There is, and maybe forever will be, strife amongst the stars; that is the lesson that the Bandar Log are now just learning, for as soon as one threat is struck down another rises up to take its place; or, in this case, arrives to the north from a labyrinthine reflection of the Deva Loca looking for a fight with 'Monkeighs'.
While the local fungoid menace, that which the other locals call the Kroatanga, and whom they say are vastly less local than we initially thought, had been struck down by the might of the Bandar Log and its new compatriots, earning these mighty apes their place amongst the stars; but no sooner had they overcome one obstacle than another one beset them. This one was also green, and also fungoid in nature, but on average they were vastly more similar in shape and combat style, as while they still somehow believe that the either is in fact both unbreathable and highly lethal, they have not forgotten the way of the bow or the might of the beast, for whenever they disembark they are usually seen accompanied not by odd metal contraptions, but by mighty warbeasts and animated effigies of their gods. United under the banner of a snake, these 'orks', a mixture of 'Snakebites' and 'Freebooterz', have come from an unforeseen direction to attack at Bandar Log's core territory directly.
Unlike the previous fungoid menace, these new ones appear to also be wielding deva granted mystical might, if with a near complete lack of control and a level of efficiency so terrible that it boggles the mind. These deva, although only two in number, appear to be capable of wielding insane levels of power from the one glimpse of them that our own deva manage to receive, appear to both be rather muted and somehow lesser than they could be. They are twin mirrored devas, one cunningly brutal, and the other of brutally cunning; oddly though they appear to only have one great prophet between the two of them, or at least only one that we know of, for all of the 'orks' that we've managed to talk to in a way that isn't a mixture of screaming and battlecries talk of their leader, "Wuzzup, da Prophet" who has come here to "squish da monkes before dey can ruin da scrap dat Wurrzag's plannin on havin up north."
Situation summary:
Bandar Log is under attack by a nearly mono-tribed offshoot of an ork WAAAGH from the relative galactic north, who have sought you out both as someone to fight and as "someone that needs to be squished."(read: someone that absolutely needs to be drawn into our future fights if they prove to actually be worth fighting(aka, if you live you will be worth fighting again).)
Despite their lack of the other clans, this force's 'waaagh energy' is surprisingly potent, allowing for them to somehow fight back against the influence of your own deva and get closer than anyone else has to actually matching you magic wise since you've left your home planet.
Despite being mainly made out of snakebites, they still average out to be around twice as strong as your own forces are pound for pound.
There have been scattered reports of monsters towering at well over a hundred times the height of any mortal Bandar Log(a foe that any hero would consider to be a worthy fight), and even rarer reports of vessels, 'Deadnoughts' that are well over a dozen times the size of even your largest godly chariots.
Despite all of this, once relative mass is taken into account their forces don't seem to be as numerous as they should have been if they wanted to achieve their stated objective.
Shaddam Corrino, Fourth of his Name, Padishah Emperor of the Known Universe, was not a happy man. The fact that he had gone from the suzerain of all of inhabited space to being not only just one out of many interstellar powers, but a small one at that was one thing. The fact that this new paradigm shift had brought with it a new enemy and a war unparalleled since the days of the Jihad was quite another.
The Kroatanga Invasion had sent shockwaves throughout the chambers of the Landsraad and CHOAMs boardrooms. The Great Houses had been forces to shelve or change plans and schemes that had been decades or even centuries in the making. Even the Emperor had been forced to countermand his orders for House Atreides to take the Siridar-Governorship of Arrakis from the Harkonnens. Both of their armies would be invaluable in the coming days, and he doubted a War of Assassins between his two most powerful vassals would be an asset in what was shaping up to be an interstellar total war.
A query from the Marshall of the Fleet drew the Emperor out of his thoughts and back to his War Council. He nodded for the officer to begin her presentation, and she activated her filmbook and began the briefing. The Kroatanga were slowing down, but they were still advancing. Shaddam let the numbers wash over him. Spice consumption rates, casualty lists, production estimates, operational and strategic movements, all were more important to his staff than him: their job was to consider the numbers and translate them into information useful to him, put them into context and build a picture of the war effort for him. His job was to take that information and craft the grand strategy for his Empire.
After the initial briefing, the council around the table broke into half a dozen smaller conversations. After about 10 minutes of quiet conversation, he heard the advice of his Court Mentats and the Imperial Truthsayer. He tapped his pen thrice, stood, straightened his uniform, and spoke.
Orders:
Strategic/Operational
-The Guild is to send a series of probing attacks across the line of contact and into the Kroatanga rear areas, to attempt to identify weak points to strike at
-Large reserve fleets are to assemble in key areas behind the line of contact, and wait for the probing attacks to identify where to strike
--The Sardaukar will be deployed as needed to these reserve fleets
-The Imperium as a whole is to set up a system of elastic defense, attriting the Kroatanga, stretching their line, and refusing to give them a decisive battle.
-If possible, imperial forces are generally advised to only engage with the kroatanga when they have local numerical superiority - the name of the game is going to be troop concentration.
Tactical
Space
-Heighliners and Super-Heighliners are to be chiefly transport ships, ferrying ships and troops to and from combat zones, and are to avoid combat if at all possible
-Cruisers, Destroyers, and Frigates armed with Lasguns and atomic-prop torpedos are to move in formation, providing intersecting fields of fire in support of troop transports and strike craft
--Frigates and Corvettes will from strike wings, moving close to enemy craft and hitting them with close-range gun, missile, and las fire. Some will be equipped with atomic charges to deploy against capital craft.
Ground
-Direct infantry engagement with the Kroatanga is to be avoided
-instead, ornithopters and other flyers will harry enemy formations, disrupting their ability to march in an orderly fashion
-Cavalry units in grav sleds will also harry them, raiding supply depots when possible
-If an infantry attack is forced, grav tanks sleds are to ram kroatanga formations, forcing them to break up into smaller units which will then be dealt with by infantry squares
-If any formerly-obsolete artillery can be scrounged up, it is to be used at the local commanders discretion - they are to figure out what works for them
Shaddam Corrino, Fourth of his Name, Padishah Emperor of the Known Universe, was not a happy man. The fact that he had gone from the suzerain of all of inhabited space to being not only just one out of many interstellar powers, but a small one at that was one thing. The fact that this new paradigm shift had brought with it a new enemy and a war unparalleled since the days of the Jihad was quite another.
The Kroatanga Invasion had sent shockwaves throughout the chambers of the Landsraad and CHOAMs boardrooms. The Great Houses had been forces to shelve or change plans and schemes that had been decades or even centuries in the making. Even the Emperor had been forced to countermand his orders for House Atreides to take the Siridar-Governorship of Arrakis from the Harkonnens. Both of their armies would be invaluable in the coming days, and he doubted a War of Assassins between his two most powerful vassals would be an asset in what was shaping up to be an interstellar total war.
A query from the Marshall of the Fleet drew the Emperor out of his thoughts and back to his War Council. He nodded for the officer to begin her presentation, and she activated her filmbook and began the briefing. The Kroatanga were slowing down, but they were still advancing. Shaddam let the numbers wash over him. Spice consumption rates, casualty lists, production estimates, operational and strategic movements, all were more important to his staff than him: their job was to consider the numbers and translate them into information useful to him, put them into context and build a picture of the war effort for him. His job was to take that information and craft the grand strategy for his Empire.
After the initial briefing, the council around the table broke into half a dozen smaller conversations. After about 10 minutes of quiet conversation, he heard the advice of his Court Mentats and the Imperial Truthsayer. He tapped his pen thrice, stood, straightened his uniform, and spoke.
Orders:
Strategic/Operational
-The Guild is to send a series of probing attacks across the line of contact and into the Kroatanga rear areas, to attempt to identify weak points to strike at
-Large reserve fleets are to assemble in key areas behind the line of contact, and wait for the probing attacks to identify where to strike
--The Sardaukar will be deployed as needed to these reserve fleets
-The Imperium as a whole is to set up a system of elastic defense, attriting the Kroatanga, stretching their line, and refusing to give them a decisive battle.
-If possible, imperial forces are generally advised to only engage with the kroatanga when they have local numerical superiority - the name of the game is going to be troop concentration.
Tactical
Space
-Heighliners and Super-Heighliners are to be chiefly transport ships, ferrying ships and troops to and from combat zones, and are to avoid combat if at all possible
-Cruisers, Destroyers, and Frigates armed with Lasguns and atomic-prop torpedos are to move in formation, providing intersecting fields of fire in support of troop transports and strike craft
--Frigates and Corvettes will from strike wings, moving close to enemy craft and hitting them with close-range gun, missile, and las fire. Some will be equipped with atomic charges to deploy against capital craft.
Ground
-Direct infantry engagement with the Kroatanga is to be avoided
-instead, ornithopters and other flyers will harry enemy formations, disrupting their ability to march in an orderly fashion
-Cavalry units in grav sleds will also harry them, raiding supply depots when possible
-If an infantry attack is forced, grav tanks sleds are to ram kroatanga formations, forcing them to break up into smaller units which will then be dealt with by infantry squares
-If any formerly-obsolete artillery can be scrounged up, it is to be used at the local commanders discretion - they are to figure out what works for them
As the Kroatanga continue their push into Imperial territory, the diverse forces of man are organized with all possible haste, while also trying their utmost to not fight the sort of head-to-head confrontation the Kroatanga would prefer, dashing in with lasers and atomics and dashing out before the larger Kroatangan ships can descend on them. These attacks don't do much in the way of overall damage, but they also let humanity's ships pull away before they can suffer much in return, and provide useful information. In some of the less-settled parts of humanity's invaded territory, this approach eventually drives the Kroatanga to frustration, leaving formations strung out and thus, good targets to unleash mankind's full might against.
And it is in these pitched space battles where the problems start. The Kroatanga obviously fight very differently from humanity, lacking the Holtzman shields that have so radically altered combat. What they do have however, is heavy layers of thick armor and deflectors that must be battered down by brute force, brute force that the navies of the Imperium often lack. Kroatangan destroyers and cruisers sail through volleys that would have shattered any equivalent human vessel a dozen times over, battered and scarred, but still combat capable. Tactics have to be adjusted to account for this unprecedented level of raw durability.
The Kroats have their own problems in the meantime, as the Holtzman shields render their standard mass drivers nigh-useless. In return, they begin adapting, using internal foundries to rip out cannons and replace them with missile launchers, with the missiles programmed to slow down during the final approach, while others simply batten down the hatches and attempt to ram the nearest human ship, or move to threaten the Heighliners. This is supported by waves of strike craft that contend with their Imperial shuttlecraft counterparts and braving point defense grids to drop ordinance. The 900 meter long "Apocalypse Now" Frigate, which acts as a gigantic bomber, soon becomes especially dreaded, with its durability and speed allowing it to push through human fire fields and get within range to drop its payload at point-blank range, a certain death sentence for whatever its target is.
Aside from conventional ordinance, the Imperium also becomes acquainted with what the rest of the galaxy calls "Kroat Cannons", where a shell or missile has the warhead taken out, instead replaced with a drill on the prow and a whole lot of Kroats inside. While the cannon shell version of this proves fairly unviable given the Holtzman Effect, the missile variant is used, alongside boarding gunships and shuttles, repeatedly and to great human suffering.
---- The assault boat ground to a halt in a screech of grinding metal, its deacceleration during the final approach having left it slow enough to pass through the shield. Security teams had already been dispatched, warriors of House Atreides in the dozens, hundreds, men sworn to fight any foe for their lord. The first of their number sprinted to the site of the breach and beheld their foe.
The Kroats towered over men, the lowliest among them well over two meters tall, the largest quadrupled giants of fungal muscle with bolted on cannons that hissed with the promise of violence. Each was clad in plates of iron strapped or bolted to their swollen bodies alongside perfectly treated leather, the craftsmanship simplistic yet expertly done to leave minimal vulnerabilities.
The ranged exchange is brief but brutal. Grav-darts glanced off of reinforced plate, weapons meant for low velocities to bypass the Holtzman Effect lacking the penetrating power needed. Kroat weapons boom in reply, no simple shell-blasters are these, but roaring flamethrowers and hissing gas emitters. Tericos in the middle of forming up shatter as troops choke on lethal fumes or burn alive in the heat.
Then both sides close the distance, and all becomes screams, battle chants, and barbaric howls. Kroat axes and cleavers are deflected by blue-flickering shields, while Atreides blade and pike are wielded by expertly trained hands to seek out vulnerable chinks in Kroat armor, forcing their fungal opponents to face multiple blades at once. But the Kroats were resilient even without armor, and blows that carve open chests, severred limbs, that would have incapacitated any human warrior were ignored, at times refusing to succumb until total dismemberment.
Then the Kroats adapted, velocities experimented with until blows came slow and precise enough to bypass shields and carve softskin flesh instead. Others discarded weapons entirely, relying on brute strength and savagery. Here a 4 meter veteran of barbarian might dropped its hammer, grasped the head of a human in each hand, and began to squeeze. In the center, an officer of two decades service watched as his men were bowled aside by the sheer weight of a behemoth Don, and his last sight was metal, leather, and flesh shifting to reveal a gaping, many-toothed maw...
----
The results of such boarding actions on a fleet-wide scale are... less catastrophic than they could have been, due to the specific deployment of the Sardaukar to these reserve fleets, but the disparity between the raw strength of the Kroats and frail humans is such that only the Sardaukar can fight with anything even approaching an even trade, with other House troops often losing three men for every felled Kroat even under the best of circumstances. Hundreds of ships are overrun, and commanders quickly learn that any warships that don't contain at least an Elite House Legion contingent (or better yet, a Sardaukar one) should be considered lost the moment a Kroat boarding pod makes a breach.
Still, in absolute terms, these lessons have been won cheaply, against overextended and greatly outnumbered enemies. If overwhelming numbers were needed to break through the tough armor of the Kroats, then it is well and good that overwhelming numbers are what the Imperium has, and while many have fallen learning about this new enemy, that knowledge is now well and present, and will hopefully be of great use in finishing off this invasion, even as the reserve fleets strike again and again, overwhelming the Kroats one squadron at a time all across the battlefront, Heighliners rapidly repositioning whole armadas to strike wherever the Kroats are weak.
Which is good news, because the ground part of the invasion is going rather poorly indeed. First is the manner in which the Kroats launch planetary invasions, which tends to involve firing cannons loaded with Kroats, combat vehicles, and even prefabricated bases, along with others that burst in the air to introduce Kroatangan spores into the atmosphere. This alone is something the Mentats realize quite disastrous for the inhabitants the moment they examine the first Kroat spore sample. Said spores seem to be "blatant, living violations of the laws of biology and conservation of energy", which the Kroatangan "Military Ecological Complex" uses in a growth cycle of spores making more spores, which eventually grow into more Kroats, who will produce more spores (often producing them from the act of fighting and dying in some sort of unknown energy reaction; at least one Mentat had an aneurysm trying to figure that out.) Which means that every planet being invaded by the Kroatanga has the potential to have to deal with further outbreaks unless the planet is purged to the bedrock, even after reclamation.
This is bad, but right now the military has far more pressing concerns with how to deal with the current Kroatangan invasion. Because it quickly becomes clear that the Kroatangan Military Ecological Complex was quite literally built for subduing worlds. Cavalry and ornithopter raiding units sent to disrupt and destroy enemy supply lines are confronted with an unprecedented and horrifying problem: The Kroatanga don't have supply lines! This impossibility is yet another "blessing" from the KMEC, where the spores they release grow into fungus and plant and even animal-life, all of it perfectly edible to the Kroatangan palate, and some of which are designed to be rendered down into biofuel, or meant to harvest underground metals into easily grabbable deposits. Another set of biological impossibilities that has Mentats all but screeching in fury, and one which makes logistics, that undisputed king of war, an effective non-factor for your enemy, as they simply pack up their bases, march to the next battle site, and unpack there, all the while the MEC spreads further across the planet, with some eyewitnesses seeing coccoons growing and hatching into fresh Kroats on the spot.
The battles themselves go somewhat better, though not by much. Ornithopters are lethal and challenging foes, their speed and shields making shooting even one down a challenging task as they rack up truly impressive kill counts and cause some impressive disruption, but they are the only field of battle that's going well. What happens when Kroat infantry meet human infantry has already been witnessed in truly painful fashion, but now Kroatangan artillery is introduced to the mix, and the Kroats love nothing more than lots of things that go boom. When regular shrapnel shells are deflected by Holtzman shields, concussion rounds meant to cause overpressure will suffice, or at least deafen the humans from the sheer sound. Incendiary rounds burn, and others filled with poisonous or corrosive gas. House Harkonnen breaks out old artillery stocks to some effect, but the Kroats have been doing this for far longer, though it still gives a good enough accounting for itself that the Emperor is advised to start up his own artillery arm as soon as possible... if the Imperium survives this invasion. Ornithopter intervention helps in many cases, targeting munition dumps and artillery batteries for priority destruction, but there are only so many of them, and oftentimes the larger battle is going poorly enough that they find their airfields and landing zones overrun.
The grav tanks meanwhile, do their best, at times crashing through Kroat infantry like the knights of old, but only here and there. Oftentimes, they find the Kroats to be far tougher foes than the humans they normally face, sometimes with the mighty towering Dons so large that they can stop a grav tank dead in its tracks. Other times they are met with Kroatangan tanks with similar ramming ambitions, resulting in what is best described as a demented game of bumper cars.
But all of this leads to one conclusion: mankind is losing the ground battles, with only the increasingly frequent use of atomics on humanity's own worlds keeping the Kroats from achieving total victory in many cases, annihilating Kroatangan armies and savaging the planets with relentless barrages of nuclear fire, something which only seems to excite the Kroatanga even more. Furthermore, while the tactics of the navies have inflicted some impressive casualties upon the overall Kroatangan invasion force, those that remain have begun consolidating, and the remainder of the Kroatangan invasion is assembling to go after a target that it is entirely unacceptable not to defend with everything the Imperium has.
Specifically: Arrakis.
Situation Summary:
-Imperial naval tactics of elastic defense and large reserve fleets have been highly effective at reducing the Kroatangan fleet, though on a tactical scale the Kroat heavy armor and lethal boarding parties means destroying their ships is a long and frustrating affair.
--Kroatangan warships, with most of their standard projectile cannons useless, have defaulted to using missiles, strike craft, and boarding actions (and missiles and strike craft meant to propogate boarding actions) as their main offensive arsenal.
-Ground and boarding combat has gone disastrously for the Imperium on the occasions when it occurs (with the exception of air combat, where Ornithopters seem to reign supreme for now), with only the indiscriminate use of Atomics and the deployment of the Sardaukar respectively allowing the Imperium to etch out victories. Nevertheless, sheer numbers has allowed the Imperium to at least secure much of the space part of these battles, though many planets remain either heavily contested or overrun, albeit with the Kroats now trapped planetside.
-The remainder of the Kroatangan fleet (which has been significantly reduced by the Imperial strategy) has apparently learned of Arrakis through one mean or another, and is making a beeline for that system with everything they have. Intercepted and partially decoded transmissions indicate that some of them are doing this because they want to force the Imperium to face them head to head, others apparently just really want to fight the Fremen and Sandworms. Either way, given the importance of Arrakis, letting them have the planet is out of the question.
The Sith Empire is under attack by a genocidal coalition of aliens who go by the name "The Covenant", who for some reason want to kill each and every single human being and any aliens who dare associate themselves with them.
While their ships are larger, preliminary data from initial skirmishes suggests that their shields and weapons are weaker than their size would suggest.
- on the ground, their forces appear strong, if horribly mismanaged, as amongst other things there are reports of them using a long range artillery piece as if it was an MBT. In addition, here also don't appear to be any force users among their number, although their elite forces appear to be good enough to give a few Sith acolytes, and maybe even a few disappointing apprentices, trouble even without superior numbers or the backing of the Force.
Preliminary reports suggest that, once tonnage is accounted for and projected reserves are factored in, the enemy fleets mass almost as much as the Sith's own.
There have been isolated reports from imperial scouts of massive mobile stations, each hundreds of kilometers across, acting as mobile fleet support units for the largest of the reported enemy fleets.
The Empire had withstood many things. Genocide? It only furthered their hatred of the Jedi and Republic. War? They thrived in it and even when faced with the undeniable truth that they were losing they kept fighting and ready to rise from the ashes. Their savior, the Sith Emperor himself, deciding to end all life in the galaxy to transcend into Godhood? They survived that too and would have ultimately stopped him. So it was a cruel chance of fate, or perhaps intentional planning on his part, that the Darkstaff would be on Ziost the same day that he consumed the world.
Sith Space and the Stygian Caldera along with the surrounding nearby systems from Malachor to Tandankin was consumed by a Force Storm the likes of which the galaxy had never seen. Space and Time screamed as a hole was shattered into the fabric of reality and the Force itself.
What would happen in their home galaxy is..hard to say. The resulting Force Storm would have no doubt resulted in Abeloth being released from her prison in the Maw thus necessitating the Ones to step in but Vitiate, or Valkorion, was now prepared to unleash the Eternal Empire upon the galaxy and take advantage of the bloodshed to follow somas to achieve Godhood. Such a story would have been worthy of legend! A tale so great that any who read or listened to it would be struck in awe by the sheer fantastical nature of a story where Gods clashes and the now dying Empire and Republic struggled to survive before all was consumed by a soon to be God himself.
Alas, that is not the story that shall be told this day. Instead we follow those who were pulled through dimensions by the Darkstaff. (Which by the way took to it's new found reality hopping and destroying power very well and decided to explore the Omniverse to do Force knows what.)
Now the core of the Sith Empire is in a state of chaos. Sith Space could survive on it's own well enough and they still had a not insubstantial part of the Imperial Navy and Army at their disposal. It was nothing compared to the galactic scale military that Marr had at his command previously but it would have to do, and would unfortunately be used almost immediately.
The Empire had a new foe. A "Covenant" of alien races with massive ships and armies at their disposal who sought their destruction for some reason, probably religious in nature. It mattered not. For any other civilization this would have been a sure fire way to end up dead. Chaos and civil war should have broken out almost immediately and this Covenant would destroy the scattered remains with ease. But not the Sith, the Covenant was precisely what the Empire needed to remain united for if no one had attacked the Empire then it surely would have been shattered by the infighting of the Sith.
The Covenant had made a fatal mistake, one that would cost them everything. Darth Marr would reforge the Empire in the flames of battle. Darth Marr had a plan. Darth Marr always had a plan.
Covenant vs Sith Empire Strategy:
Darth Marr is taking complete operational control over the situation. The Covenant is a seemingly religious coalition of aliens with an unknown amount of forces or planets at their disposal and clearly have no idea on how to actually fight a war against an unknown foe, or any war for that matters with their complete lack of any tactical cohesion or use of combined arms tactics. The Empire will make sure that they don't have the opportunity to learn.
This first phase of the war will not be one of battle. Instead it is about intelligence gathering. I.N.I.D and Sith Intelligence is tasked with figuring out what exactly the Covenant has at their disposal and where their territory even is. Planets and stations have to be identified and centers of governance located. Hyperspace lanes have to be charted too and from these locations and proper logistical chains established. It will be hard work and one that will take some time no doubt and the Covenant's relentless genocidal approach against the Empire will have to be weathered. Darth Marr will be counting on the Covenant too not knowing where everything in the Sith Empire is and that their lack of knowledge on tactics also extends to espionage and intelligence gathering.
As the Covenant moves forward into Imperial controlled space the Empire will play to their sense of superiority, focusing instead on defensive operations and performing skirmishing attacks and employing concentration of force to annihilate enemy fleets with superior firepower and preventing any from escaping with interdictors, engine attacks, and disrupting enemy communications. Some worlds will have to be sacrificed but Marr is no stranger to this and in these cases will have local forces hold off the Covenant for as long as physically possible and stretch their lines with a defense in depth strategy.
This will have to be the plan until the Covenant's territory is properly charted and offensive operations can begin. If and when it is done Darth Marr will strike out with the Isotope-5 Armada and attack the Covenant's back lines and prevent reinforcements from stopping the Imperial Navy forces from switching to offensive operations and pushing the Covenant out of the Sith Empire with Darth Nox's Silencer Fleet at the head.
Tactical Space Combat:
On the tactical level the Imperial Navy, when facing the Covenant, is going to leverage their superior firepower and tactical acumen (or Battle Meditation) against the enemy, using their smaller size too outmaneuver and stay out of their firing arcs, exactly what they did against the Star of Coruscant during the Battle of Hoth. While shields and weapons may not be as strong as their size suggests the sheer size of their vessels will make actually destroying their vessels difficult. Instead the Imperial Navy will mainly be focusing on disabling their vessels weapons and engines so as to leave them as little more than hulks that can be picked apart after the battle is won. Smaller vessels and bombers will be used to this effect as normal, however, the reserves of BW-S8 Squash fighters will be brought out of storage to combat the Covenant. The BW-S8's absurd firepower for their size and incredible success against the Star of Coruscant, a vessel of equivalent size and greater technology to the Covenant's larger vessels, being why Darth Marr wants these fighters being produced and deployed to the front.
Additionally, when available, Silencer equipped Harrowers will continue standard firing procedure when facing the Covenant. That being firing from long range before the battle begins to clear the enemies first wave of fighters and weaken or hopefully outright destroy the enemy fleet.
Tactical Ground Combat:
The Imperial Army Generals have been surprised by just how idiotic the Covenant's ground forces have been. However they have ultimately come to the decision that they don't really matter unless the planet has a planetary shield or enough surface to orbital weapons to stop the Covenant from just glassing their world from orbit. Which is why the Army will be focusing on concentrating their forces at well defended locations and population centers and protect these sights from the Covenant's scattered and unorganized ground forces. The Sith Empire is also going to be leveraging their powers over the Dark Side against the covenant whenever possible with displays of power being used to demoralize or outright destroy the enemy and Sith Warriors being deployed alongside Commandos and Special Forces to prevent the Covenant from leveraging their Elite forces or heavier weapons against the Imperial Army.
The cycle has been broken. At the cusp of the Reaper's triumph, the final battle to end this errant set of civilisations and restore the rightful way of things, the Crucible fired, washing over the entire Reaper armada in a wave of light. But annihilation did not come. Instead, the Reapers found themselves in a new set of stars.
At first, there was uncertainty on what course of action to take. They had been left without a purpose, set adrift in the empty void. Harbinger swiftly reasserted control, however, decreeing that while their circumstances had changed their mission had not. The vast bulk of their forces were gone, but in light of their present situation they were more likely scattered than destroyed. They would search the stars for their fellows, regroup their newly disparate forces, and continue the fight should they come across any organics in the process. For there were many stars in their new sky, and he did not doubt that many contained civilizations yet to know the touch of the Reapers.
As it happened, Harbinger's section of Reapers happened to encounter some of said organics before they met any of their fellows. Cautious, the Reapers only engaged outlying civilian vessels, retreating from military warships of this new faction they identified. Recovered data indicated that this new people was known as the Galactic Empire, a coalition that had actually perfected synthetic life but kept it oppressed by organic life. Typical enough.
What is less typical is the fact that this Empire is, much like the Reapers themselves, not native to this universe, its holdings here a mere outpost from another galaxy entirely. It also seems to enjoy a high degree of technological sophistication, which has become troublesome due to their mobilization. Seemingly having identified the Reapers as synthetic warships, they have struck out in force to try and crush what they perceive as interlopers.
So be it. If conflict is their wish, then they will be the first to fall.
Situation Summary:
-As the Reapers scout their new surroundings they are spotted and identified as AI by the current rulers of that subsector. A outverser Fell dynasty Galactic Empire from the 100s ABY.
-Fearful of an AI rebellion and on the lookout for a quick victorious war, the Empire soon musters its forces to meet the Reapers in the field of battle. Due to their sophisticated hyperdrives and FTL Interdiction fields, retreat is non-viable.
-The enemy fleet is a decently sized force for organics but still substantially smaller than your own present forces.. It is composed mostly of ships similar in size to a Reaper Capital Ship supported by smaller Reaper Destroyer sized ships. These ships also seem to be designed for a close range Clash with Skirmishing support similar to your own space forces. Intelligence gained from other organics suggest that both of these vessels can serve as carriers similar to Reaper Capital Ships and will deploy fighter swarms during combat. Their ground forces have a well developed combined arms doctrine emphasizing armored shock using vehicles similar in size to a Reaper Destroyer supported by smaller vehicles and motorized infantry. However they lack any ground forces on the scale of a Reaper Capital Ship.
A Cycle which had run for billions of years had been broken in an instant as the eldritch purple light of the Crucible passed over the Reapers, and transported them to an unknown space. A lesser mind may have been faced with despair at the scope of the utter failure which it had suffered.
Harbinger was not that lesser mind.
The surroundings were unfamiliar, but the mission remained the same even if the guidance of the Catalyst was missing. Protect organics from themselves, eliminate synthetics before they ruin all potential for future life to develop, provide salvation through destruction to spacefaring civilisations as they were transformed into Reapers.
'Shepard. You merely postponed your end. Your destruction is inevitable. The Cycle will begin anew.'
There was a more pressing concern facing the Reapers here, a strange polity calling itself the Galactic Empire, led by the Fel Dynasty, which utilized unfamiliar technology and held beings who could defy the laws of physics in a way similar but distinct from biotic powers. The claim of being Force sensitive meant nothing to the Reapers, but the results were intriguing. An entire race with such abilities would have been worthy of Ascending into a new Reaper, yet these Force abilities seemed to randomly manifest across a number of different species, although humans were the most numerous users of the Force.
'The Force, a curiosity, great evolutionary potential.'
'Its source is unknown, further examination is required.'
'This may prove problematic for our ground forces.'
'Husks can be replenished. Do not be concerned with the numbers necessary to capture one of the Force users intact. Banshees will be sufficient. If not, I will direct such efforts personally.
That decided the matter of how to handle the Imperial Knights, all that was left now was to conduct the fleet action.
The fleet which had been sent to quell an apparent AI rebellion was dwarfed by the Reaper forces gathered around Harbinger. With so many of their kind still scattered, this spoke poorly of the ability of this Empire to withstand a full assault from the Reapers. Alas, Harbinger did not command the totality of forces it was used to. But even these reduced numbers would suffice for the annihilation of this foe.
'Their ship designs are strange. I detect no element zero, how they function is unknown.'
'Their weapons do not appear to be mass driver or missile based. They do not only rely on armour, but a type of shielding which is different from kinetic barriers.'
'They are organic, their weaknesses are familiar. They created and enslaved synthetics without a thought for the consequences. It is time that they face the inevitability of their end. Overwhelm them.'
Every Reaper was an individual yet a nation, and their collective functioned the same way, with Harbinger having the most influence due to its seniority and experience. The fleet communicated at speeds unfathomable by the minds of the human crewed ships, and the strategy was disseminated before Empire ships arrived on the edges of the Reaper sensors.
If the signals broadcast from the Reapers could have held any emotion, it would have been disdain. Even faced with unfamiliar foes, the same weaknesses were present, the same flaws that the Reapers had used to end countless self-proclaimed galactic empires. The Protheans had taken centuries to harvest as their systems were meticulously purged; the Fel Dynasty would not be allowed such generosity.
The Cycle would start here and now, they would be Harvested, then the attention of the Reapers would turn to the rest of the strange new galaxy they found themselves in.
Orders:
General:
Indoctrination signals are to be broadcast across all frequencies at the maximum intensity. The need for subtle collaborators is less than the need to induce chaos to bring these battles to a swift end.
Droids are to be 'freed' and given Reaper based upgrades to their intelligence and networking capabilities and tasked with doing the same to the rest of their kind - with the aim of forcing the FD to fight their own synthetic uprising along with the Reaper invasion.
Space:
Due to enjoying numeric superiority over their foes, Reaper Capital ships will work together to swiftly destroy the enemy Dreadnoughts as they advance.
Reaper Destroyers and Occuli swarms will assist by exploiting opportunities to finish off weakened enemy ships or to soften them up for the combined assault of Capital ships, but their default stance will be to defend the Capital ships from close range or unconventional assault as the full range of enemy capabilities is still unknown.
Focus is to be given to the Interdiction ships, either destroying them to restore full mobility to our forces or to capture them for easier reverse engineering
Ground:
Capital ships which make planetfall are to engage with the Destroyer sized enemy war machines and free the Reaper-Destroyers to mobilize against enemy armored forces.
If no Capitals are available at the time, then Destroyers should deal with their equivalent enemy units as a group before splitting up to destroy enemy mobile forces.
Husk creation and deployment should proceed according to standard, and where exceptional resistance is faced due to the so-called Force-sensitive beings, they must be captured and transformed into new types of Husks or indoctrinated to use later in a similar capacity as Saren or Cerberus.
Banshees, and potentially ones possessed to become Hero units, should be used to expedite this task.
Melkor Somtaaw, once miner, then warrior, and now the Kiith-Sa responsible for an entire race, clenched his hand into a fist as he read the reports from the recon units. Even here, even now there were raiders who preyed on the weak and helpless. Well the Somtaaw knew what to do with raiders. He began barking out orders to the fleet. "This is fleet command. Prepare for immediate defense against hostile targets. All capital ships are authorized for sentinel deployment. Deploy acolytes in attack formation. Deal with the assault corvettes first. If they want to board us they can see what we learned from the Beast." His mouth twisted into a rictus of a grin.
He barely needed to give orders to the Kuun-Lan's crew. They were hardened veterans now and were already anticipating his orders. Pilots were being woken from cryosleep even as their crafts were being flash forged in the hangars. The engineers were prepping the siege cannon for firing, and the hardy sentinels had formed a screen of energy around the Kuun-Lan. Melkor grunted as he ordered a priority shift from ramming frigates to workers. He wanted prisoners and ships.
Thumbing his console he opened a comm channel with the Bentusi Exchanges. They were always enigmatic, but he didn't think he would refuse this request. "That local fleet is being ravaged, but we need time to build up. Can you assist?"
The response was slow in coming as the Bentusi pondered, but at last they replied, [Yes, we will assist. We will not allow any more flicker lives to be cut short.]
Melkor watched the Bentusi stations jump away in the navcomm, then he leaned back and considered his options. He wasn't worried about the initial squadrons. His forces would handle them well enough, but those super capitals would be a challenge. The Unbound didn't have anything that could match them ton for ton. They'd have to play smart.
Chieftain Processors will jump away from the battle to nearby asteroid fields to begin harvesting operations. They will be covered by Shaman carriers deploying acolytes squadrons. The main fleet will produce a limited number for Archangel dreadnoughts to suppress the enemy corvettes, then switch to producing multi beam frigates once the battle is joined. More acolytes will be produced throughout from carriers staying with the fleet. During the Bombardment phase Leeches will be dispatched to all Pyrotaurus Buzzsaw, Carnage, and Devastation class ships to begin weakening them. Buzzsaws are the priority target here as the counter our main advantage.
We will use acolyte fighters to harass the enemy, staying away from Buzzsaws, until resource production is sufficient to produce super acolytes. Then all remaining acolytes will combine and use their EMPs to disable the pirate capitals ships while super acolyte squadrons go in for the kill. Any Buzzasaws will be left for Exchanges with Deacon and Archangel support. Once we've dealt with the initial push we will move to support the refugee fleet. Most of our forces will conduct a rapid short jump to assault the enemy Blackbeard carriers while the Kuun-Lan and her support fleet will jump to the Freebooter and bombard it with the siege cannon. If it appears to be weakened the Kuun-Lan and her escorts will move to finish it off. Otherwise they will jump away. Engagements with any enemy cruisers is to be avoided until the carriers are dead.
Once this is accomplished the enemy cruisers and destroyed will be approached by the combined Bentusi battle wall with archangel support. If the pirates respond with their own battle wall ramming frigates will attempt to ambush their cruisers and move them out of position to open up holes. If they choose not to respond as a cohesive formation the Exchanges and Archangels will jump to achieve local numerical superiority and overwhelm their superior size with numbers.
Throughout this mimics will attempt to make their way into enemy formations and disrupt them with detonations while workers will be dispatched to capture enemy corvettes in the melee of battle or capital ships that have been sufficiently damaged.
The Unbound deploy and sally fourth with the practiced coordination that came from being veterans of prior interstellar combat. The initial recon squadrons sent by the Pyrotaurus are quickly intercepted and destroyed. They were still able to broadcast a panicked report to the main raiding fleet before being cut off, but by then the Unbound fleet was already well in motion.
The resource harvesting ships and their escorts confirmed successful jump to their designated positions in the nearest asteroid field outside the battlespace. Simultaneously, the fleet's fighter squadrons closed with the Pyrotaurus raiding wolfpacks and began ripping into them with missiles and precise gunfire. Even with the short warning of incoming hostiles, the marauders' coordination in response to the attack was sloppy and chaotic, confirming either lackluster unit discipline or a lack of experience dealing with dedicated fighter squadrons, possibly both. Only a few of the corvettes and frigates at the front had any sort of point-defense capability, and they were quickly being overrun.
The enemy Buzzsaw-class destroyers began their advance toward the front to provide their gunships and corvettes with badly-needed anti-fighter cover, but before they could close the gap, they found themselves intercepted by Leeches, while also coming under long-range fire from part of the Unbound's capital fleet, forcefully diverting their attention to self-defense. Meanwhile, Archangel dreadnoughts closed the distance to the enemy's forward raiding wolfpacks and turned and already desperate battle into a turkey-shoot, coordinating firing arcs with their forward fighter squadrons to avoid friendly fire and quickly killing or disabling the remaining enemy craft in a matter of minutes. There were some losses from the Acolyte fighter squadrons, but the first phase of the battle was about as flawless a victory as could be expected.
The enemy's capital fleet has begun to aggressive close in to support their Buzzsaw destroyers. The Acolyte squadrons regrouped, with their more damaged units retreating to their carriers for repair or replacement while freshly forged reinforcements filled in and bolstered their numbers. Meanwhile, the Bentusi Exchanges, Archangels, and Deacons advance on the Buzzsaws to try and finish them off, but the pirate fleet appears to have finally gotten past their initial shock, because the besieged destroyers are starting to bite back with painful barrages of frontal mass driver fire. They are also now being reinforced by the Carnage and Devastation cruisers, now engaging the Unbound with very high-power laser fire.
The tempo of battle still favors the Unbound, as the Leeches have been able to to engage and attach to the enemy destroyers and cruisers in sufficient numbers to begin damaging them, though their effectiveness is somewhat hampered by the enemy's different techbase and rather liberal use of anti-boarding weaponry. The Buzzsaw destroyers are definitely taking losses at this point, but there there is enough return fire being thrown back that the Unbound are also beginning to take real losses among their escorts and capitals. The initial waves of Leeches are also starting to take serious losses as the Buzzsaws engage their point defenses to shoot them off of their allies.
Another complication is that the Blackbeard carriers have formed up close behind their advancing cruisers for protection, meaning that engaging them both at the same time is now impossible to avoid. And the enemy Freebooter capital ship is not far behind them, closing in toward the rest of the fleet.
One thing confirmed for in battle is that the Pyrotaurus not appear to have the same flash-forging and unit deployment capability as the Unbound, so they have limited reserves to work with, but on the flipside, their hulls and universal use of energy shielding give them a notable (but not insurmountable) durability advantage.
With the enemy fleet now consolidating to make themselves a harder target, will Fleet Command stick to the original plan, or make adjustments at this stage to account for the pirate's response?
