Aotrs Commander

The Red Furnace: First Contact

There was definitely no question of using the "proper" method. Lord Death Despoil had far more demands on his time than just the Azure Skies, and three months was too much. (The renoucing of the power would not even have been a moment's hesitation, of course. Anything that demanded a loss of information was never, ever worth any kind of power.)

Instead, the Lichemaster - still in a null-magic field and turning his attention mostly back to those matters which did not need magical attention (of which there were many - redeployed to the KPS Division station around Nestrotar, where the curse-smasher operations were being prepared.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Captain Whisperbleed shook her head, looking over the data on the Auzre Skies' FTL. "I'm not sure whether to be impressed or laugh."

Ensign Krelliac looked up from what their screen. "Ma'am?" they ventured curiously.

"They accelerate on sublight - must be magical compenstation for the time dialation - and just... ram through what they hit. I can't decide if I'm impressed that they can withstand those sort of impacts or laugh that they're so bad they actually unintentionally HIT something in SPACE."

Krelliac, shook their head, still keeping an eyeglow on the hlem, though they were completely stationary. "If they can tank FTL collisions, they must be using the smae sort of relativitic compensation as our railguns... Go faster, but not actually hit anything like infinite energy. Even so, they can't be hitting anything big or..."

"Or the same thing would happen as if we hit a full-velocity railgun at a planet." Starship weapons generally had to be eased DOWN from full power when hitting the surface; while actually blowing a planet up ws one thing, the amount of baleful energy required to deal devastation on a global level was considerably less. A railgun sluh hitting the atmosphere could deal incredible devastation... By the fact it would basically atomise with the heat. "Unless they reduce their effective mass enormously, but that doesn't gel with their make-it-so-we're-falling gravity..."

"And thus we're left with they must be hitting glancing blows on something and bouncing off with the shields... But it's still sort of impressive they are so bad at navigation they are hitting things."

Krelliac was quiet for a moment, and Whisperbleed could also see the thoughtful glow of the little wight's eyeglows.

"Maybe they have to. Maybe, since they have to use a G-Well to get most of their maneouvre, right, so maybe they have to point directly at a G-Well they can't see very well and practically run into it by default. They might even be navigating by divination alone, and you know how dubious that can be."

"Huh," Whisperbleed nodded to herself. "Yeah, you could be right. Still, it will be interesting to see how they react to a railgun slug."

"Speaking of..." She said. She was looking at the main command display. Essentially, it was a large hologram table, projecting a 3D view. To the eye of the uninitated, it looked like a giant computer game. All the ships appeared to be relatively close together, all with little lines and other data appended to them. But this was no graphics, but real-time images of the outside. All the vessels and points of interested were dynamically scaled, vastly exaggerating their proportional size to the empty void so as to be clearly seen. This was quite possible, given the huge distances in space. The normal combat seperation of an Aotrs fleet squadron was around 70 to 80 thousand kilometers. At that size, even the giant Star Swampers would be all but invisible to the naked eye or eyeglow. Magnified by three orders of magnitude or so, the spacing naturally gravitated to one that resembled models on a table or in a game. When vessels actually DID get relativisticlly close to each other, the display automatically proportionally scaled them, tinting the readouts slightly, red-shifting the desingation/name bars the closer they got.

Likewise, this game-like UI was not entirely a co-cidence, since it was realised by the time the Aotrs had FTL, that fictional gaming had already worked out the best ways to deliver the same sort of information for so many decades prior.

Now, the solar system view showed the arrival of the 4th Fleet - or at least a notable fraction of it. The the six-mile super-cruiser Doomskrieg Treek-kaa was prominently absent, for it would have dwarfed all the other vessels, even with the proportional scaling. But a very sizable task force, a hundred and fifty ships, including the Crypt Bearers Troop Transports and the other ancillery vessels. They emerged as a group 35 AU out, in the fringes of the ice-asteroid belt* around the extremities of the solar system.

There, most of the fleet would stay, with the actual combat force making Gate jumps closer in. (A wise commander understood you never used more than around a third of your forces in actual combat, since the other would be resting or repairing.)

For the moment, the fleet held position, assessing what the Azure Skies vessels were doing.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Unlucky cheerfully answered Boldness' questions (or at least the commonly known broad explanations). Boldness seemed taken aback when he explained that they had no "knights," at least not in the sense she probably meant (the pre-industrial forces, granted, had - and still did, when required - mounted soldiers in full plate, but chivalry and the like had never been even on the table back in the day for the Aotrs.)

