LustForDecay

Into Perdition's Jaws

Driven by pure murderous instinct; a puppet with the rabid intensity of a diseased hound, the gundrone was now a burning waste-pile that glared as it charged. Flames erupted out of the gaping wounds gouged by the Sect troopers, its own machine gun collapsed into the raging inferno slowly warping the weapon from the bottom up and rendering it a useless chunk. Vat-flesh bonded to composite metal was beginning to peel from its dense body across its flap-like arms, down its dense legs, as it began to turn a meaty charred brown, ignoring Vin as its unztadtlige handler shot it forward in a murderous charge.

Even the soldiers in the park could detect the sparking voidhanger as electrical readings combined with residual energy from the plasma burst lit him up but they weren’t paying that much attention to him. The huge hulk of a human in his armoured suit charged with ferocity equal to the bioconstruct, smashing into the construct with bone-shattering force. In its frenzied, dysfunctional state the machine stumbled forward, crashing against the burnt-out husk of a civilian truck and crushing the wrecked vehicle’s cargo component inwards – its own sheer momentum made it stumble faster than its internal balancing calibrators, currently melting, could correct.
A gout of flame vomited out of its wound, barely even singing Paris’ armour, as sparks began to crackled inside of it. Pops at first then flashes of light with harsh snapping sounds – its own rounds were starting to detonate as the vicious flames from Corsica’s weapon. The tubular gaze from the flaming tunnel glowered with more anger than its two eye stalks – one really, one of the detonating rounds had sliced another clean open as vaporizing regulative fluid wafted out of the wound and its shuddering flap arms pulled against the vehicle it had been cratered into.

Their stand-off was interrupted by an enormous glob of plasma, slamming into the ground behind where Paris had imagined, momentarily blocking Zsresrinn’s sight with a huge blossom of raging power. The blast of blue and white desecrated tortured metal, sending melting fragmentation spitting outwards before a wave of heat and force. Windows shattered and loose components flew outwards, scattering before the two like leaves in autumnal winds. The force was far more ruthless, shoving against Paris’ shield as if to usher him towards his doom.

The bio-machine’s controller had no such reservations about preserving the weapon. If it could at least take one of them, that was enough. With a tortured creak the nearly destroyed machine pulled its body out of the truck and staggered towards Paris with a drunkard’s urgence and imbalance. More sparking crackles and bolts of white shooting outwards like blips of light from its body – its unspent ammunition set off by the extreme heat. Loud beeping – the machine’s warning signals were going off as it lunged towards Paris, one arm flap simply falling off from the melting heat, its remaining eye peeling off of its limb, and from within its body, Paris could see the boxy magazines of its ammo starting to go white.

Just before it could make it to the halfway point, a scourging beam of light slammed into its body, melting off one of its flap arms and causing the machine to awkwardly stumble and stagger. It writhed and jerked, its electronics and control mechanisms sent into overdrive as the combined heat from the vrexul’s energy weapon rapidly melting its internal body and setting off the volatile munitions within.

In a blast of flame and heat, the machine’s body finally exploded. A storm of white spark-like bullets flew outwards in a deadly shrapnel like spray. It was but a fraction of the speed if they had been launched from its now shattered heavy machine gun but its devastation was clear. Vehicle husks shuddered and shook, car doors fell off, supporting components shattered and a few vehicles not already devastated by the mortar bombardment slumped with heavy thuds to the ground.

The final last-ditch effort of their assailants had been in vain but there was little time to breathe.

The soldiers at the park quickly lowered their guns, gesturing for the whole squad to join them. A few of them paused to watch Zsresrinn closely – one of them held what looked like a missile launcher but he paused when Silver made it in first. A few of them paused, looking almost ready to raise their weapons at Corsica – her heat signatures were off of the charts. It was clear that the bizarre mishmashed squadron was still a sight to many of them. Troopers further back were starting to move back to the APC’s as ominous frothing growls and shrieks, likely celaderaka mixed with tarrhaidim, called out over the sound of melting metal and stomping boots off in the distance. Whomever was hunting them was angry.

One of the soldiers stood a foot taller than the others – their armour made them featureless, beyond the light black overlapping ridges over a mixture of light and dark greys comprising a more flexible under armour. Larger wrist guards that featured fang-like tips sat on their wrists and a cape was visible around their waist, likely some sort of shielding for hidden thrusters of some sort. Their ridged helmet was imposing as they loomed before Silver, still dwarfed by Zsresrinn as he motioned for them to follow him as he walked towards the parked vehicles.

NPC leader reference image

“Yirilovan Selekawael, loyalist to the bone.” The armoured figure called out, motioning to the rest of the Sect team to start boarding. “Captain within the Regime, Fortress Kerovnia just a few hours from here. Your leaders told us nothing about a hot landing when we were recruited for assistance. As far as the tasahnial* are concerned, our truce with them holds – they are not aware we crept in just under their noses. Hence the jammers – as far as they are concerned, this is a dead zone too close to our lines for them to near.”

