LustForDecay

The Envenomed

*CLANK*

The air around the skeletal being shimmered, pond-like if a stone had splashed into it, but no such sound emerged. A hard thud sent the projectile bounding back, clattering on the tiled floor.

There was no response from the commander, far more interested in what pressing questions had demanded.

"Nobody here can say they are being granted a mercy being placed under our command. Elsewhere, your comrade may have simply been made to face a wall with their hands behind their back. Mere service to the League in some circles is the greatest transgression. Truthfully, I cannot blame them; many bear the scars of the League's humanitarian generosity even before it was a single imperial alliance rather than two. I can however, veto certain complaints and injunctions. Consider this a sentence with more leeway for her than was originally intended; even command level accusations of reactionary belief have their limits in our domains. If she wants it further shortened, I am sure the rifles of those you are sent against will gladly oblige."

Echo would detect an electronic flicker as a signal was transmitted from the cyborg to a wall adjacent of them. Four corners formed those of a rectangular shape and holographic light extended, a luminescent and soothing green-blue that resulted in the formation of a screen of raking lines and fizzling static. Definition gradually overtook them and it would appear to gain an entirely solid construction as if light itself had become tangible. It blinked; a news channel manifested, League in origin based on the quad-winged x-shape of wings and the eye-hilted blade that stabbed down the middle that flashed before the screen. It shrunk into the corner and, next to a capitalized stream of pressing news, but far less so than the footage of a familiar, half-sizzled, planarian-headed creature stumbling forth on the screen. Stumps where tendril wings should be were visible on its back and its once majestic figure rested with its arms draped over two shades-wearing human bodyguards. Low-light camera flashed serenaded its return as a voiceover spoke.

"The Solar Broadcast Federation news has learned that roughly 30 terran hours ago the ZRF completed a series of high-profile prisoner exchanges as part of the ongoing territorial negotiations with the New Prosperity planetary government. After the recent Front offensive in the Rhodes Valley, which has resulted in massive losses for the Intransigence-armed rebel group suspected of multiple terrorist offences, a number of captured personnel were exchanged to enforce renewed ceasefire talks, believed to be pushed by more moderate members of the Front leadership. The death of Commandante Sazan, which insurgent leadership has refused to comment on, is believed to have forced them to the negotiating table.

"An impressive piece of the free press serving the iron boot. I believe I do not need to lecture on you which details they left out; details that you no doubt painted by your hand. You have helped; the peace talks are in full effect... but 'peace talk' is doing quite a bit of heavy lifting."

The news-reel continued; scenes of the Artelesia Nation Sector governor wiping the sweat on his bald head under the sun, a distant fire off in the background as heavily armored League marines stood just within peripheral sight of the fish-eye camera lens - a scielto broadcast. His words were subtitled in the alien cursive of the seraphic aliens but his words in the meantime were resolute or bluster depending on the inclination of the viewer; the radical factions that had undone years of benevolent market development and post-Yrrkradian reform but especially that a narrative of 'economic apartheid' based on the productivity of individual city-sectors and economic zones, was little more than foreign interference from Intansigence propagandists and inner-system college protesters blinded by authoritarian trickeries.

"I suppose I have just earned myself the ire from more fanatical of those we ally with for not a single yet two feeds of market-profitable disinfo-news sludge, but an ex-League economic policy greaser like that does not sweat like that when he merely needs to rouse the ire of the foreign-imported business owners and bourgeoisie against a threat. They could not even find an angle that would not hide the smoke in the distance; what's that they called it again? Minor damage from a failed rocket strike? I'll switch to proper news eventually, but tell me, what do you think you were ordered to actually target? A command centre is one thing, but what do you think prompted the peace talks to accelerate? The vassal-state of the League could never retain control forever and this was merely a wake up call. Yet for a most favorable outcome, someone had to go and you have yourselves to congratulate for that. Connect the dots; some of you are special forces, yes? I would fail you now if you could not."

In the meantime, he glanced over to Kleo then to Alice.