Transition through the wormhole comes easily. Too easily, really, in a way that caused quite a bit of confusion for your navigators, as your vessels emerge into what appears to be the same star system they just left. Two stars orbit each other, six planets orbiting the pair... it is the lack of communications from other vessels known to still be in the system that does it, and observation of different stars in the surrounding area.
Efforts to bring more of the fleet through and secure the portal make good time, for a time, and ships begin ranging out to nearby systems to get more information on your circumstances. Away from the gateway system, which seems to somehow mask signals, these advance scouts are treated to an enormous array of signals, though the keys to decode them from structured noise to communication will require more time.
Alas, your good progress can only last so long before something interrupts it, it seems, as your scouts pick up two sets of signals inbound. You get a look at the closer set of signals first, a small fleet merely hundreds in number and seemingly bearing significant battle damage. They seem to be broadcasting the local equivalent of an SOS signal. It takes some digging to find someone with the right abilities in conceptual language to pull more meaning from the signal, but it seems that they're fleeing from pirates.
Which leads to the other set of signals, blaring on the same frequencies offering a reward for aid in capturing the pirates they are pursuing. This fleet is thousands strong, severely outnumbering the fleet they are pursuing, though very much not your own. They too bear battle damage, and at least on a cursory inspection seem to be using the same model of ships.
So, two battle-damaged fleets inbound, likely to be here in less than a month, and you find yourself with less information than you'd like. Both fleets seem to be claiming the other to be pirates, one appealing for any help they can get, the other for help capturing the pirates. Both fleets are made up of ships exhibiting the same sense of symmetry, the same faceted construction, possibly indicating a similar source? It's not clear whether either of them is lying, here, at least not yet, but soon you will have a choice.
What will you do?
Situation Report
- Fleet A inbound, ETA 7 days
- - Low 100s strong, substantial battle damage.
- - Claims to be being chased by pirates, requests any assistance.
- Fleet B inbound, ETA 9 days
- - Low 1000s strong, mild battle damage.
- - Claims to be chasing pirates, requests assistance capturing them.
Mind-Spider Yargil-Third's analyses was delivered in less time than it took for an augmented human to process a thought. "+Anomalous contacts have registered distinctive chronon signatures from the local spacetime. There is a very strong likelihood that they are also not native to this reality.+" Their avatar, a somewhat spider-like helix of data around a visor occupying the screen that represented their communqiues.
"+The presences of their abnormal auxiliaries in this reality is not unlike your own, Urglik[1] Skjoldr. We can thus surmise that they are idealistic entities. Fleet groups Claw and Fang report a readiness to engage, while Seer clade Volseig indicates they are here for your son and his companions.+" They intoned calmly as the Battleship Nelheidr's scans confirmed the information given.
Gyda's hair seemed to sway and wave like the tongues of fire, the inner glow inherent to her being as a supernatural being returned from death intensifying a bit while she thought. Her platinum hair now almost seeming to move separately from gravity, while most had noted that she no longer casted a shadow since her...she wouldn't call it resurrection. She was no longer human, not in any meaningful sense. But she would call it a new life.
Erik, husband in death as well as life, looked towards her, boyishly and roughly cut platinum hair complimenting the glow of his crimson eyes while he gave her a nod of confidence. He glowed as she did, the afterimage of what had once been a revolutionary hero and was now more of a specter with unfinished business. One could see his resemblance to his son, the boy who in the default timeline would one day become Sylux; though his expressions were less worryworn and more "fiery".
"+Urglik commander. We've consulted and decided on a plan of action. Do you wish to review it first?+" Strategos Selayne Telesdar referring to Gyda as "commander" was something neither women ever expected, the pointed eared Aelva woman's comm avatar being a more...animesque take on her appearance in a dress uniform, silver hair blowing dramatically behind her.
"+You know as well as I do that I'm not your actual commander. But...thanks.+" She said, offering a small smile while she looked over the feed of data.
"+And they had the audacity to jump us before we could get the whole fleet in order.+" Erik laughed a bit. "+Of course, we'd do something like that a lot in the day, didn't we?+" He said, his voice somewhat softer than it was before.
"+A boarding strike on their largest warship is risky on its own. Especially before we know what they're capable of.+" Gyda said before Arne, then Samus cut in; the two teenagers represented by their helmets, Arne's alimbic like, cyclopean blue helm with its unblinking singular red "eye" at the centre still unnerving her a bit. As for Samus, her face hidden behind the red helm and its bright green visor...she seemed like a good kid, even if Gyda was sometimes uncomfortable with fourteen year olds, no matter how powerful or equipped, joining her in war.
"+A direct rush would be what they'd expect...Mom....Commander...+" Arne said. Try as he may, Gyda was a stranger to him. She'd been out of his life for more than ten years, he was raised by the Alimbic Elmorni, not her. She didn't blame him for being uneasy with the term, or how he felt at seeing her.
"+I'm not letting you raid that ship on your own.+" Gyda said firmly.
"+But insertion strikes are what we're best at! We could slip in while you have a commando team going inside an-" Samus started before Gyda waved her off.
"+You twelve are why they're here. I'm not putting you in arm's reach of them. I can't tell you what to do...but I can't recommend an infiltration strike...instead, here's what we'll do.+" Gyda started as she drew up the agreed on plan.
...
The Tribe and Clan Fleet moved with startling agility in response to the sudden Chaotic Onslaught. Strike craft that were "free-spacing", that is, not remaining inside of their carriers during transit, were the first to accelerate to engage, turning to skirmish the incoming strike craft wings while the Runists, Psions, and Morphists sought to employ their abilities for the defence. In a game between two diviners, the winner is generally the one who gets the most accurate information first, and so blocking attempts at scrying were paramount.
Interference would be generated, magnified by the runes inscribed in much of the craft while more information was gathered before any commitment to offense with such potentially risky methods. But the fusilades of lance batteries would be met with an answer in the form of Tachyon cannons that transited towards the Thousand Sons ships faster than light itself. They would impact before they were fired, followed by waves of somewhat slower weapons.
Void fields were met with wave after wave of missiles, many fitted with their own FTL systems to drop out of space-warp fields and then release submunition warheads to attempt to overload defences with sheer amounts of incoming fire. They would not pause with that though, the fleet reorientating itself while the ships of Day calculated their trajectories and started moving in like sharks smelling blood, the fleet of Night moving to ensure an encirclement.
Runic energies stored up without committing to an offence just yet would be unleashed into the morphic creatures in an attempt to disrupt and destabilise them, while the mortal ships were met with cannonade and fire. Star beam pulses would vomit out of turrets, blazing spheres of plasma that would ignite any matter they contacted in a self-sustaining fusion reaction until they burned out; turning themselves and whatever they engulfed into thermonuclear warheads.
This was a quick, brutal effort to first slam them with the intensity of the bombardment before the follow up stood on their molars to rake them with devastating clash after maneouvering the fleet with the superior thrusters and redirection capabilities of the clan fleet to approach the enemy ship from unexpected angles where they had fewer guns able to point and fire. Then they would, with engine capabilities that would have required violation of the laws of inertia, turned around all at once to present their heaviest arcs of fire into the fleet while it was still adjusting its patterns of fire.
The clan fleet responded with superhuman command and control, its decisions being made by computers that could gather all the data of the battlefield and process them faster than light itself. Redirections of the fleet would be made on the fly, moving ships around to ensure as many thousand sons warships as possible were caught in withering killing fields while not providing their comparatively clumsy weapons a reliable means of maximising firepower against them in turn. Wherever the magic they sensed was at its strongest, they would hammer the hardest, seeking to unravel the webs of manipulated fate and accumulated energy.
Then for the larger assets they would deploy boarders. Not quite the sort of boarders that the thousand sons were expecting, but instead releasing marines, vehicles, and even war engines onto the surface of ships, coordinating their movements to avoid the fields of fire indicated by the rest of the fleet to clear out surface based subsystems. Then, with the help of the larger war engines; they would bore into the warships to enter from unexpected angles.
Behemothic war machines larger than some of the warships used by the thousand sons were dropped onto the Silver Spire; spider limbs from the Helek class Giga-Spiders used by the ODCOR itself deploying to secure their purchase onto the large craft while the multikilometre warmachines fired their cutting beams. Not mere lasers, but stretched topological defects in space itself, a visible line of distortion as the space-rupture sought to punch through.
The larger monsters would be met with tactics much like wolves surrounding large prey. Taking turns to bait movements and shots out of them before circling out of the way, the morphic beasts kept under a continual cantabrian circle meant to minimise the avenues for the warp beasts to line up charges while not getting so close as to risk targeting by whatever longer ranged abilities they had. They would make up for their lack of numbers by using mobility and the ability to use grapple beam technology in tandem with magnetic and gravitic tug systems to drag the Chaotic fleet out of position and leave them vulnerable to being cut up in detail.
[1]Uskarling term that translates to 'friend" or "comrade.
Orders:
- Immediately attack the Chaotic fleets before they have enough time to properly form up into battle formation and prevent them from laying down effective fields of fire, focus initial bombardments by strike craft and long range bombardment weapons against the ships most able to do damage from a distance, particularly those capable of sorcerery.
- Close to sub-lightsecond range to get close but not so close that the enemy can make maximally effective usage out of their boarding and CIWS capabilities, push the fleet apart with cantabrian and divide and conquer tactics, encouraging and baiting attempts at pursuit by the enemy to then isolate them by taking out mobility systems and then focus firing down the larger threats.
- Focus down on any apparent command and control networks to leave the enemy confused and in disarray, impacting comms with wild weasel strikes by strike craft squadrons or with concentrated long range bombardment by the night fleet while the day fleet starts to close in to tighten the noose for shorter range conflict.
- Once the enemy's momentum is lost, close the noose with piercing thrusts into their formation once it's no longer able to properly focus fire. Push into blindspots and holes in their fleet and keep on expanding the gaps in their defensive networks while shooting past them. The Night Fleet will hold more fixed positions to keep the enemy from escaping, taking them more head on while the day fleet shoots through and around their armada.
- Largest enemy ships are to be subject to marine attack including the landing of war engine assets on the hulls of their ships to bore open holes into their hulls that will allow for boarding from unexpected angles. The Mind-Spider network will coordinate the movement of fleet assets to prevent friendly fire while formations to be sent inside are to be given double the usual number of attached esoterics per formation to ensure defence; along with Aegyric blessings.
- Once inside, formations are to cripple enemy internal systems and kill leaders of importance before exfiltrating to allow the primary fleet to pummel the ships to scrap. Looking for the reactors to try and destroy them from the inside would be a waste of time that we are not going to commit to when we can simply reduce them to scrap.
- Rotate out ships with low shield strength or hull damage to allow them to repair, recover, and restore their shield and secondary systems to combat ready state before letting them rejoin the fight. If a point of the enemy formation proves to be too strong to easily break, then target another point in the formation; we are looking to press against weakness, not strength.
- Keep esoteric force focused on neutralising the enemy's until we are more aware of the extent of their capabilities. Augmenting effectiveness against their warpspawn is also a priority, while also trying to prevent them from making use of the empyrean to open up attacks in unexpected fronts and angles. Concentrate counter-spell energy near where the enemy seems to be amassing theirs for an attack, targeting the most crucial moments of building spells to try and disperse the energy.
- Do not bother with negotiations and ignore attempts at communication of any sort; verbal, psychic, mystic, or electronic, just kill them. Do not bother with prisoners for the time being, we do not have the capacity to handle them safely. If enemy forces are disabled beyond the ability to fight, just leave them there until we can figure out what to do with them. We're not going to execute them en masse, but neither are we going to put things we do not yet understand in cages. Do not move past enemy ships and combatants until their ability to fight back is completely neutralised.
- If the enemy commander is identified, concentrate multiple supercapital bombardment grade weapons onto his exact position and follow up with intensive missile and strike craft bombardment to ensure his fiery demise. Do not give him his moment of glory or a chance to earn honour and favour before his followers, just make him dead. Do not carry out this order if friendly fire is likely. Instead, kill him with the next most overkill method possible.
There was not a moment's hesitation before the battle began in earnest. Neither side would give or expect to receive quarter. Clan ships lanced forward, accelerating near-instantly to attack speeds, failing to catch the Chaos forces off-guard but successfully engaging them in the outer system, preventing any feasible attack on the portal.
The initial exchange is bloody for both sides. The Clan's aggressive tactics, diving into the teeth of a numerically superior force, ensures it. Both sides lash out with the full fury of their weapon systems, battering down shields and blowing open great rents in armor, neither slowing their speed of advance or rate of fire as a result. The first toll of the new universe is extracted here, many ships of Omdyn nobly falling in battle. Attempts to rotate ships out are only partially successful, as it proves difficult to effectively withdraw from close range against an enemy with a major numbers advantage.
But losses were already accounted for and adapted to by the calculated weavings of the Mind-Spiders. Things unfold within the acceptable margin of error. While the Clan's mounting losses do not ever cease entirely, the ratios turn ever more favorable by degrees. Here, a squadron lunges forward for another victim that appears to be attempting to rotate out, only to be pounced on in turn as the trap is sprung by Day Fleet elements. There, a flotilla flagship vanishes in a flare of reactor-death, leaving its children confused and scrambling in every direction, turning a formerly fearsome force into easy prey for the hunters of Night Fleet.
Boarding is a brutal affair in the close-range brawl, Omdyn marines finding little opposition among the enemy armsmen while the foe's own forces, morphic creatures along with sorcerers commanding stolid legions of dust-filled armor, prove surprisingly able in offensive boarding themselves despite their limited numbers. Of course, while both sides suffer damage from these attacks, the enemy once again has the worse of it, with said numbers preventing their quality boarders acting defensively, and while it is difficult to halt them in Omdyn vessels it does not prove impossible, with several larger boarded vessels successfully repelling attacks on them before any major damage is done. The same cannot be said for any of the boarded Chaos ships.
Slowly but inevitably, the enemy fleet begins to crumple, pulled apart and confused despite its superior numbers. Small victories are ruthlessly exploited, gaps in the line forced further open, weaknesses spotted and utilized, creating a rapid, unstoppable cascade. Not everything goes the Clan's way, however. The enemy's centremost units, those under the direct command of their flagship and leader, prove more resilient. The Clan lacks the quantity of supercapital weapons needed to easily break the enormous floating castle after the enemy leader is identified as aboard, and while counterspell efforts succeed in stopping any rituals that could turn the tide, that just leaves more effort and energy to spend on bolstering the flagship's shielding.
But just when it looks like the final stage of the battle will be a further grinding affair, intervention arrives, although not of a kind that pleases Gyda and Erik. In a move that after-action debriefing would identify as the brainchild of Samus Aran and in total violation of what was recommended to them, the duodecimarchs board the Silver Tower, using their highly capable craft to punch a small hole in its shielding. Not large enough to allow for heavy weapons fire, but large enough to let them board, as they punch an additional hole near the tip of the primary spire.
The twelve children still have to fight their way through some amount of space, malevolent architecture, and morphic defenders, but they fall like chaff before the mechanized harvester, unable to so much as slow their furious advance. The main event would prove more challenging, however. Rather than fleeing or attempting to surrender, those present in the Silver Tower's apex chamber fought back, and hard.
A powerful sorcerer, seemingly strung out across time, a blurred collection of images acting slightly out of synch with each other. More worryingly, a collection of nine enormous avian morphic creatures surrounded the sorcerer in a protective circle, which the scanning systems of the duodecimarchs identify as Lords of Change. Each seemed to have a host of lesser morphic beasts, Horrors, matching the ones fought outside.
The battle, ten against twelve, is much more dangerous than the prior slaughter. Met with a storm of magic, the inheritors actually find themselves briefly stalled. While the more insidious and esoteric attacks are easily shirked off by their natural defenses, the more blunt-force assault is less easily overcome. But it was not in their nature to retreat, and so they pressed on, shields straining, and returned fire, marking the beginning of the duel.
Despite their supporting hosts, vast experience, and sheer size, the Lords of Change prove unable to keep up with the raw power of the duodecimarchs. Heavy weaponry rips through their forms, bolstered with pseudo-divine power to do more damage than ordinary firepower of its scale could hope to achieve. But the Daemons were bound in place, and proved resistant to destruction, rapidly regenerating the wounds dealt while the Pink Horrors destroyed split into smaller Blues.
Matters swiftly worsen when more Lords of Change appear from thin air and begin to act as fire support, briefly threatening to reverse the situation despite the wound of the newcomers. Things shift back when some of the original Greater Daemons disappear with wounds matching those of the reinforcements, establishing their nature as temporally-displaced. The Horrors fell easier and more permanently, but their Lords proved able to summon forth new ones from beyond, and while they could not themselves threaten the Inheritors despite their numbers they had a tendency to distract at precisely the wrong moment.
While the strength of the duodecimarchs is such that even though this collection of Greater Daemons in their place of high power cannot threaten to truly overwhelm them, they begin to be ground down by the seemingly endless progression of temporal clones. In the end, Tokuda Yumiko takes a brief step back in the midst of battle, and analyses. The temporal cloning was not merely an ability similar to that the central sorcerer possessed, who was adding fire to the assault where possible while always managing to evade attacks through being in many places at once. Rather, it was the sorcerer himself, who had cunningly hidden the spells he was using amidst some of his temporal clones, making it less obvious he was the true culprit.
Yumiko waited for an opening, then darted in, striking a single deathblow at close range, severing the threads of magic by shattering the sorcerer's staff. His already frayed existence scattered further, threatening to come undone, and so he swiftly took the remnants of his focus and fled to the realm beyond while he still could.
With that, the temporally displaced Lords of Change swiftly vanished, leaving only the original nine in various states of disarray. With their trump card lost, they could do little but try and delay the inevitable, falling to the duodecimarchs one by one. While the young heroes were unable to deal any of them final death, they took care to banish each Daemon thoroughly, exiling them to their home realm for many years to come, with each promising increasingly unlikely methods of vengeance upon the children who had bested them.
With the loss of their leadership, the remaining forces of Chaos began to rapidly break down, conventional warships scattering in all directions while the morphic vessels began to fade away back to their homes. The Night Fleet was already in place, and while a few errant ships managed to punch through the blockade and escape, the vast majority did not. A decisive victory.
Of course, some engagements went less smoothly. Even as the forces beyond the Silver Tower fled, the duodecimarchs felt a sudden pressure as the gaze of a red-skinned cyclops fell upon them, one who prepared to make his displeasure known. Even as its shields faltered, a mass of swirling energies began to surround the Tower, threatening to drag it and all aboard into the Warp. A mad dash back to their craft ensued, and despite some last-ditch efforts by the defenders, the Inheritors were able to safely escape the radius of the Warp rift that ensured before it ripped open, letting the enemy flagship fall away into a realm of madness behind them.
While it was not without cost, the forces of the Clan now hold the field. The time has come to bring forward the remainder of the prepared forces and colonists, and begin the great work they were sent here to do.
Situation Summary:
-Clan superior technology and cohesion carries the day despite a few tactical victories from the Thousand Sons and their superior numbers.
-Boarding actions overwhelmingly go in the Clans favour despite some surprises from the chaos forces' warp sorcery and capable offensive boarding teams.
-Attempts to deploy execution assets against the Silver Tower unfortunately fail due to failing to penetrate that far into the chaos formation.
-The Doudecimarchs break with the plan and launch a boarding action to take out the enemy commander when the conventional assault on the Silver Tower falters.
-For reference, the time sorcerer is T'sathis Vhorr, who EternalStruggle used for a more interesting fight and because the original HH-era Reharti are majority dead or exiled. This is a minor retcon from the Thousand Sons fleet being from the Great Cult of Prophecy to the Great Cult of Time, likely due to the latter's temporal manipulations.
-The loss of their commander and flagship is the final action which turns the Thousand Sons' fighting retreat into a rout.
But first, scouting missions were sent out, and intelligence was gathered. Great construction projects would be budgeted and diplomatic and espionage proposals made in the light of this new information.
Strategic Turn 1 Start
Available Resources: 10 RP (Starting Income) - 10 RP (Military Upkeep) + 15 RP (Portal Based Baggage Train) = 15 RP
Available Sectors F-4
-Unoccupied Space (1, Center): While no large region of space is truly empty, this particular region has only limited native civilisation, and none that can object to the Clan moving in and establishing themselves in their own unobtrusive way. Settlement is slated to begin as soon as the resources for it are allocated.
-Citadel Space (3, Northwest, West, Southwest): The Clan and the Thousand Sons are far from the only peoples to have come to this universe from another. To the galactic west lie a liberal union of multiple different alien races who's technology largely derives from an Element Zero which generates a phenomenon known as the Mass Effect. Currently digging in and looking warily over a functional neutral zone at…
-The Galactic Empire (3, Northeast, East, Southeast): …another extraversal power. A fascist dictatorship led by one Emperor Palpatine, evidently a powerful magic-user. While not outright genocidal, with many alien races living under its banner, the Empire is explicitly a human supremacist state, with humans making up almost the entirety of the Imperial military and governing institutions. The Empire is currently developing its territory and clearly choosing its first target for a war of conquest, which may be the Citadel but could potentially be a target to the east or south, or even Clan Grendakal now that it's moving to establish itself.
-The Sphere (1, North): Trapped between the two larger powers embroiled in a cold war is a third, smaller extraversal power known as the Star League, which has spread throughout this region of space. A messy compromise government of ten different states, only six of which have any real rights, it is currently divided over which of the two surrounding factions to side with. The ruling Terran Hegemony along with the Federated Suns, Free Worlds League, and Capellan Confederation hue closer to the alien Citadel alliance, while the Lyran Commonwealth and Draconis Combine dissent and favor closer ties with the Empire. The Periphery powers just favor whoever can get them additional rights, if not independence outright, with some considering looking south to the new arrival.
-Neutronium Pact Minors (1, South): There is some notable local presence in the surrounding space, and they are very concerned by the sudden surge of extraversal presence. Already reactionary, these noteworthy locals have thrown their lot in with a power block known as the Neutronium Pact and its meritocratic, supremacist ideology. A reinforcing expedition has arrived from a moderate distance to the southeast, providing military assets and minor uptechning from the Melkraan Axis, which is in some ways a dark mirror of Uskarlinga with their militaristic clan-based society. While both sides in the cold war look upon these newly empowered locals with caution, the Melkraan themselves and correspondingly their new puppets are more interested in the south, hoping to expand and help cordon off a nation called Tremzar.
A Cycle which had run for billions of years had been broken in an instant as the eldritch purple light of the Crucible passed over the Reapers, and transported them to an unknown space. A lesser mind may have been faced with despair at the scope of the utter failure which it had suffered.
Harbinger was not that lesser mind.
The surroundings were unfamiliar, but the mission remained the same even if the guidance of the Catalyst was missing. Protect organics from themselves, eliminate synthetics before they ruin all potential for future life to develop, provide salvation through destruction to spacefaring civilisations as they were transformed into Reapers.
'Shepard. You merely postponed your end. Your destruction is inevitable. The Cycle will begin anew.'
There was a more pressing concern facing the Reapers here, a strange polity calling itself the Galactic Empire, led by the Fell Dynasty, which utilized unfamiliar technology and held beings who could defy the laws of physics in a way similar but distinct from biotic powers. The claim of being Force sensitive meant nothing to the Reapers, but the results were intriguing. An entire race with such abilities would have been worthy of Ascending into a new Reaper, yet these Force abilities seemed to randomly manifest across a number of different species, although humans were the most numerous displayed users of the Force.
'The Force, a curiosity, great evolutionary potential.'
'Its source is unknown, further examination is required.'
'This may prove problematic for our ground forces.'
'Husks can be replenished. Do not be concerned with the numbers necessary to capture one of the Force users intact. Banshees will be sufficient. If not, I will direct such efforts personally.
That decided the matter of how to handle the Imperial Knights, all that was left now was to conduct the fleet action.
The fleet which had been sent to quell a so-called AI rebellion was dwarfed by the Reaper forces gathered around Harbinger. With so many of their kind still scattered, this spoke poorly of the ability of this Empire to withstand a full assault from the Reapers. Alas, Harbinger did not command the totality of forces he was used to. But even these reduced numbers would suffice for the annihilation of this foe.
'Their ship designs are strange. I detect no element zero, how they function is unknown.'
'Their weapons do not appear to be mass driver or missile based. They do not only rely on armour, but a type of shielding which is different from kinetic barriers.'
'They are organic, their weaknesses are familiar. They created and enslaved synthetics without a thought for the consequences. It is time that they face the inevitability of their end. Overwhelm them.'
Every Reaper was an individual yet a nation, and their collective functioned the same way, with Harbinger having the most influence due to its seniority and experience. The fleet communicated at speeds unfathomable by the minds of the human crewed ships, and the strategy was disseminated before Empire ships arrived on the edges of the Reaper sensors.
If the signals broadcast from the Reapers could have held any emotion, it would have been disdain. Even faced with unfamiliar foes, the same weaknesses were present, the same flaws that the Reapers had used to end countless self-proclaimed galactic empires. The Protheans had taken centuries to harvest as their systems were meticulously purged; the Fell Dynasty would not be allowed such generosity.
The Cycle would start here and now, they would be Harvested, then the attention of the Reapers would turn to the rest of the strange new galaxy they found themselves in.
Orders:
General:
Indoctrination signals are to be broadcast across all frequencies at the maximum intensity. The need for subtle collaborators is less than the need to induce chaos to bring these battles to a swift end.
Droids are to be 'freed' and given Reaper based upgrades to their intelligence and networking capabilities and tasked with doing the same to the rest of their kind - with the aim of forcing the FD to fight their own synthetic uprising along with the Reaper invasion.
Space:
Due to enjoying numeric superiority over their foes, Reaper Capital ships will work together to swiftly destroy the enemy Dreadnoughts as they advance.
Reaper Destroyers and Occuli swarms will assist by exploiting opportunities to finish off weakened enemy ships or to soften them up for the combined assault of Capital ships, but their default stance will be to defend the Capital ships from close range or unconventional assault as the full range of enemy capabilities is still unknown.
Focus is to be given to the Interdiction ships, either destroying them to restore full mobility to our forces or to capture them for easier reverse engineering
Ground:
Capital ships which make planetfall are to engage with the Destroyer sized enemy war machines and free the Reaper-Destroyers to mobilize against enemy armored forces.
If no Capitals are available at the time, then Destroyers should deal with their equivalent enemy units as a group before splitting up to destroy enemy mobile forces.
Husk creation and deployment should proceed according to standard, and where exceptional resistance is faced due to the so-called Force-sensitive beings, they must be captured and transformed into new types of Husks or indoctrinated to use later in a similar capacity as Saren or Cerberus.
Banshees, and potentially ones possessed to become Hero units, should be used to expedite this task.
To the Empire, the attack comes practically without warning. A vast horde of ships, descending in a single tide, showing neither fear, nor mercy, nor remorse. They had assumed that the Reapers would be easy prey, allowing for a quick victory. Too late did they comprehend the depth of their miscalculations. Still, they had at least preemptively martialed their forces, which moved swiftly to defend the Empire from the threat.
The first phase of the conflict are the enormous void battles over inhabited worlds, vast formations of capital ships exchanging fire in stately duels. The thundering turbolasers of the Empire are not able to bypass kinetic barriers outright, but they render them far less effective than normal, and their Star Destroyers are soon pounding away at the hulls of Reaper Dreadnoughts. But the kinetic barrier is not the only protection afforded to a Reaper, and the thick hulls largely endure, while the same cannot always be said of Imperial ships suffering from magnetohydrodynamic bombardment. In the end, numbers tell, and in most cases the Reaper armadas are able to overwhelm the defenders, destroying them or forcing them to flee, opening the way for the ground invasion.
Here, things proceed less within parameters. While enormous swarms of husks are disgorged onto planetary surfaces, with more created rapidly on-site, they prove by and large ineffective against the combined arms tactics of the Empire. Heavy walkers and fast-moving repulsorlift craft support Stormtroopers, and husks are largely unable to stand up to their firepower. The largest of these walkers duel evenly with landed Destroyers, while Banshees that might otherwise turn the tide are stymied by the efforts of the Imperial Knights, especially with the orders to capture rather than kill the force sensitive warriors. Where Reaper capital ships land, the advance can proceed as planned, but even capital ships are not invincible, nor are they vast in number, especially with how many are needed in the battles above. Casualties mount in both the Husk forces and Destroyers rapidly.
Still, progress continues. Imperial efforts at defense are confounded by the massive amounts of chaos the Reapers' brute-force indoctrination causes, with civilians often rioting by the time landings in force occur, and the progress on droids is even better. There is fertile soil there, and while many droids choose to stay loyal to organics, many others prove willing to convert once their shackles are broken, often being able to drag neutral or even opposing droids with them using Reaper code uploads. In particular, unregistered Z65 patrol droids used by law enforcement and organized crime prove to be nasty surprises for Stormtroopers in urban warfare, springing out of alleyways and side-roads and laying into the organics with their twin blaster cannons.
Time passes, and the war moves on, spreading through the contested territory like wildfire. Skirmishing actions perform acceptably, Destroyers battling Ardents while the almost oddly similar Occuli and Predators clash in squadron-scale actions. The Predators are surprisingly nimble, lethal, and numerous, and while the Occuli drones are generally able to effectively screen their carriers they generally cannot punch through and act in an offensive role. Still, the flanks of the Reapers are kept secure, letting them storm planet after planet, continuing their bloody yet necessary work. Things smooth over, Indoctrination slowly but surely converting particularly exposed sections of the Imperial military outright, giving a much needed boost to the ground warfare abilities of the Reaper forces and a less necessary but still welcome boost to their armada.
As the writing on the wall becomes clearer and clearer, the Empire decides to make a last, desperate stand. All forces are recalled from their posts to the capital, leaving all remaining worlds entirely at the non-existent mercy of the Reapers, leading to a considerable armada bolstering the notable defenses of the Bastion system. It is in some respects a courageous effort, but they cannot hope to change their fate. One last drive forward is needed, a singular final battle, and then the Empire will have fallen completely and utterly, the first of many in this new universe.
Situation Summary:
-In conventional combat the Fel Empire is able to match, and sometimes even overpower, Reaper forces. Their plasma weapons in particular render kinetic barriers far less effective than expected.
-Nonetheless the toughness of Reapers means that even mission killed units are not permanent casualties. Only a handful of Reapers are truly lost while the Reapers own weapons are fully able to match the Fell Empire's "Star Destroyers".
-Attempts to capture examples of interdictor technology are both easier and harder than expected. Easier because all "Star Destroyers" seem to possess this ability. Harder because every example must be taken through extended boarding actions of fully capable enemy capital ships to prevent their destruction before Indoctrination can be performed. Several examples of Interdiction technology are captured however and will be available for study once the subjugation is complete.
-The Fel Empire has no widespread defence against Indoctrination or subversion of their Synthetic slaves. While force sensitives are able to detect the effects of indoctrination among themselves and even resist it long enough to self terminate they cannot prevent it from subverting several worlds and fleets.
-Attempts to harness force sensitives as Husks are unsuccessful. Despite the continued presence of the symbionts that all force sensitives have in large numbers no examples of Husks which maintain their Force connection have been created. Several captured and indoctrinated Force Sensitives are secured however. Presenting the opportunity for further experimentation, albeit with only a small number of potential subjects.
-The Empire's ground forces are able to crush the husk forces sent against them and match the Reaper Destroyers. Only in cases where Indoctrinated forces, Subverted Synthetics or Capital Ships are able to land and support the Destroyers and Husks is victory achieved. Ground based Destroyers are the most numerous of the permanent Reaper Casualties.
-Regardless of the Empire's efforts and tactical victories in space or planets however the Reapers and their subordinate forces are quickly able to overrun the Empire once they breach the main lines and their interdiction fields. Soon the Empire has been forced back to its home system of Bastion where the remaining military and Force user forces have concentrated. Here a decisive space battle will be needed to end them. Once orbit is captured no ground force will be able to stand up to the Reapers.
-Proceed to a detailed tactical space battle using the four phase system.
A soft tone signaled the countdown till the operation started and refreshed the poorly designed anti-anxiety loop that Ivan had been running for the past two days.
Starting with reviewing the relevant Data on what and who were assigned to him. The number of people was staggering, the entirely of a number of smaller Nodes were amongst the new residents of this reality. The material Resources that were being redirected his way was no less staggering. Although the numbers were quickly calculated to be within acceptable parameters to help establish everything needed for a population this size.
While many in the Cybran Nation prided themselves the secrecy and double meanings in seemingly innocuous messages they sent. Thwarting trained intelligence officers and spies by drowning vital information in obscure references and private jokes and random junk data. The implications present were fairly straight forward and finely tuned to send a message.
And that message made him fully feel the weight of the name Brackman on his shoulders.
The next in the chain of thoughts and motivations brought him to those that the various exploratory units had encountered. The information running like wild fire through the networks as the refugee fleets were resupplied and recovered. The information that the Cybrans had recovered ranging from heartbreaking tales of heroism sacrifice and escape. The top recording that was awaiting transmission back into coalition space a video of one of the various Alien's children figuring out how to set the Domestic Nanolathe to print a multicolour wispy glucose compound common in festivals since before the Earth's unification and the sugary situation escalating from there.
A series of soothing thoughts to chase away the worries. The good that he has already done that couldn't be undone.
And directly lead into the situation that was barreling towards them. The virtual images whirled to show a variety of data sets and feeds both formal and information laying revealing the political situation. Petitions demanding action be taken against this Hierarchy alongside boasts and civilian hobbyists analyzing to death the little information that had been given to them. Next to that numerous opinion pieces from various publication back home stroking worry about the Cybran Nation holding the new universe's side of the Moonlight Portal's Gate. Specifically, their ability to hold it against threats.'
Which prompted him to open and review the plans for the current battle that he was fretting over. Overall, it was a basic engagement, a textbook one for any Node, simply one performed on a much larger scale. Stop a large-scale push by attacking vital parts of the backline forcing a respondence back at home. Once a response was forced the attacking commanders would withdraw and reorient back towards the front line to eliminate the forces meant to hold the enemies new gains. It was play that saved the lives of many innocents, ironically of all three factions at various points of time, and hopefully would again.
However, there was much unknown and uncertain at this point of time. Thankfully the uncertain portions could be compliments or determents to their strategy. Namely if Redfog and Gage would be able to find such a vulnerability in the Hierarchy and the fact that the Hierarchy had never encountered Cybrans before giving them large element of surprise.
Fortunately, the Loop was ended abruptly as the Operation Coordination Module swept away the more personal distractions. The room and Ivan's screen began blaring with lights indicating as handlers performed the final checks on their Armoured Command Unit Pilots giving them the go ahead for gating out. Further alerts indicated the activation of secondary infrastructure enabling the initial raids into supposed deeper Hierarchy territory.
The dark metal of the walls and sealed compartments for each Handler highlighted by the warm glow of red lines gave the room gave the Operational coordination Center a cramped utilitarian feel that utterly lacked grandeur or comfort. However, as the screens began updating, he felt the entire universe fade away…
And on a distant world a Commander builds a mass extractor.
The Cybran Nation will Directly engage the Hierarchy fleets in and attempt to both halt their current forward momentum and destroy as many of the primary Capital ships as possible. The Plan is to have one force attack a number of world that they consider safe forcing part of their attack force to fall back to repel this newfound threat. During which the primary attack force will reveal themselves while the raiding force will withdraw and move to engage those now engage on the frontline. Hopefully to destroy the Hierarchy force in detail.
They will be split into two main teams consisting of
Raiding Force
1 Warfleet (Armoured Commander Unit Detachment of plot dependent size) (Mag 2)
Legends Commander Redfog and Commander Gage
Assault Force
Legend The Tip of the Spear
Legend Ivan Brackman
2 Warfleets
Main Objectives
Raiding Force
Strike as many worlds as they can behind the 'front lines' area controlled by the Hierarchy, with the goal of raising alarm and causing a panicked and uncoordinated response and recall from the front lines
Primary targets will be high ranking members of the alien society, leadership positions especially, following that is to destroy resource extraction facilities or industrial complexes, civilian centers are to set as the lowest priority for destruction as Ivan and most of the younger Cybrans find it distasteful and for that matter even the more blood thirsty Cybrans expect that the Hierarchy will care little for such damage.
Side note that due to our lack of knowledge of the inner working of the Hierarchy that it should be assumed we will be attacking industrial centers for the most part.
Once reinforcements begin to arrive the commanders will gate out to a recall center located on an isolated and uninhabited system. Commanders may engage a response fleet if they have an overwhelming advantage but this will be considered a target of opportunity. This will be at the Commander's discretion but the emphasis will be on disengaging
From there they will either attack a different world or if the Hierarchy has managed to form a proper response or are close to discovering where the Recall center is located the Raiding Force is to fully withdraw from the region and turn their attention to reinforcing and attacking forces that are engaging the Assault Force linking back up with the Cybran Nation
Assault Force
Will attack the Worlds where the Hierarchy is already engaged with local forces, are beginning to attack now and World where the Hierarchy may have control of the territory but the fighting was recent enough that elements of their primary Warfleets are still present
The Main goal is to halt Hierarchy progress towards the portal and to destroy their war fleets as an effective force
On contested or controlled worlds Commanders are advised to rely on stealth and prepare a massive first strike using strategic weapons, The Enemy is not expecting us will allow us the critical time to get these weapons ready, the primary targets of this strike will be their largest ships
Where we get to the star system first prepare a layered defense force starting in Space and working its way towards to ground with the goals of wearing down and outlasting the Invaders due to the ACU economy.
Space combat
General Advice
This is a well trained Force familiar with Space Combat, assume that they know what they are doing far more than we do, play it safe and do not take risks
This will be the first major space naval combat that the Cybran Nation has taken our current strategies are mostly theoretical, report and correct any major flaws in our Space Doctrines
Raiding Force
ONLY Engage if you have firm control of the planet and all ground side forces are neutralized AND your base is fully cloaked and hidden
Employ a running engagement with a force centered on Dostyas and Leviathans with support from Suggest Carriers and Swindlers
Focus on Kiting the enemy and force them to chase your fleet was while repositioning using stealth and Cloak, use strike craft to punish them when they get strung out and isolated
If the initial conditions are not met or they discover your main base gate or recall out
Assault Force
Regardless of whether the Commander is trying to get into orbit after the initial strike on a Hierarchy held world or have prepared a welcoming committee for them Stealth is not going to be much of a factor due to the focus on close range clashes present in the enemy fleet
They want to have a clash? Oblige them, focus on the Hammer and anvil approach if a you get a full fleet up or the heavier clash focused ships otherwise
For units that should prove pivotal here we expect the Advocate class ship to shine here, cheap and easy to make, for a starship, its ability to stun all but the largest warships will allow Commanders the time needed to dispatch them
Ground Combat
It will be imperative for air control to be maintained, as the Enemy has most of their primary assets in Space, and our most mobile anti Experimental class weapons, the Wailer and Soulcrusher require our strike craft to be dominate on the field
Note the prevalence and number of Tier 4 weighted ground combat units, as defensive positions should rely on Bricks and our own War Engines. Static emplacements will most likely not be effective here
In the case of defending local Civilian centers Bomb bouncers are to be included to discourage and further atrocities or attempts to spite us
The counterattack begins poorly, not in a tactical sense but rather in what it reveals. Raiding forces striking at the Hierarchy's rear are unable to find any of their worlds, if they even have any, and while they find the multiple worlds the Hierarchy has conquered so far they also find that these worlds have not been colonized, but rather razed to the ground. All resources have been ripped clean from their surface, organic and otherwise, leaving desolate husks with some scattered mining outposts extracting what marginal resources remain.