Computers didn't explode because the Aotrs considered trading away a practical tool to be blinded to be idiotic. (Unlucky's bias' might have been showing, just a little.) As Unlucky pointed out, they lived in an extremely dangerous universe, and reliance on heavily magical effects or even exotic technologies left you tremendously vulnerable as and when someone developed the counter. There was, ultimately, a certain elegance in the comparitively mundane (since, he explained by analogy, a vibrosword turned off was still a vibrosword)... At least until the point sheer technological enhancement contained so many checks and balances. Which, the Aotrs were painfully aware, was not a place they were quite in yet. But even so, today's Fireball was not the same spell as he used when he first learned. The science of magic had refined it and optimised it, so that it used less mana and scaled better and contained not a few inherent dispel-resistances. What could be acheived by a digital spell-caster, capable of running complex calculations through a computer brain, could achieve a level of complexity that not even Lord Death Despoil could master. But such casters were extremely rare and the Aotrs had none on the strength level of the High Command to be able to leverage that ability very usefully.

"Even Shardan and Lazerblasters don't seem have many casters strong enough to do that and they SCARY enough with technology."

Unlucky went on to explain the Aotrs were not beholden to any goddesses and were, in fact entirely secular. They had fought gods, had a few demigods beholden to the power and even fewer divine casters of gods from outside it, but they did not have any of their own. And, he added, they'd managed really quite nicely without them. So, there was no Crimson Goddess, not in the manner he expected she meant, but if she would clarify...

As to when the went back to killing the Furnace Knight...

"We not get to this stage without being careful and deliberate. First encounter caught us off guard. That not happen all that often, but it make us even more careful. We will get back to killing him, but Aotrs have learned that best practise... Only ever pick fight you can win.

And, with proper preparations, we intend to win this one..."

*["Ice Asteroid Belt" being the Aotrs terminology for "Kuiper belt." 35 AU is a little bit inside the average orbit of Pluto, so well outside the orbits of the four planets which are in the habitable zone.]

The Red Furnace: First Contact

Curses were almost always a branch of closely related magic to necromancy. So the Aotrs had a two millenia if experience with dealign with them, both in the creation, manipulation and removal of curses.

The first thing was simply to put the Lichemaster in a Null Magic zone (easily enough set up; the KPS Division in particular had a store of readily available places and the termite-mound-like Citidel had store room on store room of specialist equipment the High Command had reserved to hand fot their own use. (Foul Skream's personal stock of weapons among them.)

Once inside one, the curse simply couldn't function. That served as a stopgap measure, while the powers' curse experts were brought in.

The science of advanced curse removal ultimately came from the science of Necromancy.

Everything, in the necromantic sense, had a soul. In a non-necromantically scienticfic sense, "soul" in conversation referred only to the very large and obvious souls of sapient beings. Beneath that, even primitive necromancy could ascertain that sentinent animals had a soul. The layers beneath that only could be found when technology was advanced enough to reinforce magic with computer analysis. And, ultimately, EVERYTHING had a soul. Demons and creatures typically held to BE a physical manifestation of a soul did, in fact, have a nonmaterial soul. Nonsapient creatures had a soul. Machines had a soul. Objects had a soul. Each component of a machine or object had a soul; as did each molecule, atom, electron and quark down to the smallest discovered partical had it own microsoul, and so did every discharge or energy, every erg of reality. Because, in the end the soul was ultimately the very essence of the impression of something on the universe; a fundemental of any that could concievable exists and interact with the universe; the sum total of everything it ever did, thought or felt. A flame existed, so it had a soul. An atom existed, so its microsoul was the record of everything it had ever been part of.

Even with Aotrs magic and technology, the microsouls were completely beyond manipulation. But the fact that something as large and compartively obvious like a curse (detectable with even pre-industrial magic) had a soul, necromantically speaking, meant that it could, in fact, be isolated, no matter how deeply and conceptually intertwined with its subject it was, because it EXISTED.

As when it could be isolated, it could be dispelled - or in some cases, destroyed by main force.

The most advanced and difficult curse removal necessitated not the complex unpicking of the spell matix (or equivalent) of the curse, but isolating the curse, and simply hitting it from a metaphysical, conceptual tangent where it was, to the applied curse-breaking effect, metaphorically floating alone in nothing. This was incredibly difficult, even for Aotrs magic.