"Relocate her to the medical bay, follow the directions on the signs or your personal handheld device. Your comrades will fill you in on the rest when you return. Kleo reeks of a certain sort of Celestial arrogance that would typically cause her to become the subject of re-shared interpersonal media controversies; I can already feel the perversity of her kind's culture vultures ready to pounce on every word. Perhaps that would be a more suitable punishment than death; participation in their discourse of emptiness. In the meantime, I have acquired an additional asset for your assistance." Their smoothly metallic head turned over to the so-called King. "A construct as some of you must have surmised or sensed, hardlight and ethereally near-untouchable. Consider this an exception to our policy on monarchial rule for the convenience of your missions. Something we shall get to sooner than later."

The Evenomed: Violent Military SciFi Action Across A Post-War Expanse

Is it possible to see a short list of the characters you already have? Even just something like "Danno, rough and tumble gunslinger with a heart of gold; FlakJacker, pint-sized alien hacker with a dirty mouth; Cadence Zinestra, exquisite infiltrator and close-quarters specialist" just so one might identify a character niche that feels exciting?

Very interested though!

@WindingWay

Thank you for expressing interest. You can also join our discord if you would like to ask questions.

Current Cast

Salvator Rasch: Embittered posthuman veteran of revolutionary wars increasingly finding himself in what appears to be the squad's leadership position.

Echo: Multi-bodied cybernetic coral colony weapons platform psychologically geared towards precision obedience of commands and horrific explosive force.

Kleo: Human ex-special forces member providing most of the humour and questionable attitudes towards nonhumans on top of sheer contempr of the ethereal.

Ilshar: Rotting-corpse-fungoid ex-terrorist, as cunning and ruthless as he is blessed by perverse forces from beyond the visual spectrum.

Alice: Voidborne sharpshooter proficient of both precise aim and stealthy sorceries, recently keeping wounded allies alive as well.

King: The squad's newest member; a living supernatural construct once human now rendered as merely a mind trapped in a high-tech prison.

The Evenomed: Violent Military SciFi Action Across A Post-War Expanse

BUMP + Updates

We have just finished the first mission of the roleplay, essentially a test-run to see how well you all adapt and get everyone used to it. Due to the mission-based structure of the RP (at least as it currently stands), this leaves quite a bit of room for others to join especially in these intervals between missions.

If you would like to join the roleplay, we are still accepting and currently during the in-story downtime, it is a good time to introduce your character and even participate in voting on which mission you would like to have next when the choice is presented.

The Envenomed

There was nothing for an awkward few moments but the sound of grinding gears and ripping dirt. The enormous walker had taken a comically large stumble down the slopes after having had multiple weapon and movement options crippled. None of the damage was inflicted was to core systems and as much as it had smashed and rolled its way down the hill, but it had probably done far more damage to the stones and the trees that had dotted the ascent. They would have heard bark and stone shattering alike between the groaning and screeching of tormented metal and they did, breaking the silence of the whirring rumble of a distant battle falling away into the distance.

The Envenomed heard all of the carnage layered beneath a sound that filtered into the air like the creeping ring of tinnitus. No sooner than Salvator had made his call had it began to appear, easily mistakable for residual electronics interference or the return of clear communications. At first it was only from their coms, near smothered by the sounds of the horrible machine they had felled no doubt rising to its chunky legs, stripped of wheels and pilot no doubt pride, but it grew too loud and insistent to be incidental. Where there was once just silence from command soon there was its pulsing hum, soothing the pastiche of shattered bodies and scenery they awaited.

Light fluctuated, blinked, not with the passage of absent clouds upon a clear sky but curving trails of yellow beams bent into shapes expected of glass sculptures that might filter them. Beams that once would peak through the foliage landed a few feet off and visually trailing them upward saw them curve and splinter around and against unseen turns and forks. There was a shape implied, one that covered much of the area of operation they had previously battled in even if it cast no shadow amongst the wreckage of being and machine. It was an aberration and it neared, the tops of trees and their leaves leaning away from it as if pushed by unseen barriers, scans of which soon were revealed to be sustained antigravitational force.