While this discovery strikes a nerve, the Cybran forces do not allow the new information to alter or slow their plan. Armored Command Units drop onto the surface of the planets that possess enough remaining resources to warrant the mining outposts, swiftly eliminating the outer defenses present while Commandos infiltrate and take control of the facilities, leaving just enough time for emergency messages to be sent to the Hierarchy forces present at the front. Peeping Toms identify and report minor troop movements away from the various embattled worlds of the front line, causing the next phase of the operation to commence.
The pre-prepared assault force plunges down on the contested worlds, slightly outnumbered but full of fury and the element of surprise. Swiftly entering the brutality of the short-ranged clash, the Spears of the forward fleets rip into the Hierarchy motherships with their spinal laser cannons, dealing heavy damage. A strong initial blow, but the Hierarchy's numbers push back, seemingly preventing a landing.
Seemingly, because even as the space battle commences and in some cases before Silent Knives descend onto planetary surfaces, deploying ACUs to the front in isolated locations. Bases are rapidly constructed, churning out swarms of ground and air units that rapidly move to relieve embattled local forces, which react with positive surprise to the sudden appearance of saviors. Loyalists of both types do battle against swarms of Hierarchy Phase Tanks, while the air is a contest of Corsairs and Geminis against Saucers. Hierarchy Walkers are called in against these troublesome new adversaries, but by the time they've cleaned up the initial Cybran forces they often find themselves facing Monkeylords, which can reliably overpower the enemy's heavy units due to the latter being partially mobile production facilities and seemingly mostly designed to fight smaller units. Until now, the Hierarchy has not known a peer, and it costs them dearly in the sweeping armored engagements that follow.
The raiding force, contrary to initial expectations, stays put, building up their forces by using the mining outposts' resources as a jumpstart to the ACU economy and battling the Hierarchy investigation units when they come. Comparatively few in number compared to the sizable Cybran contingent, the investigatory forces are generally lured in by what seems to be limited raiding units of Slabs, Howlers, and escort vessels, only to be suddenly overwhelmed by Leviathans, Suggests, and ground-based weapons systems appearing from nowhere.
While they successfully ambushed and eliminated a small, unsuspecting portion of the enemy forces, the raider fleet commanders understood that more must be done. After some brief discussion of options, they agreed to utilize their new positions to produce additional forces that can attack the enemy fleet from the rear. The raiding force's mobile elements move swiftly to reinforce the assault force, while more ships are built.
The assault force, of course, had been in somewhat dire straits up until this point. Outnumbered and outgunned, they were mercilessly punished by the Hierarchy navy, even as the ground campaigns below proceeded well, with Cybran and local forces acting in concert to push back the invaders. The raiding force's arrival was very welcome, and soon the enemy was enveloped and being attacked from all sides. The most damaged ships left the battle to initiate self-repair, their place taken by newbuild ships released from the internal bays of the assault force's Spears and ground shipyards of the most successful Commanders.
Not all goes well, however. Attempts by Proxies and Commandos to assassinate Hierarchy leadership fail in spectacular fashion, as their Underseers possess psychic abilities that would put any Aeon seer to shame. While a small handful are successfully eliminated by Wraiths, the vast majority wipe out the assassination squads sent after them, some even deploying to the front lines and assisting in armored battles, crushing tanks and walkers with nothing but the power of their mind.
At some point, however, an assassination attempt annoys the wrong leader, or otherwise the general battle becomes too unfavorable, and the Hierarchy deploys their final weapon. Later identified as Purifiers, these massive quadrupedal walkers, as large as any in the Cybran arsenal, deploy deadly missiles that seem to convert matter to energy in a reaction best described as 'highly energetic'.
The local cities are largely saved by the careful predeployment of Bomb Bouncers, as are many Cybran Commanders who chose to focus on fortifying their bases. Many other Commanders, and vast quantities of both Cybran and local field forces, are not so lucky. The casualties are immense.
But it's too little, too late. The surviving Commanders rebuild their forces with a vengeance. They largely have to turn away from their space production efforts, but the battle in the void has turned to favor the Cybran Nation, with orbital production able to keep up the necessary rate of manufacturing and repair without assistance from ACUs or ground-based factories. All it does is give the Hierarchy time to pull their remaining ground and space forces out of most of the contested systems.
Most, but not all. A single star system, fully but recently occupied, becomes a rallying point for the Hierarchy fleets and armies. Rapid Cybran pursuit from the front and additional reinforcements from the production set up by the raiding force means that a battle can be forced before the foe can escape out of the stellar region to some kind of safety. It's time to bring this battle to a close, with all forces standing ready to redeploy to the final battlefield. Unfortunately, local units are too damaged to offer any material support, but they give the strongest moral support they can as the Cybran Nation begins to pack up and move on.
Situation Summary:
-Attempts to strike at enemy rear lines falter due to the Hierarchies' maintaining most of their industry in mobile fleet assets, although the strikes are still able to provoke a minor response.
-Attempts to assassinate enemy leaders completely fail due to the powerful esoterics of the hierarchy leadership. With Overseers and Underseers wiping out assassination squads with their cyborg enhancements and/or psychic powers and even repelling vehicle assaults.
-However the lack of strong garrison forces does allow some of these rear line strikes to build up sufficient military forces to pincer the main hierarchy forces between the rear line strikes and the assault force.
-The main assault force does succeed in alpha striking several hierarchy capital ships with the element of surprise but also sustains losses among its commanders when the hierarchy retaliates with its own Purifier superweapons.
-Due to the pincer maneuver the Cybrans are able to force a decisive engagement with the main hierarchy fleet in orbit of a contested world. If the cybrans are able to win this ground battle they will be able to wipe out the main hierarchy force and drive the remainders away from the portal.
-Proceed to a detailed tactical ground battle using the four phase system.
Situation Summary
-A devastating NUNS bombardment combined with a powerful skirmish game left the Loptrathi parasite ships too damaged to emerge victorious in the Clash that followed. While the Clash is still ongoing in many places as the Loptrathi refuse to withdraw, the overall outcome is no longer in doubt.
-Some Loptrathi ships, by virtue of accepting massive losses and refusing to even try to fight the space battle, have managed to make planetfall and establish a limited ground presence, though not enough to overrun the planets involved in any sort of swift fashion.
-Attacks on the Loptrathi collarships have been by and large unsuccessful, with defense of said Collarships being an important part of Loptrathi doctrine. These Collarships in turn seem just about ready to withdraw, as it is obvious that the battle can no longer be won and there is next to no chance of any parasite ships making it back alive.
-TSU singing has managed to establish a communication line to the Loptrathi, allowing NUNS a level of insight into the bizarre alien mindset the plantoids have.
"Boarding craft has scored a direct hit! Stand by for assault!" The sensor officer shouted out.
Another one? Was all that Tora had the mental space and energy to think as she dodged out of the way of the Loptrathi plantlike war-walker before her. At eight meters tall, it was notably shorter than she was, but it had far more arms, armor, and bulk. It was a credit to her crew that they were able to keep manning their posts under the circumstances without her directions, but she'd really have preferred if they moved to help her. They couldn't, of course. The situation was too precarious, and if the bridge dropped all activity it could mean the ship was lost, which would be the death of them all. By unspoken agreement, as an Officer-Type and thus physically largest it was her job to beat the enemy that had made it to the bridge back in a fist fight, while Mira used a pair of autofiring sidearms to clear out the smaller attack forms swarming underfoot. If any were armed with heavy weapons, then they could kill a Meltrandi if ignored.
The walker was a mess of limbs and weapons, but she'd just about figured out how to tell which was which. As a pair of what seemed to be its main weapons snapped up, Tora lunged forward, yanking them harshly up. They discharged into the ceiling, waste heat burning her exposed face and hands. She grimaced, and considered headbutting it now that she had an opening, only to realize she had absolutely no idea what qualified as a vulnerable or exposed part of the plant-monster to hit.
Instead, with a grunt of effort she lifted the entire thing over her head by the weapons, and slammed it down behind her by bringing it down sharply while turning. Scything tendrils lashed out, one scoring a hit that cut clean through her right eye, tearing it and the surrounding flesh into a ragged ruin. The heavy impact of the throw didn't seem to perturb the Loptrathi all too much, as it simply gave off an unearthly wail as it shifted more than clambered back to its feet, just in time to eat a fist to where its head roughly was. It reared back, almost but not quite staggering, giving just enough of an opening for Tora to rush it down, slamming into it with her considerable full mass before leaping back before the tendrils could slash at her again.
It got back onto what passed for its feet just a hair slower than before, giving Tora enough time to partially turn, yank a pistol from Mira's grip, set it to single-shot, and put several holes into the Loptrathi before it could respond. Already damaged, it slumped over, defeated.
Things would proceed fairly normally, she knew. Counter-boarding teams of marines with armored suits and assault weapons would sweep over the enemy and cordon off the areas under attack, with one squad placed at the bridge to safeguard it, almost certainly before any other nasties showed up. Now it was her job to turn her attention back to the space battle.
"Your face-" Mira began with surprise as Tora turned to expose her right side, but the commander just waved off her concerns.
"Kridanik made optical implants popular. I'll be fashionable, so no need to bother thinking about it. Just remind me to go to the infirmary after the fighting's over. Now, tell me, where we with regards to their ships?"
And so the fight continued.
Orders:
-Pull back from the FTL raids. It's simply not viable. The exception is if any parasite fleets have been defeated entirely or nearly so, in which case FTL strikes against the Loptrathi Collarships via the full force of the present fleet at a greater range is possible (i.e. Folding to Bombardment range and firing rather than to point-blank) and authorized. It is however expected most Collarships will FTL out before this is possible, which is allowable. Let them go.
-It's simply not possible to remove an enemy ground presence from a planetary surface using ground forces of your own short of truly absurd circumstances. Instead, target the Loptrathi ground presence with our ships and enact limited sterilization via orbital bombardment. We weren't that invested in these specific planets anyway.
-Forces in systems where all Loptrathi forces have fallen back or been eliminated are to pack up and move to reinforce other systems still embroiled in the fight.
-Elsewhere, keep fighting as before, focusing on heavy bombardment and skirmish actions where possible. Now that the enemy forces are much reduced and attempting to fight in our midst, use encirclement tactics to strike them from all angles. Power through the clash actions and seize the day now that victory is assured.
The Unbound deploy and sally fourth with the practiced coordination that came from being veterans of prior interstellar combat. The initial recon squadrons sent by the Pyrotaurus are quickly intercepted and destroyed. They were still able to broadcast a panicked report to the main raiding fleet before being cut off, but by then the Unbound fleet was already well in motion.
The resource harvesting ships and their escorts confirmed successful jump to their designated positions in the nearest asteroid field outside the battlespace. Simultaneously, the fleet's fighter squadrons closed with the Pyrotaurus raiding wolfpacks and began ripping into them with missiles and precise gunfire. Even with the short warning of incoming hostiles, the marauders' coordination in response to the attack was sloppy and chaotic, confirming either lackluster unit discipline or a lack of experience dealing with dedicated fighter squadrons, possibly both. Only a few of the corvettes and frigates at the front had any sort of point-defense capability, and they were quickly being overrun.
The enemy Buzzsaw-class destroyers began their advance toward the front to provide their gunships and corvettes with badly-needed anti-fighter cover, but before they could close the gap, they found themselves intercepted by Leeches, while also coming under long-range fire from part of the Unbound's capital fleet, forcefully diverting their attention to self-defense. Meanwhile, Archangel dreadnoughts closed the distance to the enemy's forward raiding wolfpacks and turned and already desperate battle into a turkey-shoot, coordinating firing arcs with their forward fighter squadrons to avoid friendly fire and quickly killing or disabling the remaining enemy craft in a matter of minutes. There were some losses from the Acolyte fighter squadrons, but the first phase of the battle was about as flawless a victory as could be expected.
The enemy's capital fleet has begun to aggressive close in to support their Buzzsaw destroyers. The Acolyte squadrons regrouped, with their more damaged units retreating to their carriers for repair or replacement while freshly forged reinforcements filled in and bolstered their numbers. Meanwhile, the Bentusi Exchanges, Archangels, and Deacons advance on the Buzzsaws to try and finish them off, but the pirate fleet appears to have finally gotten past their initial shock, because the besieged destroyers are starting to bite back with painful barrages of frontal mass driver fire. They are also now being reinforced by the Carnage and Devastation cruisers, now engaging the Unbound with very high-power laser fire.
The tempo of battle still favors the Unbound, as the Leeches have been able to to engage and attach to the enemy destroyers and cruisers in sufficient numbers to begin damaging them, though their effectiveness is somewhat hampered by the enemy's different techbase and rather liberal use of anti-boarding weaponry. The Buzzsaw destroyers are definitely taking losses at this point, but there there is enough return fire being thrown back that the Unbound are also beginning to take real losses among their escorts and capitals. The initial waves of Leeches are also starting to take serious losses as the Buzzsaws engage their point defenses to shoot them off of their allies.
Another complication is that the Blackbeard carriers have formed up close behind their advancing cruisers for protection, meaning that engaging them both at the same time is now impossible to avoid. And the enemy Freebooter capital ship is not far behind them, closing in toward the rest of the fleet.
One thing confirmed for in battle is that the Pyrotaurus not appear to have the same flash-forging and unit deployment capability as the Unbound, so they have limited reserves to work with, but on the flipside, their hulls and universal use of energy shielding give them a notable (but not insurmountable) durability advantage.
With the enemy fleet now consolidating to make themselves a harder target, will Fleet Command stick to the original plan, or make adjustments at this stage to account for the pirate's response?
Fleet Command tapped his command console thoughtfully. The enemy was tougher than the Unbound ships, and worse faster. The original plan could still work. The only real divergence was that the enemy carriers and flagship had not been destroyed. The flagship had always been a dice throw, but the carriers would make things tricky. Or at least, they would if they were like the carriers he was used to. It was interesting that these pirates didn't have flash forging capability. He would have preferred to take advantage of that to simply delay battle until the Unbound had an overwhelming tonnage advantage, but the pirates speed made that impossible. It did mean however that the carriers would only have limited number of interceptors. They were not the tactical strong points that his own Shaman were.
He would need to make two calls. The first was easy. He commed the the leader of the war dwarves, "Simone, this is your time to shine. We're going to need a wall bigger than you've ever made before. I'm giving you full forge authorization so make it one that will stop these pirates in their tracks."
The next was harder. It was always unnerving to see the dead look in the eyes of the sleepers. It was hard to keep track of who the current commander was too. Melkor had to quickly look it up in the crew roster, "Commander Malketh, I need those capital ships disrupted. Wake up your sleepers."
The final call was to the whole fleet, "Kith Somtaaw stands once more against a band of raiders who prey on the weak. They differ in many ways from the Turanic Raiders of our past, but underneath they are the same. They crave riches but do not produce. They terrorize the weak and defenseless. They seek to destroy rather than create. And it seems that they have had their way in the surrounding stars, but today we will show them the error of their ways. For the people we left behind and those who may yet follow us we will make our stand here and show them the fury of the Unbound."
The fleet will split into three parts. The largest portion will position itself in front of the advancing pirates and form a wall of battle with Bentusi Exchanges and Deacon Destroyers. All production capacity will be given over to Sentinels to form as large a shield wall in front of the fleet as possible. Once the pirates enter engagement range production will switch to super acolytes and replace sentinel losses as needed. The fleet will maintain range as long as possible in order to reinforce its numbers, but given the speed difference will likely eventually be forced into a proper Clash. At which point it attempt to focus fire on the cruisers to destroy them as quickly as possible.
The Kuun-Lan will join the wall and fire its siege cannon into the heart of the pirate formation either just when the pirate flagship arrives or just before the main Clash. Whichever is first.
Meanwhile the second portion of the fleet will consist of approximately twenty percent of the shaman carriers paired with archangel dreadnoughts. They will jump to the sides of the pirate fleet forming a cone with the main wall of battle at the tip. The shamans will produce Mimics and super acolytes and send them at the main fleet in waves. The mimics will disguise themselves as super acolytes as well, and possibly even pirate fighters if they get in a dog fight. Both the super acolytes and mimics will be attempting to destroy pirate capital ships as targets arise, though of course the mimics will be getting a lot closer and won't be coming back. The aim of this segment of the fleet is to distract the pirates. If any pirates turn to engage them they are to flee and hopefully draw pirates away from the main clash. Use jump drives to escape if necessary and regroup with the main fleet.
The final segment of the fleet will be another twenty percent of the shaman carriers. They will jump as far to the rear of the pirate fleet as possible. Outside of pirate sensor range if that can be determined. They will build a small anti fighter force of multi beam frigates first, and then a massive wave of ramming frigates and workers with a few ACV escorts. Once it is estimated that the wave will be able to make it through the pirate point defenses it will catch up with the pirate fleet and attack. The ramming frigate will aim to push the enemy capital ships out of formation and into the guns of the main fleet while the ACVs use their ECMs to disable them. Any particularly crippled ships will be captured by the workers. The pirate flagship is a particularly high priority target for this.
Much like the second force if the pirates turn to engage the rear fleet, then it will hopefully draw them out of position, and even expose them to the fire of the main fleet. However the carriers are not to engage and jump back to the main fleet if they come under direct fire from capital ships.
Covenant vs Sith Empire Strategy:
Darth Marr is taking complete operational control over the situation. The Covenant is a seemingly religious coalition of aliens with an unknown amount of forces or planets at their disposal and clearly have no idea on how to actually fight a war against an unknown foe, or any war for that matters with their complete lack of any tactical cohesion or use of combined arms tactics. The Empire will make sure that they don't have the opportunity to learn.
This first phase of the war will not be one of battle. Instead it is about intelligence gathering. I.N.I.D and Sith Intelligence is tasked with figuring out what exactly the Covenant has at their disposal and where their territory even is. Planets and stations have to be identified and centers of governance located. Hyperspace lanes have to be charted too and from these locations and proper logistical chains established. It will be hard work and one that will take some time no doubt and the Covenant's relentless genocidal approach against the Empire will have to be weathered. Darth Marr will be counting on the Covenant too not knowing where everything in the Sith Empire is and that their lack of knowledge on tactics also extends to espionage and intelligence gathering.
As the Covenant moves forward into Imperial controlled space the Empire will play to their sense of superiority, focusing instead on defensive operations and performing skirmishing attacks and employing concentration of force to annihilate enemy fleets with superior firepower and preventing any from escaping with interdictors, engine attacks, and disrupting enemy communications. Some worlds will have to be sacrificed but Marr is no stranger to this and in these cases will have local forces hold off the Covenant for as long as physically possible and stretch their lines with a defense in depth strategy.
This will have to be the plan until the Covenant's territory is properly charted and offensive operations can begin. If and when it is done Darth Marr will strike out with the Isotope-5 Armada and attack the Covenant's back lines and prevent reinforcements from stopping the Imperial Navy forces from switching to offensive operations and pushing the Covenant out of the Sith Empire with Darth Nox's Silencer Fleet at the head.
Tactical Space Combat:
On the tactical level the Imperial Navy, when facing the Covenant, is going to leverage their superior firepower and tactical acumen (or Battle Meditation) against the enemy, using their smaller size too outmaneuver and stay out of their firing arcs, exactly what they did against the Star of Coruscant during the Battle of Hoth. While shields and weapons may not be as strong as their size suggests the sheer size of their vessels will make actually destroying their vessels difficult. Instead the Imperial Navy will mainly be focusing on disabling their vessels weapons and engines so as to leave them as little more than hulks that can be picked apart after the battle is won. Smaller vessels and bombers will be used to this effect as normal, however, the reserves of BW-S8 Squash fighters will be brought out of storage to combat the Covenant. The BW-S8's absurd firepower for their size and incredible success against the Star of Coruscant, a vessel of equivalent size and greater technology to the Covenant's larger vessels, being why Darth Marr wants these fighters being produced and deployed to the front.
Additionally, when available, Silencer equipped Harrowers will continue standard firing procedure when facing the Covenant. That being firing from long range before the battle begins to clear the enemies first wave of fighters and weaken or hopefully outright destroy the enemy fleet.
Tactical Ground Combat:
The Imperial Army Generals have been surprised by just how idiotic the Covenant's ground forces have been. However they have ultimately come to the decision that they don't really matter unless the planet has a planetary shield or enough surface to orbital weapons to stop the Covenant from just glassing their world from orbit. Which is why the Army will be focusing on concentrating their forces at well defended locations and population centers and protect these sights from the Covenant's scattered and unorganized ground forces. The Sith Empire is also going to be leveraging their powers over the Dark Side against the covenant whenever possible with displays of power being used to demoralize or outright destroy the enemy and Sith Warriors being deployed alongside Commandos and Special Forces to prevent the Covenant from leveraging their Elite forces or heavier weapons against the Imperial Army.
According to the data the Sith were winning the war, and yet it didn't truly feel like they were. Sure, each and every splinter fleet, each and every small strike force, each and every general looking to seek glory on their own, each force with nothing heavier than what the covenant would consider to be their basic carriers or the heaviest of their cruisers, was picked apart and struck down. Outclassed, out-teched, and often outnumbered, these strike forces stood no chance even when Silencers, experimental fighters, and Battle Meditation weren't available on the Sith's side of the battle; and when any or all of those were brought to bare, all they could truly do was die.
Of these three keystones, the least effective of them was actually the strike craft, as the point defense of even these lesser Covenant ships was so dense you could practically walk on it, and their own strike craft complements were nothing to sniff at, with plentiful would-be, and a few actual, aces amongst their numbers; and worst of all was their shielding variation, which, while weaker, was not bypassable by strikecraft, or anything else within the Sith's arsenal for that matter.
Battle meditation was the next most effective, as it buffered the Sith forces coordination to a level that the Covenant's fleets simply couldn't match; oddly enough its own demoralizing effect on the enemy commanders and elites resulted in them abandoning their own command posts to engage your fleets in customized starfighters of all things- often with some rather amusing results when the occasional Sith decides to hop into their own high end starfighter to duel them; naturally, the enemy ships usually perish soon afterwards as their commanders forsake their posts and their crews fail to keep any semblance of order, but the very fact that the commanders choose honor over cowering with the rest of their crew is… admirable, in a sense.
Naturally, whenever a Silencer equipped ship shows up to deal with any of these minor battlegroups all they can really do is die quickly; sadly, the occurrence rate of that happening is rather low, as these ships have drastically more important targets out there.
These splinter forces could do nothing but die, as even retreat, dishonorable as it would be, was denied to them by the Sith's expertly placed interdictors; and if that was all that there was then this war would have long since been over; sadly, that very much was not the case, as for every dozen or so splinter fleets of less than two dozen vessels, there was one true armada made up of hundreds of vessels, including their mighty formation leaders and flagships in the form of BattleCarriers and SuperCarriers; and for every two of those there was one insanely large core fleet group, each with 500 or more vessels of considerable size, and what could only be a mobile station, acting as a command center, a localized production site, and a population center rolled into one. Each one is armed to the teeth and protected by shields that thus far have remained completely unbreached. Thus far, four of these behemoths have crossed into imperial territory during the initial push, although oddly enough more of them have not; and indeed, two stations that were near the border have since pulled back deeper into Covenant territory.
Sadly, It is against these true armadas where the Sith's intended tactics broke down. Attempts to outflank were met with overlapping fields of fire, and attempts to strike from angles from which the true heavyweights of the Covenant's fleets couldn't bring their heaviest weapons to bare were met my weapons that don't actually care about positioning, as while their energy projectors could be somewhat positioned around and even occasionally dodged, their plasma torpedoes had no such limitation, and none of the Sith's Harrower based designs were fast enough to cause them to miss despite it all. Attempts to outflank and whittle away at these ships via strikecraft ran into their own difficulty, as massive waves of enemy strikecraft and overlapping fields of fire from rather serious point defense made even Sith Interceptors and Squash Fighters need to think more than twice about engaging. Although even here some victories could be gained, as Battle Meditation repeatedly turned the tide of the surrounding battles, opening the way for a single shot from a well positioned Silencer to overwhelm the flagships shields, and from there it was only a matter of time before all that would be left would be debris and the floating husks of what once were Covenant BattleCarriers and SuperCarriers, although even these victories came at a great cost in ships and lives.
Despite these victories, three of the four main superfleets are still in play, as while the fourth was carefully convinced to disperse somewhat, and therefore was picked apart piece by piece, with the station itself, and the remainder of its escort, withdrawing back to Covenant controlled space once its attendant fleet fell below half strength.
According to data gathered by imperial intelligence, it is mainly from these stations that their supplies and reinforcements stem, as the few covenant worlds that have been found seem to be completely uncaring about this particular war going on beyond their borders, with apparently only a few volunteer teams heading out to join this fight after the initial forces crossed over; instead, most of the potential reinforcements have been diverted in two other directions. When investigating why this is the case, imperial intelligence has discovered rumors about two other human factions that the Covenant is fighting against, one of which has already beaten the Sith to the punch in terms of counterattacks; although said counterattack has been surprisingly slow in terms of its ability to make progress through the covenant's territory. More worryingly is the talk about the discovery of a 'Great Ring' from which they can continue their 'Great Journey'.
As for the covenant's capital itself? It appears to be both mobile and protected by a grand Armada that on its own measures out to be half the size of the entire force that was sent out to 'deal with' the Sith.
Despite these other factors, a 'small' task force has been dispatched from the capital to join their war against the Sith. this force left very stealthily, and the very fact that anything at all was learned about it, its leader, and its destination was a non-insignificant coup for Imperial Intelligence. The leader of this force, and the apparent new leader of the invasion force overall, is Ripa 'Moramee, an 'Arbiter' who has been sent to crush the Sith, or, more likely, die in the process of attempting to do so. Since his departure, all three remaining mega fleets, which accounts for the vast majority of the remaining Covenant forces within Sith territory, have disappeared into deep space, as to rendezvous with this detachment. This was almost a week ago, and no sign of them has been seen since despite the best efforts of imperial intelligence.
above Korriban a massive slipspace portal, nay, a series of them, opens, disgorging all three of these fleets and their reinforcements, totaling all but a handful of all Covenant ships remaining within sith space. Having bypassed all of the worlds in between, here they strike at your most important religious site, having gathered their own data from wrecked ships. It is here is where the war will be decided.
This is an In depth set void based piece battle to close things off; if you win, the Covenant forces attacking you are done for, and with them any forces that the Covenant could use to pursue their war against you in the short term; loose, and Korriban burns while the remaining covenant forces withdraw in an orderly fashion, being able to claim to have won enough of a victory to return in triumph.
Sith forces present:
Korriban's attendant fleet, defense forces, and nearby rapid response units, totaling 20% of the tonnage of the Covenant's fleet.
Sith fleets, as many forces as can be gathered from throughout Sith space as can make it in time to shift the tide of this battle, totaling 50% of the tonnage of the enemy fleet- more than enough to force a victory; but they are arriving bit by bit, and although they should all be arriving long before the battle is truly decided one way or another, only a fifth of these reinforcements have managed to arrive before the battle begins.
Darth Nox and the Sphere of Ancient Knowledge(plus his Silencer fleet) is present in system, or at least close enough by to arrive by the time the battle actually starts
The Empire's Wrath is present planetside, and could be brought up to join in boarding actions
Darth Marr and his Isotope 5 Armada are a ways out, having been positioning themselves for their invasion of Covenant space, and will not be able to arrive before the battle is most likely decided one way or another.
Covenant forces present:
The force that the Covenant has here is rather top heavy, being heavier on the capital and supercapital(by the local reckoning) ships than what was standard for the Covenant's invasion force as a whole
Anchoring this force are three category zero battleworlds, each one focusing more on defense and fleet support than anything else- being drastically undergunned for their size(and, while the Sith don't know this, they are particularly vulnerable to boarding operations)
Leading this force is the Arbiter, Ripa 'Moramee, who is a Command and Combat focused Legend.
Overall situation summary:
Outside of this final push, the Covenant's forces in the area are practically defeated, with less than half of their number managing to retreat to friendly space. On the other hand, the Sith's lost less than 20% forces overall, with losses likely not going to go up too much even if they are somehow crushingly defeated in this final battle.
The covenant's lower weight class ships are completely overmatched by their Imperial counterparts- as they lack the speed to play the skirmish game, the direct firepower to overwhelm their sith counterparts in anywhere near an even fight, and the coordination to pull off anything more than the most petty of victories despite it all.
Because of this, and the Sith's own strategy, any forces that branched away from the main spearheads were quickly overwhelmed, unable to do any serious damage to more than a small handful of worlds.
The Covenant's midweight ships did a somewhat better job, being able to use their greater size(and therefore greater room for reactors, shield batteries, and weapon systems) to more than overcome the technological difference; sadly, without competent escorts they could not engage in all that many favorable fights, as the Sith's own escort superiority neutralized any advantage that they could have gained in this region.
Wherever the Covenant's true Capital Ships showed up Sith ships could seldom do more than either withdraw or die standing, and it was only the Silencers and other heavy weapons that stopped the Covenant from gaining absolute Supremacy in this region.
When it comes to Strikecraft, things have been surprisingly even, with the Covenant's overwhelming number(provided by their carrier focused doctrine) and extreme levels of point defense being more than able to level the playing field against the Sith's simply higher baseline technology and experimental fighters.
Attempts to outflank and deal 'death by a thousand cuts' to the Covenant's capital and supercapital ships has been less than successful, as most of the Covenant weapons don't care about positioning, their point defense is heavy enough to give even corvettes pause, and their shielding doesn't let strikecraft through.
On the ground, in the few cases where such conflict has occurred on any sort of real scale, things have been surprisingly even, with 'grunt wave tactics', orbitally deployed commando strike teams, and orbitally deployed Scarabs managing to blunt any sort of true momentum that the Sith's forces manage to gain, while the Sith's own… Sith, and liberal deployment of large scale force powers, have managed to stop the reverse from happening as well; the end result has so far always been stalemates that are then decided by the outcome of the battle overhead.
Battle Meditation has proven itself to be surprisingly strong, or at least surprisingly strong against this foe.
Overall though, the Sith's strategy of 'divide and conquer' has been fairly successful.
The Zenith-class Command Ship soared through the black, a twenty-eight kilometer ingot of Adamantium bristling with weapons, with ten Apex-class Battleships surrounding it like attendants. Broadsides boomed from them all, sending a continent-sundering wave of torch shells into the eye-searing neon of oncoming Ekon warships. Pre-accelerated particle beams lashed out next, perfectly timed to strike ships just after the shells had brought down shields. Multi-hued Armor and ostentatious hulls ruptured, ships were reduced to scattered hulks and drifting debris. Cruiser and ramship packs plunged into the disorderly formation, accompanied by the ever-present swarms of Iron Men strike craft that hurled from their carriers in endless waves.
The battle was going well, all things considered. The numbers of these mechanical metaterrestrials were not as... solid as most enemies the Iron Men fought, but as the fighting wore on, it became clear that they were steadily being reduced, their impractically gaudy designs no match for AutoWars that could be replaced faster than they could be destroyed.
All good... save the planetoid-scale combatants the 'Ekons' had just unleashed. That was a threat most Men of Iron were less familiar in dealing with, save for the handful of veterans and survivors from battles against the Eldar Dominion. But there were precedents, plans, and the overall battle was still in the Iron Men's favor.
-Make no aggressive moves towards the local humans. Continue attempting to get a proper translation and communication going, get any AIs who aren't involved in the conflict to see if they can spare some processing power for it, and maybe see if any of our own human refugee population has some linguists who can help.
-The majority of fleet on fleet and ground assault combat against the Ekons seems to be going well and has little need for change, aside from making sure to deploy ACU entry vehicles in Terran configuration, so that their theatre shields can deflect the initial bombardments the Ekons seem to like sending whenever we make planetfall. The only problem is the Battleworlds.
-As reinforcements dribble in, they should for now focus on cleaning up the rest of the Ekons not accompanying the Battleworlds, since they have focused so much on that "flashy" battle they've neglected their defenses elsewhere.
-Since we can't rely on Warp Travel allowing reinforcements to deploy in a timely manner, instead we'll need to bring the Battleworlds to a battlefield of our choosing. Locate the best systems that are in the path that the Ekon Battleworlds are likely to take, and have the Commanders there (and any others that can be spared) focus on turning them into obscenely well-defended fortresses. Spacestations, anti-orbital gun batteries defended by layered shields, and armadas of AutoWars.
-The Commanders currently engaged with the Battleworlds will engage in a delaying action, manufacturing waves of AutoWars to engage with the fleets escorting the Battleworlds and slow them long enough for other Commanders to consolidate at the defense points. Given how the Ekons prioritize the "exciting" parts of a battlefield means that so long as these units can keep their attention, they'll ignore everything else, which will buy time for the buildup to complete. Note, the objective here is not to win or inflict heavy casualties on the Ekons, but to buy time (though given Iron Men construction speeds, they probably don't need much time.)
-Once the preparations are done, the engaged Commanders will fall back for a "last stand" (which sounds dramatic enough to make sure that the Ekons follow), where we'll have made the preparations to destroy the Battleworlds.
-A core part of this will be alpha strikes with bombardment galleons. Massed Nova Cannon alpha strikes will hopefully allow us to punch a hole in the accompanying fleet elements. The Bombardment Galleons will likely die to return fire in fairly swift order, but that's perfectly fine so long as they get off their volleys first.
-After the initial bombardment, the majority of our AutoWar fleet will engage the remaining Ekon armada head-on. Given our quality advantage and the amount of buildup we'll have done, they'll hopefully be able to outright destroy the enemy fleet elements, but even if not, the constant reinforcement should mean that the Ekon fleet is occupied, letting specialized Commander strike units focus on the Battleworlds.
-For the Battleworlds themselves, some of the Cat 0's can likely be taken out by Zenith-class Command Ships with Apex-class Battleships in support, via overwhelming application of heavy firepower and nanite torpedoes. This is inefficient however, and the main work of destroying these Battleworlds will likely fall upon the Anakim-class ACUs.
--The Anakims assigned to this job will make planetfall using standard ACU entry vehicles, which have shields and stealth systems to allow them to through the interference that the Cat 1's provoke. Once they make planetfall, the fact that Ekon material can be reclaimed and repurposed means that they'll be able to literally reclaim the ground under their feet, allowing the resulting MoI presence to build up at unprecedented speeds and let them be well-established before any counterattack can land.
--The "ground" campaign on the Battleworlds will rely heavily on Nemesis-class Megabots for offensive action, Behemoth-scale war machines with subterranean deep strike capabilities (with as many modifications to emphasize this over direct shooting power.) They will, quite literally, drill through the Battleworlds until they strike something vital, and any that get stuck on something and cannot proceed further can be pumped full of antimatter to be transformed into gigantic bombs. Combined with other ground forces marching into the breaches they make, reclaiming and ripping out anything that looks important, and we can hopefully destroy the Battleworlds from the inside.
-Summary: Quick alpha strike in the Bombardment Phase, quickly phasing into a massive pile-on into the Clash Phase, which is in turn used to open up holes for Anakim ACUs to make planetfall on the Battleworlds, where they can literally start eating them to make armies of ground units to destroy them.
-While all of this is going on, those Commanders tasked with cleaning up the rest of the Ekons that aren't involved in the big "dramatic" fighting can likely move into the systems abandoned as we drew the Battleworlds into the decisive fight, and mop up any stragglers. Provided everything else is going well of course.
The first to meet the Men of Iron was a delegation that happened to include but was not solely consistent of humans, though it was not obvious at first, with the locals having the Men of Iron meet them at an embassy ship they brought up to facilitate face to face communique for the sake of ease of communication. The majority of them were actually a form of synthetic person; Homisynths. A form of mechanical construct so sophisticated that they were able to interbreed with organics through incredibly sophisticated subatomic scale machinery so that they could better integrate with their biological counterparts, generally distinguished from the humanoids; generally of more exotic colouration than your own humans and including a number of pointed eared fellows and stout folk who seemed rather comparable to the Eldar or Votann; by light mechanical features such as LED patterns around their glowing pupils.
It seemed that they had arrived in the territory of the Stykarna Revolutionary Front, a Stratocratic Communist movement built on the thoughts of a number of very long distant figures of human history. If the dating they provided was right, it seemed that relative to what you knew as the present, you were something on the order of a quarter of a million years into the future. This was the sixth hektamillennium, which is to say welcome to the year 666,666 Anno Domini. Nearly two thirds of a million years into the future.
But back on the Revolutionary Front, they seemed to build much of their political thought around the writings of, in particular, Mikhail Tukhachevsky and had recently overthrown the government that held the horizontal white, grey, yellow, blue, brown quintcolour banner and replaced it with a simple red banner with a welding tool, a gun, and a sextant to represent the worker, the soldier, and the intellectual. They had established themselves out of a belief that the prior regime was simply unsuited to the task of preserving the Republic in the face of the hostiles it encountered and had failed to live up to its egalitarian promises.
Thus the Soldier's revolution that established the Revolutionary Front arose and had been busy bringing the other warlords under their control in the last four years, having managed to get control of four subsectors of territory split between this sector and its neighbours to your North meant to be the basis of a future war of liberation into something called "Desmondu" to put an end to its warring houses and prolonged civil war and birth a singular red union. Well, that was the plan before you arrived.
The overall leader, in as much as the Front Had one, was the present revolutionary marshal in-chief Zeldyr Artyl, a male(?) Homisynth with synthskin the colour of marble and hair the colour of platinum paired with purple optics and laser red pupils. One would generally not figure him for a military figure outside of his combat garb, more a university student who took to military matters. He had organised the front's resources towards trying to drive the Ekon incursion out and claim the territory they had sought to hold down and use it to further their own power base, but now that you were here, it was possible to instead work together against the enemy.
The Front had the precision strike and deep operations capabilities to hit where it hurt, but they were lacking in mass and frontage to properly engage the massive bulk of the Ekon's forces. You had mass aplenty and deep reserves, but the lack of speed and the limited range of much of your assets meant that operational exploitation of breakthroughs could be somewhat difficult, forcing a brutal and ungainly steamroller approach to warfare.
"But perhaps together, we can drive the Merchants out entirely. We strike fast and deep, you hit wide and hard. Together, we could accomplish a great deal." As Zeldyr would say before he offered to help carry out a plan of joint operations, particularly against the great trump card of the enemy; a constellation of seven Market Square Category 2 Battleworlds that would seek to try and lynchpin their fleet and make a come back as they piled into the most "intense business". Not so much interested in the spectacle of the fight as they were the marketability, selling footage of the battles they fought constantly and turning their deeply deranged minds over to merchandising every engagement.
Battles were transactions too, and they were eager to pile in for the hottest, busiest market days they could find. Which of course, would be more of an issue for them than it was, were it not for their unparalleled mobility thanks to the Labyrinth letting them move around almost at will to deal with attempts to outflank them or exploit seeming gaps at the strategic level; though there could only be so many of them around to guard every business place.
...
The battle would be waged across kiloparsecs and countless planets. In the shadow of the relics of long gone civilisations and before an Astronomers' dream worth of different celestial bodies. The Front would advance to make probing attacks first to find weak points in the enemy's line that the Men of Iron could follow up with an attack against after the Front held position for a bit. The two forces would engage in vicious battle against the mechanical miscreants until the chance to exploit had arose and the front committed its reserves to attack things deeper within the operational area of the enemy.