He turned to look down the road, pausing as whatever scanning systems on his armour analysed the particulars of the situation.

“That group that ambushed you – they’re bottom feeding nobodies. Nobodies under the Carnazir, another misguided group of miscreants absorbed by the traitor-armies. The Kerovnian Separatist Alliance – failures before the war, failures lapping up the offal dropped their way by the benefactors.”

Already the APC’s were moving – turning away from the gate and towards a wall or rather, the crumbled powdery ruins of one. A few troops moved into the hefty troop storage components.

“They are however, failures with a direct line to the enforcers the Carnazir use to ensure party line and loyalty is well practiced here. They have been itching for an excuse to take our territory – and your friends, the hulking human I presume and the last motion signature out on the road, better get here faster unless he wants to shatter even the tattered illusion of peace we have now.”
One of the APC’s had moved towards the gate, rumbling down the road as it turned to open its door to them. Its turret swivelled tracking motion through the trees – no visual contact but it was clear they were cutting it close. Distantly, something could be heard stomping about in the woods and in its wake, trees could be heard tumbling to the ground. The troops inside wildly gestured at Paris and Vin – it was clear they were almost on borrowed time now.

“Once they get in, we’re hitting the jammer and blinding them. We’ve done it before; we’re a sneaky bunch when we want to be. With how things have gone south, we’re going to take you the other rendez-vous point. It’s clear by helping you, we might be targeted now as well.” Yrilovan concluded, jogging towards one of the APC’s – one that the Sect squad would notice had a rather unusual electrical signature, as if it was covered in a field of static.

The crunching of trees in the distance continued.

Footnotes

*Derogatory term in central celaderakan translating to “soil shitter”, typically as a slur against lower class people believed to have been tricked into joining guerilla and insurgent groups due to low intelligence.

Into Perdition's Jaws

If you vanish for a sufficiently long time period, I may have no choice but to count your slot as open.

Into Perdition's Jaws

Less like an advanced combat platform made from a fusion of synthetic biomass and shaped metallic armouring, the stomping gun-drone looked demonic, possessed by some horrific rage beyond what could simply be programmed into a machine. Its entire front had been gouged open by Zsresrinn’s hellhammer, somehow not triggering its protective energy field, and a mixture of intestinal tube-wiring and sparking electronics spat and glared like a bloodied, pouring eye. As the sect team ran it was no less savage, its bullets at first a wild spray of mag-accelerated rounds but as it neared its targets began to grow specific and a high-pitched whine, audible even over the buzz-roar of its heavy machine gun, made it clear it was still targeting the team for its mortar-wielding unztadtlige controller.

Like a hand wracked by traumatic tremors, its large gun jerked and swivelled on it its body as its two eye-stalks, now glowing an angry red, swept around for the retreating team. The gun itself used a separate targeting mechanism as Zsresrin would soon discover, pausing rigid to aim at their estimated centre of mass before letting fly a stream of bright gaseous light and armour shredding projectiles, identifying her by the faint cloud of supernatural particles but unable to get a direct lock on her thanks to the remnants of obfuscating evzredigor matter. It jerked away abruptly towards Linus, the residual energy on their body drawing its ire. It didn’t matter an entire half cracked APC was in the way – the rounds could be heard first clattering through its layers of armour before tearing it open like a pinata, intent on shredding the softer target.

Its weapon swivelled again as it charged, drawn by the sound of clinging metal and the impact of a pair of large-calibre rifle rounds slamming into its hull, Paris now becoming the object of its wrath. It hesitated at first, gravel scraping underneath its dense legs, giving Paris a lead as he charged towards the machine. Immediately, it attempted to move to the side but it was not the only fast-moving heavyweight brute. It managed to avoid a full-on collision but not before Paris shield smashed into its left leg, sending it teetering off to the side. Its now unwieldy body smashed into a crashed hover-car, crumpling its already half melted doors, and nearly slumping to down onto both legs. One of its eyes twitched, stretching on it stalk, glaring with unearthly red at Paris.

That was when the sound of an angry, electrical shriek filled the air. Scanners in the area would detect a powerful discharge of plasma and wary eyes see the huge blue glob soar over the growing flames of the treeline, falling towards Paris as it descended – it wouldn’t be a direct hit but within the 50 metre deadly radius, serious damage could be done – even to the machine itself.

Yet it was only a few seconds before it was up on its feet, charging past Paris before a spray of plasma ripped into its side. Energy shielding flared up – the crackle of electricity around itself intensified into a semi-domal sheen of orange-yellow power, flaring as the plasma rounds slammed into it and caused it to brighten in intensity, weakening its defensive capabilities. The whine rose in intensity as its eye-mounted targeting laser swept over the treeline, wildly around where the residual heat had gathered.

Another mighty roar – another unztadtlige plasma mortar glob soared through the air, aiming to annihilate the still cloaked Vin! Even the machine might be caught in its large radius – as it swivelled outwards towards the road again, it was clearly aiming for more, targeting wildly across destroyed vehicles and the nearing treeline. Another plasma-mortar report followed, this one falling roughly in front of where Linus and Corsica were located!