Closer now; shape manifested to augmented sight whether by HUD's, specialized biology, or internal computer systems if not combinations of such. A vessel of sort clad in the appearance of reality itself; see-through, invisible, the world as it appeared stretched over it like a stolen skin for a shape censored for the sensibilities of the squeamish. It was a long vessel not long as a typical jet or plane like aerial transport would be like, its body was enormous in its dimensions turning the space above them into a realm of distorted texture and bending sky. Segments lined its body, a long and predatory shape, large enough to fit at least a handful of tanks. Heat-like distortion near its end suggested the shape of tails and where realspace bent around sufficiently revealed the implied presence of a cockpit head - the entire thing was akin to some enormous predator lurking beneath the mundaneness of the sky, now hovering above them.

The visual consistency of distorted vision was broken when black lines manifested across the false sky in their sight. Where was once the calm blue above split open and the body of the beast was revealed; a rectangular entrance blacker than the afternoon of the day that stared back at them with the intensity of its murk. Shapes were visible within; long appendages of irregular jagged joints that twisted themselves into strained patterns, all receding as the doors spread, retreating from what light was outside. The faint red of visored, goggle-like eyes - infantry, Intransigent, species unknown and specific loadouts difficult to perceive. A growing purplish glow emerged from the ceiling as dirt, rock, rubble, and leaves began to float and bump amongst themselves in a wide radius beneath - wide enough they could have taken likely two warforms in there.

"Low-gravitational well established. Board then depart."

The voice spoke as easily as one completing a purchase for an order, unfazed by the shapes moving through the foliage in the distance. Shapes bearing the same red eyes as the ones in the vessel, hidden behind cloaks over armored bodies - Intransigent forces, some enormous arthropod-like things of claw-hand appendages thicker than human bodies and torsos like inverted triangles broken off into almsot disjointed, incongruent segments some holding weapons that were autocannons rather than rifles in spite of their fitting size. Others were clad in armour seemingly made from night itself, not flat colours of endless dark but criss-crossing complexities of hard padding, magazines, and reinforced collar protection. Weapons ponly spoken of in the tall tales of veteran insurgents and security forces, those who had survived strange incursions they were told never happened, aimed towards the slope where the enormous walker no doubt had returned to its feet.

"Do not remain nor interfere with the rest. This is where your mission ends."

Vrexul, definitely vrexul, each of them a foot taller at least than the endoform band bearing weapons grotesque in their combination of innumerable, independently moving parts and savage in how it had been molded into jagged, pointed forms took up a perimeter position. It was deliberate that they moved past the Envnomed, not so much as even turning one of their living symbiote-limbs to peer or point at them. The entire group of reinforcements did not appear to even notice or acknowledge them, only the slow and rhythmic thud of the slowly approaching armored thread.

As the Envenomed ascended the gravitational column, flashes of light and missile trails streaked underneath. Projectiles that would have struck the ship detonated harmlessly beneath, vanishing their allies beneath the angry glare of explosions. A sound like a hammer, pounding in the depths of a mythical place of post-mortem soul punishment, responded in turn to the roar of mecha weaponry. It dimmed and dimmed as the vessel's body closed and Zanovia became another memory in a legacy of quiet shame and unspoken deeds.

Mission One Outro: Megadeth - Take No Prisoners

---

Time had turned into a standstill on the biomechanical vessel. The carnage that once surrounded them and which was visible just a turn of the head past a cliffside was gone and in its place the dull drone and meditative pulsing of the living cybernetics of the strange vessel they found themselves on. The lights were low but their eyes adjusted to it, the faint purple-white of ambient dome-like growths along the ceiling and walls draping their surroundings in the nocturnal glow of an imagined evening. The metal of the floors clanked yet shifted beneath their weight just so slightly, as if generously accomodating them, and in little slits and crevices in the shell-like material of the walls, shapes skittered faster than shape could be determined beyond carapaced and multi-sectioned.

