man.

A vast door made of a black metal with a gold lightning bolt above it slowly opened at their approach, steam hissing out of the ground. A patina of frost coated the entryway as the superheated water vapor froze against the surface, guards in armor made of the same material following in its wake. They wielded cruel weapons made for terror rather than efficiency, festooned with jagged edged chainblades and bulky boltguns. Forming up into a pair of lines, they pounded their fists against their chest as the unassuming robed figure walked in between, turning to engulf the party as Luigsech followed in his wake.

The tunnel beyond was carved into the living stone, the rock still bare save for bundled coils carrying water, fuel, and raw power throughout the complex. “My apologies for this mean estate, but the complex has grown in size rather hastily. The mode in which you have approached us also demanded that we not dawdle. I’m sure you understand.”

"Certainly," Luigsech dryly commented, craning her neck to duly lay eyes upon practically everything she saw. She was evaluating, assessing, examining the structures around her for any sign of barbarism... But, all the same, she understood that her unique sensibilities could not fully be accounted for. No whiskeys and libations to be found here, it seemed.

"The haste with which your complex has grown in itself has been impressive. I see no bloated Pan-Pacific labor force, and yet... You manage to clear away the Himalazian Plateau in-" she blinks, abruptly shaking her head.

"Ah, I am terribly sorry. My manners seem to have fled me -- I don't believe I caught your name, did I?"

“You did not, but you have dealt no offense. My name is irrelevant at this juncture, the master bid me welcome you and so I have. If desired however, I am Prior Beck, head of the House of Doves within the Order of the Sigilites. I have the honor of the cataloging and storage of ancient communication devices, including that which you shall use to speak with him.” Pointedly, he did not respond or react to her curiosity on how they had worked so swiftly beginning to recreate the Himalazias.

Leading onward, there was a stark transition as the nearly barren rock suddenly gave way to a chamber made of what appeared to be polished bronze, the space bearing with it the weight of ages. The guards remained outside as Beck entered in, fanning out to watch the entry to the strange, baroque, room.

“I would request that you keep all psychic interference to a minimum.”

"Of course. That will be a simple matter," Luigsech replied, surreptitiously smoothing the creases out of her dress. "I am a Navigator, not a mere witch lacking control of my own mind." She explained, duly examining the chamber as she stepped inside.

The room itself seemed to be a single cast piece of the gleaming metal, with the only exceptions being the sturdy hatches that demarcated it from the rest of the complex. The interior of these too were shown to be of the same material when closed however, leaving the pair alone. In the center of the room was a small, squat table that held a flat pane of crystal and nothing more. Hoarfrost began to climb upon the walls as the Prior manipulated a strange console in front of the table, an otherworldly hum filling the air as a sound without sound.

Suspended above the crystal pane was a soft shimmering of light, that slowly resolved itself into the wizened face of Malcador. The man seemed distracted, only a fraction of his attention upon the room his image appeared in.

“Novator, welcome. I shall be brief, for both of our sakes,” the Sigilite said, brushing past any such niceties as introduction. Any woman who thought to ask after the Emperor would know of Malcador, and his own business was too pressing by far to waste time with idle chatter. “Why have you requested an audience?”

"Then I will grant you the same courtesy you are granting me," the Navigator replied, staring unflinchingly at the hologram.

"Word reached my ears of a warlord who is rapidly expanding across Terra, of one who has managed to transform the entire Himalazian Plateau into his grand palace... Such matters concern the immediate future of my people. I wish to understand his intentions."

“They should be known to you already,” Malcador replied curtly, his image flickering as an unearthly wail came over the connection. “My order is tasked with the preservation of human history, and we have ever spurned the petty warlords of this world, until the Master of the Lines arose. He, and he alone, we found worthy of our charge and to bring about the salvation of this benighted era. Does that suffice for you to understand, Novator?”