The machine did not get a chance to keep up its wild sprint. A piercing series of beams, scorching in their intensity, hit it direct on the shields crackling wildly from the strain. Its HMG swivelled, this time locking onto Zsresrinn again, the sheer interference from its rapidly overloading shields causing its weapon to shake and shudder, firing wide from the vrexul and instead gouging open a tree a few metres behind her, sending it crashing forwards just a few metres from the arthropod.

Linus and Corsica responded in kind – energy bolts swollen with unearthly power joined with armour piercing incendiaries, exploding in a radiant show of lights. Energy shielding hit its threshold and violently expelled the excess, sending out a wave of static interference, forcing the machine to stumble backwards… but not before a few of Corsica’s round flew into its open wounds.

Biomatter erupted into flame as soot and vaporizing internal fluids burst out of its body. The very machine gun sitting upon it shuddered before falling not backwards but into its body, crackling and sparking as its biomatter were consumed by the molten intensity boiling within. Its eyestalks rapidly twitched, blinking yellow and orange as they began to target its own crumbling body, answered by another roar of the massively powerful mortar, aiming this time directly on its position!

Before it could fall there, it was up on its feet and moving aggressively towards the reclaimer and the celaderaka, intent on using its raw mass and now burning body as a living battering ram. Its unztadtlige controller was prepared to use it as the target marker itself as the burning, tortured biomachine made one final ditch effort to end at least some of the team members.

“Kirvan’s piss, that bastard’s not giving up, forget it and run!” A familiar voice crackled over the coms. “We can’t hold out for much longer, we’ve been here even before your crash! Any more and that floating coral bastard’s going to catch wind of all of us!”

The soldiers arrayed out in the ruined park were clearly on high alert, scanning over the ruined walls and some had their weapons raised. Whatever they were seeing it was getting them on high alert and the swivelling gun turrets, sweeping the sky and the roofs of the distant ruined buildings, made it clear they wouldn’t be secure out here for long.

Into Perdition's Jaws

The forest was alight with the flash of rifle fire and roaring flames emerging from the shattered carcass of the transport vessel. As the team became aware of the regroup point and the unseen ally calling for their presence, the encroaching enemy threat only furthered in its aggression. Spread out as they were, their advantage in numbers was accompanied with one in terms of pure volume of fire. The heavy-duty rifles filled the air with deadly bolts, pinging off of Paris’ shield like ringing bells but the impact was rattling and vicious. His armour might be tough but these rounds would treat it far more harshly than his shield.

Worse, the unztadtlige was nearing and as it did so, its heavy machine gun fire sharpened. A few trees next to Linus and Corsica exploded, a few of the thinner ones toppling as streams of bright purple bolts ripped right through them with raw kinetic force. Another of its turrets, emerging like some egg-like sac out of which three blocky barrels poked out, fired an angry blast at Paris, uncaring for the durability of his colossal shield. Fuzzy communication signals blared between itself and the soldiers, pushing them to trail the hulking human – with the leg servos of the tarrhaidim, that wouldn’t be a problem.

That was until mid-sprint, a horrific burst of flame and force erupted in the group that had splintered off to give chase. Limbs were torn out of sockets, worm-tendril parasites ripping out of bodies to try and escape the horrific heat, and whole soldiers tossed off of their feet and smashing through foliage, bramble, and their own allies. Paris’ solar tablet sent a whole squad into disarray as burning fungoid biomatter and hungry flames now began to consume the squadron, forcing the unztadtlige back to avoid its own coral-like biomass being touched by the raging inferno.

The bipedal bioconstruct had caught up with frightening speed, its multiple sensor eyes glaring death at Corsica and Linus but they had just managed to avoid its gauss rounds slicing them clean open. A storm of celaderaka shotgun shells repaid it in kind, clashing against a glowing dome-like field around its body. The energy shield brightened with each 12-gauge blast and the machine staggered, digging in its heels and wildly firing at the two. Crackling and sparking, it advanced again swivelling its guns towards the tree it had seen them run towards but missing a pair of grenades landing near its feet.

An explosion erupted and its energy shield shattered, a backwash of static enveloping demon and flame-monger alike, causing the robot to stagger. That was all the window needed for both to escape to the park but not before Corsica took a few choice potshots at its now vulnerable body. The human-sized machine jerked from the impact, barely affected at first. Yet what seemed at first like normal DMR rounds now erupted into flames, hungrily eating away at synesthetic biomatter around its legs and arms, forcing it to begin exuding its bio-regulatory fluids in a desperate attempt to quell the raging flames!