(Though it was grimly hypothesied that The Entity They Dared Not Name These Days could do it with a force analogous the the effect of shattering the strongest ever recorded curse (or any other supernatural effect) like a fragile glass scuplture hit by a super-giant black hole moving as near the speed of light...)

But, for EXACTLY this sort of occasion, the means did exist to do it. This was not the first time, nor would it likely be the last, that such an instance had happened.

The anti-informational nature of the curses made routine methods of scanning it difficult to impossible. But even that was, in the end, not an insummountable barrier. Technology worked perfectly fine in a Null-magic field, and specialist scanners and sensors built be their own unmagic field (like the SK-X-TN) existed, to function in extremely high magic regions. It was a case of acquiring one such system (the most easily accessible in the KPS Division's supplies), bringing it to the Lichemaster (or vice-versa) and then analysising - functionally doing an end-run around the curse's anti-information protocols. (If it had been (or was) sapient, the curse might have screamed in impotent frustration.)

Then it would be a case of simply determining how hard to hit it and what metaphysical angle to hit it from.

And, of course, in the analysis, to determine other counter-measures to apply, which would further be added to the Aotrs database for any similar occurances (and even now, the databases were being examined for previous similar occurances).

* * * * * * * * *

That the curse seemed to be powered from the effect on G-2679 and thus provided a "tame" star for further analysis was an additional boon. And, in addition, a useful test subject for targeting star-breaking weapons.

Apocalyptic weapons were not assets the Aotrs preferred to use. But they had them, in small number, in reserve. (Indeed, the presence of some of these weapons was about the only deterrent against threats such as the good-aligned Lazerblasters and even that was a knife-edge facade.) The Aotrs had had, in the course of so MANY centuries of adventures and history, cause to destroy a star only occasions which numbered in the low-single digits. But, like the greater gods they'd killed, they HAD done it. And those weapons were now being prepared. Some were not of Aotrs manufacture. 641 years of FTL-capable exploration had brought with it the loot of other technologies; some of it, at great expense or great luck, won from powers more advanced than they. The Harbingers, in particular, had a racial tendancy towards the exotic technology, and until the re-emergance of the Shardan, and the subtly-escalating terror of the Lazserblasters, the Harbingers had been the most advanced society known. The Strayvians, too, in particular had gone all-in on exotic weapons of mass destruction, but the Mad-Scientist approach had meant most of them had died with their one genius creator.

Destroying a planet was, ultimately, just a case of pumping enough energy into it until it exploded. This usually required a long and sustained attack. Modern capital ship energy weapons could theotheretically do it if they could have been fired continuously for long enough, but that was a barrier sufficient that even the Cybertanks (the most likely to use such weapons if given any chance) couldn't do it in practise.

(The first Lazerblaster supercruisers spotted in the mid 2310s were labelled "planet destroyers" simply because of the spinal-mount lazer cannon WAS powerful enough to blow a planet up in only hours with a sustained blast, though it was unclear whether they have actually ever done that instead of shoot each other. Now... Lord Death Despoil did not want to contemplate.)

Destroying a sun, then, was fundementally possible the same way, just on several orders of magnitude higher energy requirements. But it was far more feasible to use a weapon to set-up a destabilising effect on the fusion reaction through various means and ways, and use its own energy to destroy itself; something you couldn't do on most planets BECAUSE they didn't have enough energy.

Thus sun-killing was comparitively, less of a stretch that might be initially thought.

The most mobile star-killer the Aotrs had was a Harbinger device - a Spacial Splinter cannon. Spacial Splinter cannons, and their related cousins, the continuum crackers, worked in th very most basic of terms, by fundementally just putting large hole in the underyling fabric of reality and making things around it Not Exist Anymore because the laws of physics were broken. Continuum crackers were rather unsafe, with a tendancy for the effect to go out of-control and were alarmingly small enough to be seen on Harbinger combat robots on occasion. The spacial splinter cannon was "safer" but perhaps mostly so only in the sense that they were capital ship weapons, and as such the relative area they Made Not Exist anymore was proportionally smaller.

The particular one in question was the largest one the Aotrs had recovered - and it was still distressingly small for its capabilities. The power required for it, however, was entirely NOT small. Unlike the Harbingers, the Aotrs had to charge a massive series of batteries and capacitors to even get enough power to fire the thing. But when it could be fired, with the right settings and discharge time, it could break enough of reality in the core of a star to cause it to come apart. A very crude and brute-force approach, but it had worked the only previous time the Aotrs had to deploy it. (To destroy, as it happened, a star being used as an invasion gateway by an extra-reality alien power.)