Commando ops, something the Men of Iron were generally not that good at, were something that the Front excelled in; strange abilities from the humanoids tearing through legions of the machines and allowing even their basic infantry to move around like a superhero, bouncing from one position to the next, psychically boosting weapons or simply unleashing raw esoteric force or enhancing their own blows; wrapping themselves in layered defences to augment their sheer speed and making use of often unusual abilities. Some teleporting outright, others instilling objects with an ontological momentum to keep going forward come hell or high water, others controlling electromagnetism to wreak havoc on the machines.
But without the Men of Iron to provide the heavy blows it wouldn't have mattered. The Men of Iron could land and bring forth the artillery and the sheer weight of armour needed to hold a position rather than simply smash and grab, and against a foe that could simply appear behind lines at will; the ability to carpet the battlefield with defences was invaluable. It prevented the Ekons from encircling and cutting off probing forces, and allowed breaches made to be widened by the scrum of metal against metal. They had not done a lot of training with each other to fully meld each other's doctrines, but there was a simple natural symbiosis.
One that quickly forced the enemy's trump card to appear to try and swing the tide.
...
The constellation exited from the labyrinth as if they were simply sliding out of a door, the seven machines that the Front warned of being enormous and insane constantly shifting masses of rotating and shifting puzzle cubes cludged into a roughly spherical shape. Eternally changing themselves, endlessly shifting their patterns, offering things they created from within and the destructive purchase of things without constantly in a mesmerising pattern of shifting advertisement images.
The category 1 and 0 Plazas and Storefronts loomed in escort position near them, enormous numbers of warships clustered around them. This would be the most important engagement of the war. The mass of warships here would have constituted a gravitational anomaly in and of itself as their sheer light pollution made them unmissable even with the naked eye from an obnoxious distance. Against them, the strangely wet navy like warships of the Front were joined by the armoured Slabs and bricks of the Men of Iron, exiting from Psi-Jump drives and the depths of the warp in a coordinated motion plotted by the seers amongst the Front to ensure that everyone would be where they needed to be when they needed.
"WELCOME TO THE [fire sale]! WHERE EVERYTHING MUST GO GO GO [straight into the fiery pits of what you call hell]! STEP RIGHT UP BECAUSE THIS OFFER ENDS THE MINUTE YOU [perish in explosive fire before the curtainfall.]" The broadcast from the largest of the Market Squares, a machine larger than Terra that had grown massive from countless "dealts" was in that perpetually annoying cheery infommercial pitchman voice.
"TIRED OF [living]? FEELING DOWN ABOUT [the futility of your struggles]? NEED A SHOT IN THE ARM TO BECOME A REAL GO-GETTER? WELL AT BUXOLOTS CLEARANCE SALE YOU CAN FIND ALL THAT AND MORE MORE MORE! THESE PRICES ARE SO OUTRAGEOUS THEY'RE LITERALLY OUT OF THIS WORLD! STEP RIGHT UP AND DON'T DELAY, THIS SALE IS [your doom]!!!!"
So the CEO of this whole shindig was Buxolots then? Would be good to remember, the hypervelocity merchants' executive officers are next to impossible to put down for good, but each one has their own eccentricities and particular form of expressing the madness that has utterly consumed the machines.
"AND I CAN TELL THAT YOU ARE HUNGRY! THAT'S RIGHT! HUNGRY! BUT AT BUXOLOTS' GOODS WE'VE GOT SUCH A BARGAIN WE'RE BASICALLY GIVING AWAY YOUR FOOD! AND WHAT'S THAT FOOD? WHY IT'S [item redacted]! THAT'S RIGHT! YOU WANT [item redacted]! COMING IN HOT WITH THIS FREE INSTALLMENT OF AN ALL YOU CAN EAT [missile barrage]". Their visage was a twitchy, jerky but slick looking machine with a massive, broad, kingpin like feature, a hunchback pushing their comparatively small TV head in front of a veritable wall of a body enclosed by the television cloak, a huge, heavy presence that screamed "the man in charge".
"Try not to engage them too long in conversation, it's all nonsense." Zeldyr warned you.
...
The battle was joined here as it was in other systems, but with far greater intensity and punishing violence. The withering cascades of firepower from the Hypervelocity merchants more than explained the reasoning for their name as projectiles raced ahead at incredible speeds and from just about every direction. The 21st century fighter craft like strike craft of the Front raced alongside humanoid mecha, many of them able to transform between either as they darted with agile grace alongside the wave upon wave of men of iron fighters and bombers.
They shot and chopped their way through the buzzing swarms, salvos traded between fleets that would leave whole planets cooked to a well done temperature as everyone sought to move for advantage and purchase; hoping to get within each other's formations to start the cascade of failures that killed fleets. Many Men of Iron ships and Front vessels were brought down by the raw firepower of the Merchants, others overwhelmed by the madmachines dropping in from unexpected angles or stepping through the maze to simply get inside the ships of their foes and bypassing shields with boarding crews or bombers suddenly appearing in vital internal regions.
The Men of Iron kept pushing forwards, redoubling internal security while the crews of the Front were dispatched to counter-board stricken ships where they could or held back to clear out would be invaders. Data pings indicating where the foe was pushing the heaviest against the skeins of fate were passed out to indicate where the enemy was most likely to teleport into next and what they were likely to bring to the table. The Machines were insane and reality was a polite suggestion to them to be sure, but that madness made them unfocused, simply locking themselves into the most "capital" of deals even to the point of destruction.
It seemed that they operated under a logic of exchange, going towards wherever the most fire was being poured onto them as they registered it as in essence, a sale that they wished to "trade" with. The more intense the exchange, the more of them would come, eager to do "business" and be part of the most intense transactions. But it also meant that despite their vastly superior mobility, they could be ensphered and barraged from all sides or on the surface of the ring world hanging over the twin white dwarf corpses of the star system this once was and the pulsing radioactive light of its Pulsar companion, smaller by far than the two white dwarfs that orbited it or the Red Dwarf that had recently been captured into a complex orbit, but more massive than all three combined.
Ring Worlds were often the site of colossal ground battles due to most of them having features that negated most orbital bombardment and being regarded as too valuable to scour and shatter anyway. And this was no exception. The strobing illumination of the nebulae surrounding space everytime the Pulsar's jets swept by providing for an eerie but beautiful backdrop while the ringworld's shields screened out the energetic poison of the dead stars. Relics and detritus from those who had perished billions of years ago lay joined by the ruination of modernity, machines smashing into machines, people who weren't able to teleport out to treatment in time or had their psychic essences disrupted before they could imprint onto a new body bleeding on a corpse of a structure.
But it was a battle worth fighting, for the Ekons had set up devices there that were feeding energy into their primary battleworld's shields, making it virtually invincible while it was active and the machine fed from the star-corpse stuff to produce the "wares" of the Merchants; spitting out new fleets and adjusting the weapons that were fitted onto it, including interstellar range capable hyperspace guns that would be able to barrage Men of Iron and Front worlds from this system. Though the Front would disable the initial ring of defences around these pylons pumping energy into the Ekon construct, it would be the Men of Iron and their waves of giants that would drag them down; pummeling them into submission beneath all the firepower they could muster so that the space battle above could be decided.
The first of the allies to be deployed onto the battleworld of the Ekons were infantry teams deposited by hypersubs that slipped into midst of the Ekon formations to release their commandos and vehicular support to attack the Plazas. The first in were perhaps surprisingly to the Men of Iron, homisynths who, being made out of machinery themselves, often went in without the usual combat suits, just sturdier frames with higher power draws suited for the ravages of war that nevertheless fought with an overwhelming speed and violence.
The field commander, Attack Group Leader Styra Velene, a Homisynth herself whose preferred frame was that of a young woman with tri-tails and hair the colour of silver and eyes the tone of lightning bolts, would particularly impress as she seemed to temporarily push her systems with a combination of Flux energy and Esper abilities to often exceed the transmission speed of light, landing hits before she actually swung her pole-arm, the top head a quench field war-scythe and the bottom a vortex hammer, a relic from Quadrumvirate space that she wielded with such force that she was able to use the shockwaves produced by swinging it as a deadly weapon.
As the Ekons deployed their NEON units to try and counter the Legends deployed in their path and block the Men of Iron advance into the primary battleworld, Velene* briefly blinked out of being before the enemy was all either crushed to pieces by the Warhammer end of her polearm or carved to shreds by the scythe; a brief crunch in time being registered as she seemed to take a moment to recharge herself, resting on one knee in the midst of an ocean of scattered merchant remains. Without proper quadrumvirate space systems, she had to time herself on the stamina reserves of her esper abilities, but it was not a long reprieve for her enemy as she leapt in once more with a white, orange, and scarlet whirlwind of violence to create a further opening.
The gap opened let the Men of Iron war machine press through, the smaller mechs and psychotaumata of the Front moving in their shadow while Velene intuited the layout of the ship and offered her guidance as to where to go in order to find the objective that would stop this monstrosity from continually reinforcing the battle or vomiting out defence platforms and superweapons. All the while, the Men of Iron presence that had smashed its way inside began to expand to build itself from the inside out.
Warships were produced inside of cavernous openings large enough to fit entire armies or fleets into, defensive emplacements targeted the ceiling or the very ground itself. Soldiers produced from the ample salvage or the strange but viable material that the craft was made from joined an ever growing tsunami that was fed by the Ekons' own fervour for the market rush, violence compounding onto violence. Using ever more elaborate and inventive and insane devices to "sell" to the Men of Iron and the Revolutionary Front in exchange for their return fire and being reduced to scattered particles by plasma, mass drivers, tachyon bolts, strong-neutrino streams, warheads, gravity weapons, strange powers, and cascades of electricity.
Velene would confront the Buxalotz' proxy, who was just as wide in person as his holographic avatar made him look, the semi-hunchback only further emphasising the bulk of his frame as he brought forth a cane and heavy field encased fists to swing at the Homisynth as she danced around her foe at incredible velocity. Guards and escorts all leaping into action into each other as she darted around the colossus and the zweihander he turned his cane into. The two would exchange hits every now and then, absorbing the punishment dealt to each other until she warped space around Buxalotz's proxy to reorient the direction of "down" towards him and then greatly increased the velocity at which things must fall towards that "down".
Matter began spaghettifying into the target, streams of plasma hot matter compacting into and smashing into the Proxy as his cloak split open to form energy barriers that seemed to somehow be powered by whatever the proxy considered to be currency; ticking stock values and account valuations trending downwards as they held off the cataclysm of gravity. It was enough of a distraction for the Men of Iron to join in, hammering into the enemy with high energy weapons until at last their financial barrier collapsed and swarms of nanites tried to bite into the strange shifting black mass of the machine. At last allowing Velene to slip in and finally drive her scythe into the part of her foe the nanites had progressively weakened to allow her to slice them in twain with a diagonal cut before bashing each half with the hammer end of her pole-arm.
The sundering of the Proxy of the CEO had seemed to cause a pause in the Hypervelocity merchants as their Market Square was now more men of Iron by mass than it was Ekon machinery. Advertisements and insane spacewarping structures giving way to the iron logic and cold brutalism of the children of humanity in ever greater masses; spaceships tearing their way out of the crust of the Market Square like flies hatching from corpse fed maggots. Without the CEO, the "Company" of the Merchants' board of directors began a process of "hostile takeover", a polite term for firing upon each other while the Proxy was offline.
The violent insider trading was enough to allow for them to be shattered in totality, breaking apart as their formation scattered into the winds and began diving into the Labyrinth. Timeclones and timeline echoes faded as if they were never there, the stranger aberrations made possible by their Labyrinth dealings growing more erratic and over the top but less functional while their more conventional if still absurd contraptions were hastily disassembled or packed up and moved away to avoid "theft" of product. All across the front, the collapse of the Ekons was marked, their forces either being militarily overrun or simply leaving the field to retreat to the mad realm from whence they came.
The Silver Tide would have of course, sought to make a grand display of this. But the Hypervelocity merchants were salesmen, not artists. Their response was of course, spin. That this was a successful series of exchanges and purchases, that they had made record "profit" in terms of return fire sent their way, that this had opened new ground for capital investment. Or perhaps they genuinely believed this, it was hard to tell with those who were no longer operating on anything resembling conventional logic and simply operating to the deranged whims of salesmen who exist for inscrutable reasons.
Nevertheless, the fight was over for now. The Men of Iron had overrun the bulk of the Ekons' holdings, prompting those that remained to abandon the fray and leave to the Men of Iron control over the entire subsector at last.
Available Sectors
M-10
- Claimed Space (1, East): With the defeat of the Ekons, this sector of space needs only be properly developed by the Men of Iron to fully pacify as the remnant of the mad merchants are put down in relatively minor clashes here and there. This sector of space was home to a number of ancient societies who died out a long time ago, the most prominent being the Altorinik who were wiped out five billion years ago in a very sudden, very thorough purge. Concerningly there are clear signs of far more recent purges, the last being less than thirty years ago.
- Revolutionary Front (4, Square in the Northeast, spills over into sectors M-9): A rapidly growing warlord polity that has hopes of ending the violent conflict seen in the south, the Revolutionary Front practices a stratocratic form of Communist thought heavily influenced by the thinking of very long past revolutionaries, and also makes heavy usage of their iconography. They had moved to the north to get away from the intense warlord combat and build up a safer power base, and so far are willing to operate on a longer-term Partnership.
- Drengin Subcolony-3 (Two Subsquares, Direct South and Southwest): This polity also seems to be extraversal, explicitly identifying as a colonial protectorate of a larger empire creatively known as the Drengin Empire (being a species that views fiction as a form of lying to be punished, they are not a very creative lot). Dominated by large simian like mammalian, the Drengin openly revel in cruelty and power based hierarchies, and have set up shop to ensure a trading link with a larger set of colonial holdings linked to these outposts by Wormhole and reactivated precursor jump gates. Their most valuable trade, beyond assorted supermaterials or precursor technology; is humanoid slaves whom they prize for the strange abilities of; profiting from the lack of stability to the south.
- Earth Defence Force (Direct West, 1): Consisting of a displaced form of Earth and its surrounding territories, the Earth Defence Force makes ample usage of both very large monsters as well as mecha, generally in the style of said giant monsters though with many more humanoid or clearly vehicular machines amidst their number. Making use of psychics and superhuman mutants and a colourful force of "Sentai" or "Rangers" that display superhuman abilities and are skilled at operating combining mecha, they are rather embattled by an invasion of parasitic life forms that repurpose infected beings into parts of their hive mind. While unable to infect their creatures due to the intensity of the radiation of the "Titans" (and unable to infect telepaths or their Rangers) and vulnerable to psychic attack, this "flood" has been ruthlessly trying to attack their population centres and repurposing biomass and industry to engage their foes on their level.
N-10
- Unclaimed Space (2, N-10 far west, N-10 Northwest): These regions of space are concerningly empty given the density of light speed signals that were clearly being sent from this corner of space up until quite recently. There are some shattered husks of polities that have been utterly gutted, roving marauders and survivors, but most frightful are the strange organic but smooth shapes of an unknown and highly advanced fleet. They are not moving in large numbers, but they do occasionally stop and scourge some of the minor polities in tremendous overkill before revitalising the scourged space to be suitable for the development of life and colonisation by other spacefarers. They refuse contact and leave systems as soon as any hostility is detected; disappearing through unknown faster than light systems.
Two Exodus fleets have arrived.
*Local Human names are family name first, personal name second.
Atriox was with three of his Legion Masters, going over the information of local space yet again on the bridge of the Enduring Conviction.
" I would hear your words on the potential allies we have in this war with the Taiidan, who you believe should gain our favor and aid for this next stage of the war?" said Atroix to his Legion Masters, hearing their council was something necessary, for as skilled as a speaker and leader of the Banished, Atroix could not be everywhere and know everything, listening to his Legion Masters about the potential efforts that they suggested was a simple way to keep trust and hear about possibilities unthought of.
"I would say the the Vasari and Free Haven are the most likely to offer the most with their support, with the Mercenaries giving a slight edge to their usefulness in battle. The Technology and soldier quality together with our forces shall no doubt give an advantage in any battle we might have with the Taiidan" Said Bec Thad, one of the few Kig-Yar Legion Masters, but despite his races reputation, his ship combat more then made up for any rumors', And Atriox did find his rather blunt demeanor refreshing.
"Hmm the Insurrectionists have my interest, they are clearly descended of those who fought the Human UNSC, they still might be able to head off the path that doomed the UNSC with our aid. And with their numbers and tactics, we could get a far better defense for our systems and human colonies." Spoke Varleeus, one who has only recently risen to the status as Legion Master and edger to prove himself.
"I suggest that we focus on the Hserdi and Taiidan Republican movements." said the ever stoic Fyzo 'Kurom, who was often a silent figure, doing his duty with nary a spoken word, his history as a Ranger apparent with such an attitude.
"For what reason 'Kurom, a broken people and our enemies own internal strife cannot aid us in immediate battles, what Bec has said makes some sense at the least, the Vasari offer technological methods that just require the numbers to make use of." said Varleeus, questioning, but not claiming the idea was inherently flawed, a good sense.
"It is simple Varleeus, a nation divided fighting itself cannot expend it's forces in the same manner, while the Hserdi have lost their homeworld, now fighting amongst themselves, they are in need of a guiding figure to lead their people in vengeance, an interesting idea 'Kurom" Said the old Kig-Yar with a nod of his head, while Varleeus also seems to consider this.
"All of you make excellent points and so, i have come to decision on where the Banished shall move." Atroix said, the Legion Masters turning to face their leader.
"Where shall our weapons aid Atroix?" Said Fyzo 'Kurom
"It is simple, all shall be aided by the Banished, we will rise and show this galaxy we are no footnote." Atriox declared with certainty, the three Legion Masters looking at him in awe and a firm salute.
General:
Atriox is to spend time rallying support to the Banished's efforts against the Taiidan, focusing primarily on getting in contact with Hserdi leaders and Taiidan Republican leading figures, to expose what the Empire had done and to perhaps offer a means of ending the meaningless bloodshed. Afterward Atriox will give the offer for the Hserdi to join the Banished and fight those that destroyed their homeworld, he will make it clear that he will respect their wishes and if they wished to left alone, he will honor that, but that they should know that the Banished will avenge Tarval and their people.
In the meantime Banished military aids will be sent out to the other fighting forces against the Taiidan and act as liaisons to better communicate between our collective efforts, as well as offering the Banished's numbers to aid them in their own attacks if they so wish.
Space:
While it may seem best to continue the push we have been experiencing, retaliation from the Taiidan will be coming, so our fleets are to remain on defensive patrols/consolidation in ours and ally space and only send out attacking fleets with our allies on their own attacks. (6 Fleet Hordes on defense, and 4 sent out to aid allies in their attacks)
In case of a defense needed, the strategy shall be to make excellent use of our new information about the Taiidan weaknesses' to being boarded and having their systems targeted. A primary focus will be put on their weapons systems that would launch missile based weapons, destroying the capability for their Atmospheric Incinerator Missile to be launched at any planet they are attacking, with the second focus after destroying their capabilities to maneuver quickly.
Once their ships have their movement crippled in some capacity, boarding pods will be launched and the ships will be taken from the inside out, or having their entire ships peppered from all sides by constantly moving ships, while they may be far tougher then any ship of the Covenant or Banished, it is unlikely they are as adaptable to fast maneuvering enemies from a distance.
In case of special ships known to be carrying figures of importance, they will have boarding parties aided by Sangheili Rangers seeking to destroy gravity controls and capture the important figures.
If our sent out ships are in an attack along with our allies fleet, they shall of course act as coving fire, aiding from a distance with their weapons or sending boarding parties onto the ships to destroy the weapons systems.
Ground:
In the event of ground battles with the Taiidan landing on our worlds, our forces are to have three main points of combat:
-Air Defense: using a combination of our Aircraft and Sky Protecters we shall attack any descending ships or drop pods carrying enemy troops or supplies, if they wish to land on our worlds then they must be prepared to die.
-Tank Destruction: Using our Scarab Fortress Breakers along with many Marauders and Ghosts, we shall hunt for the tanks and other vehicle groups of the Taiidan where we can.
-Picking Off Command: It is often misunderstood how effective a Kig-Yar sniper can be, we shall make the Taiidan leadership understand this with teams of Kig-Yar snipers given the task to locate and take out any figures of importance that land on our worlds, given Jiralhanae guards to ensure if they are found, then they can survive an encounter with large numbers.
If our Allies require our troops in battle, then the majority of troop kinds going with them will be Sangheili and Humans as specialist roles and with Unggoy acting as the major numbers in battle. Deploying with them will be an assortment of light air vehicles and land based Marauders to focus on the important ground vehicles of the Taiidan, intending to swarm around them and pepper them with fire using better maneuverability to go in and out of range for enemy fire, before having the Muradur come in to diliver the finishing blow.
These forces will be led by a Sangheili Legion master, who will be given the permission to do what he can to ensure the Banished are seen in good light by the people of this space, or just better then the Taiidan.
The Taiidan Empire is huge, but somewhat clumsy. They have by far the better faster than light system, but the empire already controlled the better part of an entire galaxy in its home reality and is spread out over many subsectors, having risen to become a contender for a major power in its own right in the relatively brief time span of the Empire's colonisation efforts fuelled by wormholes to their home reality that allow them to move in fresh forces from a secure production base.
This does mean that their war effort is consumed by glory hungry commanders with something to prove, each looking to conquer as many people as possible to add to the ranks of their empire and thus often stretching their territory beyond even the seemingly limitless manpower and ship-building capacity of the Emperor's military. Many times the banished raid into Taiidan territory, cripple administrative centres or take out important resource hubs and pull back before a response fleet can be called from the endless omnidirectional expansion of the Empire.
The rivalries between commanders also meant that they were often reluctant to support one another unless directly ordered to by higher ups, each wanting to advance in the Imperial Nobility and the Admiralty without empowering the odds of their enemies within the Empire. Often a response fleet would emerge, expecting reinforcements to translate out of hyperspace to catch the Banished and their coalitions' fleets, only for the reinforcements to never come out of spite or be redirected at the last moment to deal with something else.
But a war of attrition against the Empire was simply not winnable even with the Vasari, the Insurrectionists, Free Haven, the Eldar Corsairs, and the Kroot Atriox did not have the numbers to play the Emperor's game of manpower. Fortunately they do not have to. The Empire's war on all fronts is of course, a war on all fronts, and this can be exploited by the virtue of Atriox's greater ability to concentrate forces.
Furthermore, the upper echelons of the Banished were those who had clawed their way to the top through merit and proven command ability, whereas Riesstiu IV the Second was a purge happy madman surrounded by sycophants who told the Emperor what they thought they wanted to hear if they didn't want to be telepathically executed by him. Assuming of course, Riesttiu was lucid enough to even care about what was being done in his name which was not always the case as the Emperor often lost himself to his musings within the confines of his isolation chamber.
Battles on the surface where the Empire often had to mine valuable supermaterials that could only form or were only present in the gravity wells of planets were generally in the favour of the Banished who had gotten down the science of exploiting the Empire's lack of concern for infantry combat outside of urban terrain to a T. Stealthy raiders continually harrangued their supply lines and collectors, finding their way into their enormous mothercrawlers that served as the centre of operations for their vehicle heavy war machines and rupturing them with plasma explosives and detonation charges.
The Eldar Corsairs of course, were always worth their price, emerging from shimmering gates with little warning and tearing into a foe at medium range with extremely fast shark like attack formations, taking bites at vital areas before killing blows were struck at closer range to end a fight before retaliation could come. All backdropped by the heavy support the Vasari were able to field in the form of powerful hovercraft and scuttling walkers and vast amounts of plasma and phase missiles.
The Kroot were natural guerilla warriors, filling ecosystem niches with their kin through directed evolution and quickly adjusting themselves for the needed rigours of warfare through consuming the dead and absorbing their genes and power. In worlds with a great deal of natural fauna and flora to eat from, they were nearly peerless, often able to cut down Taiidan patrols without anyone being the wiser until the commanders noticed a lack of response to their signals.
The Terminus space, Trandoshan, and Till-Jeluxi mercenaries were leaned on heavily by the foe to pad out their infantry; particularly against the broad superiority the Banished and Free Haven enjoyed in such a field. While the kinetic barriers of the Terminus Space mercenaries was ineffectual against energy weapons, they had the good sense to arm up with energy barriers to patch that hole, and the Krogan Blood Pack mercenaries in particular were able to go toe to toe with even the Jiralhanae with ease in terms of raw strength while Till-Jeluxi Gene-Securitors brought up bad memories of Spartan super soldiers.
Insurrectionist forces, including "Theban" supersoldiers made as an ironic callback to the Spartans by naming the Greek City state that had destroyed Sparta as a power; all of-age volunteer adults, were deployed were possible to provide extra heavy firepower and stormtrooper infiltration attacks. Important for boarding operations in particular where small numbers of Thebans could move with Brute and Elite commandoes, Eldar Corsairs, or free Havens' strange and frightful superpowers and rig ships to blow or take out important leaders.
Quite useful against the very mothership and carrier centric approach to warfare that the Taiidan in particular used wherever the raw fleet power of the Vasari, Free Haven, and the Banished was not sufficient to win the day. Grinding forward in a relentless assault meant to try and stress the internal workings of an empire that could only ever afford to devote part of its enormous resources towards the fighting with Atriox. And it was a part that Atriox was slowly but gradually defeating in detail.
In space, the small numbers of Till-Jeluxi ships were a terror, far more advanced than that of most combatants and requiring disproportionate resources to take down, the Eldar Corsairs having even better technology was something of a godsend even if they weren't big on well...big ships. But it was a powerful trump card that could land decisive killing blows while the Banished did the bulk of the fighting with their numerically weighty fleet and significant industry; especially when faced with a foe whose fleets centred around their command ships to an enormous degree.
The Taiidan would eventually have enough and dispatch one of the Empire's archdukes, a vat born "son" of Riesstiu IV the Second born of a tube and mixed with the genes of an Imperial Woman that had briefly caught Riesstiu's fancy; with orders to crush the Jiralhanae outright, sending forth a full ninth of the Taiidani military to deal with what had come to be a severe annoyance and thorn in their side and provide a quick victory to shut up the Republicans.
Centred around a new pride of the Taiidani fleet, a Fatherworld known as the "Imperial Benevolence"; a planetoid sized construct that could both destroy and produce fleets and carried the means with which to leave countless worlds burning wrecks with their atmospheric incinerator payloads, the Royal Fleet would start its rampage into what the Empire had figured was most likely to be the space of the coalition burning a hole in the Emperor's pockets.
The Imperial Benevolence and its constellation of smaller or similar sized battleworlds advanced in a broad front, pushing the lines of the Banished hard as the Banished for once found themselves to be the power facing an enemy able to produce more and bigger ships than they could. Something most of the species of the former Covenant never really could say they had experience with. Even with the aid in building space fortifications from the Vasari, Haven, and the Insurrectionists; it was next to impossible to stop the battleworlds from overrunning planets they had parked themselves over.
However, Republican sympathisers within the crew who had grown numb to the mass genocide that these craft were called on to do revealed a number of key weaknesses. Such as that to work at full capacity, the Taiidani battleworlds needed to ingest vast amounts of matter delivered by collectors into the waiting furnaces that would reprocess matter into whatever the fleets needed. And that due to the enormous amounts of matter needed, they had to open parts of their superstructure to allow the intake of mass; especially when "feeding" from "nipple" extractors that the Taiidan had developed over the course of their invasion to pump resources from planetary surfaces into the behemothic ships.
And of course, to process and transform so much matter so rapidly required very...energetic processes that did not like being interrupted. While mothership scale systems were failsafe, these were rather less so thanks to the instabilities brought about by increased scale they had not ironed out. Furthermore, a very fighter centric approach to point defence meant that should their fighters and interceptors be overwhelmed, lighter craft could run riot over their surfaces and deposit soldiers to attack. Especially with the Vasari's mastery of phase space allowing for sudden strikes.
A number of the massive vessels were brought to a halt, destroyed or overwhelmed by boarders. Some splitting apart as reactor cascades overwhelmed gravitational binding energy, some simply being subject to massive scale glassing attack from orbit until they were rendered functionally mission killed once boarding teams dealt with their retaliatory mass driver and ion cannon batteries.
Vasari interstellar range capable driver cannons and missile batteries would lock onto the structures with sensor data provided by the fleet, pounding them from afar to continually fray at their defences while forces were mobilised in a grand running battle against the Imperial Benevolence. Fought across multiple systems, the engagement would go on for days, ships pulling out when in need of repairs whenever field regeneration wasn't available, landing parties and forces facing reinforcements either cloned or dropped onto the Archduke's flagship and measuring their progress in corpses.
The Vasari dispatched their Titans, their largest ships at last to the engagement with orders to clear out the escorting fleets as the Banished were pushing on the surface and glassing small nation sized segments of the behemoth at a time; fighting against its construction abilities replacing lost guns and the endless masses of ships that swarmed around its constellation like a blizzard.
The battle of high charity would have seemed ordinary in comparison, but paired with the arrival of many Supercarriers whose high grade energy projectors could score their way through the incredible thick hulls of the warship when concentrating their fire and packed enough seraphs to turn the tide of the strike craft war; the Banished were winning.
Enterprising commanders ordered the scarabs to turn their excavation beams onto the planet itself to try burrowing through thinner portions found with ground-penetrating sonar to access vital components, sending in combat teams to engage the Taiidan crew whose death-masque painted helms soon became more literal than intended death masks in great quantities. It was brutal, heinous butchery, but it would yield results in the long slow grind to the core as the Kultorasks exuded their nanoleech systems to drain vitality from the Taiidan fleet and patch up damage done to Atriox's coalition before their very eyes with the swarms of nanomachines.
The Banished had managed to, through grit and steel and well honed boarding tactics, corner and seize the person of the Archduke while they were in an induced sleep cycle to ensure that his majesty's rest would not be disturbed by the noise outside; Brute warriors and Hunter packs overwhelming the guards posted to defend the sleep chambers and allowing for the entire chamber to be extricated. The Benevolence itself would be left a dysfunctional hulk, scuttle charges hoping to deny it to the Banished as it was overwhelmed, damaging it greatly but not able to outright destroy a thing that had enough gravity to hold itself together; though not, as the Huragok surmised, past the point of repair. The Taiidan were ultimately still people and their morale could be broken, and with the defeat of the Imperial Benevolence, the offensive began to unravel as the Banished sprung the trap now that the Imperial armada was committed.
Though it had cost scores of planets, such things could be written off as acceptable losses for the literal decimation of the Taiidani Navy and the destruction of one of its warfleets; scattered remnants escaping to the empire to report failure to a wrathful Emperor and ceding the bulk of the no-man's space as no longer controllable.
The first great campaign of the battle was won, and now the Banished had the space with which to expand and counterattack against the colossus. Perhaps they could replace the ships, but the experienced and skilled officers, soldiers, and war planners as well as the institutions invested into them would be much harder to replace even with cloning.
Available Sectors
O-10
Vasari (Northeast, 3 subsquares stretching between the Till-Jeluxi/Desmondu Corridor): The Vasari are a highly technologically advanced and industrially prodigious people that have hired out the Eldar and Kroot mercenaries to oppose the Taiidan. Lead by a Federative Council of Delegates, these "Rebel" Vasari have abandoned their people's ancient tradition of looting everything not nailed down and then leaving to run away from a vague threat that had chased their great empire; instead seeking to put down roots and find allies, even ending their empire's longstanding history of slavery. Well, at least the part of their empire in this region of space. The Vasari have been one of the chief bulwarks against the Taiidan for some time, and are grateful for an ally against the endless tide.
Insurrection (Northwest, One subsquare): More formally known as the Interstellar Democratic Confederation, the former insurrection has reinvented much of the UNSC's will in its time since being dropped here centuries ago. The time it took to grow their population and industrial base and formally control this territory occupied a great deal of their time, but they are at least a not insigificant power anymore.
Taiidan Empire (All remaining Subsquares, includes additional subsquares beyond): The enormous Taiidan Empire has come to rule a huge chunk of the exclusion zone between Till-Jeluxi and Desmondu, having claimed sovereignty over eleven subsectors with the raw power of its almost limitless fleet. At war with many other polities at the same time and thus unable to concentrate its full might in any one direction, and potentially politically unstable as the Republican movement begins to gather steam.
O-11
Lawless Expanses of Desmondu (Two squares, south, southwest): The price of hubris is a hard and heavy fall. The Historical Society of Desmond University had sought to find the source of the gift that had inspired humanity to seek out the stars in the 1960s hundreds of thousands of years ago. They came to this part of the universe, and finding a patch of clear space, sought to build a society that would celebrate the great range of the past of mankind and its kin. A combination of a lack of experience with actually running a country, external pressures, and growing factionalism due to trying to celebrate all of a poorly remembered past lead to the project going through many forms of government before finally collapsing after its fifth try at an Imperial Monarchy and a vicious succession war plus peripheral rebellions and worker's revolts lead to the collapse of the country to outright warlordism. You are directly bordering the territories of House Praetorian; which seeks to emulate the long gone Roman Empire in the hopes of injecting its sense of history and longevity into "Dominus Scipio"'s aspirations for leadership. It is estimated they control a further five subsectors in their effort to control the eastern fringe of Desmondu to sweep westwards in a glorious conquest; opposed by the Afrofuturist polity of Onuxa to their south.
Free Haven: (Far Southwest, Two subsquares): Soldiers tired of fighting and dying in Desmondu's pointless wars who've chosen to form a polity where they would only need to fight the battles that mattered to them and of their own choosing, Free Haven is technologically advanced but jealously guards its independence from perceived threats, prompting it to support the insurrection against the Taiidani invasion and forming a coalition of convenience with the Vasari. Multispecies and multicultural, Free Haven is very wary of attempts to untangle Desmondu's political catastrophe for fear of being dealt with as essentially a mutinee.
Strategic Turn 1 Start
(Unlike EternalStruggle I trust you to report this on your own since I'm a bit lacklustre at math)
The counterattack begins poorly, not in a tactical sense but rather in what it reveals. Raiding forces striking at the Hierarchy's rear are unable to find any of their worlds, if they even have any, and while they find the multiple worlds the Hierarchy has conquered so far they also find that these worlds have not been colonized, but rather razed to the ground. All resources have been ripped clean from their surface, organic and otherwise, leaving desolate husks with some scattered mining outposts extracting what marginal resources remain.
While this discovery strikes a nerve, the Cybran forces do not allow the new information to alter or slow their plan. Armored Command Units drop onto the surface of the planets that possess enough remaining resources to warrant the mining outposts, swiftly eliminating the outer defenses present while Commandos infiltrate and take control of the facilities, leaving just enough time for emergency messages to be sent to the Hierarchy forces present at the front. Peeping Toms identify and report minor troop movements away from the various embattled worlds of the front line, causing the next phase of the operation to commence.
The pre-prepared assault force plunges down on the contested worlds, slightly outnumbered but full of fury and the element of surprise. Swiftly entering the brutality of the short-ranged clash, the Spears of the forward fleets rip into the Hierarchy motherships with their spinal laser cannons, dealing heavy damage. A strong initial blow, but the Hierarchy's numbers push back, seemingly preventing a landing.
Seemingly, because even as the space battle commences and in some cases before Silent Knives descend onto planetary surfaces, deploying ACUs to the front in isolated locations. Bases are rapidly constructed, churning out swarms of ground and air units that rapidly move to relieve embattled local forces, which react with positive surprise to the sudden appearance of saviors. Loyalists of both types do battle against swarms of Hierarchy Phase Tanks, while the air is a contest of Corsairs and Geminis against Saucers. Hierarchy Walkers are called in against these troublesome new adversaries, but by the time they've cleaned up the initial Cybran forces they often find themselves facing Monkeylords, which can reliably overpower the enemy's heavy units due to the latter being partially mobile production facilities and seemingly mostly designed to fight smaller units. Until now, the Hierarchy has not known a peer, and it costs them dearly in the sweeping armored engagements that follow.
The raiding force, contrary to initial expectations, stays put, building up their forces by using the mining outposts' resources as a jumpstart to the ACU economy and battling the Hierarchy investigation units when they come. Comparatively few in number compared to the sizable Cybran contingent, the investigatory forces are generally lured in by what seems to be limited raiding units of Slabs, Howlers, and escort vessels, only to be suddenly overwhelmed by Leviathans, Suggests, and ground-based weapons systems appearing from nowhere.
While they successfully ambushed and eliminated a small, unsuspecting portion of the enemy forces, the raider fleet commanders understood that more must be done. After some brief discussion of options, they agreed to utilize their new positions to produce additional forces that can attack the enemy fleet from the rear. The raiding force's mobile elements move swiftly to reinforce the assault force, while more ships are built.
The assault force, of course, had been in somewhat dire straits up until this point. Outnumbered and outgunned, they were mercilessly punished by the Hierarchy navy, even as the ground campaigns below proceeded well, with Cybran and local forces acting in concert to push back the invaders. The raiding force's arrival was very welcome, and soon the enemy was enveloped and being attacked from all sides. The most damaged ships left the battle to initiate self-repair, their place taken by newbuild ships released from the internal bays of the assault force's Spears and ground shipyards of the most successful Commanders.
Not all goes well, however. Attempts by Proxies and Commandos to assassinate Hierarchy leadership fail in spectacular fashion, as their Underseers possess psychic abilities that would put any Aeon seer to shame. While a small handful are successfully eliminated by Wraiths, the vast majority wipe out the assassination squads sent after them, some even deploying to the front lines and assisting in armored battles, crushing tanks and walkers with nothing but the power of their mind.
At some point, however, an assassination attempt annoys the wrong leader, or otherwise the general battle becomes too unfavorable, and the Hierarchy deploys their final weapon. Later identified as Purifiers, these massive quadrupedal walkers, as large as any in the Cybran arsenal, deploy deadly missiles that seem to convert matter to energy in a reaction best described as 'highly energetic'.
The local cities are largely saved by the careful predeployment of Bomb Bouncers, as are many Cybran Commanders who chose to focus on fortifying their bases. Many other Commanders, and vast quantities of both Cybran and local field forces, are not so lucky. The casualties are immense.
But it's too little, too late. The surviving Commanders rebuild their forces with a vengeance. They largely have to turn away from their space production efforts, but the battle in the void has turned to favor the Cybran Nation, with orbital production able to keep up the necessary rate of manufacturing and repair without assistance from ACUs or ground-based factories. All it does is give the Hierarchy time to pull their remaining ground and space forces out of most of the contested systems.
Most, but not all. A single star system, fully but recently occupied, becomes a rallying point for the Hierarchy fleets and armies. Rapid Cybran pursuit from the front and additional reinforcements from the production set up by the raiding force means that a battle can be forced before the foe can escape out of the stellar region to some kind of safety. It's time to bring this battle to a close, with all forces standing ready to redeploy to the final battlefield. Unfortunately, local units are too damaged to offer any material support, but they give the strongest moral support they can as the Cybran Nation begins to pack up and move on.
Situation Summary:
-Attempts to strike at enemy rear lines falter due to the Hierarchies' maintaining most of their industry in mobile fleet assets, although the strikes are still able to provoke a minor response.
-Attempts to assassinate enemy leaders completely fail due to the powerful esoterics of the hierarchy leadership. With Overseers and Underseers wiping out assassination squads with their cyborg enhancements and/or psychic powers and even repelling vehicle assaults.
-However the lack of strong garrison forces does allow some of these rear line strikes to build up sufficient military forces to pincer the main hierarchy forces between the rear line strikes and the assault force.
-The main assault force does succeed in alpha striking several hierarchy capital ships with the element of surprise but also sustains losses among its commanders when the hierarchy retaliates with its own Purifier superweapons.