In the carnage, Linus had knocked over one of the larger scattering nearing footsoldiers moving to assist the bioconstruct, barely avoiding the burning bramble as it toppled, giving a momentary lull in the ruthless symphony of their rifle fire. It rolled towards them, crashing over a few smaller trees but caught against a few of its larger, not-yet-felled counterparts. The soldiers used this sudden stop to advance but wouldn’t even notice Corsica planting a particular explosive within the tree’s body, some of them even going so far to vault over it. As if enraged, the bioconstruct bent its legs and with some struggle, leapt onto the tree, crunching bark under its hefty frame as its shaky, partially bobbing guns struggled to track the retreating Sect operatives.

It didn’t get a chance to cut them off or apart this time. Another raging blast tore open the tree and the bipedal machine was caught right at the epicentre. Its legs were torn open, flash seared by the heat, arms ripping off their sockets then half disintegrating as they fell, while its crab-like head crumpled from the force. The machine fell in five different pieces, one of legs smashing into a human trooper and trapping him underneath its burning bulk, causing him to scream as his light armour fed the melting metal flames. Others had been tossed by the blast, their burning carcasses rolling over the ground to try and put out the flames or slain from the visceral blast force, bits of metal shrapnel from the wrecked bioconstruct ripping right through fungal flesh and human skin like knives through meat.

The battle was far from fully decided. A few of these heavier duty rifle rounds and the kinetic energy bolts from the coral warmachine passed mere inches from the still cloaked Silver and Vin’s armoured forms as they headed towards the park. A larger target had drawn the attention of the ambushers’ attention – the hefty vrexul warriors. Zsresrinn wasn’t spared any expense just as Paris wasn’t; a group of the battle riffle armed troops swung their aim towards her, sending a flurry of rounds barely after the eyestalked bioconstruct scored a hit on her side.

The waist machine strafed out to the side, readying its heavy-duty machine gun for another flurry of mag-accelerated death but the arthropod’s weapon was faster. Three cracks of high explosive armour piercing rounds slammed into its body, tearing out chunks of reinforced metal and synth-bone and ripping out its gut region. The unztadtlige managed to fire a burst her way before another trio slammed into its body. Dense and layered as its armour was, at this range the hellhammer had piercing power equivalent to certain light vehicle weaponry. One of the anemone like polyp stumps was ripped open, wiring and veins torn from the piercing force before sensitive bioelectronics were consumed in a blossom of flames. Two of its camera-ports were flattened by a single round rapidly ripping a trench across its upper body before slamming into a trooper using it as cover, splattering his skull into a misty pulp-spraying mess before detonating into the dirt behind him. The third round didn’t dig into anywhere near as vital but the impact and explosive force stunned the gestalt-minded brute – a well needed respite.

In the ephemeral moment between the reloading and firing of deadly weaponry, a strange and foul conjuration of arthropod biomatter and a strange almost glass-like, reflective smoke shimmered around Zsresrinn. Soldiers attempting to fire on her cursed and turned away momentarily, targeting devices momentarily overloaded by the wild, jarring patterns and sending shots wide and far. Before they could properly calibrate their targeting devices, another swarm had taken its place – a thick fog of foul buzzing insectoids, dominated by a singular eye like some parody of a common housefly, filling the air with a living smog of visually impenetrable fog.

Yet not physically. The fog shimmered and scattered at points as the hulking, powerful shape of the bony white gun-platform machine, still standing after three armour piercing rounds, stormed through and chased after the Sect team. Bursts of heavy duty magnetically accelerated rounds flew forth like solid streams of blue and white, going straight through thick trunks like nothing. This time however, it wasn’t targeting a specific member of the team but anyone unfortunate enough to be in front of it. At this point, all the survivors were outside of the interference range from the crash but a crackle was sounding over their com systems – foreign interference of some sort.

Jerry would be able to pick up the particulars of the signal. So would Vin.

MULTIPLE TARGET LOCK ATTEMPTS FROM HOSTILE SOURCE.
RANGEFINDING AND TRAVEL PATH PREDICTION DETECTED.

Their onboard electronics weren’t being hacked – the entire squad was now being targeted!

Off in the distance, a pulsing hum that rumbled almost like a massive buzzsaw purring could be heard. If they looked back and through the cloud, they could see a number of ports opening on the back of the unztadtlige as it prepared its powerful artillery weaponry again.

“FASTER! Faster dammit, we need you to get inside jammer's safe range! We’re picking up energy buildup, multiple hidden targeting lasers from the gun-platform’s eyestalks! The unztadtlige is preparing its plasma mortars and trying to target your travel path!”
The same voice from earlier screamed over their coms as any HUDs the possessed would light up with a navigational marker – the park, near but not near enough especially with a seemingly vengeful bioconstruct bearing on them, its onboard targeting devices scanning and slowly locking onto the team. They may have fended off the footsoldiers, even destroyed the other bioconstruct, but the unzadtlige could easily match the whole squad in pure destructive power. The hellhammer’s rounds had done horrific damage but with its unusual, partially cybernetic body it did not feel the same pain (if it did at all) that others might. Nor were its most important internal systems damaged. Yet as a sapient life form, it certainly felt a murderous need to end them for good.