While in theory, the weapon could be used as a normal anti-capital ship weapon, it was far too precious to be used as such. So the device was not permenantly mounted on a ship; it and its batteries were essentially towed into position for the specialist use. Currently, towing the bulky mass that resembled a space station (the weapon itself no larger than a standard capital battery) was a relatively trivial job for one of ten remaining Doomskrieg Supercruisers. One of the five Star Swampers (the biggest vessels ever built by the Aotrs) might have been a better choice, since they had even more powerful energy cores to help the charging process; but such vessels were so demanding on resources (especially if they got damaged) that they were all waiting the conversion to mobile shipyards over the next few decades.

The Doomskrieg itself, with an escort fleet, was preparing to head for G-2679 with the spacial splinter cannon array.

The other weapons were being readied.

* * * * * * *

In the meantime, the Crippling Glare continued its watch and the 4th Fleet was assembling to join it, now with confidence that they would emerge in the system at distances and positions the Azure Skies wouldn't be able to visually spot.

* * * * * * *

While none of the High Command were particularly adept medics, sheer osmosis over centuries meant they did have good enough grasp of first and second aid - enough to ensure Boldness was walking wounded, at any rate. She was thus given the brief, but very rare honour of seeing the High Command's personal chamber complex (starting with Lord Death Despoil's chamber office, where it turned out that they had been listening and had opened the Gate True from), as she was escorted out. Unlucky, recovering, explained that this was simply because the Citidel's depths could be... Rather dangerous to living creatures, since there were denizens that brooked no life. He accompanied her (with a couple of Defilers as additional escort) to a Gate room, and thense to a waiting Fettered Star and finally, a short FTL Gate-hop to one of Kalanoth's orbiting stations where she could be finally properly treated.

The Red Furnace: First Contact

Well, the Lichemaster thought dimly and somewhat abcently, shutting off the pain, that simplifies things.

He vaguely recalled doing some other offensive spell at point black range... Had he grabbed some of that mana right out of the snake-person and inverted the gravity field or something? Certainly they were both moving in opposite directions fasted than he was falling, so perhaps he had. (Oops, the darkness spell had gone, never mind. So had the Gate XXV.) Or maybe he shot a gravity bolt, something like that. Either way, jolly well done, him.

Yes, blowing stars up was a LOT easier than killing deities in most respects. More energy typically required, but so much more straightforward. The Lazerblasters (and almost certainly the Shardan) could actually just do it by a modification to the configuration of their standard warheads. The Aotrs would need to dig into their big box of tricks, granted, but sun-exploding was quite possible...

Actually, the Lichemaster thought distractedly, vaguley aware he was somehow on the floor and the world was spinning around a lot, the Lazerblasters... Or at least that singular one they were all most utterly afriad of (and that everything SHOULD be) could probably conceptually kill the star-virus out of hand... Mind you, at that point, the entire universe was likely already at risk of being ontologically, conceptually and meta-conceptually and probably retrocausally obliterated (if they were lucky), which was not a happy thought for anything that existed, had existed or could conceptually exist or just tangentially percieve or interact with any reality, so hopefully that level had not been realised yet. He really hoped the Good powers had ultimately SOME sort of plan that didn't involve trying force or that wouldn't just make the situation more likely, but then again, they were idiots, so who knew?

Was this precognition or just prediction? No, must be the latter, the Lichemaster concluded muzzily, after all the former couldn't work in that...

Oh, wait, was he supposed to be doing something?

Right, right, more immediate problem, fur-nest night. Really, what kind of a name was that anyway; that sounded like a celebration for small mammals about to hibernate.

He felt a sort of odd thunk on his leg. Looking down he saw an trick arrow with a clamp on his leg. Capital, that would be Bowblast, hovering inside the still-open Gate True, doing the rescueing thing.

Now if he didn't miss his guess... Ah, yes, that would be Yeller. With... Oh, his badness.

* * * * * * * *

Yeller skidded to a halt as he exited the Gate True. Bowblast had snagged The Boss. The Furnace Knight was flying back down... Looking a bit, if anything, confused; clearly whatever The Boss did to his flying didn't last long, but it had taken him by surprise momentarily.