Whatever sounds of battle they might have wondered about were absent. At most there was the slight rumble of the vessel as it presumably left the atmosphere... but then there was nothing but the alien mundanenity of it; long corridors that widened until rooms of hardened biofilm windows, behind which figures human and inhuman paid little attention.

It was tempting to think some of them were elite commando forces but they were not like the reinforcements from earlier. Mismatches of weaponry from across the hegemon across armore painted colours fitting for the Intransigence yet not concealing of the smoother shapes of League issue hardware, the mismatched jaggedness of the Black City's rank and file, the ballistic living padding of fungal-kevlar worn by many Yrrkradians... it was familiar in an odd sense. It was not often one might see scielto not draped in the heavenly splendor of their ethereal nobility but clad in the same bandoliers and infantry-issue shield generators as the celaderaka next to them, clutching at where once was a quarter of their skull, the rest of it silently hovering around his skull connected by lightning-beams of tenuous, faint energies green and sickly.

The infantry that had been leading them said nothing, clad in the general infantry armor of Intranszjednota bipeds, having said nothing but merely motioning for them to follow. Yet they stopped at the corridor, shaped like a gigantic spinal column ribbed and lined with matter that resembled muscle beneath where bones did not fully connect. At its end was a figure no less skeletal.

Biomechanical Entity, Presumed Commander Unit

It was more human than the rest of the assortment of species they had seen yet something more than that. In spite of being a mimickry of structured bone, it was greater than what a human skeleton would have been. There was volume to its mass, not spindly and crackling but rife with vigour in its motions, the striding of its six-feet-seven-inch height as vigorous as whenever it once had flesh and organic strength. It was not a skeletal grin but a harsh grimace hidden behind the tinted visor, steeled to whether coming trouble and terror alike. Intransigent forces did not often salute but the two that had lead them paused for a moment and muttered something inaudible and likely non-verbal, almost as if verses of a song.

An affirmation in the form of a buzzing pulse emerged seemingly from the walls itself, the air, or the very space around the skeletal machine as the two soldiers left.

"Speak, freely. There is much to discuss and others to meet. The vessel has docked and you are to be briefed on what is to come. I had expected little given the constraints of time, but my decision had been correct. There is little time to rejoice. We are expected soon. Yet not so soon I cannot gleam a few things. With me."

Its voice was difficult to determine; it was not the voice it would have had when it was of flesh and blood but there was something distantly buried beneath the layered echo-speak that seemed to emerge both from its body and the very space around it. As if it was a singular being who was the vessel of an audience they could not see save for itself. It had not even introduced itself and its voice was still hurried. Attempts to scan it returned fragmented false readings from its ambient electronic warfare security measures but they were busy with an agenda of their own, too much to care for little prods like that.

All they got out of any scans was that they were designated as INVICTOID AUTHORITY NODE 04/10

Soon it lead them to a chamber, one at the very least had recognizable furniture not merely for humanoids but based on the enormous cushion-like memory-moss clump on the floor, it was meant to be comfortable for the endoform and any other sufficiently large as well (the warform had to be parked in a vehicle bay from earlier). The ceiling still resembled flattened insectoid features glazed over and laminated, the floor did not shift so much (it appeared to be solid tiles for once), and the table was... a table. A wide, circular table with chairs that bore no biomechanical perversity, even having cushions of the actually-a-cushion variety with a few neon lights above that aggressively clashed with the rest of the dead-yet-dreadful decor.

"You have questions. I have questions. Speak your mind. Then I will speak mine."

The Envenomed

The mass, power behind the thrust, and velocity of the warmachine made it a functionally unstoppable force on the battlefield. Even bereft of missiles and autocannons, that much weight at such speed had no equal amongst the envenomed. Unstoppable however was not a synonym for insusceptible and "unstoppable" did not merely mean external forces forcefully ceasing its motion either.

A convergence of events would demonstrate this in short order.