Up ahead however were signs of what the unseen voice had mentioned – a few trails that converged upon a road and the burnt-out husks of trucks and other civilian vehicles turned over or crashed against one another. Travelling down the road, they would be able to see trees of a different sort – the treeline itself was purposefully cropped away from the road, leaving a gulf of shrubs between the cement and the forest along with cratered blast marks and a few cadavers scattered across it.

Down the wreck-littered road, past the flattened black iron bars of a once towering gate, and into a park of once rolling now partially blast-gouged hills and withered decorative vegetation, a few vehicles could be seen. Large and blocky armoured personnel carriers of some sort with a few soldiers of some sort positioned alongside the uneven topography.

“We have visual contact. Just get a few more meters in, then we can up the jammer’s interference and blind them… wait, shit, get rid of that bioconstruct! It hasn’t seen us yet, nail it before it alerts them all!”

APC Reference

Infantry Reference

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Into Perdition's Jaws

Barely a minute had passed since the crash and already its deadly cargo was up in arms and in action. As most of the party headed towards the wood, the raiding party neared. Black silhouettes in the foliage and spaces between the trees began to clear and multiple shapes bipedal in form began to emerge. Humans most likely by the layered plated armour, interspersed with larger tarrhaidim by the bolted or half-melded plating complimented with limb servos attached by a similar manner. The particulars of their armour were difficult to make out but it at the very least seemed basic, lower level clearance material, potentially military surplus form wars prior. The rifles in their arms were long, tubular, equipped with simple scopes and sights – a few using laser targetters to sweep the wreckage and for their frantic quarry, the red beams invisible to the naked eye.

They were equipped for engagement at a distance and as multiple party members broke from the wreckage, they fell into the sights of these lengthy weapons. The air crackled and hissed as chemo-electric discharge shattered the ambience of burning metal and cackling electricity, just as the enormous globules of blue-white plasma slammed into the ground. Waves of destructive heat and ghastly flames scorched over the crash site, causing nearby bark and foliage to combust before their ashes were blown away by violent shockwaves of force, radiating outwards and into those scattering towards the woods.

Paris, hunkering down into the wreckage, would be beset by the full brunt of the infernal heat and concussive force. The malfunctioning void-tech that powered the crashed transport fared no better as tortured metal was devoured by the hellish blossoms, bursting into nauseating clouds of ethereal luminescence, swamping the area in an unearthly glow. What was once the wreckage of the plane collapsed or shattered, sending deadly bits of burning metal fragments flying outwards. One could even hear a few distant windows smashed open from the flying bits of metal. Paris’ armour would be pushed to the limits as forces both physical and immaterial crashed upon it.

It was bright enough that a few of the encroaching hostiles were forced to duck behind tree and stone but more than a few simply crouched and watched, weapons raised as they took aim. Against the hungry glare of the mortar blast, the forms of the Sect team had been silhouetted in a sharp black against the pinkish bluish blob of flame. In the ensuing carnage of the blast, they had not seen Legius leap up into a tree nor its disappearance into the brush.

They too were unaware of Silver and Vin Valvoi: even as residual ether clung to their bodies; their eyes were focused elsewhere. Before Legius had leapt down, the bio-colony would have seen another distant shape – rock like, craggy, hovering off of the ground on a quartet of outwards-spreading cones. They were anti-gravitational emitters, attached to a body that was at first malformed to its sight but almost tank-like in build, bearing strange polyp-like growths plated with heavy armour, some of which smoked and blurred with immense heat.

It was an unztadtlige; a living weapons platform made from a gestalt consciousness of cybernetically interlinked coral-like organisms. Given that it was faintly within visual range, it was either not using its heaviest ordinance… or it planned to do direct fire support. It was far, far behind the team firing upon the scattering Sect team, ripping off massive chunks of trees with their heavy duty spike rounds as they fired at will at any Sect member in sight, but it was starting to hover closer and closer. Multiple panels across its body could be seen swivelling and spinning, gas coughing up as it released excess heat and began to unravel a smaller array of medium to heavy calibre weapons. It had annihilated the craft – now it was going to help finish off the rest of the team once it got close enough.

Another series of strange shapes would begin to appear between the infantry team and their hefty cragged companion. Their bodies had been roughly camo painted to match the environment but they could not be more mismatched visually. One had a semi-flattened body like that of a crab hosting a variety of complex sensory equipment, propped up on a series of tubes connected to a pair of powerful synthetic biomatter legs. Emerging from behind its body were a pair of mag-guns with multiple magazines loaded into them.

Accompanying it was a far stranger, misshapen bioconstruct. It was like half the skeletal body of some great extinct dinosaur, layered in a plaster-like cartilaginous looking armour. All of this resulted in but a waist, a pair of long digitigrade legs, and almost limb-flaps emerging from the sides of its hips. Yet on top of this bizarre oddity sat a far larger magnetic accelerator gun – a machine gun compared to the twin rifles of its companion. Two long stocks with orange tips, like the eyes of some large snail, emerged from its waist-body, scanning for its plentiful targets.