He grinned (or at least his eyeglows brightened in the lich equivalent). He hefted what he was carrying over his shoulder, a two-metre giant wand, over a foot in diameter, surfused with half the magical energy of all the present High Command members and every offensive enchanment they could throw on at short notice, making Death Despoil's over charged Fireball look compartively weak.

He swung the weapon at an angle, not at the Furnace Knight, but unmistakably towards the computer-like device Unlucky had seen earlier, noting at least one cowering noncombatant comfortably in the blast zone.

"Hey, Sir O'Hiss!

"Scale of one to ten! How important IS that?"

With a thundrous discharge, the magical burst released, streaking at horrendous speed towards the machine, leaving a trail of blasting sparks.

The Furnace Knight intercepted, as Yeller had expected he would (and seemed, HAD to), opening his mouth to eat all the magical energy from the attack and swallowing it, just as he had with the Boss's Fireball; but the distraction afforded the Aotrs the moments to pull back into the Gate.

.

.

Or would have, if that had been the only intention.

.

.

The Furnace Knight had, by Yeller's estimation of his reaction speed, just enough time to comprehend, far too late to be able to react, that the magic was mostly overcharged illusions and pointless buffs.

Layered on top of the active missile shields of a Foul Skream-Special, hand-made, SK-X-TN Anti-Tank Snake Warhead.

"TN" for "Thuamic Negating."

A warhead that was built entirely from exotic materials that absolutely ignored any kind of paranatural effect, defensive, offensive or otherwise.

And which detonated now right in the Furnace Knight's surprised, still-open maw.

The Red Furnace: First Contact

Inwardly, the Lichemaster smiled grimly to himself.

The Furnace Knight was not the true enemy here. The Aotrs long ago had learned - especially from Temnis - when fighting heavily divine-powered beings (or just highly religious ones) that, ultimately, you did not fight the monkey, you fought the organ-grinder.

So his next spell was perhaps completely surprising; neither a defensive spell, nor an offensive one - but a honed and precise probing spell, that locked directly on to the very concept of belief itself and traced directly the path of the bond between deity and servitor. This version was the most recent permutation, a full 95th level spell, with two-and=a-half millenia of experience in divine counter-measures, presense nullfiers, conceptual-dissonance traps and resonant backlash fields (extensively tested, in fact, on the few remaining quasi-deities on Temnis).

It sole purpose was to precisely locate the realm - divine, conceptual or otherwise - from where the divine power was coming from. Any damage the Lichemaster took in the process was entirely worth it, since it meant that they would know where, functionally, the god was. And, short of it permenantly severing its connection to reality and denuding it servitors of power - functionally committing suicide - when that was known, the Aotrs could reach it.

Gods had a nasty tendancy to believe that they were utterly unkillable and they the furthest-removed from direct reality were thus beyond harm. And, as not just the Aotrs, but others had proven, that belief was entirely wrong. Even greater dieties could be killed.

The Lichemaster recalled with perfect satisifaction the first time they'd been able to use the distant ancestor of the Howling Void's thaumic lightning cannon on a greater deity. It had taken a huge amount of raw mana from Temnis - equivalent to over a year's planetary production. The weapon - at that point little more than a giant wand or magic staff - had to be mounted on a massive fixed installation. But the look of total and complete incomprehension on the god's manifested face when he had looked up to see a Gate open right into the heart of his divine realm in front of and then literally, impossibly, been shot dead was a fond memory.

The Lichemaster could not fight and kill a god all by himself... But as a power, an army and a nation, the Aotrs COULD.

They'd had to.

The Red Furnace: First Contact

Aboard the Crippling Glare, hiding amid the gas giant's rings, the passive sensors were getting a lot of data; enough that Captain Whisperbleed was considering risked powering up to get an active scan, figuring the distance from the planet would reduce the if being detected... Nor had they had much evidence thus far the aliens has especially effective sensors.

Death Despoil next dropped a simple 6th level Control Dark spell, and altered the lighting within a two-hundred-foot radi=us pitch black. With his lifevision, the Furnace Knight and the aliens would still be visible (though nothing else) - plus he has perfect recall of where everything was - and it would be educational to see if the Furnace Knight had some means of seeing in total darkness.

He floated backwards slightly and drifted to the right.