The first was a volley of needle rounds. A few pinged off of the thick plating of its legs, inches from the wheels where others had scored. Here the metal was not of the same make and density which rendered theme easy pickings for the hyper-accelerated projectiles. The layered materials were meant to take the strain of a massive machine already partially supporting its own weight on ski-like railings, not precision needles peant to pierce the solid-yet-not-metallic mass, rending at first trenches then breaking the underlying supports, joints, and gears that held it together.

The second was a series of long bursts of larger, thicker, far less precise yet sufficiently clustered bullets mere eyeblinks later. These slammed across the back of the machine. A fireworks displays of sparks peppered the boxy bulkhead out of which emerged the antennae yet the thin appendage fared no better. It was a smaller target than the wheels but where it connected to the vehicle was soft enough for rounds to bite and tear into. Sparks sputtered out and comms channels sputtered and coughed back into life, the raw feedback burst a breath of relief and of surprise. A trail of smoke and blinking, popping flakes of light were left in the machine's wake.

The third involved multiple autocannon rounds slamming into its body, accompanied with a generous spray of .50 calibre bullets. The heaviest bullets and shells available to the squad indiscriminately bust, battered, and smashed against the bulk of the enormous war machine. Rifles and machine guns would scratch and maybe dent. Echo's autocannons gnashed and devoured, ripping out bigger and bigger chunks on its nearing approach. Yet it had something even heavier than those: its own mass. Lesser in size and bulk than the enormous frontline titan but with its already sustained damage to critical components, it was in no position to dodge the massive, wounded bulk of Echo slamming against its side.

The fourth was a few hair-raising moments before the critical impact. As if in retaliation for nearly being mulched by antipersonnel missile barrages earlier, the ulvath loudly roared as the targeted components paid the price. Machine gun rounds swarmed hornet-like into blasted camera-pod atop the autocannon, gouging, gutting, and dismembering it into a withered stump. The trail of bullets traveled over shoulder padding and into its back, bursting open the base of its antennae and turning vital systems into a fiery inferno of smashed electronic and jolting arcs of electricity.

In the timespan of under half a minute the enormous threat went from akin to a condensed train barreling towards a notably smaller hexapodal walker to a partially burning effigy belching fire and molten slag. The wheels that would have supported its crouched stance were but parodies of their former stability and integrity, its jamming systems and fearsome shoulder-cannon in similar condition, and its body smashed off course by a short-ranged ram. 45 degrees off from its intended path, a tree in its path practically burst into woodchips as the others that had fallen crumpled and cracked apart as it slid straight through them. Huge clods of dirt split and flew into the air as it slammed down the slope, sliding now on its side as its free hand tried to dig its fingers into the ground rending trenches nearly big enough to lay down prone within.

It was hard to tell where it had stopped. The sound of groaning metal and coughing thrusters was not the angry, ambient roar as before but a now threatening if muted cacophony. Not in the distance yet not near either. Movement could be heard as the weight of the machine worked against its splayed, stunned body. The pilot within was slamming fists into the ground perhaps in rage but by the rising sound of grating gears and whirring servos, likely forcing its body upwards. There was struggle but a struggle spirited and enraged in its alternating tones of crackling whirrs and mechanical growls sounding out over the hissing crackle of its various annihilated components.

In the midst, all comms jamming had vanished. A window had been forced open but already it was beginning to narrow.

The Envenomed

The warmachine stomped forward not with clumsy lumbering but a deliberate, predatory gait. Every step was measured in a machine-economy of motion but its movements belied a fluidity not often associated with warmachines; human-like in the degree of articulation of every step and the shifting of its digits across its enormous rifle-weapon, fluid and lacking the stutter-stop of a proper robotic construct. There was a living being inside of it and one that appeared supremely confident in its capability for eliminating the retreating Envenomed squad. It did not even turn its body as its shoulder mounted canon fired another salvo, briefly illuminating Ilshar in the dawn-bright blast of its explosive shells. The swiveling camera atop the turret froze and tracked them, the canon itself preparing to line-up a shot.