"No." Luigsech replied curtly, unperturbed, "my concern is chiefly the preservation of my people, Sigilite, and while I cannot doubt that your interests are noble... I cannot presume they align with the preservation of Eirné. I cannot afford assumptions, no matter how well-founded.”

“Preservation is a curious word, Novator. Let us speak plainly then, what are your terms? My time is regrettably short.”

"My House will faithfully serve your Master as Navigators, and my soldiers will aid him in his conquest of Terra and beyond. In exchange, governance of Eirné -- and Albyon -- will be left to us." Luigsech stated firmly, her brow furrowing. "We have been beaten, starved, imprisoned, enslaved, once and again and again... No more. Never again will I, or my people, allow such a fate to befall us. We are to be treated with respect."

“The Achaeminids sought much the same recognition and power, including dominion over a rival whom the Emperor’s armies shall conquer,” Malcador replied, a grim smile tugging at his lips at his last words. “Are you ready, then, to make the same sacrifices beneath the Raptor that they do?”

Luigsech quirked an eyebrow, a curious look spreading across her features. "I have already promised our armies and my bloodline, have I not?"

“The Emperor will ask yet more of you, for your land has been kept fenced and secured from the greatest depredations of this fallen era. Your mightiest exemplars he shall raise up as his own, and they will not remember the taste of summer in their own country. This is the price for what you seek.”

"Our best? My royal guard?" Luigsech asked, raising an eyebrow. "They have... Already been extensively modified by our geneticists. This will not interfere with your processes; or do you perhaps referred to the unaltered?"

“Those who already bear your arms and colors are, by and large, too old for the selections to come. The Emperor will collect the flower of your land’s youth,” Malcador explained further, pressing as far as he dared while the project was so secretive.

"I presume you will not take so many of our youth as to cripple our population growth?" Luigsech asked, steepling her fingers together. It was a difficult deal, to be sure, and she was reluctant to trade away her potential best... But the benefits, she hoped, would more than make up for the losses incurred. Freed from Albion's predations, her own eugenics programs could flourish -- an army of Fomorians, perhaps?

“Perhaps one in one hundred will pass the initial screening, fewer still taken permanently. Should your lands produce more, I would be pleasantly shocked,” the ancient man said, his focus more and more drifting towards off in the distance as it seemed their conversation came to an end. “We are in agreement, then?”

"We are in agreement," she confirmed. "...But perhaps you will be pleasantly surprised. My family has spent thousands of years cultivating an optimal population."

“Such is well then, I have no further tests then. The Emperor shall be your final judge.”
“You do yourself a disservice, old friend, as if I would ignore your judgment.” The unremarkable form of Prior Beck spoke, having returned in physical presence to the meeting between Luigsech and the hologram projection of the Sigillite. With a kind smile, that somehow seemed far older than the relative youth of the Prior’s features, he continued, “If other matters require your full attention, I believe I can handle matters from here.”

There was only a soft, and all too weary laugh, from Malcador in reply and with that, the great machine deactivated in a crackle of energy, motes of potential dissolving as they fell upon the floor of the brass chamber. The Prior’s attention then settled on Luigsech, and in a moment, some of the manipulation of reality fell away from the Prior.

The Emperor of Mankind did not reveal the full scope of who or what he was in a blaring moment, for such things might truly damage a being of psychic nature such as the Navigator before him. Instead the human shell that was the Prior shifted slightly, his skin darkening to resemble more the people of long-gone Anatolia, the kindly humble eyes replaced with blazing motes of light, as a fraction of the Emperor’s true being breached into reality.

“You have your audience, Novator.”

"Aha," Luigsech said, a small, knowing smirk cracking her features.

"You are no warlord, then, and the rumours are true of a man who seeks to become sovereign of all humanity..." She said, turning to respectfully bow in greeting to Beck once more.