Hostile Bioautomata

The waist-machine switched towards the enormous vrexul warrior, firing a deadly spray of smoke-trailing accelerated rounds, ripping through multiple trees and smoking up the ground before it with woodchipped dust as it intended to rip the bioweapon apart. Meanwhile, its relatively less malformed compatriot swerved outwards on a parallel travel path to Corsica and Linus, firing disciplined bursts of hyper-accelerated rounds in front of them with one rifle, aiming to get them to stumble and pause. Its other arm would then let loose with a longer spray, attempting to slice them in half with its armour piercing fury.

Beyond the crash site however, the forest was a busy place. Above in the skies, the drone construct Jerry had been able to not only visually make out the rest of the sect team but mark them down on Silver’s HUD. The drone’s scans also marked out the locations of the rest of the hostile intercepting force but that wasn’t all. There were more hostiles: motion sensors would detect aggressive movement behind the partially crumbled walls of Kerovnia but nothing was breaking from cover yet. There were already other squadrons moving about – one of which seemed to be on the same travel path as Corsica and Linus as if their current troubles were not enough. Another was moving towards the wreck-site from the east at a slower pace and energy readings seemed to suggest it was carrying heavier ordnance.

Yet there seemed to be a particular slice of the woods just north of Corsica and Linus’ current travel path that would lead into a nearby, partially ruined park that itself lead into a residential area, that didn’t seem particularly occupied. The problem was getting there. There was a very sharp numbers advantage for their yet unidentified assailants and their approaching reinforcements. It was possible that the destroyed craft might be interfering with their communications as well – hence why another wave hadn’t emerged from the crushed city walls.

Their coms were buzzing wildly again – the voice that had yelled at them earlier was trying to re-establish communications. Yet now their voice was further mangled.

“-IN THE TRANSPORT WRECKAGE, IS HE-…- AT THE PARK-…-HAVE VISUAL CONTACT WITH THE RECLAI-…-MULTIPLE HOSTILES-…-REGROUP AT-…-JAMMER DEVICE PREP-…-“

Whatever he was trying to say, it was clear that a hammer had been brought forth to crush the scalpel that was the Sect team.

Into Perdition's Jaws: Lore

Corporations of the UCL

Content by Auz

Business throughout the largest alliance in the galaxy is nothing if not cut throat. Broken down into two distinct areas, there’s the major industry titans of the Core Worlds and the wild west, fast and loose style of the Frontier systems.

When war broke out throughout the galaxy it was a godsend for the Mega Corporations of the Core Worlds. A blank check handed down by the government drove each major industrial giant into overdrive. Boardrooms came to resemble military headquarters as CEOs met with their directors to discuss how to obtain their own golden ticket by any means necessary.

Of course it was still the Core Worlds, the centre of the greatest Empire in the galaxy and so there had to be decorum, a sense of style and grace to how they conducted their underhanded tactics. Assassins, saboteurs, hackers and rampant online viruses were all deployed to ensure their backroom shady practice found success. Everything from ensuring hostile takeovers of smaller companies went smoothly, to stealing blueprints of emergency technologies before they could be patented to making sure any competition that couldn’t be bought was crushed through intimidation or by sheer weight of bureaucracy. Blood was spilled in but in a cold, calculating and precise manner.

For the Frontier, any bountiful solar system was divvied up regardless of who or what lived there by the Core Worlds Mega-Corps. Planets were signed and sold in the blink of an eye with large swaths of populations becoming either instantly moved into poverty or wiped out entirely, while a rich minority profited. These systems were the lucky ones as others with less resources were simply cast aside and forgotten about. Forced to survive on their own, millions perished as entire economies were forced to restructure from the ground up to be able to solely provide for themselves.

However, there were a few on the Frontier that thought outside the box. Some governments on sponsored their own business elite to act as independent bodies, carefully traversing the no man's land of galactic nation borders picking up whatever contracts could be found. They were fed scraps and looked down upon by each of the larger nations Core Worlds but managed to scrape out a living.

Things continued on like this for a time until the massive gears of war began to grind to a halt as the four major factions fought to a bitter stalemate. The blank checks handed out by the UCL began to dry up, just as once bountiful systems were squeezed for their last bit of juice. The growth of the Core World Mega-Corporations slowed as profit margins decreased. Their acts of aggression and hostilities grew few in number but the businesses themselves were still too big to fail and remained powerful giants.

As for the Frontier, through the blood soaked gold rush emerged three Mega-Corporations with each being forged in a fire of their own, leaving them strong enough to stand up to the might of the Core Worlds. Their business was open and dirty, there was no tactic beneath them and they were willing to wage open war in the street to maintain grips on their power. So a stalemate of its own came about within the business world of the UCL.

Nowadays things in the Core Worlds are back to how it was before the war, shifting their focus to their immediate systems and facing off against the other industry majors. Their memories, short, forgetting the destruction they had wrought along the Frontier.