From memory, the Lichemaster targetted the cluster of the most vulnerable-looking KPS-Division-containment-looking cells, and then went a little old school, with a simple Greater Fireball - reaching, with his skills, a radius of 40 feet - but pumping twenty times the required mana into the spell - equivalent to three times that which Gate True used. This was something of an effort, even for a caster of his power and for a lesser caster, it would be insanely risky, but there was a reason they called it "safe casting level" after all; and over charging a low-level spell didn't have quite the same risks as casting a spell with the same mana well above your safe casting level. It was also not an unfamilar action, but one he'd used many times over the centuries.

He blasted the violently-shuddering the one-foot-diameter ball straight into the cells.

[That's be "concussion damage x 20" in Rolemaster, which puts it into the easy "vehicle-hurting level..."

By-the-by, strictly speaking by RM RAW, this would be like trying to overcast a 300th level spell, but the table on the spell failure caps out at a disparity of 21+ levels above caster and DD's skill estimate is higher than that target number with just his rank and stat bonus, before accounting for level bonuses, which nearly doubles it, so even raising the extraordinary spell failure number from 200 to 400 and he'd still be passing automatically (sans fumbles), as he'd be on about +430 to +530...!

Note: I completely arsed up th Gate length last time, it would have been 5' if it had been Tanshin's star, since it's way less than 60AU away, which a very different scale to light-years... As it was light years away, the compressiong factor is 1 mile/light year, so those wolf gentlebeings will actually be falling for a long time at terminal velocity...! Oops.)

The Red Furnace: First Contact

Death Despoil assesed the situation for a fraction of a moment.

The he cast a wide-arc dispel, utilising his spell mastery to tweak the shape into a 100-foot cube, starting two feet above the ground and with the centre above himself, excluding a five-foor wide, ten-foor tall column centre on around him - with the aim of seeing if the feral creatures auras and/or the Furnace Knight's flying ability was dispellable (inf not there were other options) and without so much as a gesture or motion cast an instananeous Flight spell. As the fereal creatures entered within twenty feet of him, and then with practised ease, he opened a Gate XXV (to the Lichemaster, a paltry 30th level spell) at its maximum 90 x 90 foot size (though with his skills, he could have chosen to double it), horizontally on the floor, leaving himself floating above the centre point; and overwrote the automatic safety warnings.

Because the exit point opened directly into the sun.

Specifically, not even Tanshin system's sun, but the corona of the G-2679 system's star. Formerly the location of the Bleak Despair space station before the wormhole collapsed a couple of years prior, G-2679 was now completely uninhabited; but it was the first such star that came to mind within the roughly 600 light-year range of his spell. (Using Tanshin's star would have been risky.) The Gate itself prevented the reverse passage of the heat and gravity by default and he choose not to overwrite that feature, but that would not help any creature (and any surrounding objects lying on the floor) falling into what was (due to the minimum size compression Gate length), now a 90-foot-square, five-foot deep pit that opened into into a star.

(The Lichemaster was confident in his own reaction speed to be able to utilise an instantaenous teleport out of the way if he felt so much as a twitch from the flight spell.)

[Gate XXV range: 3 light years/level (x 2 because of his scope skills). Scary.

Note: Gates are mon-directional openings and don't "cut" anything when they open, so objects that come through from the other side are still attached to the ground (such as, sadly, the Furnace Knight's sword, which is stick in it) and will be sticking up through it unimpaired. As previously noted in the guide, you can walk through the reverse side of a Gate perfectly safely and the same principle applies to stuff that would stick through it from the other side, effectively.]

The Red Furnace: First Contact

The moment seemed to stretch for days, and Lichemaster's keen mind ran down dozens of strategies - all of them indirect attacks, misdirection, or utilising the Furnace's Knight's own momentum against him. Death Despoil had, in his millenia, very rarely engaged in unarmed combat, and though through sheer osmosis of experience was not incapable, it was certainly among his weakest capabilities, so avoiding it was still a superior option...

Most pertinently, though his eyeglows remained fixed unblinkingly on the Furnace Knight, his peripheral vision was measuring up the distance to the containment cells he'd seen - via Unlucky's transmitted helmet HUD displays - and, drawing on his phenominal recall, estimating the largest cluster of cells that seemed to have the heaviest protections.

Outwardly, however, he remained motionless and silent, not making any move towards the cuffs, nor even glancing down as they slid to a stop. (He did not dismiss them as a threat out of hand, however, and one small portion of his mind prepared to pre-emptively act if they should suddenly become animated or begin to emit any kind of antimagic field.)

"I think not." the Lichemaster replied, at length. "I believe the next move, Furnace Knight, is yours."

