Avatar of Terminal

Status

User has no status, yet

Bio

I have been writing as a hobby for longer than you have been alive. I have been a regular member and roleplayer of no less than fourteen different online forums during that time (including the old RPG), five six eight of which no longer exist.

I was previously a regular on the Homestuck forums, but I became so sick of thread turnover there that I asked around and eventually found the Guild. Since joining, I have exclusively only participated in Advanced RPs. Before Mahz gave NRPs their own subforum, I used to be an NRP regular in the Advanced Subforum. I am a Guildfall survivor, and know/regularly write with a few others.

If you ask anybody who has written with me in previous RPs, they should tell you that I have a generally open schedule, I post regularly and in a timely fashion, and I never drop an RP once I join unless the thread dies. Some of them may tell you that I have extensive expertise within the realms of Biology, Psychology, and Physics, which I will make no effort to validate since there is no way I can provide hard proof of aforementioned alleged expertise to anybody over the internet (though I am happy to try and answer any questions you send my way).

My favorite fandom is the Myst franchise, which seemingly nobody other than me has ever heard of.

I was a Contest Moderator for the Writing Contests Subforum for just a little bit over two years. I wrote the Moderation Policy for that subforum and I ran a contest called the Twelve Labours; you can still go there and see all of them and the entries people wrote for them in the Contests Section and the Victory Archives.

I have been quadruple secret banned from the guild discord. That is not a joke.

Most Recent Posts

@gorgenmast, here is an application for you. A little on the unusual side, I am entirely open to editing and reconstruction if necessary. Let me know what you think.

Interested.
Lost Haven
The Chinatown Bridge


As alien dropships, strike-craft, and bombers streaked through the atmosphere, the city of Lost Haven began to empty like a swarm abandoning an ant-hill. Untold millions of souls packing whatever belongings they deemed essential into bagages, cases, trunks, cars, and trunks and pouring outwards in droves. All of them sought to escape to the relatively safer obscurity of the surburban sprawls in the mainland, utterly convinced that the world - or at least the part of it in Lost Haven - was about to end.

It was afternoon, and the five bridges leading out of the city were all jammed packed, not only with uneven lines of countless multicolored vehicles, but also with the turbulent, clamoring streams of panicked civilians who had abandoned their vehicles in the middle of traffic in order to continue fleeing across the bridge on foot. Others, more concerned with momentary opportunity rather than the prospect of survival, had begun turning to looting whatever was left behind in the abandoned conveyances - shattered glass and even several car fires served as milestones for the path across the river.

With the evacuation proceeding so haphazardly, emergency services and the national guard had moved in to try to organize the flow of traffic and bring a semblence of order to the churning masses. Though they had been largely ineffective in that task thus far they had at least been able to protect the vulnerable, thronging masses from several alien ground assaults - though they in turn had little with which to defy the airborne attack craft periodically screaming across the sky.

Down in the waters below, a throng of ships skittered across the water, trade halted to try and get away from the city to protect the cargo and people on board. For some of the vessels, the selfless captains deemed it necessary to start ferrying the scared people off of the island Lost Haven was founded on to get them to safety. Yet despite all of the selfless people, there were a few who would be in the waters protecting the interests of others.

Several small boats moved through the waters, their origins being a few key warehouses that were located waterside. While a few of the men were busy steering the small boats to their intended locations, others were checking their assortment of assault rifles, pistols and a few of the mounted mobile turrets that they deemed to be needed at a time like this. Wearing black tactical armour, their objectives were unknown but their intent was well defined underneath concealed goggles.

"I want these waters secured!" barked Anhur, his hand clenching a walkie talkie that was on the dashboard of his boat. "The last thing we need is some assholes trying to take ground we gained from the Hounds of Humanity! And I want those bridges secured! Our interests are too important and I'll put any asshole who failed to secure those bridges in front of Dullahan himself for his foothold in the city being damaged!"

The skull-faced man rehooked the device back onto the console as he looked over the waters around the city. For him, there was only one place his boat was going. Over the past couple of weeks, the failings of not being able to locate one Kayla Mason was putting him in a bad light in Dullahan's books. While the meeting with Richard Midas came with some positive results, it wasn't enough to offset the deficit. Not while his boss's plans were still in motion. So, the next best thing was to secure the best logistical route between the docks of the city to one of the hubs of their North American operations in Crown Ridge, which was the westernmost bridge in the city.

He turns to Dirk, his second-in-command of his Lost Haven operations and leader of the Penose, "I want all of our men to secure the bridge at all cost. No asshole is to get through you or anyone here. Otherwise, I'll see to it that I beat the living shit out of you before you face the leader." While the words were harsh, the Penose leader understood the pressure Anhur was facing over the past number of weeks. He turned and began relaying the orders to his men.

Before he had finished his first sentence, he heard the tell-tale, otherworldly whine of one a nearby alien craft - looking up, he saw what appeared to be an insect-like alien gunship settle into a drift, with a large, evident weapon protruded from a hardpoint on its hull and began to blaze with incandescent light, aimed at an emergency search and rescue helicopter that had been buzzing about near the top of one of the bridge's arched support struts.

But before Anhur could even order the boat's turret gunners to take the gunship down, the tables unexpectedly flipped entirely on their own. The search and rescue helicopter swerved to angle its side towards the alien craft, and its left door retracted to reveal a tripound-mounted, heavy anti-materiel machine gun with three men crewing it. Less than a second later, the blazing alien weapon mounted beneath the gunship was showered in a deluge of exploding rounds, and the foreign craft jerked back erratically in the air as the wave machine-gun fire crashed over its hull. The craft was simply too big and too well armored for the helicopter to actually take out, but it had evidently received a nasty sting and was already pulling back up and swerving, as if to disengage even as the light surrounding its weapon fluttered and abated, shortly before going up in flames.

The skull-faced man, seemingly unfazed by the appearance of the alien craft, looked on. Dirk already began to order his men to fire at the lone ship. As the men fired, the rounds from the rifles seemed to only put dents into the hull of the craft. It was when the turret began to whir to life and fire that the rounds punched through whatever metal the ship was made of, thanks to the weaponry used to damage any bullet-resistant meta that came to the warehouses The Eye owned. The short burst of fire from the turret was enough to cause smoke, though the initial burst from the helicopter had probably weakened the armor enough for the rounds to penetrate.

While the men of the Penose concentrated on the alien craft that was at hand, Anhur's gaze remained trained on the helicopter that was in the area. While seeing emergency helicopters wasn't a new sight for him, especially in this city, one search and rescue with some heavy firepower was new. With his time in the underworld being extensive enough, he knew something was up. He reached for one of the spare rifles on the boat, but remained unresponsive as he waited to see what was to happen next.