-Due to the pincer maneuver the Cybrans are able to force a decisive engagement with the main hierarchy fleet in orbit of a contested world. If the cybrans are able to win this ground battle they will be able to wipe out the main hierarchy force and drive the remainders away from the portal.
-Proceed to a detailed tactical ground battle using the four phase system.
The river running through the Valley that could have once been said to be beautiful, once it was home to vibrant Forests, clean water and plentiful resources. To many people of most universes it would have been termed a paradise.
To the beings that prepared to fight now it was a Nightmare. The Underseer that had been deployed to hold it could feel the creeping emotion that hung like a fog on the mighty contingent. From the smallest Lost one to even the Brutes the fog of numbing shock and disbelief emphasized the confusion of the past conflict. It had not been that long ago that rumors of something akin to over compensating Novus had been heard nipping at their heels.
Now they stood in torn up mud from an Overseer cursed water precipitation event and the Dozens of Walkers that had been coordinated into a single attack force. A force that should have been able to march unimpeded burning Worlds and Empires beneath their feet. Not some last-ditch garrison hemmed and nipped at by the unmanned tanks and small mechs that now littered the battle field. Needing to form ridiculous armoured formations against some apparent Demons. While the wider war was not something The Underseer knew about, even the Lost Ones knew that something bad, no disastrous was occurring. This muster was not for some glorious counter attack, but something that the Hierarchy had seen many times before, but never had to do themselves.
The Emotion was infectious.
The constant shacking of the Hierarchy's Walkers had almost concealed the approach but all of them felt the approach of the Enemy shacking them all out of their stupor. A brief transmission, filled with vague descriptions and images came from above as the sky lit in response at this new challenger to the Hierarchy's might.
The lights from the reflected shields lit up the fog as something rounded the corner. The form that emerged from the Fog was similar to the walkers that hurried to get themselves in the formation requested from above, although it had much sharper edges, jagged lines and pointed ascetics denoting its truly alien nature. Looking more like some demented gemstone than even the Walkers denoted in the Overseer's files. The most alarming thing was the sized of the black metal, red highlighted monstrosity, it was as tall as a Purifier and looked twice the bulk of the great Machines.
Overlord- damned it. The scariest thing was that it was not alone, two more slightly smaller monsters, these more looking like the Spiderbots they were briefed on. Much larger and much heavier armoured, with a number of normal sized walkers that appeared unarmed and carrying shield generators providing additional armour. All of them marched in unison toward the far end of the valley.
There was only one choice, if they were to survive any of this they needed to get under those generators.
The Underseer let out a wave of rage, battle fervor, and determination that was caught up by the Grunts, Brutes and even the drivers of the walkers, lurching them forward towards the enemy. The Walkers pushing the limits of what they could accomplish in speed as they summoned in more and more troops, Saucers and heavy equipment to help the charge.
The central machine of the Enemy formation was the first to speak. A wave of purple, red and white energy connected with the leading Walker, a Habitat Walker as the hastily written doctrine dictated should go in first, the front half of the towering machine evaporating as the rest of the machine was push physically backwards as Saucers desperately tried to repair it.
The Walker was basically dead from the impact with a second volley finishing it off a few moments later. The Underseer had the Walkers spread themselves out to prevent the bolts from eliminating multiple at a time. The behemoth was powerful but slow firing, if they could just get under the shields.
But the Underseer's hope was based on ignoring the other units accompanying the metal beast, as a heavily armoured and oversized Spiderbots emitted a Purple-blue laser from a plated turret, with an absentminded thought placing those lasers being usually red, they began tearing through the Walkers as a blade slicing the air. Leaving the last of the Habitat walkers a literal puddle of molten metal as they turned their wrath to the Assemble walkers next.
The Central Demonic Spider then began emitting what appear to the nearly paralyzed commander was a metallic torrent of box like machines that waddled their way to the front while other spider like quadrupeds started firing red chaotic energy arcing to the sky. The Box like machines started unloading rapid firing plasma into the fastest of the Hierarchy's ground vehicles and the Underseer made an unthinkable decision. Their fate was sealed, but it would be better to die as a hero than be forgotten all together.
Far away from the battle a silent armoured figure monitored the progress of attack group 5. Screens flickering from one battle scene to the next and back to the current construction projects to side images of various Ops personal adjusting the Cybran's knowledge of the battlefield. The well practiced hands making the subtle adjustments and optimizations of the constant race of adaptions and evolution.
"Strategic Launch Detected."
The practiced hands paused for a moment, a new idea rattling around in the old bucket as he checked on the trajectory. The shields on the Stormstrider were still high enough to test this. Oh yes.
A com request was answered a few moments latter, showing a young Cybran with flaring face circuitry, indicating a bubbly personality or at least a very upfront personality,
Well, there were worse things.
"Steve_3853 You have a Strategic missile strike incoming; I will be taking control of your assault force. Fall back to position Ops will be forwarding to you shortly. Evac has been prepared if needed." The voice was calm and straight forward.
The frontline Commander proceeded without hesitation as the recognition codes flew, but not without complaint, "I don't know who this is, or what games you 56ers are playing. but know that my As…" The boy stopped seeing the famous Veteran, "Shi… Sorry Sir. Proceeding now. Will reach Fallback at T-15.4 seconds." You could hear the A.I. core in the back of his head whirling as he tried to backpedal, "So, eeh, The Tip of the Spear is kind of a mouthful to say, do you have a Nickname or something back at home with the Doctor or something?"
"Impact is estimated at 16.2 seconds, it is recommended to engage impact protections at this time." The well-trained layer of professionalism and the multitude of other issues needing attention, meant that he couldn't keep up the usual level of banter that others of his rank did.
As the child that was now a veteran support commander of about a half a dozen years of experience hastily put in a mouthguard and made other setting changes, the Commander turned his attention back to the battle, he tightened the formation, spacing out the Bomb Bouncers to cover the formation and made a final check on the Stormstrider.
Then he turned off the bomb bouncers and started them recharging.
He watched as the missile hit and the screen went white.
There was a full 2.36 seconds as the surrounding soil was baked into glass, the river was evaporated and the area was smoothed like butter under a warm sun.
A quick check of the units' vitals indicated the damage had destroyed most of the Brackman mobile artillery and engineers and had badly damaged some of the Bricks but the core of the force was still operational. The Stormstrider was getting back on its 6 feet, its shields broken and slowly recharging, and suddenly the target of many of the ships filling the skies above.
With the shots impacting on the now reactivated Bomb Bouncer barriers. The Lights returning from once they came and caused an appreciable level of chaos.
"Welp, I certainly s**** myself." The Support Commander quipped in, "I'll get this mess cleared up Mr. TOTS, must be getting close to something important. Locusts fighting harder than even those last bit of the Seraphim. You alright with me calling you Mr. TOTS?"
The Veteran of two wars that encompassed and tried to consume the entirety of Humanity paused the numerous commands and stared at Steve.
The uncomfortableness was as thick as oil, "I'll take that as a maybe, Attack group 5 will be moving in 384 seconds, Steve Out." The screen flicked off from the not that unusual Cybran as the battle raged on.
"Tier 5 Mobile Strategic Missile Launcher Location Updated. Advisement that Hierarchy bombardment is being paired to follow up Purifier Missile strikes to deal with Experimental Formations. Uploading Neural pattern files that contain an effective counter protocol."
Continuing the mission and as a new great behemoth of a machine rose from his base, a flurry of files was being accessed. A minor subroutine his hybrid mind quickly identified both the files and the person that was downloading the files.
A sigh came from the old Cybran, his task to help Ivan avoid old mistakes and unhealthy coping mechanisms of the Doctor had hit yet another hurtle.
In the skies above a near beautiful dance of death occurred as Cybran Aircraft and soon to be strike craft dueled, slashed and baited the Saucers and Monitors of the Hierarchy. And if you were clever enough you could smell the disdain and wounded pride piercing the fog of Arrogance and the wild electric current of Fear.
Near the battle an ACU containing the vengeful remains of the Assumpta manipulated the controls with movements that fully embodied the violence that they translated to the outside world.
This first battle had been fruitful yet disappointing for her, Ivan's missteps were born from haste and the Hierarchy's rapid approach on the portal creating a failure of imagination to check for eccentricities of a different evolutionary path a different FTL system would allow.
But that it had done little damage, winnowing much of the chaff and Commanders that had achieved their position from the softer Nodes lack of standards. Given what she had seen of Brackman's latest science project, he would torture himself over the lost lives but should maintain the respect of the population. The retribution and victory papering over the initial failures. The near disaster had proven most profitable for her. Ensuring the death of a number of these Underseers and Overseers had earned her quite the haul of favours and promises to look the other way, her only regret was that she had been unable to capture any of them alive. A recording or participation of the torturous death of one of these Locusts would be something that would fetch quite the premium from the families of one of the fallen or from the refugees themselves.
As yet another strategic Missile was swatted down by the AntiNuke she turned her full attention back to these Locusts as the unofficial discourse had been calling them. This Hierarchy was ultimately a nostalgic but uninteresting opponent by her standards.
The nearest example that she could express was the dance she was conducting between what she expected was two to three dedicated controllers. The hypothesis that had been put forward earlier that the Hierarchy had never been in a war with a peer, with the most egregious example being that of the Walkers coming against the Tier 4 Monkey Lord,
It was good to know that her fellows could see the most obvious natures of their enemies. This Hierarchy had their arrogant preconceptions of the Universe blazing in their movements and designs almost as brightly as her base shields flashed from the Starship fire. Their over specialization into counter insurgency was obvious from the cigar shape Scout plane equivalents that needed to be stationary to get useful sensor range to the short-ranged saucers that lack the proper armour for an ASF and were vulnerable to the repeated attacks and disengagements that skilled air control could created.
Their commanders were little better, while they had the brutality and violence needed for their work, they had little in the way of cooperation or even enough trust to take risks on their own. With her having to enrage or frighten them to get them to overextend, and when they did it was in a sloppy manner, full of force and fury but lacking the focus and precision needed to do much harm even had they been actual openings.
They were untrained school Bullies. More reminiscent of the days before her Mentor had pulled her out from the ruins of Earth than even the thugs that he had employed. Now full of fear as they fought a true battle for their lives and learning a lesson that had been expressed on her soul so long ago in a previous life.
The Difference between Strength and True Power.
A Notification updated her on the location of one of these Purifiers, and a brief check showed the Wraith that her numbers of Tier 3 air had risen enough to transition fully.
The Swarm of Geminis twisted and plunged into the air formation once again with the viciousness of the viper behind the controls. Carefully managed by the Uploaded human to rid the Hierarchy of their Monoliths and to expertly concentrate fire leaving little to be repaired as the slow retaliation lacked both the concentration of fire and the Alpha damage to punish the Cybrans before they retreated. The now Blinded airforce flared outwards angrily but impotently. With the highest skilled of the Three commanders now desperately looking for a win or something that would save their hide from the losses that had been taken over the past twenty minutes. The pilotless Drones worth much more than many of the lives under their command. However, it looked like a Corsair wing was going for the Purifier. The unguarded nature of the attack seemed to indicate some sort of desperation. Sensing a trap, the lead of the trio grabbed control of the remaining Monoliths and teleported them to cover the Saucers and get them the win they needed.
The Engagement was fierce with the fighter bomber taking a toll on the opposing aircraft but ultimately succumbing. A bit of relief crept into the alien when screams and accusations came blaring across the coms.
The Remaining forces that had been left behind, completely under the control of their fellows had been blind and torn apart as the undetected Scorpion wings had joined the Tier 2 ASF and had swept the rest of the Hierarchy air force from the sky. With insult to fatal blow being a squad of Revenant Bombers appearing from nowhere but obviously had taken the straight path through the air fight unloading their payloads on the charges they were supposed to protect.
Redfog took a little solace and would have slightly smiled at the lethargic, doomed and utterly defeated movements that the remaining Saucers undertook before they were in turn destroyed.
With a momentary flick, engineers in transports were deployed to gather the mass as she took the next step to getting her base ready for deploying Soulripper and SoulCrushers to the field.
Under the Hum of Cloak and Shield generator, William Gage happily hummed as he worked on his next big reveal. A tad disappointed at the lack of time and the chances to get to know the Cybran's guests and prepare something Special for them he was going to have to settle for something that would irritate his fellows. He'll placate them later but he was going to need something of additional value for Redfog and Steve. You always kept the murderous monster happy and coming up with the title Mr. TOTS deserved something special.
He loved Secrets. And both his benefactors and this new Universe held so many to uncover.
As another Nuclear Submarine slid into the water he played with a few ideas of music and philosophical quotes but nothing was quite fitting. He would have to go back farther in the data to find something that worked.
The Red outlines of the super structure of a Scathis was started signalled the approaching doom of the growing cloud of ships over this blood and oil drenched desert of a planet.
Some would say it was even beautiful.
General Orders
Assassination attempts by infantry forces are to be discontinued, if Enemy Commander or leadership are detected Commanders are suggested to use various sudden alpha strike weaponry to deal with them, (Tactical Missiles, Fire Beetles, Bomber runs, etc)
All commanders will prepare their bases with defenses as if for strategic artillery and Strategic missile volleys
Three Legends will converge with deployed forces to the critical Hierarchy fallback position, The Tip of the Spear, Redfog, and Gage.
Ground combat overview
Shock Phase
A series of raiding forces will be deployed to force the Hierarchy forces to concentrate.
Ground raiding forces will consist of faster elements, Loyalists, loyalist Reborn and Phenom Tanks, a high emphasis on the Phenoms when the economy allows, while not designed for it they should be able to catch out and kill lone Walkers and devastate anything lighter that the Hierachy can deploy. Adaptors can be added to deal with Saucer response.
Air raiding forces will forces will lean on gunships and Tier 2 ASF, If Tier 3 air is achieved at this point deploy those. Their primary job is to contest air at least and to hunt and destroy unsupported walkers. Also to find local Enemy assets and strongholds
A series of Heavy attack forces will be then deployed taking advantage of our superior ability to concentrate combat power and will engage the concentrated Walker columns, either Defensively or Offensively
These forces are also meant to draw fire away from bases and become the focus of Hierarchy efforts
Each attack forces will consist of 1 Stormstrider, 2 Monkeylord mark 3 (The Tier 5 Behemoth one that has dropped the stealth and cloak for armor and a bigger laser) and Five Bomb bouncers. Commander should add a number of Tier 3 units to support, typically Bricks, Bouncers and Brackman artillery, although commanders can be flexible depending on their need.
Base defenses
All Commanders are recommended to reinforce their bases with fully upgraded shields with Engineering Station Support and to expect heavy bombardment
Bombouncers and other anti orbital weapons are recommended to discourage Starship fire
Strategic Missile defense is a must and should be a priority as we expect that Purifiers will be deployed en mass
Penetration Phase
Assuming that we have the Hierarchy on the defensive we will try and pierce their defenses where ever they are weakest
Intelitron Spy planes and Raid forces will seek out weak positions in the battle lines
The Heavy attack Forces will advance on Hierarchy positions using the bulk of the Stormstider and the sheer damage of the Monkeys, supported by the Stormstrider's production capabilities to replace loses even up to producing enough build power to build new Behemoths
Tier 3 Air should be in full production and the use of Scorpion Wing Tier 3 ASF to create large holes in their air defenses for aerial assault forces
Monolith Scout Units are the highest priority due to their ability to detect and enable the targeting of Tier 3 Fighters and bombers, while they have good anti air weapons their immobile nature outside of teleportation leaves them easy targets
Saucer Swarms large enough to survive direct engagements will be whittled down with hit and run tactics exploiting the low alpha damage of the Hierarchy craft
Begin sending out Aerial Assault groups, these can create and exploit breakthroughs faster than ground forces and can be used to fight the orbiting Navy after the ground fight is done
These groups will be centered on the Soulcrusher due to the preference of heavy group units by the Hierarchy
Supporting Forces will be Wailers and Scorpion Wing Fighters
Exploit Phase
Once their lines are broken the Successful attack group will make their way to high value targets of descending importance
Purifier Tier 5 Strategic Mobile Missile Launchers
Other Strategic or tactical scale Superweapons that we can find
Commanding Officers on the ground
Resource gathering operations
Units to be produced or have ready for this phase
Firebeetles and Phenoms will be the choice of ground forces to reach out beyond the reach of the ground assault forces or deposited by the Soulcrusher
While an Air Assault force can do this phase if a break through is near it is recommended to have a wing or cloud of Strategic Bombers to quickly wipe out important targets
Reduce Phase
For cleaning up stranded forces the prior attack forces will create AOE weapons such as Artillery and the Tier 4 Soulripper
By this time of the battle Some commanders will have gotten Scathis artillery units up and running and/or Strategy missiles of our own. Due to the lack of any surviving locals here feel free to fire at any surviving Hierarchy Forces or start laying into the Orbiting Starships as you please.
War is something that unfortunately is difficult to ever fully move past no matter the societal system, so long as there are other incompatible systems even the ones most adept at solving internal strife will find themselves brought into conflict by those who would rather they not exist or deem them to have something worth taking by force. Not to mention the existence of militant eidolons that exist to do nothing but wage war and bring it to just about everything they run into. The Imperium of Man was not one of those systems that had done much to minimise internal strife, not when its vast productive capabilities were largely being turned towards the maximisation of the wealth of the people at the top who lived in opulent splendour while the majority had to work in varying degrees of toil for a living. All while fighting tooth, claw, gun, and knife to hold its hastily grabbed position of galactic hegemon seized in the power vacuum of the fall of the Eldar against many, many challengers.
Force Commander Harrsk, one of the heirs to the legacy of the great Perturabo would carry this ten thousand years of experience into a new universe as the energies of the chaos magicks went beyond even the control of its makers. The Dark Mechanicus could scarcely imagine the sort of power they had the misfortune of their device bumping heads with. The strange and nameless colours of the warp suddenly giving way to vivid rainbow flashes of colours bluer than blue, redder than red, and realer than real. As if for a brief moment, the true colours were visible, the true existence behind the veil of mundane reality and imagination.
The warp recoiled and twisted as these energies, cast forth by a sour note that resounded in the impossible and the actual, echoed through infinity and eternity. At once everywhere and nowhere, at once majestic beyond just about anything imaginable to the point of being pointless to describe but also the worst noise anyone had ever heard in their heads. The warp expanded, shifted, and its currents tore away, rerouting through a nothingness that had no dimension, no time, no space, no cause, no effect. Immeasurable and barely descripable, it was the Ur-Null that was all that which was not and couldn't be. Full of things that did not exist, empty of things that did. Without reality to ascribe any form or sequence, things were perceived to happen in order of importance to the observer; the only frame of reference in the nothingness available.
The navigators stopped screaming, the Astropaths heard quiet in the ocean that was not in the infinity of zero. The briefest flashes of a realm of unimagined colour could be seen, somehow all around but endlessly far away. A feeling of being observed by the players of great games who scarcely gave notice to the confines of spacetime that made up universes and the subversal places that inundated them; betwixt things that were against reality itself, and things that were of entirely differing definitions of real or were powered principally by what was imagined to be real. It would have been maddening, instantly mind shattering to behold this place, but Harrsk's task group had a signal to guide them through the abyss and a shell of calm warp stuff to keep the true nothing away.
A golden light could be perceived by the navigators, a map for a place that had no dimension. Direction for a place without space, and coordinates in a realm without time to reach a new universe. One that the golden light, surely the Emperor himself, had designated to them was a place of great importance. It would never be known objectively how much time occurred, because there was no such thing as time at all in the Ur-Null. But to Harrsk's sense of time, the journey was already over, the dive into the realm of the unknowable disappearing and giving way to stars and the comforting void of space. Not the stars and space you knew, but normalcy all the same.
The golden light of the astronomicon shone into this new reality, making things quite different from the four dark gods you knew recoil from its shine as slivers of radiance from the Emperor's alters were pooled together to provide for a widespread luminescent glow that the Navigators could use to steer ships through the Warp; or the Flux as it was known here. So at the very least, the fleet would not be lost in the vastness of space without direction or guidance. And the navigators were further pleased to report that the warp was easier to navigate here, greater distances could be crossed much more reliably and with greater average speed, and accidents should be minimised.
With the massive size of Harrsk's armada; which had gathered the detritus of other timelines lost in the void of the Ur-Null...or perhaps they were always there? Or did they apparate on the other side? The Ur-Null is confusing and hard to explain...in any case Harrsk had under his command a golden armada that represented a nearly matchless concentration of surface based and voidfaring might that would have been able to conquer just about any imaginable opposition put before it. The ranks of Imperial ships that began laying claim to the various habitable worlds and relics they found; including old ring worlds, ancient orbital habitats, a number of artificial and natural planets.
The Imperial government was here to stay, and would stake its claim as the general lex of Imperial law demanded. The civilians needed to land on places where agriculture could begin and quickly, and so any available body that could sustain human life was quickly made to do just that. Harrsk found his early months occupied by the drudgery of administrating an attempt to remake the Imperial Government under extensive space marine guidance and observation. The sort of dull paper work and number crunching that thankfully the sons of Perturabo were well suited for even if civilian administration was more the ken of the XIII. It was however, rather boring. The Astropaths could tell that man was not alone in these stars, but the Deathwatch, Ordo Xenos, and Mechanicus surmised that astropathic signals were not in vogue after having picked up a great many space distorted or tachyon riding signals that the Imperium sadly lacked the means to decode at the present.
But if it was war that the battlegroup craved, it would be war they would get. Some smaller xenos polities and the occasional marauders who sought to use this space as a hub for their enterprises were quashed as Imperial compliance policy demanded. Many a pre or early spacefaring civilisation would meet its end as the Imperials brushed them aside with little thought or regard. Relic abominable intelligences were, as the Cult Mechanicus decreed; put to the torch wherever found, particularly those who were readily identifiable as rogue, such as many who had come to slay their creators, assimilate them, or take over governance from them. But these were not the wars that the Emperor's Tarot foresaw.
It was generally speaking, the gravest of national sins to intentionally create a berserker probe for good reason. All too often, things made to find targets, strip them down for parts and build more themselves, rinse and repeat; would far outlive whatever original purpose was made for them. A plague on the stars that would keep on expanding, keep on growing, keep on evolving without any ability to stop itself. The "wayfaring scourge" was one of those things, a metal, composite, and plastic swarm of machines that had drifted into this galaxy entirely by accident and simply started doing what they had always done. Observe, analyse, attack, adapt, consume, search repeat. Nobody was quite sure what they were originally made for, or who made them, but the streams of "militarised probes" were enough to send waves of refugees trying to escape their advance.
Those they overwhelmed would have their minds forcibly scanned and digitised to gather information in a particularly hostile manner while they endlessly created among other things; prefabs for an organic culture that never arrived to make use of them. On tracks, wheels, legs, and hovering air cushions they moved on land, by pulse engine and thruster they moved in the skies. By laser, mass driver, atomics, and other weapons they attacked. And aboard starships that could ply the stars faster than light itself without the warp they moved, their ships being cold cylindrical things with great wings that called to mind the solar panels of ancient satellites that provided for additional firepower with the secondary batteries, dorsal turrets, and spinal weapons; along with ancillary systems. Others more resembling huge flying wings or even more conventional aircraft; but all clearly designed for aggressive conquest, data collecting, and construction.
First hostile contact would be by means of the Imperium arriving to conquer a small polity that while demonstrating a curious universality of power armour, personal shielding, and basic transsophontic enhancements for even line infantry as seemed to be standard here; was not able to compete with the Imperium's waves of metal, the sophistication of its vehicular scale mettalurgy, or the firepower of its fleet and titans. This was meant to be the final blow dealt to the curious species of hexapodal rhinoceros like mammalian, but the Wayfaring Scourge also had its sights set on the goal. The Scourge had simple directives, eliminate and understand all possible threats to a colonisation effort programmed into it by absent creators, and put forth a great but also limited intelligence towards that task. It could never imagine anything outside of the bounds of its duty, but the subroutines that made up the PIONEER network quickly agreed on once again following through with their purpose.
The Imperium hardly needed to be asked twice to open fire as soon as the Auspexes and Tarot indicated hostile intent from the machines. Nova Cannons and long range lance weapons tore through the void, detonations like the dawn of new suns rocking through the machine fleet as they retaliated with wave after wave of missiles and spinal cannon. UCAV like combat strike craft flew from the machines, detaching from launch bays and flipping briefly to right themselves into proper combat position or exiting from more conventional hangars. Imperial strike craft would swarm out in turn, Fury interceptors taking to the void alongside Starhawk bombers and other craft meant that would contest the blackness of space against the machines as this was to be but one of a thousand battles fought over just as many systems in the same time period as the Imperium found its primary nemesis.
The battle saw ships flying into each other's formations in numbers as to resemble flakes of snow driven by competing harsh winds. The electronic screech of machines through the electromagnetic waves filling the comms with gibberish while the Imperial armada sought to close to broadside range where they would do best in; void fields flickering to vent the missiles and the neutron bolts spat forth by the enemy fleet into the void of the warp. The Imperial ships were tougher than their mechanical composition, made out of superior materials, but the machines kept coming with greater numbers despite their generally inferior technology. For once, the Imperium was outnumbered, but the admiralty adjusted accordingly based on doctrine ten thousand years in the making.
As experience had shown, these sorts of Computerised Machine Minds relied a great deal on networking and efficient wireless bandwidth to coordinate and communicate. There were advantages to every single asset in a fleet knowing where every other asset was at all times, but it also meant that they needed both potent receivers and transmitters as well as strong computers to crunch the needed data. Thus the ships making the most electromagnetic "noise" would be the ones that needed to be eliminated first. And in the maelstrom of the ongoing combats, the Deathwatch's strike teams were difficult to notice with their stealth systems and effective escort.
By Caestus Assault ram, Stormbird, and boarding torpedo; the black armoured xenos slayers of the Imperium who were generally the first to cut into the teeth of any new foe would move ahead of the general Legionaries in smaller combat groups. Space Marine weapons found their mark into shielded quadrupedal dog like machines that mounted weapons on their backs like turrets, scuttling and scurrying around, using magnetic implants on their clawed feet to walk on walls and ceilings. The "gunhounds" as they were quickly called were no match for space marines of course, especially not the Tactical Dreadnought teams who were generally the first to go into confined spaces like these or the Dreadnoughts who joined in when it was clear there was enough room to do so. Their flechette guns meant to shield strip for mag-gun equipped gunhounds to move in for the kill were largely wasted on Astartes who had no such thing as shields, and even their hypervelocity mag-guns shattered upon ceramite armour.
Track mobile "fusilier" machines rolled forwards, deploying their heavier weapons and barrier fields to support their smaller kin. The bark of heavy machine gun equivalents growing into a continuous tearing sound before being silenced by judicious usage of cyclone missile bombardment or the Death Guard's destroyer squads breaking out the conversion beamers that turned the air around the machines into energy that broke their shields and reduced them to vapour. The Mechanicus and Sororitas, also adept at offensive boarding combat of this sort; would soon start to join them in battlefronts stretched across parsecs, providing bulk or firepower where needed while the Tempestus Scions provided what infiltration support they could.
"Scuttletroops" that seemed likely to be made in the image of whomever made these machines clanked forwards on clawed hooves, whip-like tails extending sensors to be more aware of their surroundings before they turned their compound-optics towards the space marines. Built-in armature guns slid into firing position atop their wrists and let rip with high pitched whines as "neutron spark" burst weapons that created shells of plasma around themselves from their heat and friction. More akin to the firepower of lasguns but able to be used in spread or slug shot fashion like shotguns. The Iron Hands displayed how impressed they were with the releasing of a number of leviathan dreadnoughts given free reign to engage at will with the usual results of Leviathan Dreadnoughts being permitted to do as they please in close combat in confined spaces.
On land men did battle with machine. Pitiless robots finding battle with equally numb and inhuman Kriegsvolk whose gas masks obscured all expression and hungered for death in battle against the metal, ceramic, and plastic legion. Lasguns and Autoguns met with flechettes, neutron sparks, and mag-guns. Indomitable lines of fortifications sprawled across both sides, men moving even in the face of high intensity microwave emitters meant to literally boil organic tissue into a gory end. The rumble of the Imperium's endless armoured divisions crashed into the tracked tankbots whose small turrets belied the powerful guns they tended to wield. The primary mark of enemy tank acquired a nickname soon enough, as humans did love to name things, the first names were unsuitable for print, but the designation of "Groundtick" for their ability to quickly entrench themselves with their prow scoops was what stuck.
The Leman Russ tanks were made of sterner stuff and were well suited for going across trenches, but the Groundtick tanks could reduce their target profiles to an incredibly low and difficult to hit one. So demolisher tanks would lob heavy shells in the most well dug in enemy formations under the reasoning that you don't need to actually hit an enemy tank if your explosion is big enough to cripple its internals. Sound logic, especially with Krieger Ragnarok tanks in support and the almighty baneblades rolling forwards, but one that the enemy was quick to respond to with VTOL gunships and attack drones that launched missiles while loitering from above. Hydra flak tanks with Stalker and Hunter support and back up from SAM fitted manticores filled the skies with death to shred the annoying pests that sought to sling explosives or suicide into Imperial lines, and the range and accuracy of lasguns allowed guardsmen to generally quickly neutralise smaller drones as soon as they were spotted.
The almighty Titans thundered into the battlefield to do battle with enormous quadruped upright standing machines. Shields strobing as they received and negated hits before the overwhelming firepower superiority of the Titanica told and across a thousand worlds the machines began to buckle before the onslaught. The conflict would generally be deemed as proceeding according to plan as the Imperium turned its might against the machines to crush them, the Mechanicus eager to collect whatever scrap they left behind, but such things are never as simple as we would like them to be. While many enemy fleets paused as their networks were targeted and crashed by precision strikes or the raw firepower of the Imperium, reports would filter in of a new enemy.
All the fighting would invariably attract the attention of another party, that saw the violence as a chance to grab some glory and loot and assert their prerogative as the traditional hegemon of the region. The Vorkyli Peoples' Martial Republican Federation built itself as a soldier's democracy, where only those who had served would be entitled to a vote and the armed forces had fully subsumed the democratic state after series of coup and countercoups between varying factions of government had created what the generalship had seen as a dangerous void. Eliminating the "idealogues and extremists" who threatened the "national soldiers' revolution" with either "over-cosmopolitanism" or "insular xenophobia", Vorkylak had taken its always potent military and made it the entirety of its nation.
Predominated by the Urkalsik species, carbon composite life-forms; which is to say carbon-based not in the sense most life is, but carbon based in the sense of being formed out of primarily complex carbon molecules with greatly reduced numbers of non-carbon atoms, more akin to diamond, carbon fiber, and carbon nanotubes than life as the Biologus regularly knew it; which stood twice as tall as the average human and had heavy-set bodies wrapped in black biological carbon plate chitin-like biological armour and walked on two legs with two large pincer arms and six smaller manipulation limbs with fluked tails for balance. The creatures fit somewhere between lobsters, crabs, humanoids, predatory whales, and gemstones; the Vorkyli had a great love for the thrill of combat and their heavier living technology ships emerged from artificial wormholes to join the battle their probes had detected.
Their technology such as it were, was grown and cultivated, not built or assembled. Always hydrodynamic in shape, always calling to mind the oceans of home. They fought alongside other life forms, some that were to them as gorillas were to man; clearly warbeasts, others such as the somewhat lobe finned fish like and winged Torodos were definitely other sapients albeit far smaller in the Torodos' case where their tallest members didn't even come up to the knees of the Urkalsik. Others like the more human sized and vaguely salamander like Qachaks scurried around their greater cousins, the Qachaks in particular making ample usage of their biochemical fire, belching forth streams of matter that the laws of chemistry would really rather not exist and so had them erupt into brilliant orange flame that would burn even in water, or explode when aerosolised; supplementing their heat guns that shot forth channels of intense infrared energy that created an ominous distortion wave as they carried through to rapidly increase temperatures in front of them.
Bio-electricity built up and then discharged by the Urkalsik's rod like "shock guns" leapt out with vicious and ill intent, trading blows with Imperial Lasers and Wayfarer Molecular Arresting beams that were able to freeze, damage, and immobile targets out of range of their super-cooled water/liquid-helium mix sprayers and cryobaric warheads. The three way battle that developed was one waged as soon as they identified the Imperials and the Wayfarers as the source of the cessation of trade and tribute from vassal states. They neither expected nor asked for anything in the way of diplomacy, and committed their fleets into agile but deadly formations that seemed at odds with their more ponderous method of fighting in boarding actions or on land.
But the space marines were masters of killing new and unusual forms of alien life, having practiced the skill for ten thousand years. Phosphex was allowed to run rampant on ships and battlefields that were bounties of fuel for the malicious living fire. Rad weapons were used to turn the carbon derived living armour of the Martial Republic into radioactive coffins through neutron activation, and mutagenic acid filled boltshells rained freely to melt their tough fibrous flesh from the inside out when their shields and armour was finally breached. They were good fighters, not as fast as the Astartes but certainly strong, and they were proud soldiers who regarded death in battle as an honour; certainly more than a match for the Imperial Guard man to man, but the Imperium had the better psykers; releasing the power of the warp upon an army that mostly favoured espers to significant effect.
Across now ten thousand planets, the war was being waged as the enemies battled both each other and the Imperium with gusto. One to establish a colony, one to guard its hegemony, one to fulfill a purpose that had been programmed into it by the long dead. Harrsk now need not fear an overabundance of peace, for war had come.
Situation
-The Wayfaring Scourge, an aggressive form of Von Nuemann probe, has entered Imperial space across a broad front to fulfill its directives. The machines are generally not on the same tier of technology as the Imperium, but do have some standouts of advancement and interesting ideas the Mechanicus would like to study. They are a networked A.I cluster filling out their orders in spite of clearly changed circumstances and favour wars of attrition due to their ability to rapidly set up fabrication facilities to produce more of themselves and lack of concern for morale. This does mean that they are vulnerable to network crash attacks directed at comms and computer systems that force the network to reroute and rebalance processor load.
- The Scourge has achieved some penetrations so far but has also suffered from Imperial offensives into their own territory as well as upon their operations with loss ratios significantly favouring the Imperium despite the enemy's numerical superiority. On the ground they clearly seem to prefer precision strike warfare and "hunter-killer" tactics where probing elements report enemy positions for massed firepower to deal with, delivered in a quick and overwhelming but precise fashion. This does mean that they tend to resort more to aggressive measures for defence than static lines, and also means that they will thin out parts of their line to amass for attacks, giving forewarning and potential weak points for a counter-offensive.
-The Scourge appears to use a non-warp based faster than light system that accesses another sort of dimension. The Navigator Guild is displeased with this news. In space, they seem to be quite fond of lobbing missiles as their solution to most problems, while making heavy usage of CIWS and shielding in order to survive retaliation fire from things active defences cannot neutralise. They are also quite fond of dorsal turrets, considering spinal weapons more of a specialist tool and braodside/secondary batteries as more of a back-up plan. Strike craft wise, they clearly have a bias towards missile combat as opposed to the gun centric form of warfare the Imperium practices in the void, and use smaller and less potent but more numerous craft. In terms of boarding, they largely deploy surfeits of close quarters units in an attempt to flood and overwhelm a foe.
- The Scourge is, through Deathwatch investigation, primarily mobilising from a Nebula rich in heavy metals from the deaths of multiple super and hypermassive stars in a chain nova long ago. The young planets there have a great deal of valuable materials that the Scourge is unable to synthesise and thus forms a logistical weakness due a kiloparsec behind the frontline, occupying about a two hundred parsec region of space. The materials appear to be necessary in the usage of many high grade units, and according to the reports of infiltration teams; in the construction of a number of multiple battleworlds being assembled at their shipyards.
- This place has further importance to their operations here, with the rough equivalent of a capital in this subsector built in the core of the region. Their operations are centred around the remains of megastructure builders who lived at the heart of the nebula and whose creations survived even the nova chain that they have devoted immense computational resources towards understanding and replicating; centred around a dyson cage whose swarm was blown away by the hypernova but whose lattice of rings remains intact; now enclosing a black hole. The black hole is being used to power a massive scale computer, while swarms of analysing machines try to study the cage and the swarm-drones built to replace those lost in the prior cataclysm. Based on the amount of signal traffic, this is the brains of the operation and its destruction would paralyse the entire Scourge network at least temporarily.
- The Martial Republican Federation is a soldier's democracy that places a great deal of pride on military might, accomplishment, and their pre-existing hegemony over local space and has rerouted forces that were meant for other fronts and to serve as reserves to investigate and deal with the cessation of diplomatic contact with some of their vassals and protectorates. They have engaged both Imperial and Scourge Forces across a wide front with a strike force delivered by what seems to be the capacity to create wormholes, likely through some sort of station as the Biologus has not identified any organs capable of doing such on their living ships.
- Vorkyla as it is more colloquially known uses mixed species formations of troops, though most are Carbon-Majority life forms like the Urkalsik who are larger and stronger than humans by far. They prefer to grow and cultivate their "technology" which is a sophisticated form of husbandry and bioengineering creating colonial "devices" made out of multiple symbiotic life forms, non-invasive implants, as well as augmented beasts for more specific tasks. Their forces are surprisingly mobile, but more agile than they are fast, able to reorient in short order and aggressive in seizing the initiative in breakthrough and exploitation. Shorter ranged than the Imperial or Scourge forces, they are not hopeless in terms of artillery but do not pack as much big boom per division as the Guard does.
- In Space their vessels are once again quite agile, rapidly capable of turning and reorientating themselves, which when paired with their great durability makes them quite difficult to kill. They are quite fast in straight lines too, but their firepower can leave something to be desired, resulting in a preference for skirmishing and pursuit over bombardment. In the clash, the ships themselves can serve as weapons while their boarding crews are well practiced in navigating tight spaces to find weaknesses. However they have to actually get there first in the face of overwhelming Imperial firepower or the long range of the Scourge; and while their strike craft are quite good indeed, Imperial ships are not wanting for point defence.
- The Mechanicus theorists that the Wormhole generators can only have so much range, and that with the capture of living ships they might be able to pinpoint the ones that allow them to drop into this region of space and thus remove their ability to interfere with the Imperial mission. They suspect it would be a large station built at the outskirts of a solar system, and likely have some back ups both to handle losses and to mitigate the strain on the individual stations. Without their wormhole networks, their space warping alcubierre drives would be slower than the Imperium's warp drives by a large margin due to stripping out weight for such drives to put in more sunlight mobility systems.
- The soldierly pride of Vorkyla means that they are loathe to turn down a fight they think they can win. While not as warrior esque as the Orks, they do respond to duels quite readily, and the commanders tend to pride themselves on personal combat skills as well as command acumen. This means that the overall commander of this operation and their retinue would respond to a worthy challenge and the defeat of such a warlord would devastate their morale by showing them their strength is not absolute. Based on interrogations, the commander is named Askoros, and will likely be aboard their battleworld flagship.
War is something that unfortunately is difficult to ever fully move past no matter the societal system, so long as there are other incompatible systems even the ones most adept at solving internal strife will find themselves brought into conflict by those who would rather they not exist or deem them to have something worth taking by force. Not to mention the existence of militant eidolons that exist to do nothing but wage war and bring it to just about everything they run into. The Imperium of Man was not one of those systems that had done much to minimise internal strife, not when its vast productive capabilities were largely being turned towards the maximisation of the wealth of the people at the top who lived in opulent splendour while the majority had to work in varying degrees of toil for a living. All while fighting tooth, claw, gun, and knife to hold its hastily grabbed position of galactic hegemon seized in the power vacuum of the fall of the Eldar against many, many challengers.