Noticing its quarry retreating from the League outpost, the machine's pace sped up and one could almost feel the malevolent excitement no doubt welling in the pilot. Yet its immense stature and capability for destruction came with a few caveats. The flames, debris, and dust it kicked up even from missed shots cratering the earth or annihilating vegetation made it difficult to see smaller targets. A voidhanger laying prone was easily mistaken for other bodies broken or crushed beneath its feet and the debris laying about whether artificial or natural.

Salvator's HUD immediately noted a number of distinctive characteristics of the machine, highlighting a dome-like space around its body and the shield-like plating on its right shoulder. The former caused his HUD to blur and distort a few times - some sort of disruptive field, likely electro-magnetic in nature or otherwise with some sort of disruptive capability, presumably working as shielding or target jamming. Yet given by its strength and the particular output, it seemed designed to disrupt weapons fire, presumably just directed energy or beam and similar types, and the armor itself while tough didn't seem indestructible.

The source of this was behind the shield - in the shoulder itself, but connecting to its "shield" which seemed to amplify its effects. Analysis concluded that solid rounds would likely do much better or entirely ignore this barrier; perhaps that is why it was so intent on separating them from the outpost they had previously raided.

It appeared its thrusters were currently cooling down; it had rushed all the way here and might not be able to use them for maybe a minute. There appealed to be wheel-like contraptions within its dense legs; likely to be used in conjunction but as they moved further from the base and towards the slopes they had travelled up, it appeared to be preparing them for usage again. Its balance upon them seemed precarious; they looked almost reverse engineered from certain construction machinery, likely not entirely intended for such a massive machine, even if they clearly worked to a degree for wheeled travel.

While the gun-pod mounted camera was an obvious avenue of sight, it also had its head and two small slits atop its "middle" shoulders - those two had small cameras. Behind them, an antennae connected to likely what was the source of the communications jamming, somewhere within its back. Also of note was its left arm's inner elbow having somewhat softer armor than on its right. The only problem was that when it raised its weapon, the posture of its arm ensured that was well concealed unless one had a higher vantage point.

Salvator's rifle cracked and the to unaugmented eyes invisible barrier around the machine flared like a plasma globe touched by a human hand. Sparks flew as bullets slammed into the camera, interrupting the shoulder-cannon's aim. Armor dented and bent and gouges were torn across the the length of the circular white top, sending out crackling electricity and sparks. The camera swiveled rapidly yet it struggled to see, the canon now forced to rely on the shoulder and cranial cameras to detect the voidhanger.

A luminescent smear remained however, as if someone has spilled glowing paint on some glass dome, awkwardly hovering in the air in front of the camera. It was not entirely blinded but with its visual functions partially impaired and now a near-blind splot from the angle where Salvator had shot, it could not accurately target him with that. Yet that still left its shoulder-cams and head along with whatever sensory equipment it had, trying to home in until it saw the figure breaking from cover.

Yet rather than its machine gun, the sound of shrieking missiles answered, four in total launching vertically from pods located on the top of its square shaped blocky "outer" shoulders. They spun in the air, dancing in intertwining trails before they began to descend. Two slammed into where he had been hiding, reducing the trees to splinters, but the other two shot wide. One erupted 30 or so feet from him, the force of the blast sending a spray of dirt, rock, and wood that blanketed him in the chaos. The final one however swung away and towards where it thought Ilshar was hiding, detonating in the tree tops above roughly 20 feet from him and sending down a shower of shrapnel and burning foliage. While the tarrhaidim was not in the primary blast range, they would have to watch for stray burning metal and vegetation.

Yet it was not the only heavy duty machine in this fight. As it turned its attention back to Echo, it abruptly stopped as a bipedal war machine leaped out of its body. The blink-long pause was all that was needed for the endform to score a nasty volley across its torso and its machine-gun rifle. The machine jerked almost human-like, neuroreactive networks kicking into overdrive yet far from fast enough to dodge Echo's weapon fire. Rounds slammed and shatter against its torso, halting its advance, but the ones that hit its rifle cause its whole right hand to whip back, scarring and gouging the weapon across the length of its receiver-body and where that connects to the long barrel. Exposed metal and firing mechanisms were revealed for a brief moment before it staggered back again, this time from a spray of machine gun fire from Ilshar, raking across its head in a shower of sparking hits and rattling impacts.