Watching carefully, he noted as the helicopter completely ignored the alien craft as it started to careen towards the water-line - another irregularity given standard airspace regulations and practices - and instead pulled in close to the top of the bridge's suspension arch. Men from within the helicopter jumped out - bearing small, bundled packages of some kind, their exact details hard to make out until Anhur brought up the rifle to get a better look at them through its scope.

He realized what the packages were at the same exact moment the radio cracked to life and a nearly panicked report from one of the other boats came through.

"Boss! We found something really bad at the base of one of the support columns for the bridge! Bundle of plastic explosives, has a fail-deadly detonation mechanism-"

Through the scope, Anhur could clearly see the tell-tale coloration and irregular moulding of packed plastic explosives - and that some of the men were also carrying and preparing modern arming pins. From street-level, their activity probably looked completely innocuous - not even the national guard had probably realized anything was amiss yet. But he did.

"Target the helicopter!" he roared, pulling the trigger to let off a burst of  bullets towards the men at the base of the columns. "Don't let them get away!"

On the sound of the orders, just as one of the men on the bridge fell to the ground dead and another clutching his leg, the men on the boat began to fire at the remaining men on the top of the arch. The turret moved its machine gun towards the helicopter and began to rain bullets at it with deadly precision. Any men that managed to escape the helicopter before it went down, he was certain to get answers from them. Not on his watch that they were going to pull this shit on him and get away with it.

"-looks like some kind of secure receiver. Hardware isn't signal compatible. There's gonna be somebody nearby with a detonator for this boss - and maybe other explosives if they want to bring the whole bridge down." The voice over the radio finished. Through the scope of his rifle, Anhur watched as four survivors from the helicopter on top of the arch pulled out of view from sea level and retreated towards the median of the structure. The wreckage of the helicopter - riddled with massive, jagged holes, engulfed in flames and disintegrating into pieces - fell towards the water below.

As soon as the boat reached the base of the column, Anhur stormed over to where the bomb was placed. Looking at where the helicopter was with a few of the remaining survivors jumped out of, he turned to the explosives. The plastic that lined the explosives did, indeed, have a mechanism that could set them off. Over the sound of the screams, alien craft and nearby shots, the bomb would probably be difficult to deactivate without any time.

"We're gonna need to call in pros to dismantle these things boss. Think we either need to get our hands on the detonator or start pulling everything we've got away from the bridge. No telling how many more of these things are lying around." The radio-caller growled with resentment, hands clenched into tightly bound fists from pent up, impotent rage.

Anhur wasted no time in beginning to scale the bridge to where the survivors were. He was already at the top by the time a few of the Penose realized he was not with them and began to follow. Once on the walkway of the bridge, his eyes scanned for any unusual activity, ready to take pursuit of the men who left the helicopter.

He was not left waiting long. The top of the bridge was a traditional box-capped arch, with a roofed maintenance hall in the middle and several meter-boxes for emergency and night lights interpersing the surface - abundant cover. Not even a few moments after he pulled himself up onto the top, two of the survivors from the helicopter rose from behind two power junction boxes, armed with SMGs, and started to throw a hailstorm of bullets in his direction.

On first sight of them, Anhur began towards them, only taking cover once the bullets started to fly towards him. Using the rifle he brought with him, he began to fire back between the break of the bullets. While the weapon was good enough to scare most people, he knew he was more effective if he was up close and personal. Using the rifle in short bursts, he started to move closer towards his targets.

Hearing one of the gunmen swear at his steady and efficient advancements, he saw the two unfortunately wise up and start exchanging rudimentary hand signals - they went from firing at him in tandem and began to alternate bursts. That was not optimal - but they were falling for a predictable blunder. Having already vented at him the moment he had appeared, they had forgotten to conserve their ammunition. At least one of them would be running out of ammo, right about...

He heard one of them audibly swear again in tandem with the sound of an empty magazine clattering to the roof of the bridge.

Smiling at their unfortunate precidament, it was at this moment that he struck. Leaping out of cover, it didn't take long for him to close the gap to the men. He slid low towards the nearest man. Using the heel of his hand, he drove it straight into his stomach. Using the momentum of his burst of speed, he launched himself towards the other. His other hand curled into a fist and rammed towards the other's neck.

His knuckles glanced off the raised edge of the gunman's weapon as they sprung backwards on the spot - though thankfully, their weapon's magazine was empty too. Even as his accomplice collapsed into a writhing ball of terrified anguish and left gasping for breath on the roof of the bridge, the second thug dropped their emptied weapon onto the ground and pull what looked to be a surplus army knife from a holster at his belt. Getting his first good look at both of the men, Anhur could immediately tell they were both amateurs - the one presently pulling a knife on him even looked a little familiar. Both of them were local muscle or mercenaries of some kind, and while some of their gear was evidently on loan - like the machine gun from the helicopter and the SMGs they had been using - everything else about them was shoddy and simply boring.

Anhur let out a sigh of disappointment. "And I thought you guys were going to be a serious threat to my men down below." Shaking his head, he raised the rifle in his possession and shot the knife-wielding mercenary. With the other one incapacitated, he turned to look for the other two men as the Penose started to reach the area.

"Secure him. I want to interrogate him later." As the men followed his orders, he began walking in the direction that he thought the other two were heading. S s

He ducked briefly into the roofed corridor - no sign of them, but - there. At the other end there was a rapelling line tied to the end of a catwalk. Looking down, he could barely see the form of somebody making their descent on it through the obstruction of the catwalk and various criss-crossing girders. To get a decent shot he would have to stand right where the line was tied-

A glint in the dark was his only warning, but just enough of one, as the sniper's bullet whizzed past his head and buried itself in the corridor wall. Hunched in the dark at the opposite end of the corridor was the third survivor, armed with a high-powered rifle and crouching behind an overturned steel locker.

As soon as the shot echoed in the corridor, Anhur ducked behind one of the upright girders. He growled at the predicament, but the person who was on the rapel line was his main target. No doubt the men before and the sniper were there to slow them down so the figure could escape far enough to detonate the explosives.

After a moment passed, the skull-faced man turned the corner, rifle raised. Firing a couple of shots at the steel locker, he began to advance. If the other men were anything to go by, the sniper should also be an amateur mercenary. As he closed the gap to where he got a glimpse of the line, the rifle clicked once to indicate the empty clip. While still out of range for him to hit him with his fists, he was close enough for one thing. Unclipping the rifle, he threw the weapon at the sniper like a hatchet - the mercenary was too distant to really be able to hurt them with it, but Anhur had closed the distance enough that his opponent was forced to raise his rifle to deflect the thrown weapon, momentarily distracting them and putting them off balance - leaving them exposed.