Force Commander Harrsk, one of the heirs to the legacy of the great Perturabo would carry this ten thousand years of experience into a new universe as the energies of the chaos magicks went beyond even the control of its makers. The Dark Mechanicus could scarcely imagine the sort of power they had the misfortune of their device bumping heads with. The strange and nameless colours of the warp suddenly giving way to vivid rainbow flashes of colours bluer than blue, redder than red, and realer than real. As if for a brief moment, the true colours were visible, the true existence behind the veil of mundane reality and imagination.
The warp recoiled and twisted as these energies, cast forth by a sour note that resounded in the impossible and the actual, echoed through infinity and eternity. At once everywhere and nowhere, at once majestic beyond just about anything imaginable to the point of being pointless to describe but also the worst noise anyone had ever heard in their heads. The warp expanded, shifted, and its currents tore away, rerouting through a nothingness that had no dimension, no time, no space, no cause, no effect. Immeasurable and barely descripable, it was the Ur-Null that was all that which was not and couldn't be. Full of things that did not exist, empty of things that did. Without reality to ascribe any form or sequence, things were perceived to happen in order of importance to the observer; the only frame of reference in the nothingness available.
The navigators stopped screaming, the Astropaths heard quiet in the ocean that was not in the infinity of zero. The briefest flashes of a realm of unimagined colour could be seen, somehow all around but endlessly far away. A feeling of being observed by the players of great games who scarcely gave notice to the confines of spacetime that made up universes and the subversal places that inundated them; betwixt things that were against reality itself, and things that were of entirely differing definitions of real or were powered principally by what was imagined to be real. It would have been maddening, instantly mind shattering to behold this place, but Harrsk's task group had a signal to guide them through the abyss and a shell of calm warp stuff to keep the true nothing away.
A golden light could be perceived by the navigators, a map for a place that had no dimension. Direction for a place without space, and coordinates in a realm without time to reach a new universe. One that the golden light, surely the Emperor himself, had designated to them was a place of great importance. It would never be known objectively how much time occurred, because there was no such thing as time at all in the Ur-Null. But to Harrsk's sense of time, the journey was already over, the dive into the realm of the unknowable disappearing and giving way to stars and the comforting void of space. Not the stars and space you knew, but normalcy all the same.
The golden light of the astronomicon shone into this new reality, making things quite different from the four dark gods you knew recoil from its shine as slivers of radiance from the Emperor's alters were pooled together to provide for a widespread luminescent glow that the Navigators could use to steer ships through the Warp; or the Flux as it was known here. So at the very least, the fleet would not be lost in the vastness of space without direction or guidance. And the navigators were further pleased to report that the warp was easier to navigate here, greater distances could be crossed much more reliably and with greater average speed, and accidents should be minimised.
With the massive size of Harrsk's armada; which had gathered the detritus of other timelines lost in the void of the Ur-Null...or perhaps they were always there? Or did they apparate on the other side? The Ur-Null is confusing and hard to explain...in any case Harrsk had under his command a golden armada that represented a nearly matchless concentration of surface based and voidfaring might that would have been able to conquer just about any imaginable opposition put before it. The ranks of Imperial ships that began laying claim to the various habitable worlds and relics they found; including old ring worlds, ancient orbital habitats, a number of artificial and natural planets.
The Imperial government was here to stay, and would stake its claim as the general lex of Imperial law demanded. The civilians needed to land on places where agriculture could begin and quickly, and so any available body that could sustain human life was quickly made to do just that. Harrsk found his early months occupied by the drudgery of administrating an attempt to remake the Imperial Government under extensive space marine guidance and observation. The sort of dull paper work and number crunching that thankfully the sons of Perturabo were well suited for even if civilian administration was more the ken of the XIII. It was however, rather boring. The Astropaths could tell that man was not alone in these stars, but the Deathwatch, Ordo Xenos, and Mechanicus surmised that astropathic signals were not in vogue after having picked up a great many space distorted or tachyon riding signals that the Imperium sadly lacked the means to decode at the present.
But if it was war that the battlegroup craved, it would be war they would get. Some smaller xenos polities and the occasional marauders who sought to use this space as a hub for their enterprises were quashed as Imperial compliance policy demanded. Many a pre or early spacefaring civilisation would meet its end as the Imperials brushed them aside with little thought or regard. Relic abominable intelligences were, as the Cult Mechanicus decreed; put to the torch wherever found, particularly those who were readily identifiable as rogue, such as many who had come to slay their creators, assimilate them, or take over governance from them. But these were not the wars that the Emperor's Tarot foresaw.
It was generally speaking, the gravest of national sins to intentionally create a berserker probe for good reason. All too often, things made to find targets, strip them down for parts and build more themselves, rinse and repeat; would far outlive whatever original purpose was made for them. A plague on the stars that would keep on expanding, keep on growing, keep on evolving without any ability to stop itself. The "wayfaring scourge" was one of those things, a metal, composite, and plastic swarm of machines that had drifted into this galaxy entirely by accident and simply started doing what they had always done. Observe, analyse, attack, adapt, consume, search repeat. Nobody was quite sure what they were originally made for, or who made them, but the streams of "militarised probes" were enough to send waves of refugees trying to escape their advance.
Those they overwhelmed would have their minds forcibly scanned and digitised to gather information in a particularly hostile manner while they endlessly created among other things; prefabs for an organic culture that never arrived to make use of them. On tracks, wheels, legs, and hovering air cushions they moved on land, by pulse engine and thruster they moved in the skies. By laser, mass driver, atomics, and other weapons they attacked. And aboard starships that could ply the stars faster than light itself without the warp they moved, their ships being cold cylindrical things with great wings that called to mind the solar panels of ancient satellites that provided for additional firepower with the secondary batteries, dorsal turrets, and spinal weapons; along with ancillary systems. Others more resembling huge flying wings or even more conventional aircraft; but all clearly designed for aggressive conquest, data collecting, and construction.
First hostile contact would be by means of the Imperium arriving to conquer a small polity that while demonstrating a curious universality of power armour, personal shielding, and basic transsophontic enhancements for even line infantry as seemed to be standard here; was not able to compete with the Imperium's waves of metal, the sophistication of its vehicular scale mettalurgy, or the firepower of its fleet and titans. This was meant to be the final blow dealt to the curious species of hexapodal rhinoceros like mammalian, but the Wayfaring Scourge also had its sights set on the goal. The Scourge had simple directives, eliminate and understand all possible threats to a colonisation effort programmed into it by absent creators, and put forth a great but also limited intelligence towards that task. It could never imagine anything outside of the bounds of its duty, but the subroutines that made up the PIONEER network quickly agreed on once again following through with their purpose.
The Imperium hardly needed to be asked twice to open fire as soon as the Auspexes and Tarot indicated hostile intent from the machines. Nova Cannons and long range lance weapons tore through the void, detonations like the dawn of new suns rocking through the machine fleet as they retaliated with wave after wave of missiles and spinal cannon. UCAV like combat strike craft flew from the machines, detaching from launch bays and flipping briefly to right themselves into proper combat position or exiting from more conventional hangars. Imperial strike craft would swarm out in turn, Fury interceptors taking to the void alongside Starhawk bombers and other craft meant that would contest the blackness of space against the machines as this was to be but one of a thousand battles fought over just as many systems in the same time period as the Imperium found its primary nemesis.
The battle saw ships flying into each other's formations in numbers as to resemble flakes of snow driven by competing harsh winds. The electronic screech of machines through the electromagnetic waves filling the comms with gibberish while the Imperial armada sought to close to broadside range where they would do best in; void fields flickering to vent the missiles and the neutron bolts spat forth by the enemy fleet into the void of the warp. The Imperial ships were tougher than their mechanical composition, made out of superior materials, but the machines kept coming with greater numbers despite their generally inferior technology. For once, the Imperium was outnumbered, but the admiralty adjusted accordingly based on doctrine ten thousand years in the making.
As experience had shown, these sorts of Computerised Machine Minds relied a great deal on networking and efficient wireless bandwidth to coordinate and communicate. There were advantages to every single asset in a fleet knowing where every other asset was at all times, but it also meant that they needed both potent receivers and transmitters as well as strong computers to crunch the needed data. Thus the ships making the most electromagnetic "noise" would be the ones that needed to be eliminated first. And in the maelstrom of the ongoing combats, the Deathwatch's strike teams were difficult to notice with their stealth systems and effective escort.
By Caestus Assault ram, Stormbird, and boarding torpedo; the black armoured xenos slayers of the Imperium who were generally the first to cut into the teeth of any new foe would move ahead of the general Legionaries in smaller combat groups. Space Marine weapons found their mark into shielded quadrupedal dog like machines that mounted weapons on their backs like turrets, scuttling and scurrying around, using magnetic implants on their clawed feet to walk on walls and ceilings. The "gunhounds" as they were quickly called were no match for space marines of course, especially not the Tactical Dreadnought teams who were generally the first to go into confined spaces like these or the Dreadnoughts who joined in when it was clear there was enough room to do so. Their flechette guns meant to shield strip for mag-gun equipped gunhounds to move in for the kill were largely wasted on Astartes who had no such thing as shields, and even their hypervelocity mag-guns shattered upon ceramite armour.
Track mobile "fusilier" machines rolled forwards, deploying their heavier weapons and barrier fields to support their smaller kin. The bark of heavy machine gun equivalents growing into a continuous tearing sound before being silenced by judicious usage of cyclone missile bombardment or the Death Guard's destroyer squads breaking out the conversion beamers that turned the air around the machines into energy that broke their shields and reduced them to vapour. The Mechanicus and Sororitas, also adept at offensive boarding combat of this sort; would soon start to join them in battlefronts stretched across parsecs, providing bulk or firepower where needed while the Tempestus Scions provided what infiltration support they could.
"Scuttletroops" that seemed likely to be made in the image of whomever made these machines clanked forwards on clawed hooves, whip-like tails extending sensors to be more aware of their surroundings before they turned their compound-optics towards the space marines. Built-in armature guns slid into firing position atop their wrists and let rip with high pitched whines as "neutron spark" burst weapons that created shells of plasma around themselves from their heat and friction. More akin to the firepower of lasguns but able to be used in spread or slug shot fashion like shotguns. The Iron Hands displayed how impressed they were with the releasing of a number of leviathan dreadnoughts given free reign to engage at will with the usual results of Leviathan Dreadnoughts being permitted to do as they please in close combat in confined spaces.
On land men did battle with machine. Pitiless robots finding battle with equally numb and inhuman Kriegsvolk whose gas masks obscured all expression and hungered for death in battle against the metal, ceramic, and plastic legion. Lasguns and Autoguns met with flechettes, neutron sparks, and mag-guns. Indomitable lines of fortifications sprawled across both sides, men moving even in the face of high intensity microwave emitters meant to literally boil organic tissue into a gory end. The rumble of the Imperium's endless armoured divisions crashed into the tracked tankbots whose small turrets belied the powerful guns they tended to wield. The primary mark of enemy tank acquired a nickname soon enough, as humans did love to name things, the first names were unsuitable for print, but the designation of "Groundtick" for their ability to quickly entrench themselves with their prow scoops was what stuck.
The Leman Russ tanks were made of sterner stuff and were well suited for going across trenches, but the Groundtick tanks could reduce their target profiles to an incredibly low and difficult to hit one. So demolisher tanks would lob heavy shells in the most well dug in enemy formations under the reasoning that you don't need to actually hit an enemy tank if your explosion is big enough to cripple its internals. Sound logic, especially with Krieger Ragnarok tanks in support and the almighty baneblades rolling forwards, but one that the enemy was quick to respond to with VTOL gunships and attack drones that launched missiles while loitering from above. Hydra flak tanks with Stalker and Hunter support and back up from SAM fitted manticores filled the skies with death to shred the annoying pests that sought to sling explosives or suicide into Imperial lines, and the range and accuracy of lasguns allowed guardsmen to generally quickly neutralise smaller drones as soon as they were spotted.
The almighty Titans thundered into the battlefield to do battle with enormous quadruped upright standing machines. Shields strobing as they received and negated hits before the overwhelming firepower superiority of the Titanica told and across a thousand worlds the machines began to buckle before the onslaught. The conflict would generally be deemed as proceeding according to plan as the Imperium turned its might against the machines to crush them, the Mechanicus eager to collect whatever scrap they left behind, but such things are never as simple as we would like them to be. While many enemy fleets paused as their networks were targeted and crashed by precision strikes or the raw firepower of the Imperium, reports would filter in of a new enemy.
All the fighting would invariably attract the attention of another party, that saw the violence as a chance to grab some glory and loot and assert their prerogative as the traditional hegemon of the region. The Vorkyli Peoples' Martial Republican Federation built itself as a soldier's democracy, where only those who had served would be entitled to a vote and the armed forces had fully subsumed the democratic state after series of coup and countercoups between varying factions of government had created what the generalship had seen as a dangerous void. Eliminating the "idealogues and extremists" who threatened the "national soldiers' revolution" with either "over-cosmopolitanism" or "insular xenophobia", Vorkylak had taken its always potent military and made it the entirety of its nation.
Predominated by the Urkalsik species, carbon composite life-forms; which is to say carbon-based not in the sense most life is, but carbon based in the sense of being formed out of primarily complex carbon molecules with greatly reduced numbers of non-carbon atoms, more akin to diamond, carbon fiber, and carbon nanotubes than life as the Biologus regularly knew it; which stood twice as tall as the average human and had heavy-set bodies wrapped in black biological carbon plate chitin-like biological armour and walked on two legs with two large pincer arms and six smaller manipulation limbs with fluked tails for balance. The creatures fit somewhere between lobsters, crabs, humanoids, predatory whales, and gemstones; the Vorkyli had a great love for the thrill of combat and their heavier living technology ships emerged from artificial wormholes to join the battle their probes had detected.
Their technology such as it were, was grown and cultivated, not built or assembled. Always hydrodynamic in shape, always calling to mind the oceans of home. They fought alongside other life forms, some that were to them as gorillas were to man; clearly warbeasts, others such as the somewhat lobe finned fish like and winged Torodos were definitely other sapients albeit far smaller in the Torodos' case where their tallest members didn't even come up to the knees of the Urkalsik. Others like the more human sized and vaguely salamander like Qachaks scurried around their greater cousins, the Qachaks in particular making ample usage of their biochemical fire, belching forth streams of matter that the laws of chemistry would really rather not exist and so had them erupt into brilliant orange flame that would burn even in water, or explode when aerosolised; supplementing their heat guns that shot forth channels of intense infrared energy that created an ominous distortion wave as they carried through to rapidly increase temperatures in front of them.
Bio-electricity built up and then discharged by the Urkalsik's rod like "shock guns" leapt out with vicious and ill intent, trading blows with Imperial Lasers and Wayfarer Molecular Arresting beams that were able to freeze, damage, and immobile targets out of range of their super-cooled water/liquid-helium mix sprayers and cryobaric warheads. The three way battle that developed was one waged as soon as they identified the Imperials and the Wayfarers as the source of the cessation of trade and tribute from vassal states. They neither expected nor asked for anything in the way of diplomacy, and committed their fleets into agile but deadly formations that seemed at odds with their more ponderous method of fighting in boarding actions or on land.
But the space marines were masters of killing new and unusual forms of alien life, having practiced the skill for ten thousand years. Phosphex was allowed to run rampant on ships and battlefields that were bounties of fuel for the malicious living fire. Rad weapons were used to turn the carbon derived living armour of the Martial Republic into radioactive coffins through neutron activation, and mutagenic acid filled boltshells rained freely to melt their tough fibrous flesh from the inside out when their shields and armour was finally breached. They were good fighters, not as fast as the Astartes but certainly strong, and they were proud soldiers who regarded death in battle as an honour; certainly more than a match for the Imperial Guard man to man, but the Imperium had the better psykers; releasing the power of the warp upon an army that mostly favoured espers to significant effect.
Across now ten thousand planets, the war was being waged as the enemies battled both each other and the Imperium with gusto. One to establish a colony, one to guard its hegemony, one to fulfill a purpose that had been programmed into it by the long dead. Harrsk now need not fear an overabundance of peace, for war had come.
Situation
-The Wayfaring Scourge, an aggressive form of Von Nuemann probe, has entered Imperial space across a broad front to fulfill its directives. The machines are generally not on the same tier of technology as the Imperium, but do have some standouts of advancement and interesting ideas the Mechanicus would like to study. They are a networked A.I cluster filling out their orders in spite of clearly changed circumstances and favour wars of attrition due to their ability to rapidly set up fabrication facilities to produce more of themselves and lack of concern for morale. This does mean that they are vulnerable to network crash attacks directed at comms and computer systems that force the network to reroute and rebalance processor load.
- The Scourge has achieved some penetrations so far but has also suffered from Imperial offensives into their own territory as well as upon their operations with loss ratios significantly favouring the Imperium despite the enemy's numerical superiority. On the ground they clearly seem to prefer precision strike warfare and "hunter-killer" tactics where probing elements report enemy positions for massed firepower to deal with, delivered in a quick and overwhelming but precise fashion. This does mean that they tend to resort more to aggressive measures for defence than static lines, and also means that they will thin out parts of their line to amass for attacks, giving forewarning and potential weak points for a counter-offensive.
-The Scourge appears to use a non-warp based faster than light system that accesses another sort of dimension. The Navigator Guild is displeased with this news. In space, they seem to be quite fond of lobbing missiles as their solution to most problems, while making heavy usage of CIWS and shielding in order to survive retaliation fire from things active defences cannot neutralise. They are also quite fond of dorsal turrets, considering spinal weapons more of a specialist tool and braodside/secondary batteries as more of a back-up plan. Strike craft wise, they clearly have a bias towards missile combat as opposed to the gun centric form of warfare the Imperium practices in the void, and use smaller and less potent but more numerous craft. In terms of boarding, they largely deploy surfeits of close quarters units in an attempt to flood and overwhelm a foe.
- The Scourge is, through Deathwatch investigation, primarily mobilising from a Nebula rich in heavy metals from the deaths of multiple super and hypermassive stars in a chain nova long ago. The young planets there have a great deal of valuable materials that the Scourge is unable to synthesise and thus forms a logistical weakness due a kiloparsec behind the frontline, occupying about a two hundred parsec region of space. The materials appear to be necessary in the usage of many high grade units, and according to the reports of infiltration teams; in the construction of a number of multiple battleworlds being assembled at their shipyards.
- This place has further importance to their operations here, with the rough equivalent of a capital in this subsector built in the core of the region. Their operations are centred around the remains of megastructure builders who lived at the heart of the nebula and whose creations survived even the nova chain that they have devoted immense computational resources towards understanding and replicating; centred around a dyson cage whose swarm was blown away by the hypernova but whose lattice of rings remains intact; now enclosing a black hole. The black hole is being used to power a massive scale computer, while swarms of analysing machines try to study the cage and the swarm-drones built to replace those lost in the prior cataclysm. Based on the amount of signal traffic, this is the brains of the operation and its destruction would paralyse the entire Scourge network at least temporarily.
- The Martial Republican Federation is a soldier's democracy that places a great deal of pride on military might, accomplishment, and their pre-existing hegemony over local space and has rerouted forces that were meant for other fronts and to serve as reserves to investigate and deal with the cessation of diplomatic contact with some of their vassals and protectorates. They have engaged both Imperial and Scourge Forces across a wide front with a strike force delivered by what seems to be the capacity to create wormholes, likely through some sort of station as the Biologus has not identified any organs capable of doing such on their living ships.
- Vorkyla as it is more colloquially known uses mixed species formations of troops, though most are Carbon-Majority life forms like the Urkalsik who are larger and stronger than humans by far. They prefer to grow and cultivate their "technology" which is a sophisticated form of husbandry and bioengineering creating colonial "devices" made out of multiple symbiotic life forms, non-invasive implants, as well as augmented beasts for more specific tasks. Their forces are surprisingly mobile, but more agile than they are fast, able to reorient in short order and aggressive in seizing the initiative in breakthrough and exploitation. Shorter ranged than the Imperial or Scourge forces, they are not hopeless in terms of artillery but do not pack as much big boom per division as the Guard does.
- In Space their vessels are once again quite agile, rapidly capable of turning and reorientating themselves, which when paired with their great durability makes them quite difficult to kill. They are quite fast in straight lines too, but their firepower can leave something to be desired, resulting in a preference for skirmishing and pursuit over bombardment. In the clash, the ships themselves can serve as weapons while their boarding crews are well practiced in navigating tight spaces to find weaknesses. However they have to actually get there first in the face of overwhelming Imperial firepower or the long range of the Scourge; and while their strike craft are quite good indeed, Imperial ships are not wanting for point defence.
- The Mechanicus theorists that the Wormhole generators can only have so much range, and that with the capture of living ships they might be able to pinpoint the ones that allow them to drop into this region of space and thus remove their ability to interfere with the Imperial mission. They suspect it would be a large station built at the outskirts of a solar system, and likely have some back ups both to handle losses and to mitigate the strain on the individual stations. Without their wormhole networks, their space warping alcubierre drives would be slower than the Imperium's warp drives by a large margin due to stripping out weight for such drives to put in more sunlight mobility systems.
- The soldierly pride of Vorkyla means that they are loathe to turn down a fight they think they can win. While not as warrior esque as the Orks, they do respond to duels quite readily, and the commanders tend to pride themselves on personal combat skills as well as command acumen. This means that the overall commander of this operation and their retinue would respond to a worthy challenge and the defeat of such a warlord would devastate their morale by showing them their strength is not absolute. Based on interrogations, the commander is named Askoros, and will likely be aboard their battleworld flagship.
– from burnt fragments recovered from the Alba archives, attributed to the ancient poet Elliot
'The Destroyer has challenged, and this time I will answer him. But to win, we need to cast off the old ways of war. None of my other Warsmiths can think like you, they are all too bound up in whether a fight can be won to understand that sometimes a fight needs to be fought. The coming war will demand leaders who will fight even when every logical thing says they shouldn't - warriors who will confound our enemies at every turn.'
- Last words of Primarch Perturabo to Warsmith Honsou , before the Second Black Crusade and his dissapearances atop the Chaos flagship Eternal Ravager
One
Ruminations.
Masks and Steel
Champion
Warsmith Gideon Harrsk grimaced, his gauntleted fist rest on his command throne. Data screens flickers all over the deck of the Olympia's Glory , updating the latest hpapenings across the dozens of different battle the Battlegroup has now engulfed in. It's only been months since the fleet arrives in this new galaxy and already they have found themselves in a 3-sided war. His left eye glows deep red of bionic, a gift upon the furious battle againsts Eldar slavers near the Garrantine System 10 years ago.
Around him, bridge crews scampered back and forth, as klaxons alert of incoming enemy fire, absorbed by the straining void shields. The Warsmith at the moment, seems to transcend the fire and fury across the void around him. For in his mind is rumination about war. War is at first glances, would be everchanging, ever transforming in its myriad forms, as the barbaric horsemen of feral steppes , to the fire of planetary annihilations following the XIVth campaigns. But all that multiple appearances and aspects of war are just mere window dressing, a facade. For all battle from the moment a primitive primal creature bashes his rival's head with rocks, to tank clashes across the ruined highway can be reduced to calculation. A deadly game of regicide, where the stakes are the planets and people of his realm. But he think of othr aspects, the reality he saw from his centuries of service, as he remembers a young mother in Hansa V. Her charred corpse, in r final moments still sheltering her offsprings from what looks to be Orks Burna Boyz. In Megron Quintus, where that squad of Sister of Battle stand back against a dozen Talosi Pain Engines, sacrifice themselves in agony to buy only meagre of times for the Space Marine reinforrcement toarrives and relief Eldar attack upon that cathedral packed with refugees. In Santiel , it was his fellow Battle Brother in the IIIrd company dies to the last to hold back Xi-se-lath-me-sa-tha-glan, before the exterminatus fleet consign that tainted world to oblivion, and in Cadia, where he remebers those Guardsmen from that twisted tribunal that distracted Sigismund as the cost of their lives, allow him to drive the Destroyer back from Cadia in a decisive strike that sent the Chaos Lord reeling for 400 years. Loss, honors, bravery, sacrifices, all serves to reminds him that the costs of these calculaations are more than just numbers and regicide pieces, it's blood and flesh of the Imperium. Blood and flesh of the Emperor's flock. Theoretical, and Practical. Just as the blue clad sons of Guilliman would often prattled. This war would be no differences, as Xenos and Abominable Intellignces trade shots with the Holy Imperium across dozens of worlds and hundreds of void battles of various scales across this Sector , while also striking eachother relentlessly. There is an opportunity there, he could see it. A new regicide board was set, another game has begun even as the previous match were interrupted. Another Equation is offered to be solved. And more blood and flesh would spill in this deadly game, for in this universe, war is eternal , and its nature were...unchanged
The ship rocked as a particularly heavy weapons struck the Olympia's Glory voidshields
Seemingly ignoring the commotion, the Warsmith refocused, and ordering his fleet to enact manuevers so as this battle is quickly brought into conclusions, shouting for the Macrocannons and lance batteries to take out major Scourge vessels that has now suffereing serious losses, while sending further orders to the Astropathic choir, to further contact towards different part of the Battlegroup engaging across the Sector. Time to play another maneuver.
=============
Corporal Vyrkens stands in watch. It was already 12 days of artillery strikes as the tides of metals trying to push themselves past the guns of the Guards. What was that words that Sons of Horus said in Badab ? Something about how Big Guns never tires ? He hoped it matched that expressions, for it seems the swarm is endless in their ferocity. His unit was sent in along side several more Armageddon regiments...and Kriegers. Dour lot, he gathered, and this is even after sharing transport ships with the Mordians. They never seems to socialised, they never shares a smoke, they never seems totake off those danm mask of theirs. The Steel Legions wores gas masks too...but the Kriegs...there are something quite unsettling about those ones. For all contacts Vyrkens has with the bastards, it seems they considers their mask as true faces. In battle, they marched and charged with near suicidal fury, stepped on theirdead as they advanced. The Kriegers gives him shudders.
A few weeks ago, reinforcements arrives in the form of those tin-soldiers of the Admech. These ones don't wear gas masks, but instead display elaborately carved metal death mask on their faces, all with expressions of disturbing serenity. Compare to Kriegers' suicidal marches, the Tech Guards fought with inhuman precision. Every movement calculated, every shots calibrated , they fight with the the level of humanity comparable to those abominations they fought againsts, as Cognis-stubber and Transuranic slugs slammed into the machines with horrifying lethality
His contemplation was interrupted.
A flechette shot whizzle over his head as Vyrkens raced towards his positions, lasgun ready.
The enemy moved pass the corridor. Groundticks lumbering and heavy attack drones dashing in support of the mass of machines. He put more and more lasbeams downrange againsts the Horde, trying to thin them out , desperately hoping it would blunt their advance before they reached knife range. Around him, spats Heavy bolters, lascannons and shells , seemingly holding similar hopes.
A hope forlorn.
Chaos ensures as the Scourge reaches close ranges, the order of Fix Bayonet sounded. And the sons nd daughters of the Imperium fixed their monoedge blade to their las rifle, the officers turns on the power fields of their weapons, or rev their chain blade one last time , before jumping into the fray.
Vyrkens follows, Flechettes and neutron sparks whizzzes arund him as He unleashed a hail of Laser beams at a quadrupedal machine, ending its shooting spree with its bodies filled with scorched las weapon wounds.
He have no time to celebrate tat small victory before a hail of flechette shreds through his calf.
Vyrkens fall. He close his eyes, mumbling the few scripture lines he remembered from the sermons.
Several shots rangs out as the approaching machines fell .
He opens his eyes and saw Red robes. Vyrkens hold out his hands.
The Skitarii gives him a glance, then it keeps marching, leaving him behind
Vyrkens saw darkeness.
The Corporal opens his eyes, the battle was still rages on, as he crawl with a wounded leg...towards...he don't know anymore. The sounds of metal footstepss alert him. In front of him are the machines' fast attack platform. Gunhounds they called them. Its turret raised, ready to finish Vyrkens for good.
An action that it does not get to fulfilled , as a Skull-masked Krieger slam into it. They wrestled with echother , a death spiral in a grotesque parody of a man playing with his beloved canine. Even as Vyrkens trying to aim his weapon with one arms towards the metal beast. A loud gunshot was heard, and the GUn-hounds slumped to the side. The Krieger stand up, shotgun smoking. Their masked heavily ruined by the thing's claws, almost split in half, and they let it fell to the side.
She let it falls to the side.
Dark hair, with her face looks unblemished even with soot and ashes of the battlefields. Her skins are pale , comparable to the corpses . In any other context, he would say the woman in front of him as "beautiful". But he looks at her eyes, a cold yellow, an overall feeling of cold numbness.
Eyes that reminds him of the dead.
It is in certain mythology that a spirit , a deity of Death will take a dying man towards the afterlife
Vyrkens must have felt the same as those dying souls when they saw the Pale Rider, the Grim Reaper.
The spirit of death spoke:
" Gefreiter Natalia-345312, Grenadier , 4th Company , Krieg 45th Infantry. State your name and rank"
Vyrkens opens his eyes again.
"Stays down, Corporal. You still kept your leg thanks to the Emperor's Grace. But sudden movement could reopen old wounds. Amputations would be more likelythen"
Vyrkens sighed, but listen to the medicae either ways.
In the days laying on this cot, he has time to think. About the grim gas-masked men he fought alongside with. He was wrong. Even with their cold and expressionless masks there are something still of their humanity. For within those very suicidal charges, within their desperate desire for death to honor that mysterious debt to the Emperor he heard rumored about, is their very humanity dedicated
And for once in his life, he thinks some of the Kriegers are not so bad.
==============
Private Joachim-2134 marches onwards, heedless of the chaos surround him
For he is already dead, such is his existence of the entire Volks.
Their existence is only borrowed, to repay the Sins their ancestors stained themselves with. Themselves and all their gets.
Treasonous scum, turning their backs againsts the Emperor, forsake His loving graces for mere decadence and petty politics. Proven themselves not worthy of his Love. They only carry numbers, for they have forsaken their names. They goes to War, forthey have forsaken their fates. Now, their only hope is His forgiveness as they breathe their last in the service of His Majesty. In life, War. In Death, Peace. In life, Shame. In death, Atonement.
Joachim-2134 marches forwards, the corpses of his company behind him.
They fell, charging a Xeno gunline. Only he was left in that skirmish. A short prayer, for the Emperor to accept their atonement, and strength for the living one to find his redemption. Scavenge his comrades bodies for ammunitions, he moved on.
Joachim-2134 marched forward, amidst the ashen deserts and the raging battle.
Tanks trading fire with warbeast mounted gun platforms. Las-shots and bolt shells hurling towards Xeno energy beams. Men and alien exchange shot for shot, life for life.
An amphibious-like Xeno spats roaring bioalchemical firebomb towards him. The Kriegers duck to cover, a corpse of a Coral-like Xeno warmachine. He return fire with his Lucius-pattern lasrifle, only as for the thing to answer with several shots from its heat ray weapons. And back and forth, until the alien made a mistake, a wild fireball that missed, giving room for the Joachim-2134 to stop the Xeno from furhter mistake, as he plant a las bolts right between the creatures ' eyes.
He sighed, and march forward. Lasgun ready.
The soldier came across a clearing. The battlefield are strewn with corpses. Uniforms the deep blue of the Mordian, the Ochre of Armageddon, the drab olive of Penal legionnairs, and the field grey of Kriegers. The robes of Priests, the carapace of Stormtroopers, the longcoat of Commissars. All drab over the dead...and by the living. Here , an Ogryn bashes the head of a Torodo with his oversized Ripper guns, there, a squad of Mordians being cut down by enemy heat rays. He even sees a squad of Sororitas Seraphim juped towards a battery of enemy artillery, gun blazing. But he hears a shout
"Don't you dare stop, you cretins! Every last one of you- keep coming! Keep trying to clog my chainblade with your intestines if you can!"
Bawling out over the war-born orchestra was a clearly vox-augmented voice.
Standing straight, assuredly exposing herself to the guns of the enemy, she lashed out with hateful words. Her sneer as biting as any sword, she was surrounded by four shock-maul wielding military Arbites, thrumming warshields ready and mauls sparking with energy. And two hulking Bullgryns in power mauls and uniforms of the 34th Mentravik Penal Legions
There was no tact required when commanding a penal legion. Its operation was simple, its purpose clear. It was an instrument of penance and cold logic. A commander would select an enemy position, and then drown it in bodies. Often, these scums would be lad to the line by zealous Commissars and Arbites Prefects, whose chance of making out alive are barely higher than their charges
This one however, looks to be missing thier usual fodders. Most likely they have perishes by the claws of warbeasts and heat rays. She is a muscular woman , towering over her Arbites suboordinates. Her dark Carapace armour emblazoned with her badge of Office. Her Arbitrator helmet , she wears proudly. Face covered, so that no one knows who the gaze of Justice will fall uon next. Mouth clear, so everyone will hear Judgement clearly. A nasty scar is seem across her neck, strapped with a vox grille. She fought, Bolt pistol ablazes and chainswrods felled , reaping a tally of dead Xeno among her "field retinue".
Joachim charged into the fray.
They emerge- a brute of a Xeno, smeared red and bellowing at the top of his lungs manifests out of the smoke. Shapes materialize behind him as he charges headlong towards the trench. Joachim snaps his lasgun up and aims.
She eyed him, as mechanical as the grilled vox-hailer that replaced her throat
The Krieger squeezes the trigger. The head of the alien snaps back as the lasbeam blows through his skull and incinerates his brain- his body falling limp. The scene repeats for the next trio of enemies, lasbolts burning through armour or cratering the bare chests of the aliens as they leap into trench, their weapns firing, their hands curled into claws or fists, their teeth sharpened to nail points.
Joachim watches form the corner of his eye as the Prefect takes on a different aspect, she has her bolt pistol aimed and firing, she pulls the trigger with succinct curtness, taking her time to direct his shots despite the alien before them. The woman doesn't flinch from the erupting melee, bullets snap through the air around her but she hardly pays them any mind, simply stepping to the side every so often and letting a bolt round fill the space she had once occupied.
The bulk of the charging horde hits the trench. One of the xeno tackles an arbite, and by the time a boltpistol is pressed flush against his skull he has already eaten through the arbites throat, and by the time the bolt blows apart his head, three more of these fiends have crashed into the others and they are lost from view.
The Prefect, howling her battle hymns only gives the faintest sign of acknowledgment, her remaining shield-bearing enforcers shifting around her, power-mauls crackling with energy.
"This is our stand!" She bellows, her bolt pistol ejects a cascade of shells as she holds down the trigger, emptying an entire stack in a matter of moments- the trench before her exploding into a gore heap as mass reactive rounds tear through Xeno warriors and warbeasts alike. "No mercy only death! Only duty! Only the Emperor!"
Joachim emptied half of his lasguns powerpack into the first two, he had no time to even remember what they looked like, what horrid weapons they bore, nor their scrreams or battle cries, they were the enemy, and they needed to die. Joachim moved to shoulder the lasgun, but the confines of the trench were quickly becoming to cramped, he shifted, lifted the barrel, aimed from the hip, and held down the trigger.
Superheated beams of light punched holes in unarmored xeno, searing through flesh, boiling blood, burning bone and stitching a line of charred meat through the alien dregs.
The Krieger whipped around, grabbing the barrel of his weapon- ignoring how it scalded his hands- he smashes the stock over the head of a Xeno nearby. He kept ahold of the bent lasgun, swinging it back around and into the gut of some fish like creature with wings
It grabbed the bent piece of metal that was once a lasrifle, and he let it have it. A snap-step back, and the Krieger feels Arbites carapace against his back as he did so.
Joachim rips his revolver, a scavenge from his atoned company leader earlier free from its holster- fanning the hammer, he held down the trigger, each shot tore chunks out of the enemy, each lasbolt powerful enough to dig a hole in the trench wall before dissipating. The chamber turns and a desultory whine is all he hears- he's out of power, but that doesn't mean he's without a weapon.
He spins the revolver around in his hand, he catches the heavy metal handgun by the barrel, despite its recent eruption, cool to the touch. He shouts- a roar ripping up his throat as he hauls back and clubs the reinforced plasteel grip across the head of a Xeno. The scarred head of the creature snaps down as the grip clobbers his skull- Joachim sets him right again, slamming the grip back up in a reverse swing, crunching the jaw of the alien shut- his tongue flopping uselessly into the mud as he bites it off.
With a final third swing, Joachim roars and smashes the alien nose back into this face with a powerful blow. The enemy warrior staggers back, limp and choking. The Krieger spits, spinning his revolver, he deftly slips it back into its holster, there he draws his shovel, he nearly loses his grip when something sharp yet blunt smashes into his side. Joachim grunts, the weapon then drawn out and slammed back home again.
He whips around, ignoring the pain, his arm sliding out like a striking snake, he slashes the alien responsible for wounding him across the neck. The alien stumbles back, trying to hold his ruined throat closed. He stumbles, grunting from a savage blow slamming across his back, spinning him around.
A hulking brute of an alien sneers down at him.
CHitin armour coveered is entire body. On one of its six small front limbs, a protruding claw act like a wicked sword. On the two, a pincer snapped threateningly, fluked tails waving for balance
It hauling back for another strike with his weapon in the close-in confines of the hellish trench. Joachim doesn't give him the chance to strike again. He slams forwards, strike his entrenching tool into the one of brutes arm, letting the serrated edge and wrapped barbed wire dig into flesh and tear through flesh, as much damage as he could do in as short an amount of time as he could manage. Ripping the blade out he jumps back- fighting for distance when in truth he had none. All he succeeded in doing was jumping back into the wreck of an overturned tank.
Before the hulking Xeno could exploit his mistake, the Arbites Prefector jumped in. She dodges a clumsy swing, countering, she slams her chainsword up to the hilt in an approaching alien's side, before clashing her swords with a the brute's bone-sword. She duels the thing for how long, he don't know,
A roar, louder than the alien battlecry and louder than his own, shrieks overhead
Airstrike, he thought, as crustacean shapes aircrafts launching missiles , including one that slams near him.
He open his eyes after the shock, only to see the alien slams his bone sword into the Prefector, lying without her blades on the ground.
The Krieger reaches for his shovel, only for it nowhere to be found. But a chainsword laying around instead.
Madness gives the man fortitude, letting him ignore the bleeding wound across his face, his eyes shot with rage. With his fingers curled around the handle, he shot up, and lunges at the alien, and it roars back. His bonesword struck the Krieger's chainblade, as the soldier continues the arbitrator's duel. Slash, dodge, parry, riposte. Chainsword against claw-blade, chainsword againsts striking pincers, chainsword againsts whipping tails. The duel went on. No mistake, no mercy, each waiting for his opponent to slip up, for the killing blow.
The cacophony of war roars around them.