Yet rather than directly retaliate, it suddenly bent its legs with the length of its knees now laying parallel to the ground. Scans indicated a rise in temperature coming from behind its hefty shoulders. The previously scanned side-leg mounted wheels unfurled and pressed to the ground as its thrusters roared, sending it forwards directly at the warform. While its machine gun and missiles might not possess the raw power to fully crack the unztadlige's armor, its massive bulky and shield-like shoulder it now was bringing to bear could easily bowl the machine over and send it potentially tumbling down the slopes the Envenomed had previously ventured up.

The Evenomed: Violent Military SciFi Action Across A Post-War Expanse

@Arkitekt

Honestly with just a bit of tinkering (plus a few other things), this would not be hard to make work for the setting. Most of it works pretty easily. Have you seen the Character Sheet Outline? Would just need to figure out what her background is wrt to the lore (what faction she was with before if she even was with any of them) and for you to DM me her Actions Of Interest.

The Evenomed: Violent Military SciFi Action Across A Post-War Expanse

is this still open?

@Arkitekt

Yes it is. Jump on the discord if you can.

The Envenomed

Jubilation had overtaken their allies, raging with the same intensity as the wounds blighting the flesh of realspace. Where the icons of imperial domination once stood was the bleeding pollution of ethereal distortion, tearing metal, foliage, dirt, and implant-ridden flesh alike. A hated enemy reduced to even less than the term should allow; what need did they have to even pay attention to their allies - their means to an end? Yet it had been done with their help; the revolutionaries were dogged and harsh as living under the boot of membranous and pink-fleshed frequently was, but they liked to think of themselves as a different stripe.

"Friends, friends of the Struggle! Now, those who died before us can rest with the footfall of our dancing in their ears, not the rumble of their armor!" The sound of the gealtirocht leader's hand slapping the upper back of Salvator went out with an audible clunk. The tone of stern vitriol had vanished; alien still to ears both human and post-human, but bereft of the tone that felt accusatory even if solely aimed at the occupiers.

"Our mission is finished! No need to bother with this hunk of junk. Why, maybe we can recover it for our own means, at the very least as a trophy!"

He was too focused on interrupting himself, pausing to shout and banter with his surviving friends. Many of them had taken out personal hand-phones - cheap, off-world, and just from a glance unsightly with the various modifications they'd no doubt had their own engineers install. The little clicks of their phone apps going off in sequence could barely be heard above their celebrating, the cameras like a tiny pitter-patter of clapping and applause to the cacophony of their joy.

His eyes were not following the inputting into the control panel of the artillery cannon; the way the weapon shifted and groaned barely garnered attention from the surviving insurrectionists, even as the barrel began to shift. Until, it had shifted too much and Salvator said what he said.

In the brief moment before Salvator vanished from where he once stood, he would not have required the most advanced scanners to know the way the eel-like being's features had twisted.

His comrades had turned, hearing the blink, seeing their allies suddenly falling back, and feeling, hearing, dreading the way the dots had fallen into place.

"You... all along you were-"

The cannon fired and silenced the leader's voice, a wash of ethereal power coming over them. Some had fallen onto their knees, phones dropped, watching as the same wrath that had given them historic victory now stole the taste of victory from the battlefield. The bunker, a fare more diminuitive structure than the mobile command center or repurposed stadium, was not silhouetted against the birth of a wrathful sun. Neither did the support trucks and their convoy; with the same uncaring judgement of the beyond, there was but a near-perfect inverted-dome crater.

There was no time to watch the scurrying of horrified, shocked Front forces; now tasting the same horror inflicted onto their tyrants in a cruel twist. Their weapons would speak.