Another opportunity came as Anhur had planned. Grabbing a knife from his belt, he flipped it and threw it towards the sniper as they were exposed. he instantly ran and vaulted over the railing, grabbing the rope as he quickly descended down the rope to catch with the runaway. Said party was close to the ground, but evidently judged that falling would be too debilitating to let them fight back if Anhur followed suit - the mercenary below unsheathed a combat knife from a belt-holster, clamped it between their teeth, and started climbing back up towards Anhur. The skull-faced man saw this and carried on sliding down, feet falling first to hit the mercenary when the gap closed. His target shifted precariously on the line, taking the blow to the chest rather than their head - and immediately let go with one hand to snatch at the knife again and slash at Anhur's leg. He gritted his teeth as the knife bit into his leg, but he closed the distance to get into contact as his free hand palmed the mercenary's head. The mercenary reflexively lashed out to stab directly at Anhur's arm as he did so, but was too late to actually impede contact. Seizing the opportunity of being in close contact, Anhur looked down to see the detonator. With a devilish look in his eyes, he moved his arm out of the way of the incoming knife and ripped the detonator off of the mercenary's belt. With the threat now secured, he looked at the scared mercenary.

"Looks like it's a one way stop for you. But don't worry, we'll make sure that we'll find whoever hired you and -"

The mercenary, evidently uninterested in entertaining a lengthy monologue despite being evidently terrified, proceeded to throw a left hook with his free hand at Anhur's head. Recoiling at the hook, Anhur swung back and kicked out at the mercenary with both feet at their torso. This drove the air straight from the mercenary's gut, causing all four of their limbs to lose grip on the line - sending them plummeting towards the end of it, until the safety catch on their belt caught them, suspending them belly-up and spread-eagle, hanging ten meters off of the surface of the bridge, a teeming throng of civilians shouting in indifferent panic as they looked on. With nothing else left to do, the skull-faced man sighed as he began to quickly ascend to the catwalk.

Halfway back up the line, a sudden chiming sound came from the detonator - looking down to it, Anhur could see that the head of a stop-watch appeared to have been adhered to the side of the detonator, right below the safety cap - and from the look of its digital read, the countdown had just reached zero. Nothing appeared to have come of it though - so perhaps it had just been a margin timer, something there to instruct the holder when they should detonate the bombs -

In the distance, to the Northeast and over the river, there was a chattering sequence of explosions across the Sicily bridge - Anhur watched, suspended from the rapelling line, as the neighboring bridge's support columns, suspension cabel anchors, and central archway were engulfed in luminous bursts of light, followed by occluding hazes of smoke. Distant, keening reverberations of shearing metal filled the air as the whole superstructure slowly collapsed in on itself. The whole process of the bridge falling to pieces and into the water - with thousands of torn up and fiery pieces of debris from vehicles and electronics caught in the blasts falling from its crumbling throughfair like ash from a pyroclastic cloud - took the better part of perhaps forty-five seconds.

Watching on in horror that his assumptions about the helicopter were right but the scale of what happened, Anhur gritted his teeth in anger and began to quickly climbed to the top. Once at the top, he quickly walked over to the dead mercenary, the knife lodged in their throat, and ripped the knife out. His knife now back in hand, he turned and walked back towards the rapelling rope and looked down to see what the man on the line was doing.

Which was evidently nothing - he appeared to be unconscious, or else too exhausted to try and recover from his predicament. Although from the looks of things, some of the bystanders below were already trying to stand on top of the parked vehicles beneath him to try and reach up towards him. Even if he did not move on his own, he would not remain there for long.

Anhur looked on. On the one hand, the bridge was secured from a potential disaster and there was already a mercenary in their possession that the fate of the mercenary down below was inconsequential. On the other hand, he remembered what he saw just a moment ago with the other bridge. Dullahan would not be happy and the people responsible for this would see this as a victory. No, Anhur knew what he needed to do.

He needed to send a message to those responsible.

Turning back to the dead mercenary, his eyes spotted the sniper rifle and ran to grab it. Grabbing another bullet from the dead man's belt, he loaded the rifle and walked back to the edge. Leaning over the edge, he aimed the rifle at the mercenary's chest and fired down below. The shot tore straight through the mercenary's armor and out the other side, losing velocity and tumbling harmlessly onto the ground thereafter - followed almost immediately by a spray of viscera and dripping blood from the dead man's torn up cavity. From street level, the sight must have been terribly poignant and ominous.

Anhur caught sight of several people raising cameras and phones to snap shots of the body where it hung suspended in the air, still dribbling guts from the wound he shot in it. He had a feeling he would be seeing it from their point of view in the next publication that got around - or at least in the next airing of the local news. Satisfied that the message would be seen by those responsible, he returned back to the catwalk and began to walk back to the Penose he left behind, shouldering the sniper rifle as he grabbed his thrown one in the process.
Lost Haven
East-Side Tenament Housing


Galen swore as the entire room rumbled and dust poured down from the ceiling in thick curtains as the tell-tale sonic boom of an alien strike-craft streaking by overhead caused the entire tenament to shudder.

"Fucking aliens..." He muttered, steadying himself against the nearby wall before moving on. The housing complex he was in was somewhat run down, but not unusually so for that area of the city. What really stood out was the silence - where normally such an area would be filled with the ambient sound of children, pets, and occasional shouts or loud thuds of shifting furniture, the entire building was eerily quiet.

Although this was almost to be expected in the midst of the alien invasion with nearly everybody with two working brain cells to rub together evacuating from the city, the reign of silence in the tenament was ordinary here. If not for the cleaners who occasionally dusted and swept the hallways and the frequently changed-out lighting, the place could have been mistaken for being empty.

Galen walked down the main hallway at an unhurried pace, softly muttering to himself as he counted down the doors, approaching the one he was looking for. Reaching it, he raised his hand, hesitated for a moment, and then knocked in an unusual sequence - twice, pause, five times rapidly, pause, once, pause, and finally a solid, louder, solitary thump at the very end.

After a short pause, Galen saw the telltale hint of the peep-hole's slide being pulled back as the occupant peered out at him. A moment later, with a series of rattling chunks and clicks, they undid the door's superfluity of locks and cracked it open, leaving the door still secured with a jam and two chains.

"What's the call?" The occupant said, still standing out of view behind the door itself.