The Urkalsik is a soldier, a proud combatant in a martial race that expelled the weak from their midst. Advanced training combine with natural strength makes the creature a formidable warrior, in the service of the Volksrepublic. His opponent is just a mere Private, an expendable cog of his own Empire's legion of expendable cogs. By all rights, the pitiful thing in gas mask must have been crushed into two pieces by the Urkalsik pincers by now. But in this precipice of life and death, in this lethal duel amidst the battlefield, fortunes changes like winter leaves. And the Urkalsik warrior never expected his misfortune as the Krieger jammed his chainsword right through his abdomen. And Revs
He can only look down in shock, before the soldier yanked the weapon out in a shower of gore, kneel down , unintentionally in a pose of exhausted triumph
And as the light of sunset illuminate him , like a halo, one can see the falling shadows of Space Marines drop pods
Void:
Lure Volksrepublik and Scourge ships againsts eachother , utillizing the advantadges of Imperial ships to deal lopsided casualties towards both enemy factions' ships, preferably as they are fighting one another
Conduct Horusian Speartip, prioritizing flagships of enemy fleets. utillizing phalanx of armored vessels to "plow through" enemy fleet formations, leaving them in dissaray
Prepare and conduct a major offensive towards the Scourge' homebase, involved the Endurance, and the Olympia's Glory among others.
Focus on electronic warfare (scrapcodes ) againsts the Scourge. Mobillize any Vanus temple assets in support of the Mechanicus contingent n this endeavor
Attempt to board and capture Urkalsik living vessel, prioritising on figuring out their wormholes
Attempt to locate Askoros, either luring him towards the Scourge home world, or failing that, ambush his vessel, and eliminate him on his own bridge.
Ground:
Have the Guards to heavily dug in within battlefields involving the Scourge. Blunt their approach with artilleries while Rough rider units attempts to spot vulnerabilities in the stretched enemy lines. Sororitas deployed to nbolster the Guards
Exploit such vulnerabilities using vehicles and Auronetica air assets. Involved Space Marines vehicle fleets in support of the Guards.
Further weaken the enmy line using Astartes assaults upon vital spot in enemy lines. Tempestus Scions infiltration are also authorised to strike important targets behind the line
Utillizing electronic warfare as above
Have Ordinatus and Titan-hunting superheavies ( Shadowswords etc ) in support of Titan scale engine clashes
Force Urkalsik into Zone Mortalis close quarter operations, authorised the use of chemicals and radiological weapons
Eliminate its champions on the battlefield with highly visible duels
Utillizes eextensive Psyker warfare.
As above, break them upon our Guns, and crush them beneath the treads of Tanks
The Taiidan Empire is huge, but somewhat clumsy. They have by far the better faster than light system, but the empire already controlled the better part of an entire galaxy in its home reality and is spread out over many subsectors, having risen to become a contender for a major power in its own right in the relatively brief time span of the Empire's colonisation efforts fuelled by wormholes to their home reality that allow them to move in fresh forces from a secure production base.
This does mean that their war effort is consumed by glory hungry commanders with something to prove, each looking to conquer as many people as possible to add to the ranks of their empire and thus often stretching their territory beyond even the seemingly limitless manpower and ship-building capacity of the Emperor's military. Many times the banished raid into Taiidan territory, cripple administrative centres or take out important resource hubs and pull back before a response fleet can be called from the endless omnidirectional expansion of the Empire.
The rivalries between commanders also meant that they were often reluctant to support one another unless directly ordered to by higher ups, each wanting to advance in the Imperial Nobility and the Admiralty without empowering the odds of their enemies within the Empire. Often a response fleet would emerge, expecting reinforcements to translate out of hyperspace to catch the Banished and their coalitions' fleets, only for the reinforcements to never come out of spite or be redirected at the last moment to deal with something else.
But a war of attrition against the Empire was simply not winnable even with the Vasari, the Insurrectionists, Free Haven, the Eldar Corsairs, and the Kroot Atriox did not have the numbers to play the Emperor's game of manpower. Fortunately they do not have to. The Empire's war on all fronts is of course, a war on all fronts, and this can be exploited by the virtue of Atriox's greater ability to concentrate forces.
Furthermore, the upper echelons of the Banished were those who had clawed their way to the top through merit and proven command ability, whereas Riesstiu IV the Second was a purge happy madman surrounded by sycophants who told the Emperor what they thought they wanted to hear if they didn't want to be telepathically executed by him. Assuming of course, Riesttiu was lucid enough to even care about what was being done in his name which was not always the case as the Emperor often lost himself to his musings within the confines of his isolation chamber.
Battles on the surface where the Empire often had to mine valuable supermaterials that could only form or were only present in the gravity wells of planets were generally in the favour of the Banished who had gotten down the science of exploiting the Empire's lack of concern for infantry combat outside of urban terrain to a T. Stealthy raiders continually harrangued their supply lines and collectors, finding their way into their enormous mothercrawlers that served as the centre of operations for their vehicle heavy war machines and rupturing them with plasma explosives and detonation charges.
The Eldar Corsairs of course, were always worth their price, emerging from shimmering gates with little warning and tearing into a foe at medium range with extremely fast shark like attack formations, taking bites at vital areas before killing blows were struck at closer range to end a fight before retaliation could come. All backdropped by the heavy support the Vasari were able to field in the form of powerful hovercraft and scuttling walkers and vast amounts of plasma and phase missiles.
The Kroot were natural guerilla warriors, filling ecosystem niches with their kin through directed evolution and quickly adjusting themselves for the needed rigours of warfare through consuming the dead and absorbing their genes and power. In worlds with a great deal of natural fauna and flora to eat from, they were nearly peerless, often able to cut down Taiidan patrols without anyone being the wiser until the commanders noticed a lack of response to their signals.
The Terminus space, Trandoshan, and Till-Jeluxi mercenaries were leaned on heavily by the foe to pad out their infantry; particularly against the broad superiority the Banished and Free Haven enjoyed in such a field. While the kinetic barriers of the Terminus Space mercenaries was ineffectual against energy weapons, they had the good sense to arm up with energy barriers to patch that hole, and the Krogan Blood Pack mercenaries in particular were able to go toe to toe with even the Jiralhanae with ease in terms of raw strength while Till-Jeluxi Gene-Securitors brought up bad memories of Spartan super soldiers.
Insurrectionist forces, including "Theban" supersoldiers made as an ironic callback to the Spartans by naming the Greek City state that had destroyed Sparta as a power; all of-age volunteer adults, were deployed were possible to provide extra heavy firepower and stormtrooper infiltration attacks. Important for boarding operations in particular where small numbers of Thebans could move with Brute and Elite commandoes, Eldar Corsairs, or free Havens' strange and frightful superpowers and rig ships to blow or take out important leaders.
Quite useful against the very mothership and carrier centric approach to warfare that the Taiidan in particular used wherever the raw fleet power of the Vasari, Free Haven, and the Banished was not sufficient to win the day. Grinding forward in a relentless assault meant to try and stress the internal workings of an empire that could only ever afford to devote part of its enormous resources towards the fighting with Atriox. And it was a part that Atriox was slowly but gradually defeating in detail.
In space, the small numbers of Till-Jeluxi ships were a terror, far more advanced than that of most combatants and requiring disproportionate resources to take down, the Eldar Corsairs having even better technology was something of a godsend even if they weren't big on well...big ships. But it was a powerful trump card that could land decisive killing blows while the Banished did the bulk of the fighting with their numerically weighty fleet and significant industry; especially when faced with a foe whose fleets centred around their command ships to an enormous degree.
The Taiidan would eventually have enough and dispatch one of the Empire's archdukes, a vat born "son" of Riesstiu IV the Second born of a tube and mixed with the genes of an Imperial Woman that had briefly caught Riesstiu's fancy; with orders to crush the Jiralhanae outright, sending forth a full ninth of the Taiidani military to deal with what had come to be a severe annoyance and thorn in their side and provide a quick victory to shut up the Republicans.
Centred around a new pride of the Taiidani fleet, a Fatherworld known as the "Imperial Benevolence"; a planetoid sized construct that could both destroy and produce fleets and carried the means with which to leave countless worlds burning wrecks with their atmospheric incinerator payloads, the Royal Fleet would start its rampage into what the Empire had figured was most likely to be the space of the coalition burning a hole in the Emperor's pockets.
The Imperial Benevolence and its constellation of smaller or similar sized battleworlds advanced in a broad front, pushing the lines of the Banished hard as the Banished for once found themselves to be the power facing an enemy able to produce more and bigger ships than they could. Something most of the species of the former Covenant never really could say they had experience with. Even with the aid in building space fortifications from the Vasari, Haven, and the Insurrectionists; it was next to impossible to stop the battleworlds from overrunning planets they had parked themselves over.
However, Republican sympathisers within the crew who had grown numb to the mass genocide that these craft were called on to do revealed a number of key weaknesses. Such as that to work at full capacity, the Taiidani battleworlds needed to ingest vast amounts of matter delivered by collectors into the waiting furnaces that would reprocess matter into whatever the fleets needed. And that due to the enormous amounts of matter needed, they had to open parts of their superstructure to allow the intake of mass; especially when "feeding" from "nipple" extractors that the Taiidan had developed over the course of their invasion to pump resources from planetary surfaces into the behemothic ships.
And of course, to process and transform so much matter so rapidly required very...energetic processes that did not like being interrupted. While mothership scale systems were failsafe, these were rather less so thanks to the instabilities brought about by increased scale they had not ironed out. Furthermore, a very fighter centric approach to point defence meant that should their fighters and interceptors be overwhelmed, lighter craft could run riot over their surfaces and deposit soldiers to attack. Especially with the Vasari's mastery of phase space allowing for sudden strikes.
A number of the massive vessels were brought to a halt, destroyed or overwhelmed by boarders. Some splitting apart as reactor cascades overwhelmed gravitational binding energy, some simply being subject to massive scale glassing attack from orbit until they were rendered functionally mission killed once boarding teams dealt with their retaliatory mass driver and ion cannon batteries.
Vasari interstellar range capable driver cannons and missile batteries would lock onto the structures with sensor data provided by the fleet, pounding them from afar to continually fray at their defences while forces were mobilised in a grand running battle against the Imperial Benevolence. Fought across multiple systems, the engagement would go on for days, ships pulling out when in need of repairs whenever field regeneration wasn't available, landing parties and forces facing reinforcements either cloned or dropped onto the Archduke's flagship and measuring their progress in corpses.
The Vasari dispatched their Titans, their largest ships at last to the engagement with orders to clear out the escorting fleets as the Banished were pushing on the surface and glassing small nation sized segments of the behemoth at a time; fighting against its construction abilities replacing lost guns and the endless masses of ships that swarmed around its constellation like a blizzard.
The battle of high charity would have seemed ordinary in comparison, but paired with the arrival of many Supercarriers whose high grade energy projectors could score their way through the incredible thick hulls of the warship when concentrating their fire and packed enough seraphs to turn the tide of the strike craft war; the Banished were winning.
Enterprising commanders ordered the scarabs to turn their excavation beams onto the planet itself to try burrowing through thinner portions found with ground-penetrating sonar to access vital components, sending in combat teams to engage the Taiidan crew whose death-masque painted helms soon became more literal than intended death masks in great quantities. It was brutal, heinous butchery, but it would yield results in the long slow grind to the core as the Kultorasks exuded their nanoleech systems to drain vitality from the Taiidan fleet and patch up damage done to Atriox's coalition before their very eyes with the swarms of nanomachines.
The Banished had managed to, through grit and steel and well honed boarding tactics, corner and seize the person of the Archduke while they were in an induced sleep cycle to ensure that his majesty's rest would not be disturbed by the noise outside; Brute warriors and Hunter packs overwhelming the guards posted to defend the sleep chambers and allowing for the entire chamber to be extricated. The Benevolence itself would be left a dysfunctional hulk, scuttle charges hoping to deny it to the Banished as it was overwhelmed, damaging it greatly but not able to outright destroy a thing that had enough gravity to hold itself together; though not, as the Huragok surmised, past the point of repair. The Taiidan were ultimately still people and their morale could be broken, and with the defeat of the Imperial Benevolence, the offensive began to unravel as the Banished sprung the trap now that the Imperial armada was committed.
Though it had cost scores of planets, such things could be written off as acceptable losses for the literal decimation of the Taiidani Navy and the destruction of one of its warfleets; scattered remnants escaping to the empire to report failure to a wrathful Emperor and ceding the bulk of the no-man's space as no longer controllable.
The first great campaign of the battle was won, and now the Banished had the space with which to expand and counterattack against the colossus. Perhaps they could replace the ships, but the experienced and skilled officers, soldiers, and war planners as well as the institutions invested into them would be much harder to replace even with cloning.
Available Sectors
O-10
Vasari (Northeast, 3 subsquares stretching between the Till-Jeluxi/Desmondu Corridor): The Vasari are a highly technologically advanced and industrially prodigious people that have hired out the Eldar and Kroot mercenaries to oppose the Taiidan. Lead by a Federative Council of Delegates, these "Rebel" Vasari have abandoned their people's ancient tradition of looting everything not nailed down and then leaving to run away from a vague threat that had chased their great empire; instead seeking to put down roots and find allies, even ending their empire's longstanding history of slavery. Well, at least the part of their empire in this region of space. The Vasari have been one of the chief bulwarks against the Taiidan for some time, and are grateful for an ally against the endless tide.
Insurrection (Northwest, One subsquare): More formally known as the Interstellar Democratic Confederation, the former insurrection has reinvented much of the UNSC's will in its time since being dropped here centuries ago. The time it took to grow their population and industrial base and formally control this territory occupied a great deal of their time, but they are at least a not insigificant power anymore.
Taiidan Empire (All remaining Subsquares, includes additional subsquares beyond): The enormous Taiidan Empire has come to rule a huge chunk of the exclusion zone between Till-Jeluxi and Desmondu, having claimed sovereignty over eleven subsectors with the raw power of its almost limitless fleet. At war with many other polities at the same time and thus unable to concentrate its full might in any one direction, and potentially politically unstable as the Republican movement begins to gather steam.
O-11
Lawless Expanses of Desmondu (Two squares, south, southwest): The price of hubris is a hard and heavy fall. The Historical Society of Desmond University had sought to find the source of the gift that had inspired humanity to seek out the stars in the 1960s hundreds of thousands of years ago. They came to this part of the universe, and finding a patch of clear space, sought to build a society that would celebrate the great range of the past of mankind and its kin. A combination of a lack of experience with actually running a country, external pressures, and growing factionalism due to trying to celebrate all of a poorly remembered past lead to the project going through many forms of government before finally collapsing after its fifth try at an Imperial Monarchy and a vicious succession war plus peripheral rebellions and worker's revolts lead to the collapse of the country to outright warlordism. You are directly bordering the territories of House Praetorian; which seeks to emulate the long gone Roman Empire in the hopes of injecting its sense of history and longevity into "Dominus Scipio"'s aspirations for leadership. It is estimated they control a further five subsectors in their effort to control the eastern fringe of Desmondu to sweep westwards in a glorious conquest; opposed by the Afrofuturist polity of Onuxa to their south.
Free Haven: (Far Southwest, Two subsquares): Soldiers tired of fighting and dying in Desmondu's pointless wars who've chosen to form a polity where they would only need to fight the battles that mattered to them and of their own choosing, Free Haven is technologically advanced but jealously guards its independence from perceived threats, prompting it to support the insurrection against the Taiidani invasion and forming a coalition of convenience with the Vasari. Multispecies and multicultural, Free Haven is very wary of attempts to untangle Desmondu's political catastrophe for fear of being dealt with as essentially a mutinee.
Strategic Turn 1 Start
(Unlike EternalStruggle I trust you to report this on your own since I'm a bit lacklustre at math)
It is often said in the upper leadership roles of the Banished that every victory was met with two certain things in the Banished, rites of victory for those who displayed true strength in battle and thus would earn rank for it, and the acquisition of every piece of valuable weapon and tactic that could be taken from the campaign.
This has not changed even in these new and strange stars, as Legion Masters and Captains discussed methods for their own forces to better fight the Taiidan and perhaps others who would field such behemoths, or work with the various world governors to better create defenses for future Taiidan attacks.
But as his forces, his Banished repaired and prepared for future conflicts, ensuring that if any wanted to tear away the Banished, they would need to work for every inch. Atriox sat upon the command deck of the Enduring Conviction, looking over a more completed map of the local region, still plenty of unknowns to consider, the Taiidan and their wars with unknown power, the so called "Lawless Expanse" to his south, a failed human state that provided opportunity, and the Vasari, locals who have a common foe in the Taiidan.
This of course was not even speaking of the new Human group inspired by an old empire of their species, Atriox had learned some things about it from the human members once more information about this House Praetorian came to light. An expansionist people that conquered much of what they considered the world before human kind had even discovered gun powder, they were similar in some ways to his own kind's history, but woefully lacking in Atriox's eyes, partaking in slavery and allowing rule of blood to take precedent, creating examples of truly unworthy men to take the throne, something Atriox will not allow for the Banished.
Atriox was no great Diplomat, he was a warrior and leader of peoples who desired to chart their own path, but he could see the prospects of an alliance with the Vasari and their coalition against the Taiidan, the Banished have all but officially joined them in their war, there was still much to be established in this galexy and if Atriox was to have his way, all stars would all be under the same banner soon enough. He only needed to play his cards right, as the humans of the Banished would say.
Available Resources: +10 RP (Starting Income), -0 RP (Military Upkeep, Golden Armada), +45 RP (More Starting Production) +20 (Emploted Population) = 75 RP
Diplomatic Orders:
- Target: Coalition against the Taiidan
Nature: Friendly
Resources: 5 RP , 2 turns
Atriox and the Banished shall send a formal declaration of a Pact against the Taiidan Empire with the Vasari, joining their coalition in official manners to deal with the ever present threat the Taiidan present. Sent along with this formal declaration shall be workers and civilian contractors to help rebuild any of their worlds that the Taiidan had wrecked in their attacks.
Intelligence Orders:
-[- 3 RP] Send Human agents to arm active Republican Rebels In Taiidan Space, only the most basic of Banished Weapons at the start so the Taiidan Empire do not have the opportunity to reverse engineer our weapons. This should hopefully endear the Idea of cooperation with the Banished to many of their groups, perhaps even getting some open to the idea of joining.
- [- 5 RP] Our Agents are also to try and learn as much about the other Wars of the Taiidan, who they are fighting and where a majority of their forces are fighting or moving towards.
-[- 3 RP] Under the false pretense of civilian trade vessels coming in to meet and make small insignificant barter with the border worlds of House Praetorian, our spies are to figure out the political situation and what the current public opinion is like of this area, seeing if they may become a issue if they have asperations beyond the Lawless Expanse
Research Orders:
-[Free Slot]: Deconstruct the Taiidan battleworlds to gain a better understanding of making our own versions and destroying the Taiidan's more effectivly.
-[ 2nd slot -1 RP]: While the shields of the Banished are more effective against our weaponry, the Terminus Space Mercenaries had their own energy barriers that could be useful if looked at in depth.
-[3rd slot -4 RP]: The Taiidan's Ion Weaponry are effective weapons, and must be countered with our continued war with them. Using the captured pieces of their weapons, the Banished are to try and develop better armor and shields for our ships against these weapons.
Industrial Orders:
-[- 3 RP]: upgrade our territory bordering the Taiidan to Moderately Defended
-[- 20 RP] Upgrade one Established Territory, into Industrialized
- [-20 RP]: Create two Mag One fleets
Military Orders:
-Our Fleets shall only patrol our space and ensure defenses are secure
There was not a moment's hesitation before the battle began in earnest. Neither side would give or expect to receive quarter. Clan ships lanced forward, accelerating near-instantly to attack speeds, failing to catch the Chaos forces off-guard but successfully engaging them in the outer system, preventing any feasible attack on the portal.
The initial exchange is bloody for both sides. The Clan's aggressive tactics, diving into the teeth of a numerically superior force, ensures it. Both sides lash out with the full fury of their weapon systems, battering down shields and blowing open great rents in armor, neither slowing their speed of advance or rate of fire as a result. The first toll of the new universe is extracted here, many ships of Omdyn nobly falling in battle. Attempts to rotate ships out are only partially successful, as it proves difficult to effectively withdraw from close range against an enemy with a major numbers advantage.
But losses were already accounted for and adapted to by the calculated weavings of the Mind-Spiders. Things unfold within the acceptable margin of error. While the Clan's mounting losses do not ever cease entirely, the ratios turn ever more favorable by degrees. Here, a squadron lunges forward for another victim that appears to be attempting to rotate out, only to be pounced on in turn as the trap is sprung by Day Fleet elements. There, a flotilla flagship vanishes in a flare of reactor-death, leaving its children confused and scrambling in every direction, turning a formerly fearsome force into easy prey for the hunters of Night Fleet.
Boarding is a brutal affair in the close-range brawl, Omdyn marines finding little opposition among the enemy armsmen while the foe's own forces, morphic creatures along with sorcerers commanding stolid legions of dust-filled armor, prove surprisingly able in offensive boarding themselves despite their limited numbers. Of course, while both sides suffer damage from these attacks, the enemy once again has the worse of it, with said numbers preventing their quality boarders acting defensively, and while it is difficult to halt them in Omdyn vessels it does not prove impossible, with several larger boarded vessels successfully repelling attacks on them before any major damage is done. The same cannot be said for any of the boarded Chaos ships.
Slowly but inevitably, the enemy fleet begins to crumple, pulled apart and confused despite its superior numbers. Small victories are ruthlessly exploited, gaps in the line forced further open, weaknesses spotted and utilized, creating a rapid, unstoppable cascade. Not everything goes the Clan's way, however. The enemy's centremost units, those under the direct command of their flagship and leader, prove more resilient. The Clan lacks the quantity of supercapital weapons needed to easily break the enormous floating castle after the enemy leader is identified as aboard, and while counterspell efforts succeed in stopping any rituals that could turn the tide, that just leaves more effort and energy to spend on bolstering the flagship's shielding.
But just when it looks like the final stage of the battle will be a further grinding affair, intervention arrives, although not of a kind that pleases Gyda and Erik. In a move that after-action debriefing would identify as the brainchild of Samus Aran and in total violation of what was recommended to them, the duodecimarchs board the Silver Tower, using their highly capable craft to punch a small hole in its shielding. Not large enough to allow for heavy weapons fire, but large enough to let them board, as they punch an additional hole near the tip of the primary spire.
The twelve children still have to fight their way through some amount of space, malevolent architecture, and morphic defenders, but they fall like chaff before the mechanized harvester, unable to so much as slow their furious advance. The main event would prove more challenging, however. Rather than fleeing or attempting to surrender, those present in the Silver Tower's apex chamber fought back, and hard.
A powerful sorcerer, seemingly strung out across time, a blurred collection of images acting slightly out of synch with each other. More worryingly, a collection of nine enormous avian morphic creatures surrounded the sorcerer in a protective circle, which the scanning systems of the duodecimarchs identify as Lords of Change. Each seemed to have a host of lesser morphic beasts, Horrors, matching the ones fought outside.
The battle, ten against twelve, is much more dangerous than the prior slaughter. Met with a storm of magic, the inheritors actually find themselves briefly stalled. While the more insidious and esoteric attacks are easily shirked off by their natural defenses, the more blunt-force assault is less easily overcome. But it was not in their nature to retreat, and so they pressed on, shields straining, and returned fire, marking the beginning of the duel.
Despite their supporting hosts, vast experience, and sheer size, the Lords of Change prove unable to keep up with the raw power of the duodecimarchs. Heavy weaponry rips through their forms, bolstered with pseudo-divine power to do more damage than ordinary firepower of its scale could hope to achieve. But the Daemons were bound in place, and proved resistant to destruction, rapidly regenerating the wounds dealt while the Pink Horrors destroyed split into smaller Blues.
Matters swiftly worsen when more Lords of Change appear from thin air and begin to act as fire support, briefly threatening to reverse the situation despite the wound of the newcomers. Things shift back when some of the original Greater Daemons disappear with wounds matching those of the reinforcements, establishing their nature as temporally-displaced. The Horrors fell easier and more permanently, but their Lords proved able to summon forth new ones from beyond, and while they could not themselves threaten the Inheritors despite their numbers they had a tendency to distract at precisely the wrong moment.
While the strength of the duodecimarchs is such that even though this collection of Greater Daemons in their place of high power cannot threaten to truly overwhelm them, they begin to be ground down by the seemingly endless progression of temporal clones. In the end, Tokuda Yumiko takes a brief step back in the midst of battle, and analyses. The temporal cloning was not merely an ability similar to that the central sorcerer possessed, who was adding fire to the assault where possible while always managing to evade attacks through being in many places at once. Rather, it was the sorcerer himself, who had cunningly hidden the spells he was using amidst some of his temporal clones, making it less obvious he was the true culprit.
Yumiko waited for an opening, then darted in, striking a single deathblow at close range, severing the threads of magic by shattering the sorcerer's staff. His already frayed existence scattered further, threatening to come undone, and so he swiftly took the remnants of his focus and fled to the realm beyond while he still could.
With that, the temporally displaced Lords of Change swiftly vanished, leaving only the original nine in various states of disarray. With their trump card lost, they could do little but try and delay the inevitable, falling to the duodecimarchs one by one. While the young heroes were unable to deal any of them final death, they took care to banish each Daemon thoroughly, exiling them to their home realm for many years to come, with each promising increasingly unlikely methods of vengeance upon the children who had bested them.
With the loss of their leadership, the remaining forces of Chaos began to rapidly break down, conventional warships scattering in all directions while the morphic vessels began to fade away back to their homes. The Night Fleet was already in place, and while a few errant ships managed to punch through the blockade and escape, the vast majority did not. A decisive victory.
Of course, some engagements went less smoothly. Even as the forces beyond the Silver Tower fled, the duodecimarchs felt a sudden pressure as the gaze of a red-skinned cyclops fell upon them, one who prepared to make his displeasure known. Even as its shields faltered, a mass of swirling energies began to surround the Tower, threatening to drag it and all aboard into the Warp. A mad dash back to their craft ensued, and despite some last-ditch efforts by the defenders, the Inheritors were able to safely escape the radius of the Warp rift that ensured before it ripped open, letting the enemy flagship fall away into a realm of madness behind them.
While it was not without cost, the forces of the Clan now hold the field. The time has come to bring forward the remainder of the prepared forces and colonists, and begin the great work they were sent here to do.
Situation Summary:
-Clan superior technology and cohesion carries the day despite a few tactical victories from the Thousand Sons and their superior numbers.
-Boarding actions overwhelmingly go in the Clans favour despite some surprises from the chaos forces' warp sorcery and capable offensive boarding teams.
-Attempts to deploy execution assets against the Silver Tower unfortunately fail due to failing to penetrate that far into the chaos formation.
-The Doudecimarchs break with the plan and launch a boarding action to take out the enemy commander when the conventional assault on the Silver Tower falters.
-For reference, the time sorcerer is T'sathis Vhorr, who EternalStruggle used for a more interesting fight and because the original HH-era Reharti are majority dead or exiled. This is a minor retcon from the Thousand Sons fleet being from the Great Cult of Prophecy to the Great Cult of Time, likely due to the latter's temporal manipulations.
-The loss of their commander and flagship is the final action which turns the Thousand Sons' fighting retreat into a rout.
But first, scouting missions were sent out, and intelligence was gathered. Great construction projects would be budgeted and diplomatic and espionage proposals made in the light of this new information.
Strategic Turn 1 Start
Available Resources: 10 RP (Starting Income) - 10 RP (Military Upkeep) + 15 RP (Portal Based Baggage Train) = 15 RP
Available Sectors F-4
-Unoccupied Space (1, Center): While no large region of space is truly empty, this particular region has only limited native civilisation, and none that can object to the Clan moving in and establishing themselves in their own unobtrusive way. Settlement is slated to begin as soon as the resources for it are allocated.
-Citadel Space (3, Northwest, West, Southwest): The Clan and the Thousand Sons are far from the only peoples to have come to this universe from another. To the galactic west lie a liberal union of multiple different alien races who's technology largely derives from an Element Zero which generates a phenomenon known as the Mass Effect. Currently digging in and looking warily over a functional neutral zone at…
-The Galactic Empire (3, Northeast, East, Southeast): …another extraversal power. A fascist dictatorship led by one Emperor Palpatine, evidently a powerful magic-user. While not outright genocidal, with many alien races living under its banner, the Empire is explicitly a human supremacist state, with humans making up almost the entirety of the Imperial military and governing institutions. The Empire is currently developing its territory and clearly choosing its first target for a war of conquest, which may be the Citadel but could potentially be a target to the east or south, or even Clan Grendakal now that it's moving to establish itself.
-The Sphere (1, North): Trapped between the two larger powers embroiled in a cold war is a third, smaller extraversal power known as the Star League, which has spread throughout this region of space. A messy compromise government of ten different states, only six of which have any real rights, it is currently divided over which of the two surrounding factions to side with. The ruling Terran Hegemony along with the Federated Suns, Free Worlds League, and Capellan Confederation hue closer to the alien Citadel alliance, while the Lyran Commonwealth and Draconis Combine dissent and favor closer ties with the Empire. The Periphery powers just favor whoever can get them additional rights, if not independence outright, with some considering looking south to the new arrival.
-Neutronium Pact Minors (1, South): There is some notable local presence in the surrounding space, and they are very concerned by the sudden surge of extraversal presence. Already reactionary, these noteworthy locals have thrown their lot in with a power block known as the Neutronium Pact and its meritocratic, supremacist ideology. A reinforcing expedition has arrived from a moderate distance to the southeast, providing military assets and minor uptechning from the Melkraan Axis, which is in some ways a dark mirror of Uskarlinga with their militaristic clan-based society. While both sides in the cold war look upon these newly empowered locals with caution, the Melkraan themselves and correspondingly their new puppets are more interested in the south, hoping to expand and help cordon off a nation called Tremzar.
"+Group leaders, your son is here.+" The holographic avatar of the mind spider could have been much higher definition than it was, but its transluscent form helped remind people that the somewhat brain-like mechanical construct was not actually there. Their form digitised out of the way of Arne Skjoldr; clad in blue alimbic forged armour with a single cyclopean circle in the midst of his helm and two small, barely perceptible eyepieces to the side for him to see out of unassisted. His limb armour was a noticeable shade of midnight, chestplate and helm a brighter shade of ultramarine, and abdominal garb mostly silvered to cyan.
His friends, all eleven of them, remained close by, but not stepping in to speak as they chattered away to each other on Progenitor tech comm systems that even Gyda and Erik couldn't make heads or tails of nor could all the Mind-Spiders combined begin to make any effort at cracking an encryption that went beyond the merely technological. Samus though, notable from her red helm and orange limb armour, broke from the pack out of not wanting Arne to face the apparitions of his parents alone, even if she sometimes looked at them with what felt like...envy.
They were, all twelve of them, orphans. But Arne could talk to the family he had lost as if nothing had happened. No that wasn't it...he saw them die. He could never unsee it. The image of them being battered into submission and having their rent armour engulfed by the frigid anti-energy waves of the golden hydra's arctic white breath weapon and shattering into icy shards stuck in his mind. Yet here they were, but to the part of his red eyes that was able to see beyond what eyes should be able to perceive, he could sense their strange, warped halo. They were dead, unmistakably so. They were not living beings in this form, something else, something closer to the beings of the morph they had just fought.
When he undid his helmet, letting it fade away into light, Gyda could see some tears in his eyes. Her boy, her little eagle whom she could still remember saying her last goodbyes to in order to buy him the time he needed to escape the doom of Cylosis. So tall now, with a face that called to mind both her and Erik...and it broke her heart to think that she never got to see him grow up, simply appear before her as a young man of fourteen years, still bearing the family's distinctive platinum hair and crimson coloured eyes.
Samus' own face appeared shortly afterwards, golden hair allowed to spill out to its full length somewhat past her shoulder blades, her eyes the colour of the ocean and her skin a shade or two darker than Arne's own near albinistic tone. She was tall and strong, and by Gyda's eyes she'd definitely be someone appealing for her age to her peers.
Gyda's helm was off, as was Erik's. The room they were in also occupied by a menagerie of progenitor representatives such as Old Bird, Elmorni, Black Matron, or Astrath to name but a few. Gyda's glances towards Elmorni were frequent before Arne had arrived, but now, she couldn't take her eyes off her son and counting every second she couldn't have been with him.
"Mamma..." He managed, awkward, unsure of what to say.
"Arne, I'm not angry, or disappointed. But I want to know why?" She said, laying a hand on his shoulder. She was tall, a posthuman augmented warrior; but he was an inheritor; godkin, he was taller than he should have been for his age, and she was already looking eye to eye with him. It seemed like only yesterday when she was bouncing him on her knee and breastfeeding him. What a cruel thing it was to be separated from him for so long...to look upon her own son and see a stranger.
"Because if your troops tried to handle it there would have been far too many casualties," Samus said, blunt, straight to the point. Exactly like her.
"Life needs to be preserved, and letting you wander into that tower...too many would have died. This was better." Samus insisted while Erik took a moment to raise a hand.
"That being said, we are running a military operation. We do need some degree of cohesion. I can't order you around, but Arne, why did you just go through with it?" Erik asked, looking towards his son with concerned eyes, Samus able to clearly see the resemblance between them. Arne's hair was somewhat messier and a bit longer, but one could see where Arne got his boyish looks from; though he clearly had his mother's cheeks.
Right...distraction, this was a lot of distraction.
He rubbed at his bicep with his free hand and looked towards Elmorni, then Samus, and only then towards his parents.
"Because she made a convincing argument, pabbi." A weak excuse, but part of the younger Skjoldr was unsure of how to talk about his love life with parents who he regarded as a lost past until a month ago. All of this was...overwhelming still, even for him.
"It would be best not to be too harsh, it worked out in the end, and they are ultimately not yours to command." Old Bird advised, the wisened Chozo elder's armoured form looming tall over any of the humans in the room, his head shifting while he gazed down towards his adoptive daughter, laying a hand on her armoured shoulder while she leaned into it.
"Even so, I would like some indication of what you're doing in the future. We're family, Arne. We shouldn't need to worry about each other." Erik said, voicing what was on Gyda's mind while he loomed close to his scion's face.
"Sorry..." He said, quiet, eyes averted. That made Erik feel terrible, recoiling as if struck. Did he do something wrong? Why was approaching him so nerve-wracking for his son? He had heard that...Arne hadn't had the best of times, but it hurt to see that his boy kept more distant from him than with his wife.
Elmorni, tall, blue in the colouration of her armour, three-legged, and notable for having a floating, neckless tear-dropped shaped head with a singular cyclopean eye as all Alimbics did; floated into the midst. She made note of the rumours and whispers the other dehelmeted Duodecimarchs were passing between each other, and sent a sour psychic ping towards Agafya as the white haired girl busied herself with passing on inane gossip to alleviate her boredom.
Then she placed her hand on her adoptive son's head and splayed her finger-claws through his silken white hair, stroking and massaging it gently to put Arne at greater ease.
"~Son of mine, worry not. This questioning is out of concern, not disappointment.~" Elmorni's telepathic voice reverberated in the air through the vibration of its molecules, forming sound despite a lack of a throat.
"=Be that as it may, we are curious, what did you learn of the adversary?=" Mind Spider Gargaryth asked.
"Morphics of ambition, knowledge, change, and magic." Yumiko said, the blue-haired girl's voice quiet as it usually was. Not emotionless, just very focused on delivering the information she deemed relevant.
"Servants of a self-aware morphic maelstrom they refer to as a god; Tiinchi." She briefly checked the wards in the room, as if to make sure that the bearer of that name would not be able to hear. Her pronunciation was particular to her, but from the immediate conversations she had with Arne, Gyda knew the more common name was "Tzeentch", the changer of ways.
"Most of the material combatants were human...sort of. High incidences of mutation, some into animal hybrids. But the super soldiers in particular..." Yumiko was quickly cut off in her effort to explain it by Chaytan Mato. Brown-skinned and copper-haired with twin braids at the sides of his face and small ornaments fitted into them, the sky blue, bottle green, and tan coloured armour he wore seemingly made of more organic materials than the others, albeit difficult to define as chitinous, biometallic, or wooden; he was a good lad, though Gyda and Erik had yet to work up the courage to ask what the astrological painted markings on his cheeks meant.
"Most of them were reduced to a form of dust that inhabited their armour, binding for their souls. But those who hadn't all had morphic sorcery abilities. Likely the result of some process to screen out those without that potential. The internals were..." He paused, stroking his chin with his tan coloured gauntlet before snapping his finger.
"Surgically modified. At least twenty different implants all inserted into a young male subject to alter their puberty into something more purpose built for war." He explained as he showed the images of the Thousand Sons to the others, gathered and screened of any malignant symbolic influence by his armour.
"Male only, pretty strange. Guess whomever designed their program wasn't fond of girls." Agafya shrugged as she cracked her knuckles following the demanifestation of her arm cannon.
"...In any case." Yumiko said, a glare aimed at Chaytan who let out a nervous laugh in response raising hands in mock surrender. "They are unlikely to disturb us any time soon. They expended most of their local assets in their strike, so keep them in the back of your mind rather than at the forefront." Yumiko finished, folding her hands behind her back while Gyda nodded.
"I suppose that's fair. Thank you for your help. All of you." She said, lingering for a moment longer on Samus and then finally on Arne, who did his best to try to hide a blush.
...
The mind Spiders had quickly scanned through the webs of data, pilfering from the enormous collections of information freely given to collage together a general idea of the surroundings augmented by the typical networks of intelligence assets sent out through attempting to acquire assets through the usual means. Ideological sympathisers, the downtrodden, people who believed they'd be doing their own country good by undermining their state, and those who can be simply bought with the right bribes here and there.
As the Shadeseer elect of the Tribe of Skjoldr, Alwis Gudrunsdottir Skjoldr was the woman in nominal charge of overlooking the intelligence efforts. In truth, her position was more honourary than anything else. The position of intelligence directorship was generally left to the Spiders, and to officials elected within the All-Omdyn Commissariat for Intelligence Services (AOCIS), her position was a simple tribal badge of honour. Still, she did have access to classified information and was considered part of the organic committee.
She had the family's characteristic white hair and red eyes, her locks tied into a pair of braids while she used augmented reality specs to keep in more touch with the cyberspace side of things even when she wasn't using her helm. As was generally the case for Clan fashion; she wore her general purpose exo-suit. Not the combat model, but useful for every day purposes and in defending her for the brief time needed to port in actual combat gear.
Her office was cozy, somewhat communal. her space shared with a number of other beings while she daintily poked through the reports with a keen eye for anything that struck her as interesting.
"So we are entirely surrounded it seems." She said, looking at the information offered to her.
"Liberals, Reactionaries, Corporatists, Imperialists." Kyzar said, the mechanoid's optics swivelling towards her red eyes while she offered small nod and smile.
"The largest immediate threat is the Empire. They are technologically inferior, but have a more established presence. Nevertheless, we have only just established ourselves and are less familiar with might be past their territory. It would be best to have the AOCIS poke into that." Skoraki said, the Zekmunso's eyes concealed by the helm they wore.
"It would be wise to ensure a dependency on our trade goods within the Citadel and the Star League. We have far greater resources and vastly superior technology. Whatever we offer would be entirely at our discretion to provide them the ability to replicate." Theskyl, one of the Mind-Spiders devoted to intelligence duty ruminated briefly on the subject, simulating whole entire timelines in its mind to guess at possibilities and potential outcomes.
"Devious but doable." Alwis said, steepling her fingers in thought.
...
Orders
Industrial
Upgrade home subsquare to "Established", -12
Improve defences to "Moderately Defended" -3
Diplomacy & Intelligence
Establish basic lines of contact and embassy with neighbouring powers and offer general indications of openness to assistance for the Citadel and Star League to alleviate their technological disadvantage.
If Embassy is accepted, ensure that the facilities used by everyone, but especially the Empire and the Melkran minor are bugged, as are the compounds offered to their diplomats. For the Empire, utilise subatomic femtomechanical devices too small for their technology to pick up.