Near immediately, a rail-cannon swung forth and zeroed in on the largest, heaviest target - the same one that had formed the bulwark of their advance. Rifle fire and grenades flew as readily as howling rage, too incoherent for speech as language and round flew with equal intent. A few rounds glanced the unztadtlige's armor, a few clanging against its bulk - rattling armor, but brusing rather than cracking. Semi-automatic weapons appeared to turn automatic, a torrent of blasts erupting as the traitors fell back.

A crackle over the coms; friendly, but blurred, grainy, unclear doubly so over the retaliatory barrage sent from former allies.

"-Active jamming! We can't track your location, ghost data-"

A sound like a whistle tinged first with a loud thud. Before even enhanced senses and ocular capability could detect it, two human bodies simply vanished; clouds of fizzling mist and squirming innards leaving two torsos standing. Two trees in front of the Envenomed squad's retreat simply lost massive chunks of mass around their middle; bark exploding outwards as if tinder, sending bramble and branches crashing down before them.

"-Unit! I repeat, specialist-"

One of the humans leapt out of the way, rolling away from a torrent of smoke-trails slamming in a v-shaped line. Anti-personnel rounds shred three more survivors - comrades became skeletal remains, tattered centipede-like creatures holding onto bits of bodily mass and armor, the other surviving gealtirocht a pincushion for serrated, whirring shrapnel-saws slowly powering down as if fattened on anguilline meat and juice.

The one who jumped gripped his midsection; the pain of re-attaching to the lower torso was punishing. His aim was shakey - cracking off two spiteful shots at the Envnomed, before he ducked again.

"-Bile! Can't land until-"

One last scream of anger as the same weapon that pulped the first victims fires; this close, it was a piercing report, a firecracker in the lower registers - a deep gavel pound rather than celebratory popping. The gealtirocht's voice vanished as did his body; raw physical shock from a massive automatic rifle-cannon overwhelmed reinforced armor. Turned to a footnote in history before his body even fully became a scattered mess of multicolored, moist matter and electrcuting armor fragments. The hellish spray of gunfire swept over the battlefield and the rest of the ZRF vanished behind it. No silence stilled the battlefield as dirt and debris rained, a counter-rhythm against the pounding, heavy footfalls of an approaching threat.

A shipping container groaned as a mammoth forced knocked over, the jutting tail-fins of the burning gunship swatted away with even less trouble soon after. Through the smoke of its judgement, it stomped through.

ENEMY HEAVY ARMORED WALKER UNIT: RESOLUTE-CLASS UCL MULTI-WEAPON PLATFORM

BGM: Byatis - Apology of War

What stomped through did so as thruster jets on the back of it shoulders powered down, blue anti-grav pulsations diminishing as wheels on the edge of its boot-like feet retract, stability prioiritized over speed. At 26 feet tall, it was even denser in its bulk than the warform even if its two visible weapons were notably smaller. A preliminary scan revealed missile pods stored in its shoulder but soon, electronic disruption makes such things difficult - something on its body is deliberately targeting them their coms and combat electronics. The former was silenced yet the latter can only struggle.

Given by the muddy-looking smears on its knees and hands, combined with the crude graffiti of a string of triangular, mantis-like heads impaled on a sword with a wingled handle, it's clear it had been very busy even before it was called over.

The heavy duty "machine gun" in its arms locked onto the warform immediately and fired, not just at the Envenomed but through the trees they are putting between themselves. A few rounds slammed into Echo's multipedal body; they did not pierce, glancing hits, but they hit hard enough to stagger the massive warmachine. Its shoulder-mounted cannon swivels around; it points at Ilshar's general direction... but it seemed to avoid aiming at him deliberately. Perhaps it was unable detect his specific location - the camera-pod sitting atop of its shoulder mounted cannon scanned the area. The weapon thudded out its judgement - HE-shells flew as close as within 15 feet of the hidden tarrhaidim, annihilating whatever foliage was behind him, lighting up the woods as the massive machine advanced!