"Shipping just picked up the title to a new warehouse in the French Quarter at 5426 Moore." Galen said steadily. "We sent in two guys earlier to sweep through the place and clear out any indigents, maybe give them another place to stay if you catch my drift. Only they never came back."

"Well shit. Anybody we know?"

"Not sure, I didn't get there names, just a call. Been told to get four more guys down there to check the place out."

"The fuck for? If the last two who went there are MIA isn-"

"Boss says it's been happening all over the place. People going missing and the like, all because of the Martians and the evacuation and it keeps going on. And just in case they did get in trouble, that's why we're sending FOUR of you. So get a crew together, get some heat, and go check the place out."

"Blazing?"

"No! For all we know the other two are just laid up in a hospital or buried under rubble or something. If you find anybody bring them in. If you find the other two's corpses do whatever you like."

"Whatever. I've got a paper and pen, what's the new number today?"

"0074-192-9047."

"Alright. Me and the boys will take an early lunch and then head out. I'll set the message for around three or something."

The door shut then, and the occupant began relatching and securing all the locks as Galen mentally scratched the conversation off of his lengthy to-do list and went on his way.


888888888888



5426 Moore Blvd.
Not Too Much Later...


Before four of the men sent was what most would call a dilapidated shithole of a warehouse. It stood at four stories and what held together its filth stained windows that barely lit the interior even during the day, were long metal walls of now rusted aluminum. A shorter building with thick steel doors jutted from the huge husk that even from here it could be seen that part of the roof had collapsed inward after years of neglect. Why their boss would bother to buy such a piece of crap was beyond many of them. Having not come into contact with anything particular unusual moving towards the warehouse, they approached with the kind of caution one only gets when one is told that two of their fellow goons somehow lost contact in a spooky abandoned warehouse. That is, pistols raised and quietly.

Various points of red pin prick lights focused on these four very unfortunate men. Sending raw sensory input to Little Lo who for all intents and purpose was command, who bounced back an order to "Kill them." Due to previous orders, this would have to be done without the traditional method of latching onto a mans face and detonating so violently that only the back of the skull remained. So, they were restricted primarily to tranquilizers and sliding their metallic feet over the goons' necks until an artery was finally sliced open, or to using lethal injection of Lo's toxic sweat to cause cardiac arrest and possible brain damage. Combat data gathered from the previous encounter suggested the latter course of action.

One drone clambered down the split rusted remains of a storm drain, before suddenly loosening its grip to  lunge onto the back of one startled goons head. He felt a thin prick and the drone leaped off, scurrying into the lower half of the drain.

"The fuck was that?" he shouted.

"The fuck was what Tommy?"

"Something just latched onto my head and pricked me with somethin'!"

Another felt a prick to their ankles, and saw a small spider drone rapidly moving away. He lifted his pistol, fired, and hit it dead on target, splintering the drone to fragmented shards of sparking steel. This didn't stop the last two from getting multiple injections to the wrist, ankle, and calf. This caused them to, within a minute, scream in agony, because in cases of multiple injections, hosts to the toxin experienced painful waves of nerves firing off like christmas trees far, far earlier. They fell to the ground, slowly losing the ability to move, their twitching and spasming movements soon silenced and mouthed screams witnessed by the two soon to not be survivors.

The first who had been injected pulled a burner phone from his jacket. He unfolded it and creased inside was a slip of paper which had the Galen's number on it, which he crumpled and threw away - he had forgotten to throw it away like he should have.

Elsewhere, Galen's own burner phone rang while he was in the middle of a belated lunch inside one of the tenament apartments. Spitting out a hunk of a half-chewed roast sandwich, he dropped the rest of it on the table in front of him and snapped open the phone hurriedly. He was not supposed to receive calls on it, ever, unless it was a life or death emergency - which this presumably was, or else it was going to become one if somebody had called it for shits and giggles.

"Talk to me." He choked out, still partly clearing his mouth of morsels.

Tommy said with some effort, "There were these spider robot things, I think they injected us with some kinda poison? I don't know how long we got, but after we smashed and shot a few, they scattered off back into the warehouse."

"Shit." Galen subvocalized. "Alright, get out of there, go to the harbor clinic, we basically own the place. Break your phone now before you go, remember to get the card too."

"You sure the clinic can deal with this?" Tommy could hear his heart pounding and it felt like it would nearly go through his chest.

His only answer was the clicking sound of Galen hanging up on the other end of the line - and doubtlessly breaking his own phone immediately thereafter as well.

Tommy cursed tossing his phone to the floor and stomping on it, then kicking one of the small sphere bodies of the spiders against the rusted face of the warehouse. Ricky, having been standing by patiently and losing feeling in his left arm, let him have this one. Besides, the robotic freaks had left.

Of course they hadn't. They'd merely crawled through a skylight and clung there, some going inside to drain jars of Lo's toxic sweat and refill their stocks. They moved silently, until the moment they could pounce, focusing on any exposed artery.

Tommy remembered something. That piece of paper, he'd have to find it and rip it up before he went to that harbor clinic. He saw it, lying on worn planks six feet from where he stood. He took a step forward and was nearly brought to the floor by first the pain of infection in both of his ankles posterior tibial arteries, but also a solid impact to the back of his head. This drone rubbed two of its legs together and a arc of electricity jutted between each. It brought this down on his head, which caused his final twitching, spasming collapse, his skin slowly fading to a sickly yellow as the toxin did it's own work.


888888888888





Not Too Far Away...


Lo flipped through drone camera streams, over and over and over again, making absolutely, deadly sure, that every single thug who had tried to enter what she was quickly realizing she thought of as her territory, was absolutely, one hundred percent, dead. She didn't even feel safe enough to leave her desk.

Little Lo chimed into comms, "Ok, Lo, look, I think that was all of them. I'm guessing they sent four because if two doesn't work, you just send two times the original number. It's how it works. So they're probably going to send eight or something, or maybe get some guys to sort of scope the building. Point is, we have two options."

Lo interrupted, "Yeah, I know, we literally have the same brain. We either leave or we convince them it 100% absolutely isn't worth coming to take this place."

Little Lo added, "That they own, legally. Because they bought it."

Lo scoffed, "Yeah probably with drug and gun trafficking money. They sent armed thugs to check out a low HPI warehouse during an alien invasion. They are absolutely not clean, even if they send cleaners. Can you send more drones over for patrols? Maybe we can catch them and convince them we're something stupid like a mass ai intelligence network."

Little Lo sighed, "Yes, I think I can do that. Also, you mean skynet right?"