“Humanity has faltered, but through my guidance it can reclaim its destiny. My reach is great, but for what we wish to achieve, the services of your household would be…expeditious.” The man accepted the bow with a nod of his head, the light that seemed to sear the air itself around him barely dimming with the action. “But what can be achieved, will be achieved, I believe The Sigillite has addressed to you the price of service in my Imperium.”

"...Yes. Yes, he has." Luigsech nodded, momentarily withering under the man's overbearing psychic aura, so hot it almost made her feel like she was developing a fever.

"My House... I have spent a great deal of time shaping them into the ideal Navigator, into the ideal weapon against the witch," she hissed, resisting the urge to spit. This man, if he could even be called that... Unquestionably, he was a psyker, but... Not like those she was used to. Their power was chaotic, wild, their mere presence a bomb waiting to go of, but this? This was... Order.

"...You will find us quite useful, I believe."

Tales of Azeroth: Flames of Chaos

@POOHEAD189@Bugman@Ezekiel@Erezrim

Greymane

The War Room, Southshore Citadel, Hillsbrad Foothills

"The Queen is willing," Calia interjected, smiling politely at Alexandros, before quickly turning to face Anvilmar, her expression just as soft and disarming as always. "I cannot speak for the King, but as I see it, Lordaeron has nothing to lose and everything to gain from granting Alterac to one of our most trusted allies. I would be honored to leave Alterac to your capable hands," she said, curtsying deeply, perhaps more than would be expected of a woman of her station, casting Garithos a pointed look as she rose, silently reminding him of his place.

"...And, of course, in the same capacity, I am happy to accede to the restoration of the Alliance." She nodded. "Capital City may be lost. My father may be gone, and my brother, far worse... But the peoples of the Alliance remain strong, and, as the High Tinker so wisely pointed out, we are stronger together than we are apart. None of us, surely, can defeat the Scourge alone, but together?" She continued, gesturing widely across the chamber, her voice rising in volume, though only after a brief glance in acknowledgement to Mekkatorque.

"Together, we have saved our world from annihilation once before. Now, we are called upon to do so again, against a threat perhaps greater than we have ever faced before; one that threatens not just our lives and our freedom, but life itself. though all of us may not be present -- Stormwind, Quel'thalas -- I am certain that we will all see the wisdom in joining forces, for the sake of life-"

Suddenly, there was a dull thud, a knocking at the door, and the brief sound of verbal commotion, before they were abruptly thrown open.

The man -- or beast -- who stepped inside was clad in the exact manner as King Greymane so often had been -- a heavy, blue-grey leather coat, lined in gold and a handful of small decorations; a pair of pins in the shape of a wolf’s head on either side of his collar, holding his cape in place, parted down the middle by fine white fabric and brass buttons. For a King, the outfit was altogether simple, though he carried himself with just as much arrogant confidence as one would expect of Genn Greymane...

Despite the fact that he looked nothing like the man anyone present knew.

In the place of that man was a massive, white-furred wolf-thing; a worgen that would tower above even some of the tallest of the Zandalari trolls, wicked grey claws the size of daggers extending from his furred paws. His fur was thick and bushy, clean and groomed but allowed to grow in a way that seemed altogether wild, a handful of small metal caps or rings over his wicked fangs. Other than his natural implements, however, he seemed unarmed -- and his clothing, unchanged by his lupine form.

Not far behind followed Lord Darius Crowley -- unlike Genn, still cast in the form of a man, his one good eye cautiously staring out at the gathered council, as though on alert for danger, though clad in a crisp Gilnean suit as he was.

“Of course,” Greymane grunted, his voice a low rumble, though still recognizably the man he once was. “It would be sheer foolishness not to.”

alpine republic

#1 alpine republic fan

@PerfectThought

Im haet u

In The Guard Now (Warhammer 40K)

I *do* love my special weapons and beeg guns...

Are we gonna be playing infantry?

Tales of Azeroth: Flames of Chaos

Quel'Thalas is available again, as is Stromgarde.