The Red Furnace: First Contact

Fortunately, the liches were not particularly susceptible to disorientation (you couldn't really stun a lich, for example; yet one more advantage of lichdom); so while some of the effects succeeded, a lot of the others failed to get any purchase on the liches due to them just... Lacking a biology for it to work on.

Stab was most shaken by the attacks, sprawling.

At least one member of the sqaud was still clear-headed enough to fire a coldbeam support weapon in sustained mode, sweeping a line across between the sqaud an the aliens, throwing up a thick cloud of freezing mist - useless against any kind of sensor, but excellent for completely fouling visual targeting. It would disipate in seconds, but that was all it took for Alpha to scramble through the Gate to inside the Fallen Soul and Shadowflight to close it.

Feltain didn't even need to shout, since the Fallen Soul commander was already yelling "Go! Go!" and the pilot gunned the engines to run straight towards the Must Gate exit point.

Feltain immediately began assessing the acid damage - the worst hit lich was snarling and already stripping his armour off and kicking it to the back of the vehicle, but he'd taken a fair bit of not-easily-healable damage. There was a fading-but audible hiss from almost all of their armour.

"That... Was less fun than I expected." Stab managed.

* * * * * * *

Death Despoil nodded quietly to himself. His foresight had served well enough, at least for this gambit, not having directly attacked the Furnace Knight at all himself. He gestured and the other High Command broke off, leaping back. Even had the Furnace Knight been able to see and read their reactions, none of their surprise would have showed at being told as certainly as if spoken that he would handle this himself personally, and alone.

"I'm curious," the Lichemaster stated, eyeing the rapidly-approaching Furnace Knight steadily. "Your power is largely based around trying to force others to fight you, and you apparently set all this up to defeat an opponent in a duel to gain honour and prestige." Shatterscatter vanished into the portal, followed by Deather a moment later accelerated by a Haste spell. Bowblast ran to the Gate and spun, waiting just inside the threshold. Yeller, flickering in from a standard teleport, rolled smartly behind him and disappeared into the Gate tunnel.

"You ignored Unlucky when he dragged your would-be assassin away. A heroic action, perhaps? Which says your honour is clearly important to you. Perhaps the MOST important thing."

"So then, Furnace Knight, how much honour do you gain from defeating," - with a single deft motion, he tossed his pistol and Deathblood to Foul Skream, who deftly caught them and disappeared though the Gate - "an unarmed opponent, one clearly weaker than you, who will not fight back?"

The Lichemaster stood stock still, folding his arms, one eyeglow slightly raised in expectation to meet the Furnace Knight's gaze unflinchingly.

The Red Furnace: First Contact

The psychic compulsion had no effect on the liches (least of all on Lord Death Despoil, who had been resistant to mind-control even BEFORE his death). They could feel it, but it held no power over them. (Unlucky, despite his centuries, was the second-youngest among them and unlike the youngest, but not a lich himself and thus not so bolstered.) The Furnace Knight desired a direct, one-on-one confrontation; so he would not be granted one; not until there was only one of them left standing. At its core, above and beyond the inherent resistance to mind-control, the Furnace Knight's compulsion itself had the problem that the very idea was an athema to everything the Aotrs stood for; an assault on their core virtue of co-operation. And on top of that, it went against the doctrine better part of three millienia of experience (for all of them except Bowblast): never allow the enemy to dictate the terms of engagement. This was already a suddenly-forced battle, they would not compound that error further by yielding to the enemy's strategum.

So without even so much as a twitch of instruction, Foul Skream and Shatterscatter smoothly attacked the Furnace Knight from the either side. With shields - further boosted by the full plethora of defensive spells from Combat Law themselves, concentrated on disruption and damage mitigation. Both took damage from the Knight's strikes, but not debilitating damage and instead focussed their own on making the Furnace Knight have to abort just enough of his own attacks that he couldn't follow-up to do that damage. They were taking more damage than they were inflcting, but that wasn't the point. Though both concentrated most on melee, as their enemy did, while Foul Skream holstered his pistol to more easily use his spells (and the occasional psionic blast), Shatterscatter retained hold of his coldbeam rifle. Ordinarily, such a weapon might not have affected the Furnace Knight, but the Aotrs's coldbeams were just as heavily enchanted as their melee weapons - though it had to be observed that their swordwork was still superior after so many more centuries of practise at it.