Lo said, "Sky what?"

Little lo added, "Wait, you haven't seen Terminator 2?"

"No, definitely not. Saw season 2 episode 13 of the Sarah Connor Chronicles, but only the part where the girl in the white dress is cutting that guys throat open and just keeps going."

"What...no. Ok find a copy, start watching it, skip to about 26:37, that's the part where Arnold Swarzeneger explains to a young John Connor that skynet or whatever took over the future and are sending robots back in time...anyway don't include the time travel part. Just do a hal 9000 impression, add some distortion in the audio, and really jack up the line level. I know you'll figure it out."

Lo, like god intended, pirated a copy of Terminator 2 and watched it with great interest. Little Lo had sent a powerpoint presentation, illustrating how, exactly, she should enjoy several major scenes in the movie. These included the famous bike chase, conveyer belt scene, and the penultimate scene where The Terminator gives a thumbs up as he dissolves in molten metal. Lo had of course barely read this, as it was fairly exhaustive and written with clinical precision. She was worried Little Lo might be diverging a bit too much.

She skipped to the scene at 26:37. Sarah Connor and what she presumes is called The Terminator are mid conversation.

"Skynet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self aware at 2:14 am eastern time august 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug."

"Skynet fights back."

"Yes. It launches its missiles against the targets in russia."

She rewinds back to scenes where The Terminator is fighting some other Terminator, and thinks that, she's probably got the gist of it. She wanted to watch the rest of the movie later, there was just something about stupid american action movies that she couldn't resist. But, now was not the time. Now all there was to do, was wait.
People of Interest




Groups of Interest





Do you know how to post pictures on RPG boards?:


People of Interest




Groups of Interest





Do you know how to post pictures on RPG boards?:


Murex

The Heart of Stone




What Comes of Dreaming.

888888888888

The Lands of Aurochylys
In the Southwestern Heel of the Western Realm

888888888888



The lands of Aurochylys, before, had been barren and desolate. No life could flourish in the place, for it was a great bowl of ashes and dust, arid and without refuge nor break in the Earth.

But now in the center of those flats, where before they had been nothing save the scant, crumbling ruins of a remnant civilization long since past, there now arose a renascent city. The structures were all of recent make, simple in construction and being shaped from bricks of dried and fired clay excavated from the surrounding waste. Scaffolds of wooden planks and canvas rose and surrounded each dwelling, evidence of ongoing craftswork and labor, with the innermost structures rising to three heights and the outermost clearly intended to follow.

Though the city was filled with stockpiles and workyards, all orderly and tidied and brimming with tools and materials of trade, the city evidenced no granaries, nor wells, nor fields of crop, nor bakeries or butchers or even distillers. The city was one of and for the dead - nobody could have dwelt there for long without sustenance, of which there was clearly and evidently none. Yet somehow, the city still found itself populated with many peoples who did toil in the harsh light of the day, building ever on, heightening and lengthening the bounds of the growing settlement, seeming tireless in their efforts.

Come Nightfall, the many people would retreat to whatever dens and dwellings they had made of themselves, and the horror would begin. For as those who had labored during the day, those who had rested and made leisure would extend their arms and with the bite of a dagger, bleed themselves, pouring out their lifeblood as wine from a skein. Measures of flesh would but cut and flayed from the body - the both body and blood would be consumed by those who had toiled. In the next days, the cycle would repeat - on, and on, seemingly without end or beginning, for those who gave of their flesh partook of no sustenance and imbibed no mixtures, yet every night without fail they would surrender flesh and blood as though they had never done so before. Wives and husbands, daughters and sons, all surrendering, laboring, and partaking in turn in a ghastly and unnatural ritual of unending toil and bloodshed.

The city was a quiet one, even at the height of the day as most labored and worked, with quartermasters and headmen bellowing orders and instructions while heavy materials were shifted, lifted, and installed. The cause was evident, for though the city was alive with work, there was no commerce, no the bustle of trade and the many sounds of social gathering and exchange. All the materials in the settlement came from without, with teams and caravans arriving and departing daily from distant lands, carrying goods, which were distributed amongst groups, almost as handouts, rather than bartered and traded for. From there out, beyond the occasional groups of artisans who would gather to ply their custom with whatever was available - weavers and tailors to make clothes anew, or carpenters and smiths to fabricate new tools - there was little exchange between the peoples of that place. Humorless and devoid of mirth and talk, of wine and laughter, of hearth and hospitality were the dens that rose from the Earth in the barren lands.

Spread throughout the growing settlement city at regular intervals were tall pillars - topped with clay statues of a serene stylite, gazing onwards with a single raised hand, holding up an admonishing finger. Surrounding each pillar at their bases, without fail, would be a ring of desiccated corpses. Chained to its foundation and left there in the harsh and arid climate, those who had been left there were attended by small children, who would carry with them baskets of salt, and anoint the corpses as necessary every day. Though their skins were cracked and leathery beyond measure, the bodies there remained, eerily preserved, some still seeming as though they might be revived if attended to immediately.

Occasionally, during the day, a laborer would throw down their tools or drop their burden - and refuse to resume. To beg for respite, or to throw curses at all around them. Some of these, when consoled, would return to their homes to resume work the following 'morn.

Those who did not - those who refused to continue such joyless and hollow labor - were dragged, screaming, to be chained to one of the pillars, where they would struggle and shout in futility, where they would strain against their metal shackles for days on end, snarling and spitting at the children as they came every day and threw handfuls of salt at those who were bound - and then with time, as the sun rose and set again and again, their struggles would slow and cease, and soon after they would be but another desiccated and preserved corpse chained at the base of a stylite's pillar.

In the shadow of Evil did the city grow, mirthlessly and without cheer, all within and all who arrived at the place toiling thanklessly and with only the barest and most inhumane of sustenance to preserve them, and with little comfort save the embrace of their loved ones and family come the eve.

And yet, like a seething tumor, the city did grow, and grow. Soon, it would begin to approximate an actual civilized place, and as the weeks passed, facsimiles of more ordinary structures did begin to appear. Granaries holding naught but dust, fields that were left fallow, vintners that fermented only blood, butchers who dealt only with rancid flesh. Market squares were planned, arranged, and slowly erected - though for the moment, they remained empty. Though what dread and hollow services and exchanges would be established therein, soon, would offend the sensibilities of all civilized people.

And every day, as the City in the Shadow of Evil did grow, more and more people did arrive there, having trekked there across the thankless and dusty barrens - and those who arrived, rarely did they leave again.