Happy enough with this small victory, those who lived in the all but forgotten regions of the galaxy look to their own, new, Mega Corporations to begin to build a new future. But their victory may be short lived as the wild west attitude of said companies has formed an almost powder keg situation. Corner cutting, desperate business decisions and open malpractice of the new three major players has left a fragile path forward at best. Dicey, is the future for the people of the Frontier.

Major Sectors and Corporations of the Core Worlds:

Tech:

NG Ltd:
Owned by the eccentric and famous trillionaire Nolan Grimes, this corporation focuses on the manufacture of physical products and hardware. While it does have it’s own software section, it’s not as strong or dominant as it’s competitor. It’s top earning portfolios lay within the robotics and cybernetic divisions.

Voroly:
This corporation is all about software and online dominance with their highest earning sector being consumer attention, algorithmic data gathering and advertising.

Mining:

Roniry:
This company mostly keeps to itself choosing to focus solely on the rare elements and mineral mining. The cost of extracting such materials is astronomical, leaving an unbelievably high barrier to entry, ensuring Roniry is easily able to dominate it’s chosen industry.

Tigmon Mining:
This company focuses on commonly found elements and minerals found throughout the UCL. They mine planets (both populated and unpopulated), asteroids, gas clouds, floating ice balls etc. basically if something of value can be extracted, this company will plant a flag in it.

Jexmon:
Focuses in the same areas, commonly found elements and minerals. Despite there only being two mega corporations competing for this section of industry, their bitter and long rivalry has kept things highly competitive. As a result the government has ensured neither receives an upper hand in the continual battle for dominance, it’s one less headache for the UCL.

Finance:

UCLB:
Not long after the actual formation of the UCL all major finance companies and banks joined into a single huge conglomerate after the decision to create one major currency for the entire League. The power of this bank is said to almost rival the government themselves and is, as such, kept on a very tight and heavily regulated leash. Luckily for the government and the other major industries, they are prone to heavy infighting as many different and radical ideologies try to govern each other from within. Their goal always being an attempt to dominate and create an autocracy.

Fuel and Transportation:

Energek:
A company that’s primary focus is on providing fuel and energy for planets and stationary ships. It does some minor work in relation to the Abzu but prefers renewable energy, mainly looking at fusion and harnessing the power of suns. They’re primary product are Dyson Swarms, enabling governments to power entire systems.

Heavy Freighters: Are the largest logistics company in the UCL. One arm of business focuses on the design, creation and of utility vehicles (land, sea, air, space), another runs logistics from business to business (continents, planets, systems) but their largest returns come from their military division. If you’ve ever flown in any sort of military vehicle in the UCL chances are it was made by Heavy Freighters or a subsidiary.
Radiante: A Mega-Corp focused on transportation for commercial use, offering transportation for individuals from land to water to air to space. They’re highest earning sector is luxury, best known for serving the rich, famous and powerful.

Consumer Goods:

The most peaceful industry, this section is dominated by two Mega Corporations that work in symbiosis, Syntaty builds the factories and creates the products, ProdExpress handles the marketing and the back and forth between smaller businesses and consumers.

Mega Corporations of the Frontier Worlds

Athlean Mining Corp:
A mining giant that uses citizenry as miners, rather than it’s robotic counterparts in the Core. Excessive poverty along the frontier left no shortage of manpower for the company to capitalise on. Though due to technological inferiority and cost cutting, the job itself is not only extraordinarily dangerous but hell on the psyche. As a result heavy drug abuse is common as well as organ swapping (and organ harvesting). This has created hardcore smuggling rings and even given way to a very lucrative black market.

Deadcrush Shipping:
Officially this company is nothing but a simple logistics operator which started by ferrying goods from one border to another and back to Frontier worlds who could not afford to do so on their own. Unofficially? They’re the smugglers that capitalise on the black market and turn a further profit from piracy.

One of their favourite money making schemes was to cross the border of an opposing faction and find a planet with a surplus of trade. They then buy the goods at a cheap price point and turn a profit by selling those goods to local pirate colonies. From there the pirates would grow strong and harass the planet resulting in the government placing a bounty on them. Deadcrush would then swoop in, pick up the bounty contract, return back to the pirates under the guise of another trade detail and instead take them by surprise and wipe them out. Making profit on top of profit for themselves. This, however, works well in wartime with everyone distracted but during peacetime these short sighted dealings and malpractice have begun to catch up to them.

The Ebenkanesor Foundation:
The third and final Frontier Mega-Corp began as a cheap (and illegal) arms operation. Unable to afford the high tech weaponry of the Core but still having the need to defend themselves, they crafted rudimentarily designed weapons from ancient times. Guns that used hammer and trigger mechanisms along with gunpowder to fire bits of lead, similar to the weaponry of the 21st century of Earth. Crude but effective, they saw some success but it wasn’t until after a large trade deal that they made the move into banking. Strange but effective the company took off, still dealing in weapons but seeing massive improvement in arms quality, range of weapon products and all things finance.