Bowblast - who, despite his relative youth was the second-strongest spellcaster after Death Despoil himself - started working through his own repatoire of spells on the Furnace Knight, starting with direct-damage spells, and then gravitating to dispelling and indirect attacks, including opening Gates directly under the Furnace Knight's feet or directly in front of him or even where his blade swung. Mixed in with the occasional trick arrow (because if you were going to carry around a bow in the modern era, you had better carry trick arrows). Tactics all designed to frustrate and deny the Knight what he wanted - a fair fight and a shot at Death Despoil. (Or rather, Bowblast, corrected, a fight in which the Knight could tell himself was honourable, by forcing his opponent to fight only on his terms - so not a fair fight at all. But that was duels for you, wasn't it?)

Yeller and Death aimed to deal with the berserkers - guns off the field. Over two millenia of sparring with the individuals that mastered the SCIENCE of frenzy stood them in good stead. The pair of them worked smoothly in a concerted team, keeping the berserkers fully occupied, avoiding the unstoppable charges and trying to ensure their own life-draining and cold auras contributed to the speed at which the berserker's lifeforce expired.

Death Despoil himself remained on the defensive, watching, measuring, and acting only with deliberation. Here, a vertically-aligned momentary Gate to drop Boldness at Lucky's feet mere seconds after she fell. There, a precisely targeted Disintigration Bolt to the blindfold of one of the berserkers in front of Deather - partly to see what happened. Here, a pin-point thaumic rupturing spell (a form of explosively destructive dispelling) targeting the runes of the one appraching Yeller's flank. There a Disintegration Beam to annhilate one berserker whose charge would have interrupted Shatterscatter's own disruptive attack on the Furnace Knight...

The Furnace Knight finally shoved Foul Skream back hard, skidding several feet as Foul Skream blocked a swing. This created enough on an opening that the demigod could make a full stroke at Death Despoil. But the Lichemaster's eeriy combat-precognition and incredible reaction speed was enough that he was already moving, and a Bladeturn True spell was enough - despite substantial resistance - to deflect the first blow. The follow-up was blocked by Deathblood, the Lichemaster's own blade, already in motion. For something less than a heartbeat, the Law of Kings was halted by the Lichemaster's surprising strength - but only for that instant, and only due to the Lichemaster's measured, precise application of strength and leverage and the angle of block. He knew better than to ever to risk fighting head-to-head with an equal or an superior, nor to risk his own blade against the much larger one, for all Deathblood's power. Then he was back out of immediate reach with a flash step that might not even have been teleportation - it was too fast to tell - and the Furnace Knight had to block two vehicular-level coldbeams from Foul Skream and Bowblast from opposite directions at the same time as Shatterscatter's attack at his rear.

Delay and measure; Lord Death Despoil's razor intellect was assessing the Furnace Knight's capabilties as they fought, and committing everything to his perfect recall with computer-like efficiency.

[DD: D100 roll of 30 (+75 RE bonus) = 105 on Tactician ability ('If an open-ended roll of 101+, adding RE bonus is made, the character can receive information directly from the GM pertaining to the tactical situation.') Used here less for that than as a good a measure as any of how much he's getting from this observation. (I thought it was a 50% chance and he failed, then I checked and went "oh snap, it's D100 + RE bonus, he DID make it...!")

[Unlucky RR vrs effect: 11 on D100. Still affected.]

Unlucky's head was still too muzzy, but he knew what he had to do and why they were delaying. He glanced at the fallen Boldness. "Guh... Think you might have over-estimate us, snake-lady. Might have mentioned it was demi-god. Plus-side, now know, can't let that thing be so close, so looks like you stll got ally..." He grabbed Boldness by the unshattered arm and started tugging and dragging her towards the Gate True. " You going to be very not-me, get to see Citidel..." He did not add that was going to be the case even if she was dead, since that was hardly a limitation to the Aotrs. Though, the part of his brain that was not involved in fighting for control detachedly wondered if these divine folk could snag souls on the way out, across interstellar distances.

Well, if they could, that was intelligence too, wasn't it?

* * * * * *

Stab and Feltain reached Alpha squad, just as Shadowflight opened the Gate.

At the precise moment a squad of aliens rounded the low ridge.

"Blasted scum of a lich!" She was surprised to hear it in tandem with Feltain.

As Stab dived for cover, she wondered if Lord Unlucky was contagious...

The Red Furnace: First Contact

[Some sort of doublepost, not sure how to delete]