There was another striking, eerie quality of the place as well, which although readily overlooked at first would have struck most people after several weeks. There were no cemeteries nor places of burial in all the settlement. No asheries nor crematoriums, nor medicae or herbalists nor healers. None of the people grew ill. None of the people fell and failed to rise again, save those who broke covenant with the master of that place and were condemned to become pillarbound.

The City of Aurochylys was a City of the Damned, populated only by the living dead, and governed through fear of stillness. A pall of menace hung over the whole of the place and all of its people, along with the single stark and certain promise: The city would grow, for the glory of Aurochylys, as certain as the day did dawn, and soon, all of the world would likewise be blessed with his boon, and work his sacred labors for all time - and the Nightmare would Never End.

But far afield, without the dustbowl the city sat in, in greener pastures and more joyful locales, there was nobody who knew of that dread and darkened city. None heard of the terrible fate which the Master of that place intended to inflict upon them. They only heard and saw what his many agents and servants said and did, and wherever they went, they cured injury and malady, bestowed life everlasting, and spoke of a distant paradise where their venerable Master, Aurochylys, did gather the worth to work in glory and raise the wonders the likes of which had never been seen before.

And so the cycle began to turn - as soon, it would turn without end.

The Ordo Astranoma
12th Macroclade Fleet
Praetor Alpha Primus Andron Axaltus



The First Universal Law


Life is Directed Motion.

The sheer volume of Human conceit that can be crammed into such a succinct phrase is so staggering that the no less than six thousand members of the Holy Synod of Mars have dedicated their entire careers to doing nothing other than writing treatises upon that single phrase. I have to permit that it is rather practically applied in a likely infinite number of allegories and parables. Such as this one:

In space, your motion is undirected and you are dead. On the ground, your motion is (usually) directed and you are alive. Inside a voidship in space, which has directed motion even though you do not, you exist in a paradoxical state of being both dead and alive at the same time, which is also true of the state of morale for most soldiers aboard voidships.

Voidship combat in particular has a way of canalizing the exact orientation of crew morale (dead versus alive) which explains how even entirely neurosynched crews can fall prey to schism and mutiny. Mutiny is, in fact, far more common amongst Mechanicum vessels than it is upon those of the Imperial Navy. Even Skitarii - as we are all adamantly loyal to our Tech Priest masters, as any of us will tell you - can fall prey to treason this way if we can but be persuaded by that single minder. So it falls to conductors of directed motion such as myself to motivate the sentiments of the Skitarii Legions and the Tachmata against such eventualities. Ironically, one of the best ways of promoting shipboard morale is via pitched shipboard combat. It tends to distract away from the larger crisis of flying through space in a giant glorified coffin which may or may not be in the process of exploding violently.

With Orks, this prospect is pleasingly simple, as their so-called 'tellyporta' have more than three times the range of even the finest Mechanicum Teleportarium. Similarly, their long-range void-weapon of choice, the voltaic 'Zapp Kannon,' has only a faintly shorter range than the Macroclade Fleet's own Nova Cannons and nearly perfect accuracy - while being, thankfully, drastically less potent. Predictably, Archmagos Explorator Mephitor has arranged for a wall of vanguard ships hosting the finest war cohort of the fleet proximal to the approaching horde of Ork voidships. When the Orks unleash their first salvo against the those vessels , and when those vessels' void shields drop and the first Ork boarding parties begin to teleport over - the entire fleet's morale will supposedly benefit from the thorough thrashing the Orks will be delivered.

The first step to securing such a victory for that cohort is to direct their enthusiasm towards the advantages of fighting the Orks in our own halls without reminding them of the nature of the flying coffins they will be fighting in and their predilection to violently explode when fought in.

"...Those ships are all filled with Castallen Maniples, so we will be getting the sloppy seconds once the Orks are done with them. We are not going in to fight them, we are going in to purge them. A reminder that Orks are resilient, their heads can be reattached just like ours, only entirely unlike us the reason they can do it is because they're too frakking dumb to realize they should be dead. Destroy theirs, and if you feel the insatiable need to embarrass your flesh, make sure to bend over and shove your own head up your ass so they can't hit it." Praetor Alpha Primus Andron Axaltus relayed the address over voxcast to the entirety of the Skitarii War Cohort at his command and the handful of Tech Priests who would serve as their neurosync minders.




The first wave of Ork boarding parties was completely overwhelming in number to the point that they started getting in their own way - they crammed the Cruisers they had targetted with so many Nobz and Gretchin they could scarcely move without picking fights with each other. A problem the utterly merciless and precise Castellen robots guarding the ships did not have. Armed with Flamers and Melta weapons, the robotic Maniples were perfectly equipped to deal with the thronging Ork hordes in close quarters - but even the mighty machines had their limits, and the Orks continually received reinforcements via tellyporta strikes while the few Gretchin who managed to evade the searing promethium volleys managed to work and work their way into every nook and cranny of the unfortunate vessels - including the voxhub. The War Cohort waited until the Ork Mekboys managed to plug into the systems to vox back to their own ships that the poor unprepared Hummies first ships had been taken.

And then the Skitarii appeared.

Silence scythed through the still air of the vessels as the Skitarii Vanguard calmly and orderly walked the halls of the ship, preceded by Sicarian infiltrators and Ruststalkers. The Ork Gretchin infesting the ships, even hiding in the ductwork and tiniest nooks and crannies, tended to simply die as the Sicarian killclades passed them by - the only symptom of their passage the abrupt loss of all sight and hearing as insidious neurostatic black noise thrummed through the ships' hulls, causing the smaller vermin to expire as their flesh bubbled and churned from the resonant dirge. The Orks themselves - made of sterner stuff - simply went blind and deaf. Even robbed of their senses however, they remained dangerous - and as the Sicarian Killclades began to butcher them, they retaliated in kind, their bodies able to endure being split open by transonic blades and turn wrath back onto their unseen attackers. This, too, had been anticipated - and as the Sicarian Killclades danced and spun with the Orks, one by one, the behemoths they could not cut down began to fall dead to the decks as a new and silent killer entered the fray.

The Skitarii Vanguard, emitting such immense radiation that not even Ork physiology could withstand it, walked calmly through the halls of the ship, subjecting any bodies they found to promethium and volkite rays. As more Orks reinforcements appeared via tellyporta, those too began to simply drop dead on arrival, the radiation levels in each ship having built too high for them to withstand.