It wasn’t long before rumours began to circulate that they acquired and are using highly illegal A.I. technology to run their operations. This, if true and exposed to the public, would see a UCL level intervention brought down upon them. It’s just as likely that they are now slaves to the A.I. which would be in the position to hold them to ransom. But they’re just rumours, right?

Into Perdition's Jaws

Overture BGM: Deathrow - Events in Concealment

The Sprawls - rainforest region on the outskirts of city of Kerovnia, Caracosa.

In the flash of a pulse-blast, the extraction mission had gone south. To the nine agent crew of the stealth transport vessel, specifically modified to evade the targeting and tracking systems of any known hegemon, that shouldn't have been possible. The Gnosis Eater Sect had a reputation for dropping into the most dangerous of warzones. Ether-scanning, electro-interference vision, biosignature reading - their dropships had a reputation for being as ghostly as their fighters.

None of that mattered as cockpit was blown open and with it, the pilot's entire upper torso. All they had for warning was a few seconds of turbulence, a targeting bleep, and just as the cockpit door opened, they saw an angry conical flash headed their way. There was no time for the pilot to scream before the energy-ablative glass shattered, sending a storm of slicing fragments into the troop carrier bay and reducing the human pilot to half a stomach and a pair of legs attached to a charred stump.

You didn't just "nab" a Sect stealth transport like that. Not on an op like this. Not unless you had help.

The rest of the cockpit hadn't fared any better. Where once stood a cutting edge series of semi-biological and ether-receptive mechanisms capable of synchronizing with nearly any species now sparked and sputtered from the overload of deadly currents the energy blast had sent. A ghostly fog-like light hovered over the various switches, screens, and panels but it did not obscure one particular feature. A holograph emitted by the still intact projector display hovered just in front of the pilot's remains, a red floating rectangular outline encasing in plain english:

VEHICULAR CONTROLS UNRESPONSIVE. BRACE FOR IMPACT.

Air rushed into the rattling vessel, descending faster and faster far past its initial landing spot in one of Kerovnia's parking lots and into the depths of the woods. The first few trees crashed and snapped their tops against the hull but the powerful wooden forms soon grew thicker and more resistant, ripping through wings and vital components as sparks and flames began to erupt through the descending wreck.

And wreck it did, crashing through the layered foliage, streaming black smoke as it slammed into dirt and bumped over stones, rocking the entirety of the reinforced hull, slamming down with a grating groan of tortured metal before a final agonized end to its perilous, dead-end journey. It had been hard to tell what else had happened during the harrowing descent but over half of its mass had been torn off as it fell, leaving a withered husk partially crushed between a series of now heavily dented rocks and toppled trees.

A dull silence befell the woods, punctuated by a few instances of sparking electronics and weakened metal cracking off like melting icicles. Another sound soon fellowed.

A sharp crack off in the distance and the sound of wildlife scattering to the air and through the undergrowth. Another, a third, fourth, fifth, a whole volley, pinging off of burning metal and tearing into stone, adding gravelly dust to the fuming smoke emerging from the wreckage. Distant calls and cries could be heard now growing in volume as black outlines could be seen distantly through the woods, closing in on the wreckage. Too far to get a clear view through the ether-electrical interference emerging from the crashed vessel but the long shapes within their arms left few questions.

Off in the distance, a few clicks over to the southwest, Kerovnia could be seen with its paritally decapitated tower-structures and the the roofs of its larger buildings visible over the thick foliage. That was where they were initially headed. That was also where the largest concentrations of the hostiles seemed to be heading from. Around them, the thick foliage was far from friendly to invader or defender; it was perfect for getting lost in. The same however, applied to the enemy.

Electrical interference was playing with the coms, practically silencing the team, but a distant signal was pinging on their coms. A voice was trying to break through the heavy static and interference emitted from the smoking wreckage.

"GET THE HELL OUT OF THERE!" It called out, the particulars of its voice reduced to a grating buzz as their unknown contact blared over the sound of distant potshots and blizzard background ambience. "THEY KNEW YOU WERE GOING TO LAND HERE, THERE IS NO TIME TO EXPLAIN. WE NEED TO LINK UP SOMEWHERE SECURE, CANNOT SEND LOCATION DATA DUE TO INTERF-"

Before it could continue, a series of loud whistles could be heard through the air but they did not radiate from around them but above.

Mortar fire; energy-based given how it was further blurring the coms. Based on the volume, likely landing near and soon.

Into Perdition's Jaws

The RP is going to start tomorrow. If anyone else wants to join in, now is a really good time as there is only a single character slot left as previously stated (after one of our own had to leave due to other obligations).

Into Perdition's Jaws

There is a single open character slot left for anyone who wants to join.

Into Perdition's Jaws

I would be keen to play if this is still open

@Jumbus

Sadly we're full at 10 players now. However if there are openings I will try to let you know.