Few plans withstand contact with the enemy however, especially an enemy as unpredictable and chaotic as Orks. There was exactly one kind of Ork the Skitarii and their Sicarian brethren could not cripple and slay with such contemptuous ease: The Mekboys who had established control over the ships. Their crude cybernetics let them detect and survive the initial bouts of the the rapidly building radiation - long enough to impossibly calibrate their shielding to protect them from the deadly energies. And though their bionic senses were no more protected from the dread song of the Sicarian Infiltrators than organic tissue, they were able to overcome the debilitating pain and register attack vectors through pain alone. Their likewise cybernetically augmented Gretchin assistants proved able to survive where others had choked on their own blood and died.

Fighting a handful of Ork Mekboys and their Gretchin would not normally have been an issue for a fighting force such as the Vanguard and the Sicarian Clades. But they were not fighting a handful. They were fighting untold thousands of them.

The only solace to be found in the situation was that as the remaining fleets of the Astartes legions joined the system, the focus of the Ork voidships broke apart and finally, at last, the never-ending torrent of Ork corpses materializing aboard the Mechanicum vanguard cruisers finally began to abate. What followed next was several days of dirty, treacherous fighting in the confines of the Cruiser as the Ordo Astranoma's armada began to disperse, its Macroclades heading for their own predetermined coordinates - leaving the Skitarii War Cohort to either live victoriously or die when the first Vanguard Cruiser's cogitators overloaded the engines in response to Orks seizing helm control. The explosion that followed would set off a cascade in all the other nearby cruisers, causing them to burst open like krak grenades.

"You had better not die or let them seize the bridge. That would be treasonous." Axaltus conveyed via voxcast at one point. "We are all due to arrive on Ullanor Tertius in a few days time to immediately fight the Ork Warbands there and being dead is no excuse for dereliction of duty to the Omnissiah."

As the days passed, punctuated in the void by ships performing line maneuvers to place additional shots with the Nova Cannons and in the ships by deadly pushes through narrow chokepoints by either the Skitarii or the Orks, Moral inevitably improved. Barring the unfortunates who were literally torn to pieces by swarms of Gretchin or had their heads stolen and whisked away to be eaten in a duct somewhere, true casualties amongst the Skitarii were few in number - as long as enough of their head remained to preserve in stasis, they could be given new flesh in the form of ceramite and battle steel to fight for the Glory of the Omnissiah once more. The Ork Mekboys were more interested in scavenging and repurposing the ships itself than destroying it, which was reflected in their tactics - and so the Skitarii Cohort slowly and surely ground away at them, purging and cleansing the Cruisers of Ork spore as they went. The battles were hardly one-sided, but victory was inevitable and in sight.




'Praetor, this is Magos Acquisitor Lictarii. We have an unexpected development. The Ork Technician omnispex readings showed as having set up in the rear anterior node relay junction access hall made a failed attempt to tap into the ship's power feed approximately two hours ago. Then are now moving directly for the reactor manifold. Their Gretchin are moving with them and many other swarms have abruptedly started to converge. We suspect an imminent, potentially hazardous act of interference with the functionality of the reactor by the Ork Technician.'

Andron Axaltus paused midswing to consider this. It was more of a figurative than literal pause, as he had overclocked by his sensory throughput and cognitive processing to such an extent that his perception of time in that moment had slowed to a crawl, in order to properly evaluate the situation along with his personal coterie, likewise overclocked and neurosynchronized with him. After a brief discussion about the placement of the nearest Maniples and a somewhat longer argument about the layout of the ship (due to a misconception by it not possessing a standardized template configuration), the edge of his power sword's energy field had finally crawled close enough to the surface of the 'Cybork' Gretchin's cranium to begin splitting it apart one atom at a time. Once they had all reached a decision, they all reset and recalibrated their feeds and processors and time screamed back to its normal breakneck pace, the screaming cybernetic Gretchin's entire body falling into a mix of organic and mechanical pieces as Andron's sword carved through it. As one, he and his entire Maniple turned on the spot and began hurriedly marching, single-file, through the corridors of the ship towards the reactor manifold, much to the confusion of the thronging Swarm of Gretchin they had been in the midst of disassembling. They continued to fight disgusting fungal xenos as they went, Mechdendrites mounted with laz and arc weapons blasting away at the diminutive creatures shooting from off the Skitarii's backs as they turned away.

It took the better part of an hour to fight all the way to the reactor manifold, with Gretchin and the occasional Ork Mekboy all seeming to suddenly conspire to abridge the Skitarii's progress. Gretchin could not fight the Skitarii head-to-head, but from ambush, sheer numbers, and ability to slip between the narrowest confines of the ship, they were able to wage a war of attrition. Skitarii would have their own weapons stolen and turned on them by them by mobs of snotlings erupting from ductwork or maintenance shafts. Sicarian infiltrators would have entire corridors collapsed on them with primitive, improvised explosives, while others would occasionally vanish through unsecured floor-hatches to be messily devoured in the dark. But as much as the Gretchin struggled, they could only inflict triffling losses on the advancing Maniple, who were relentless in their pace and broke for nothing.

Which was for the best, as when they arrived at the Manifold the Ork Mekboy had been halfway through the process of disengaging the reactor manual safety overrides by way of repeatedly smashing one of the control interfaces with a wrench while Grechin tore furiously through its mechanical innards in order to fulfill his incoherently screamed instructions.

"You hummies cannit stop us! Wez gotz all da scuzzy bits we needz to make the new tellyporta work!" The Mekboy crowed triumphantly as he turned towards the door and layed down a hail of withering arc-lightning with his shock cannon, the deadly voltaic energies grounding into the frame of the doorway and preventing entrance without the intruder becoming a lightning rod.

"I'll be taking yuz glowy WAAAAAAAAGH power thing and uze it to BLOW DIS JUNK. Gonna tellyport out wit the poz and let you go BOOM." The Mekboy continued to taunt as he hefted up a combi-bolter and started sending slugs through the same passageway just as an auger-servitor floated in front of it to gather intel from beyond the safety of the threshold.

'This one appears to be a Big Mek.' One of the Vanguard relayed over vox. 'Standard munitions will be ineffective, he has the equivalent of a voltagheist shield.'

'Acknowledged. I have dispatched such an enemy before. I will need a tactical solution for my approach vector that does not involve being fatally electrocuted.' Axaltus relayed. 'I will need to get within family portrait distance of them.'

'Devising a technical solution for their arc weapon now.' One of the Rangers answered as they retrieved their arc maul from their belt and began performing a number of hasty modifications to it on the spot with their one free hand and multiple mechadendrites.

'We can lay down suppressing fire as soon as the arc weapon is eliminated.' One of the other Vanguard members indicated. 'We have three Plasma Calivers between us here, which ought to keep his focus nicely.'

'Just so long as we can do this before this Ork sends us all to meet the Machine God.' Axaltus relayed back as he edged closer to the doorway and readied his power sword.

'Executing solution now.'

The first Vanguard held out his arc maul beyond the threshold of the doorway, immediately causing the arcing lightning from the Ok's shock cannon to fixate upon it - and with a small galvanic thud, the small melee weapon overloaded and cause multiple tracers of powerful feedback to rebound on the Mekboy's caster and make it erupt in a shower of sparks. Axaltus took that as his cue to step through the doorway and begin running a roundabout path towards the Mekboy from the other end of the reactor room as three other members of the Maniple piled into the doorway and unleashed a barrage of plasma fire into the enemy. Even altogether, the Skitarii's plasma calivers could not penetrate through the Mekboy's shielding - powered by the mysterious WAAAAGH energies the Orks obsessed over, it would likely have stood up to anti-tank munitions. But the sheer volume of fire the Skitarii were able to pour into it was an ample distraction, forcing the Mekboy to turn his full attention on them and lay down return fire with his combi-bolter even as he dropped the overloading shock cannon from his other hand and began reaching towards a haphazard pile of Orkish equipment by his side.

"Krak dat Hummie cybork!" The Mekboy howled even as he kept his focus on the doorway, and immediately a swarm of nearly two dozen heavily augmented Gretchin and Snotlings seemed to spring out of thin air and scrabble towards Andron, chittering vile Ork profanities all the way. Not stopping to engage them properly, a dozen or so small mechadendrites uncoiled from various points along each of his limbs and a small array of digital weapons mounted upon each began expending their charges to unleash inferno-blasts of energy upon the creatures, incinerating them so rapidly they did not even have time to blacken and turn to ashes - they simply stopped being there as the hellish energies tore through their bodies. Of course, the same weapons would now be unavailable for engaging the Mekboy due to having to be recharged with every use, but the Skitarii Praetor had not been planning on using them for that purpose in any case. Instead as he drew close, he threw himself into a full-body lunge with his power sword, stabbing directly into the field of Orkish WAAAAGH power surrounding the Mekboy, and then burying the weapon's blade into the deck plating - forcing the vicious power behind the shielding to ground itself into through the weapon as it penetrated.

The Mekboy was instantly blasted by a storm of Caliver fire, but with a roar he pulled on the alternate trigger for his combi-weapon and sent a contact grenade to explode in the doorway amidst the Skitarii clustered there, even as he hefted a crude but massive power claw in his other hand. The fire from the Plasma Calivers had torn entire chunks from his armor and cybernetics and, in a few places, had punched clear holes through his body - but such injuries were nothing to an Ork, and he barely noticed them as he turned his attention to the Skitarii Praetor.

Having buried his power sword into the floor, Axaltus barreled forward in a rollto come up beneath the Mekboy's aim and, with a chop from his bare bionic arm, sent the Ork's bolter to clatter across the flooor. He was then forced to throw himself fully back down onto the floor to evade a vicious swipe from the Mekboy's power claw. He then rolled out of the way of the Ork's follow-up strike, sprung back up to his feet, and swayed forward inside of the Mekboy's guard in order to get close enough for a shoulder-mounted mechadendrite tipped with a dataspike to lash out and bury itself in the Mekboy's head.

Roaring with unbelievable rage and completely ignoring what would have been a fatal head injury to any other species, the Mekboy grasped at the offending protrusion with his free hand and ripped it away, tearing it clear of the Praetor's shoulder and throwing it back in the Skitarii's face for good measure before hunching over and slamming forward to tackle him. Axaltus dived out of the way, landed in a roll, and came out of it with an overhead strike from the edge of his hand to spear into the Mekboy's back. Even as the Mekboy screamed in rage and turned to lash at the Skitarii with their power claw, Axaltus brought up their other hand and grappled onto the Mekboy's back, using their free hand to secure himself while his embedded extremity went burrowing through the Ork's body. After failing to dislodge their assailant after a number of bucks and desperate flailing towards their back with their over-sized arms, the Mekboy finally reoriented themselves and slammed themselves back-first into the nearest wall. Had he been fighting a member of the Imperial Guard, such a tactic might have been effective - but the Skitarii were more metal than flesh. Axaltus simply registered the damage to his chassis and its systems with cold analytical rationale and dismissed it as non-inhibiting. His hand then finished digging through the Ork's innards and, with a single deft motion, crushed the Ork's heart inside the creature's chest.

And then, since the Mekboy barely even seemed to notice and slammed him into the wall a second time, Axaltus resorted to his weapon of last resort when fighting Orks.

"Hey Ork Boy. I'm going to punch your heart out." He said aloud. He then shoved his embedded fist forward another foot to emerge straight from the Ork's chest as the stunned creature looked down. "You're dead?" Axaltus added, with an almost plaintive tone. After considering the proposition for a good three seconds, the Mekboy's limited intellect managed to overcome its own vigor and their eyes rolled back in their head as they fell forward onto the floor, having convinced themselves that they should in fact be dead.

"Orks are the worst." Axaltus muttered darkly as he hauled his right arm out of the Mekboy's carcass. "Maniple, status report."

'Heavy external damage to all members, Praetor.' Came the voxed response. 'No actual casualties but a few of us will require stasis. We should be able to hold our position for the moment though.'

'I am arranging for two other Maniples to come relieve you and to cleanse the manifold of spores.' Axaltus cast back. 'It seems that you will all unfortunately have to miss the crusade on Ullanor Tertius until your new bodies are ready, Omnissiah forbid.'

'Some of us should be able to atte-'

'That was not a suggestion, Skitarii.' Axaltus interrupted. 'If you are seeking to endeavor in sacred service to the Omnissiah, those of you who still can may assist with the ongoing cleansing of this vessel and you will like it. The Ork Spore is resilient and who here could possibly not enjoy burning away fungal grime in service of the Omnissiah?'

'Your meaning is received, Praetor.' Came the response. There was no real intonation over the Skitarii voxcasts, as they communicated in Lingua-Technis formulated by their internal cogitators rather than anything so crude as using their actual voices - and so nobody reviewing the vox logs would have been able to question the sincerity of Skitarii's words from their tone.

Axaltus began to mentally chart a path through the ship back towards the bridge, even while continuing to field vox-calls from other Maniple Alphas who continued to battle the remaining Ork Mekboys scattered throughout the ship. They would be arriving at Ullanor Tertius soon - it would be time to prepare for planetary insertion soon.
© 2007-2025
BBCode Cheatsheet