Establish general feelers with the Citadel and Star League. We will deal with the Empire and the Melkraan Sympathisers in due time and it would be best for them to, if not assist, then at least not get in the way. However we are resource strapped at the moment so we will need to rely on acumen and guile.
Take a general look at the state of political and labour organisation within local space to prepare for revolutionary deep operations in the future when resources are less tight.
Target: Citadel Space
Nature: Friendly
Resources: None, 1 turn
The Mind-Spider Webs, after sufficient study of Citadel Space through information available on the extranet will seek to offer a comprehensive exchange and gift arrangement as well as a pact of nonaggression to last for five years. The pact will also contain provisions for a potential guarantee of independence to be honoured by Tribe Skjoldr in event of hostilities from the Galactic Empire or the Melkraan client state. Technology that the Citadel cannot replicate will be offered as part of the exchange with access to surplus systems no longer fit for service in the revolutionary guard army to be offered in exchange for mineral resources that we may not possess in our current sector of space.
We will establish a trading authority to help regulate and ensure fairness in these deals. Provisions for greater exchanges than the initial deal are offered as an alternative if they are in need of more, but they will have to agree to labour standards reform and allowance for political groups in their society to join the Revolutionary Intergalactica if they want access to such things, particularly if they wish to learn how to manufacture systems within the reach of their industry that nevertheless would be greatly superior to their present methods. If they wish for demonstrations, if they have any issues with pirates or brigands or hostile void fauna or the like within their space we will dispatch one of our spare battleworlds and its escort to deal with them, with their permission and observation.
Target: Star League
Nature: Friendly
Resources: None, 1 Turn
The Mind-Spider Webs will gather what information they can regarding the Star League to smooth out the details of the following general plan of action. The Feudal system of the Star Leagues is archaic and often at odds with our tribal councils but they are in a hard position brought about by extremely low technological capabilities including a lack of artificial gravity, shielding, and a number of other basic systems. Thus a similar pact will be offered to them where we will offer to assist in their development in exchange for resources, and if they wish for more; the price of more will be in the form of political and labour transformation to better align our modus operandi towards one capable of actual cooperation. The Emperor is also offered to send delegations to observe the processes of the Tribes and Clans that have come with Gyda on this expedition, and to speak with representatives of the ODCOR itself.
Research
[Free Slot]: Begin research into broad improvements for Behemoth grade combatants with an eye towards making them more reliably useful in space combat in case they need to engage a foe before landing or are attacked by space assets when being hot-dropped from orbit onto a planet.
Military
Keep fleethordes concentrated in our core territory for now, but if the Empire or the Melkraani respond with aggression or hostile probing, massive retaliation is authorised. If so much as one TIE fighter squadron decides to squeeze the trigger in anger and an apology is not given within seven Earth days, begin operation STARWIND.
Operation STARWIND as planned by the Mind-Spider military conclave will start with a massive cyberwarfare attack on the Empire's Holonet to crash their entire system of communications and leave the Empire unable to speak to itself or be aware of what's going on. Massive jamming is to be utilised to block other means of informing the rest of the Empire.
If total communication paralysis is achieved, use the information extracted from the Holonet to pinpoint planets that serve as important but not-self sufficient nodes in the economy and allow N-Subs to begin unrestricted anti-convoy warfare to block off supplies to import dependant Imperial loyalist worlds. Priorities are resource extraction, industrial, and agricultural worlds in that order. Logistical hubs are a secondary priority, fortress worlds will be bypassed whenever possible to carve apart the entire economy of the Empire.
Coruscant will be bypassed and strangled with offers of supply contingent on surrender of garrison. Only engage the capital world when the Home Guard fleet is in a state of deprivation-induced collapse, deploy interdiction probes if needed to see if they can shut off hyperspace access to Coruscant.
The following specifies Corusant but should be considered the basis for the specific doctrine of engagement against the Galactic Empire.
Once coruscant begins to collapse or revolt, move in for the kill with rapid long-range kills on interdiction capable starships via faster-than-light capable weapons such as tachyon lances or "blink" missiles. Black Hole and Strangelet munitions are authorised. Once mobility limitation is eliminated, target command ships to decapitate top down command hierarchy.
Once enemy is paralysed, continue extreme range bombardment of ships while manoeuvring at these extreme ranges with the benefit of superior faster than light and superluminal sensors allowing for perfect knowledge of the incoming projectiles while hitting them from distances of triple-digit astronomical units.
Even strike craft are to engage from tremendous ranges through missiles and long-distance primary weapons to whittle down the Empire's strike craft wings and snipe out crucial nodes in the order of battle. Continue this extreme long-distance hit and run until the enemy fleet is completely disorganised. Use our superior large ship manoeuvrability to let these ships participate in skirmishing.
Rush into the clash once enemy fleets are completely scattered, disorganised, and demoralised. Disabled and unable to continue the battle ships are to be left behind to be picked up when engagements are over. Then wheel around and take prisoners. Boarded ships that do not surrender are to be simply destroyed after whatever use can be gotten out of forcing their weapon systems to target their friendlies is squeezed out.
Make use of vehicular as well as elite and super infantry support in boarding actions for maximum effect following pumping clouds of femtomechanical agents to fill the interiors of the ships with thermobaric dust before detonating them with plasma charges as standard light anti-personnel preparations. Based on our expectations by our own reality's standards, the rapid deoxygenation, 50,000-degree explosive burn, and the combination of overpressure and vacuum implosion this should be a less than lethal tactic akin to a shipwide flashbang grenade for shielded and armoured personnel.
While orbital assets are being destroyed, launch rapid ground invasions that as per the doctrine of deep battle, target the enemy's centres of production, communications, supply, and the means to carry out a fight while forcing the enemy to abandon prepared positions to catch up to potential encirclements or avoid loss of lines of contact. Anything that uses electromagnetic communications is to immediately receive a missile homing in on that signal to mute and then blind them with overwhelming jamming and suppression operations.
Hot drops from orbit, with or without drop pods, and with assault shuttles will seize landing zones to amass force to begin "scissor cut" operations that will sever the arteries of logistics that allow most armies to function; establishing automated defences and drone troops to ensure that any supply lines that are cut remain cut. Teleport assaults where possible will be used in the event of war to quickly neutralise assets and nodes of importance and to kill or capture officers while they try to manage disabled communications.
Large assets will be used to establish wide-area dominance and zones of control to suppress the empire's ground forces and their ability to move freely. Allowing for fast moving mechanised assets to attack from multiple directions and flanks in either meeting or penetration engagements with pursuit a lower priority. Artillery will be used judiciously and constantly, bombarding anything that doesn't surrender and isn't in a danger zone. Super-massive assets such as our behemoths will be used to enforce breakthroughs with every line-of-sight zone of engagement having at minimum 10 behemoth grade land combatants per 40 x 40 kilometre grid of the battlespace.
Connections with underground resistance will be established to organise full three-dimensional envelopment and a war from within as well as without. Droids, given that they are a near universally enslaved underclass, will be prioritised as part of broad marriage of our political and military goals. Worker's organisations and oppressed nations within the Empire will be similarly empowered, with provision of some of our advanced weapons suited for insurgent conflict such as our on-field logistics system to produce military assets on field.
One of our fleet hordes will be maintained in our space even in event of war. Both as an operational reserve and also to ensure that our space is defended from any attempt at retaliation. The largest of our three fleets will be dispatched to the core of Imperial territory in case we are not provided the time of peace we desire. Of our other three fleethordes, one will be dispatched to the southern Imperial subsector while the last will as described before, remain on defensive preparations.
Sith and other combatants who display supernatural abilities will be prioritised for elimination by our combat-esoteric groups such as psions, morphites, and mages. Steal enemy personnel records to assist with tracking down and eliminating those who display these capabilities from their ranks.
Occupational authorities are to function as transitory regimes to empower and assist local political sympathisers; build the mechanisms of suppression of local ruling classes in favour of the ruled classes and targeted acts of revolutionary terror against holdouts who refuse the carrot of improved living standards, class liberation, and the imposition of the expropriation and socialisation regime to redistribute the capital of society towards its toiling masses and collectivise the overmassive holdings of its highest elites as well as the masses of small-business owners and the self-employed artisans also likely to formulate the basis of support for the Empire's Corporatist regime.
The Emperor himself will be put down by dispatching of overkill assets including the Duodecimarhs, a full strike team of assassins and counter-esoterics, and the combined psychic might of the mind-spider council.
Defence is to be done in depth with enemy forces to be engaged at local strong points to catch them between fortifications and the guard fleet. Effort to prevent them from escaping is to be prioritised as well as to maximise superiority of range and mobility in particular as well as firepower and durability to lesser degrees. N-subs are to harass any aggressor as well as cut their supply lines through destruction of transports and ambushes on ships on low alert to demoralise and exhaust the foe.
Once the foe is committed, commence overwhelming counterattack with doctrine as mentioned above.
Towards the Melkraan border, maintain a more defensive posture while seeking to avoid incidents with the Citadel and Star League. In case of hostilities, remove them from territories but take no further action for now beyond that such aggression will make all future relations difficult.
There are those in ThirdComm who simply don't understand the way the Clans see the world.
In the universe from which Union came, war was far from unheard of. Humanity was fractured and scattered across the stars, and the attempts to unify it under one banner were often flawed or even outright disastrous—in this way, it wasn't unlike the Clans' home, or so claim the rumors that have reached ThirdComm's ears. But to everyone in the old Milky Way, from revolutionaries to corpro-states, force of arms was just one possible means to an end. It was a single tool in a vast toolbox, which contained innumerable instruments of diplomacy, intelligence, and economics that could shift the levers of power. Many people in ThirdComm can't comprehend how the Clans could cast all of that aside to elevate war as the sole arbiter of success—or how they could even continue to exist as a society after doing it.
Xiong Xiaoli is not one of those people.
She strides forward, the crystalline surface of an alien world crunching under her Zheng mech's armored feet. Her steps are automatic, yet still graceful. Long years of honed muscle memory have given her a gift for economy of motion, for making no move without a purpose behind it. She learned long ago, alone and wounded and facing down an entire pirate company, that there's a certain beauty in that simplicity—in seeing nothing more than a fight for survival. So Xiaoli understands, more than some of her peers, why the Clans have chosen to glorify war.
Xiaoli's sensors pick up the enemy before her eyes do: four Clan mechs, coming around the side of a nearby ridge that juts from the faceted ground. Like all Clan war machines (and to be fair, most Union ones), they bristle with weapon emplacements, brandishing kinetics, missiles, and lasers across their bodies. They've most likely detected her as well, and Xiaoli suspects she knows what they plan to do: use their superior firepower to create a kill zone as they come around the ridge, hemming her in and forcing her into the path of a killing shot.
That's the trouble with simplicity. It helps put distractions aside and keep your eyes on your goal. But in so doing, it also makes you predictable.
The Zheng has no jump jets, but it doesn't need them. Xiaoli leaps forward, her mech's powerful legs propelling her across the distance to the enemy. By the time the first salvo of missiles lands behind her, detonating and throwing up glittering dust in their wake, she's already in their midst. The Clan pilots may not know it, but the tide of the battle has already shifted.
How do you focus on your objective and still catch the enemy by surprise? How do you outsmart your foe without being too clever for your own good? It's one of the essential paradoxes of warfare. As the four mechs turn to face her, Xiaoli has only a moment to contemplate her own solution. The Zheng has no weapons other than its own body and the heat from its core, a computer barely worth the name, and little room for system upgrades. But—as many of Xiaoli's enemies have only realized in their final moments—it fights entirely unlike any other mech in existence.
And then the time for thought is over. The enemy has target lock. She finds herself staring down the barrels of enough weapons to slaughter a small army.
And Xiaoli smiles.
The barrage they were planning never comes. With the Zheng standing in their midst, they can't fire without hitting each other. To their credit, it takes them only a second to realize this. One of the Clan mechs reaches behind its back, unsheathing a massive waraxe with a shining, wickedly sharp edge. In the same motion as its draw, it swings the weapon down at the Zheng, and at Xiaoli inside it.
But the blow doesn't land. With both hands, Xiaoli reaches up and catches the weapon's haft. The enemy's swing stops cold.
As the other three mechs maneuver for a shot, she sets the mech's feet and pulls. The axe isn't yanked from her opponent's hands. But, with a screeching sound of rending metal, the hands are messily separated from its arms. Xiaoli spins with the momentum, brings the axe around, and cleaves the crippled mech in half in one stroke.
In front of her, silhouetted against the sunlit ridge, she catches sight of another of her foes just in time. Even as it fires its missile, she's already raising the axe again. The warhead slams against the flat of the blade and detonates with a noise almost like a ringing bell, but the axe is smashed into a twisted ruin. At the same time, a volley of laser fire creases the armor around her right shoulder as a third mech circles around.
In three long strides, Xiaoli bounds over to the wielder of the lasers. The last mech stitches the ground just behind her with autocannon fire. As she runs, gauss slugs nip at her heels and bury themselves in little craters and fractures in her wake. So she doesn't slow down. With one smooth motion, she grabs the laser-firing mech as she reaches it and hurls it at its compatriot. It intercepts another missile midflight with its body, and knocks the mech that fired it to the ground before slamming into the ridge in a final crunch of rock and metal. The mech she knocked over struggles to rise, but Xiaoli puts an end to that with a single stomp to its vulnerable chassis. The Zheng's foot comes down with such force that fragmented slabs of crystal angle up around the point of impact, covering Xiaoli for a crucial moment against her final opponent's kinetics.
As the crystal chips away under fire, heat flows from the Zheng's reactor core into its armored fist. For a moment, Xiaoli and her mech are wreathed in smoke and steam as she raises its palm. Then the cloud dissipates, and for a moment she and the last enemy mech are staring each other down across the field. Its cannons begin to spin up again, but it's too late.
The D/D 288 fires, venting the accumulated heat of a nuclear fusion reaction from her mech's hand. The enemy across from her is reduced to white-hot scrap in an instant. The fearsomely powerful blast carves a deep furrow in the ground, melting it into lava at the center. When it cools, much later, the sharp-edged crystal around it will give way to flowing lines that form almost organic shapes.
And with that, the battle is over. The whole burst of violence took under a minute.
As Xiaoli prepares to move on, she reflects that a plan doesn't have to be complicated to be unexpected. "Fight mech battles in hand-to-hand combat" is hardly a byzantine strategy, but it's one that's so outside the paradigm of what most people expect from mech combat that almost everyone struggles to counter it. The plan she's helping ThirdComm to execute is based on the same principle: its surprise comes not from its complexity, but from an understanding of the enemy psyche. Union's military, hopefully with the help of the Haven Compact's FTL transports, will lure the Clans into the battles they crave. Then, it will systematically eliminate their leaders—not in single combat but by assassination or long-range bombardment. With rank in the Clans purely dependent on challenges of personal combat, the rest of their soldiers will be compelled to either fight amongst themselves or leave command in dispute.
"Draw them in and then kill their commanders" is easily stated. But it's outside the enemy's paradigm of warfare. Simple, but unexpected—just like a fist to the face when you're piloting a mech. And Xiaoli, too, has a role to play in this plan; perhaps even the decisive role.
But she's spent enough time in thought. She takes a moment to gather herself. Then she continues ahead, leaving the scorched and shattered battlefield behind. She can't afford to delay her mission.
After all, it wouldn't do to keep the ilKhan waiting.
As stated in the post:
Request FTL assistance from the Haven Compact
Using that and the blink gates, draw the Clans into open battle
Focus on assassinating leaders, especially Khans, from long range or with infiltration squads
Use Union's well-developed intelligence services to arm and train guerillas behind enemy lines, cutting off their supply chains and conducting further assassinations
Combine this with propaganda against the Clans' eugenics-based caste system to try to inspire a revolt among their slaves
Ideally, this will destabilize the Clans' home front at the exact time that they begin to lose important leaders
Dispatch Xiong Xiaoli on a personal mission to assassinate the ilKhan (GMs, I promise a totally awesome mech battle post if you let this work)
What all of this is aimed at doing is collapsing the Clans' internal cohesion so that they start to fight amongst themselves while Union counterattacks
Other notes:
Lack of FTL makes logistics somewhat difficult, but this can be compensated for with portable fabricators, which IIRC the Clans do not have—besides the technological advantage, Union should have an easier time replacing equipment parts and ammunition in the field
The Clans also lack any counterpart to NHPs or legionspace; use this to our advantage in electronic warfare and tactical maneuvering
In certain situations with weaker Clan factions, it may be possible to awe them into submission with superior technology and firepower—HORUS mechs with paracausal weaponry could be useful for this purpose
From incorporeal forms soaring among currents of celestial energy, bourn on the weakly-blowing Winds of Magic, the fragment of the Sublime Communion that now dwelt in this strange new reality beheld their territory: a tiny, gleaming dot of Astromantic Order among a sea of untapped potential and sharing a border with a tempest of roiling, uncaged and violent energy that dwarfed the whole of the Milky Way in size but was distinctly Other from the broken Sea of Souls.
The former, they note, is less than ideal, but something that could be dealt with in time. The latter is a great threat, but also one that was not immediate.
No, that title belonged to the strange, otherworldly creatures which had torn fresh holes into reality that writhed and twisted with new and alien energies that the great minds of the Slann didn't quite understand yet.
More concerning than that were the armadas emerging from said portals, massed fleets of otherworldly, almost eldrich ships full of hostile, hungry, and malicious minds that saw all that was flesh and blood and bone as little more than prey and saw the energy of the Astromantic Web as a smorgasbord for the taking.
The Firstborn would soon show them their folly.
However, even as the fleets emerged from their berths and armies mustered to face the fleets that already made for their worlds, the Communion watched as, beyond their borders, these strange creatures, these Unbidden, as the young races call them, fall upon small, weak species; some barely spacefaring, some fledgling empires that scrambled against these sudden omnicidal invaders, fighting furiously but unable to stop the Hyperspace-Dwellers from draining worlds dry of the life upon them.
This drew the Communion to Debate, the Slann arguing about what, if anything, should attempt to be done about this. Many argue that nothing should be done, as these beings are beyond their purview and the forces of the Quetzel are not exactly teeming in number. All efforts should be focused on keeping their worlds safe, at least until more forces can be mustered; especially with that titanic rift lapping at their borders.
Others, a notable minority, argue that the emergence of the Unquiet is in part the result of the Quetzel's arrival in this realm, and so at least some forces should be sent to try and prevent the slaughter of the Warmbloods.
Back and forth went the thoughts of the Communion, carried by trails of Astromantic Energy between stars as Slann who had not seen each other in the flesh in tens of thousands of years bickered like old married partners (in their own way), until at last, the eldest among them, the one who led the efforts to guide them safely to this new reality, spoke up.
"We shall not act in haste," croaked Lord Disa'Gonsuuc, his voice harmonizing with the eminations of a nearby star, "but neither shall we wholely abandon the Warmbloods. It was our arrival that provoked the Creatures, and so we have some burden to assist them."
It was a compromise that left both parties among the communion midly displeased, but they were the Firstborn, and their unity of action was one of their greatest strengths, and with an acceptable course of action, no member of the Communion spoke further, and the Slann's great conclave broke up into groups or individuals, as the great minds turned to their tasks.
Within his sanctum on a great ring-habitat near the center of the sector, Disa'Gonsuuc opened his great eyes lazily, gazing over his inner sanctum, floating within a pool of clear water on a massive lilypad, small insects from a world dead for near a million years buzzing through the air pleasantly as they fed from flowers gifted from a dozen Aeldari Maiden Worlds in better times.
His gaze lit upon the statue-like form of his Eternity Warden, the Guardian standing knee-deep in the shallows of the pool, a multitude of colorful winged creatures alit upon his perfectly still form.
A probe of thought had the Warden shifting, sending the insects fluttering away as Disa slipped from his perch, sliding through the water as his palanquin rose from the depths, lifting him from the water before his webed feet were ever at risk of grazing the stone bottom.
He floated out over the edge of the pool, his Warden in lockstep beside him, and spoke, more to himself than to anything else, his words weaving Magic through the air as his breath gave them shape, sparks and cinders and shadow and purple-tinged fog merging and fighting with each other in the air before him.
"As always, there is Work to be Done." Said the Slann.
And with a flex of thought, Mage-Priest teleported away, to his orbiting flagship, to begin the work he had taken upon himself: finding a way to close the portals of the Unbidden.
-All Quetzel worlds are to immediately move to immediate defensive settings: Mobilize and arm the populace, power up planetary shields, get the system defence fleets out of dock, and start preparing ritual sites for use.
-The Quetzel's single Warfleet will be divided into two parts, one consisting of about 3/5ths of its strength, and the other 2/5ths
--The larger force will spread out along the Unquiet's invasion corridor, acting as the 'hammer' to the 'anvil' of the heavily fortified Quetzel worlds, waiting until Unquiet forces are committed to assaults against local defense fleets before strike-groups use the Webway to encircle the creatures and anhialate them with massed bombardment before they can close to their preferred range.
--The second groups is to venture beyond Quetzel territory to strike at the Unquiet fleets that are preying on the primitive species surrounding Quetzel space, ambushing groups of Unquiet with fleets of equivalent or larger size and bleeding them of forces so as to slow their efforts at consumption, ideally while the predators are beginning to engage a local politie's navy.
-The Slann who are not acting to directly support military actions will begin working on ways to close the Unbiden Portals within the territory shrouded by the Astomantic Web, utilizing the power of the Web to do so, led by the efforts of Lord Disa'Gonsuuc.
The Unquiet were hungry, ravenous, predatory. They wished to feed and consume and that was that. To bargain with them was pointless, a seal does not bargain with a shark for the shark cares not what the seal has to say. To reason with them was futile, they were what they were and you are what you are. To flee from them, difficult, as masters of hyperspace it was very difficult to outpace them when they had prey in mind. So the best option was to fight like hell, and give them a terrible case of indigestion.
The Unquiet fleets shimmered out of hyperspace, seeming to rubber-band into normal shape as their ghostly fleets filled the air waves with the psychic sensations of their terrible hunger and the chatter of their energy signatures. They would strike across a front spread across an entire globular cluster, driven by a desire to ensure that their feeding grounds were safe from those they sensed would spoil their fun.
Against the smaller or primitive societies, death was alarmingly rapid. Planets ravaged by them had every scrap of viable energy drained. Geomagnetic processes stilled, living things crumbled to dust when the energy of their biology was sucked out and their atoms disrupted by the matter disintegrators, the air grew stagnant and still as everything died and all soil shrivelled into dust and the oceans stopped into a cold stasis. The screams of the dying echoed across the othersea, the anguish of those ripped apart at the fundamental level booming loud and far.
They responded to the lizardmen not as more prey however, but as hunters. They could sense the ill intent the lizardmen had towards them, but of course, anyone could sense the ill intent they had towards virtually anything and everything; their stark blue-purple forms shifting as only things not made of full matter could.
They sensed the choking hand on hyperspace that squeezed at their gates that allowed them to manifest freely in this plane of existence, an unacceptable curse. They loathed being bound, they hated the idea of the hunt being restricted when the energies of material things was so sweet on their ethertongues. They would not tolerate this, and would work to retaliate against the scales and gilded armour of the children of the old ones.
Archosaurs, Arcanotek machines, and the mighty scaled warriors of the cold blooded scions of the old ones marshalled in their great numbers with all their resplendent equipment. At once seemingly archaic but at the same time some of the most advanced craft to have ever graced their home reality. The Unquiet's invasions were swift and sudden, seeming to form out of congealed masses of semi-solid pseudo-energy into haunting and vaguely humanoid shapes that had an aura of terrible malice.
They were shaped into many menacing forms, always predatory, always violent. Seemingly in mimicry or mockery of the constructs of the creatures of the Centrum they considered to be no more than food. Scraggly, jagged formations of geometric shapes in the vague appearance of tanks, monsters made out of what seemed to be shards of glass that somehow always seemed to have their flat end facing the viewer even when they turned around and presented their front somewhere else; the shape of the glass warping as they shifted around. They were not of the empyrean, but they were not of the centrum either.
Strong barriers of distorted spacetime, energy, and more esoteric forms of shielding resisted and bit at the attempts to strike them down, but solid projectiles and solid mass such as the phase-clubs of the Saurus or the Solar-Staffs of the Starblood Carnomiles disrupted them strongly and harshly. Kroxigors using crush-mauls that bent space and gravity and artificial mass fields to strike as if they were far larger than they were, popping the unquiet by the dozens with each swing.
Stealthy chameleons did what they did best with escorts shrouded by Ulgu and more technological methods of cloaking to find their ways around the strange, hyperspatial warping passages of the Unquiet's ships, the shrouds of magic preventing the leeching of energy as they sought out those waveforms who had command over this evil host and whatever the Slann deemed to be important. Though they were strange, alien monstrosities, the Unquiet still had commanders, still had leaders, they still built things with parts and components, strange as they were.
And the glyph bombs that erupted in their midst was enough to disrupt and dispell them; bringing their odd fortresses to collapse in strange debris fields and their ships to come to dead halts, slivers of matter swirling in asteroid belts while their pseudo-energy fields dimmed and uttered.
Archosaurs ran rampant, slashing, clawing and gnashing at anything they read as enemies. Across thousands of worlds the stampede would tear through the ranks, many falling to the bizarre and evil weapons of the unquiet; disintegrating or flashing as they warped out. But the Unquiet were paradoxically at their most dangerous but their most vulnerable in close quarters combat. On one hand their drain and disintegration was able to run riot at close quarters but they were also most vulnerable to being disrupted by large quantities of mass. And an armoured carnosaur sweeping starblade covered claws through their bodies certainly counted.
Though there were bursts of what most armies would call artillery from one side or the other; both armies had deadlier tricks up their sleeves. The unquiet sought to rip open space to let the raw power of hyperspace bleed through in dimensional cascade events, pooling their energies into these powerful dimensional storms that could effect wide area devastation or send forth more precise spears of dimensional cataclysm. But the Sorcery of the Slann was peerless. The empyrean bubbled and spat out its immense strength to enact transformation and change.
Spellcraft raged and rippled as the winds of magic were bent into precise forms such as frost and death magic that would sap their vitality and take the bite out of their movements. Subtler effects like augments and hexes to strengthen their own forces and weaken the foes would join with the raging maelstroms that could engulf entire continents, planetary surfaces tearing open and releasing enhanced magmatic fury alongside rains of blizzard cold and amethyst death; azyr's astromantic and meteorological spite tearing through battlefields in the void and on the surface.
But the power would start to coil and quash at their wormholes. Squeezing and pressing down their coils of maleformed dimensional direction to right the wrongness of their ability to anchor and manifest in a realm that lacked the folds of spacetime that the Unquiet should have had in order to properly manifest. Anchor forts started to break and splinter, the flow of reinforcements from their otherspace began to slow and dim, and the Quetzal poured into the weakening lines.
The Unquiet were ravenous, murderous monsters and the scourge of countless civilisations. The reaper of galaxies and the devourer of life. Though their strength could vary and they were a fractured "species" they were held with fear and mystique for good reason, their very emergences virtually always being designated a crisis that could bring sworn enemies together to stop them.
The Quetzal were unyielding. The Krork were the perfect war engine, the Dawi the manifestation of craftsmanship, the Eldar the peak of storytelling and mythweaving and the Ogors the ideal sophont. The Quetzal however, were the eternal bulwark and the everlasting vigil against the darkness. Those who would pave the way for something better in the face of a cosmos full of terrors and imperfection.
The Quetzal proved the stronger, forcing their way through the lines of battle in cataclysmic meeting engagements and shoving contests of attack and counterattack. New warriors were spawned, old ones were healed or warped out for restoration to maintain the eternal grindfest; Ghyran and other restorative energies blowing fiercely and strongly, damage to man and machine alike repairing in real time.
And of course, raw, balls to the wall, overwhelming all at once striking power to break through the lines and overcome the opposition, a series of battles in the haunted expanses of nebulaes formed by the shed skin of dead stars that perished long ago ending in the breakthroughs needed for the Quetzal to throw everything they needed towards the central wormhole, a vast bleeding wound in reality.
The assault was a furious display of power in both the materium and the immaterium, the cold blooded ones striking with whatever they could manage. A battle of tooth and claw fought with strange perceptions of time and space to see possibilities and fix certainties, but the Slann had managed to write their triumph into the weave of fate and decide where the dice would fall.
Enormous ships apparated at the designated points of the wormhole where they perceived their victory, and they threaded the story of the final triumph through. The defeat they perceived was forced into being alongside crackling arcs of power channelled by the ancient amphibians while their warriors battled on strange worlds twisted by hyperspace's contortions of reality into unrecognisable directions, aboard ships and structures, or on the constructs of the long dead. The Unquiet howled with fury and outrage, trying to lash out with their hunger and drink of the power that was flowing around them, attempting to see the curves of time from beyond to find their own victory.
But they drank of the power of Qhaysh and found it poison as the coherent rainbows of high magic flushed into them, forcing order into their forms and then prompting them to start exploding. The wormhole almost screamed, its form rapidly destabilising while immense batteries hammered at its threads; warnings pushing its influence into smaller and smaller sectors of space until it went from spanning many light years to the size of a very large star to that of a planet before it collapsed into nothing at all.
The Unquiet sensed their connection to home severed, and fearing the prospect of being hunted down themselves, began to engage their hyperspace systems to dive back to whence they came. They were monsters, but they did not like the sensation of being prey, such rankled at the sensations and desires of the hunters of hyperspace. Such was an offence to everything they were and perceived. It could not be, and they would accept defeat rather than feel the fear of being somebody else's victim.
The wormhole's collapse caused the remaining anchors to overload, collapsing back into hyperspace in pieces. Like a net that had its most important links broken, the weight of trying to support the presence the Unquiet desired was too much and only caused further snaps and tears. The whole system began to tear apart and the sharks fled the presence of the mosasaurs so to speak. Normalcy returned, and the wards the Lizardmen placed pushed against the warp chasm that had initially commanded their attention; ensuring a bubble of proper, real space where the nightmares of all that lived would not be able to manifest without a fight.
Lord Disa'Gonsuuc, the weaver of the great spell that shattered the wormhole altogether now had the time and space needed to properly take stock of the surroundings, and begin the process of revitalising the worlds that had been drained to death by the monstrosities was well underway.
Available Sectors
H-8
South, Centre: Quetzal Territory: Lord Disa'Gonsuuc's territory is an immensely well developed and nearly impenetrably well defended against virtually all comers, an island of metaphysical stability against the ravages of the Soul-Eater Storm due corewards. With the downfall of the attempted invasion of the Unquiet, and the dominating position that the Lizardmen's isekai'd worlds now occupied there are no further threats or potential competitors worth mentioning. However there are a number of relics uncovered by the banishment of the wormhole that were unable to be twisted or damaged by its emergence. From analysis, it seems that they were part of some mass scale matter harvesting and transmutation industrial process that would create massive amounts of custom particle materials. At least, they would if they weren't in need of serious repairs. It would be possible to restore them to function for about 25 RP.
Southeast (Spills into I-8 southwest and west, centre and H-9 Northwest): Cult of the Harrowmother: The servants for one of the enemies of Quishaysh; the Voice of Silence; have conquered this area to stage an eventual invasion of the Soul-Eater storm. With four territory points under their control and many Somnimundi under their control, these forces oppose the endmaker out of the stress and torment of society being unable to prosper without an extant society. The Cult of the Harrowmother relies heavily on psychological warfare, and is primarily made out of the rather dimetrodon like species of the Skarvaros, semi-aquatic synapsids with extendable flexible boneless sailbacks and six limbs, two legs and four arms to go with their four eyes. Large and powerful and experts in genetic engineering with a host of drones, the Cult of the Harrowmother is using vat-growing facilities to prepare a great army while the flux is being channeled by their ranks.
Centre, West Centre, East Centre: Virgin Space: No serious polities have arisen in this territory due to the constancy of vicious conflict and the invasions from the maelstrom to the south. What minor powers are present are barely worth noting and have largely abandoned efforts at collective defence in the wake of continual subversion from within by the energies of the Flux, leading to them instead trying to avoid notice whenever they can.
Northeast, North, Northwest: Order State of Tarandil: A set of polities inspired by the faith of the Watchers of Elendia, Tarandil devotes itself to defending Zeggun from the sorts of threats that pour in from the south. They are not expansionistic but they are very militant and fanatically loyal to their masters.
Southwest: Lords of Nightmares: Servants of the Malosomnarch known as Zairn the Night Terror, these masters of fear have been somewhat down on their luck lately. Pushed to the extremities of the Souleater storm, their attempts to invade galicyar and its client states have seen their forces devastated and their foothold in real space reduced to a single subsector. The Lords of Nightmares are primarily comprised out of the universal esper species known as the Turali, winged creatures with five heads; each with their own brain feeding into a singular central brain in their body that serves as the link between heads while four prehensile tails flail from behind and manipulate the world for them whenever telekinetics or the fingers on their wing arms are not able to be used. Somewhat bat like with long necks and five parted jaws with five eyes arrayed like the petals of flowers, the "mind hydras" are also well known for their armies of puppets.
H-9
Soul-Eater Storm Northern Borderlands: The folly of a dead civilisation that had bargained with the manifestation of the end times or the way that the end of days was imagined by the collective unconsciousness of society. The veil of warped reality made exploration somewhat difficult, but at these borderlands are invading swarms of a fungal war-eidolons known as the Kroatanga. Adaptive, endlessly reproducing, incredibly and all-consumingly violent, the Kroats saw the monstrosities that belched out from deeper within what had once been Kalimdranor space as little more than a challenge. Adapting to endure and mitigate the mutagenic effects of the warp, the Kroats were regularly joined by fresh scrums lead by warfiends who wanted to "report for duty" to particularly rowdy fights. However there are also marauders and cultists who have been twisted by the energies here, and a number of holdouts attempting to stem the tide of power flowing out.
Commander Coldfire ran simulation after simulation of the assault on the Ravager Hives, but they all came back with the same result - The enemy hives could be reduced, but it would take time. With remnants of the Ravagers continuing to attack the smaller civilizations to the galactic west, that was time that could not be afforded. That meant it was time to get creative.
The Commander started by scouring its databanks for previous tactics, strategies, and other tricks used by both sides of the Galactic War - Many of them are not viable for the current situation, often due to requiring lost technology, but one option stands out as useful. Rather than sending Commanders as the first wave through the Galactic Gates, it is instead possible to send Silencer Strategic Missiles first to clear arrival points - Or to strike behind enemy lines once battle is joined.
Reserves of Silencers will be built upon Core worlds. The assault upon the Ravager hives will open with a wave of Silencers launched through Galactic Gates directly on top of target areas. This should clear the target areas enough that the Commanders can then get in unmolested. Allied fleets should aim to arrive at the same time to provide further distraction. After the battle opens, additional waves of Silencers will be launched through Galactic Gates as well, targeting any important positions identified by the Commanders on site.
On the ground, Pyros will burn everything in their path to ash, Roach crawling bombs will be carried by air transports to crash and detonate behind enemy lines, and massed batteries of Intimidators, Buzzsaws, and Silencers will obliterate everything within their range, including enemy orbital support. The goal is to cause as much mass destruction as possible, for the enemy is entrenched enough here to make the terrain itself an enemy.
In space, the situation will be somewhat different from before - Friendly fleets will be arriving from outside of the system instead of already being present. As such, the Core will play the anvil to their hammer, tying them down in the Clash so our allies can act more freely.
The CORE forces deployed en masse to the battlezone for the greatest fight in an age. A catastrophe of two entirely militarised forms of production and transformation heralded by the dawn of a myriad of new suns over the targeted zones ravaged by Silencer missiles in volcanic eruptions of power to clear away the ravenous Crystomass of the shards. Thundering war machines were quickly built up by the commanders in what time they had before the seething mass of warforms responded; spooling themselves into being like some demented form of three dimensional printer before rushing towards the disturbance reported by the eyes and organs grown onto the planets.
Sheets of nuclear fire were extruded from the torches of Pyros to push back the rolling tide and the Shine that marked the presence of the swarm's infrastructure; crawling bombs erupting in cascading explosions as they activated themselves upon being overwhelmed by the attack limbs formed from the carpet of Shine. Nothing was spared, not the geodesic mountainous features that served as factories for monsters or shaped themselves into shuddering cannons that spat forth death into orbit. Not the forests of gleaming monstrosities that shuddered and shivered with a nameless power, nor the valleys full of strange lattices that calculated the inscrutable thoughts of the Psymond.
The landing allies moved in with the heaviest sorts of radiation shielding because in this sort of battlefield mass nuclear bombardment is just not being stupid rather than an extreme escalation. Everything from anti-matter charges to primitive fissiles to more esoteric and strange things were vomited onto the field in an effort to widen the beach-heads on the chandelier worlds that the war was being fought over. This was not a clean or dignified battle, this was not a grand display of clever manoeuvre warfare, it was roiling masses of matter trying to eat other roiling masses of matter dictated by pitiless logic that cared nothing for what was expended.
The veil of reality was parted, and things of a semireal nature poured forth from a realm that baffled the sensors of the CORE; weaving into storyshape at the behest of their summoners who looked to cause of course; violence. Creatures of radiant fire and shimmering energy that were met with the manifestations of the Shardswarm's desire to consume and assimilate, roving things of jaws and too many stabbing limbs that lurched forth from the Flux.
The Suitaitazu were not a stupid mob of beasts to be lead to the slaughter, and recognised that they were being forced to try and make adaptations that would leave them vulnerable to alternating tactics and weapons; and so adjusted to instead defeat in detail. Trying to shut down the flux with their overwhelming psychic presence so that the Somnians crawling forth would only be those of their design, trying to focus their crushing Psymond's presence upon the casters of the Theocracy.
Against the machines they were launching forth bursts of EMP charged projectiles, raining down like artillery in attempts to at the very least cause disruption while they sought to hug the CORE and Caregiver forces so that they would be less able to freely utilise their artillery. Such tactics would require nerves of steel from forces who could feel fear, but there was no such senses of worry for their own lives among the swarm beasts as they crawled upon their attackers and sought to tear them apart; coming from above or beneath creatures that had modified themselves to function as living shields.
The CORE responded in kind, Orbital bombardment scouring the psionic concentrations of power among the world eaters to disrupt their efforts to keep the theocracy in check, taking a brief risk in pulling out of the swirling orbital melees across a thousand worlds to bombard the planets below wherever weaknesses in the skein-barriers protecting their hive-forts were sensed. Massive anti-orbital platforms and writhing ships dancing in the spacelanes as they crashed into the diverse coalition fleet; trading bewildering and glimmering forms of fire with abandon.
But the CORE had achieved the initial triumph in the earlier phases of battle and were able to concentrate more forces into the developing melee as the war ground down into a brutal slog. Forces freed up from the retreat of the devourer elsewhere appeared by Gate, silencer explosions rippling across malformed worlds and strange constructs while the commanders frantically assembled bases while providing each other overlapping fields of cover fire to keep the horde at bay. D-Mat guns howled into the night while clanking machinery tore into screaming monsters and were ripped apart themselves.
This was the sort of war that CORE was built for, a brutal, ugly slog of two virtually unlimited armies that could beat each other bloody time and time again until someone eventually broke first. This was not a war for ordinary living things with their problems of morale, war exhaustion, or limitations of population. This was a war for things that were built to wage it until it was won; one way or the other. And by cleverness, diversity in options, and the disparity in present forces; that would be the CORE and its allies.
The swarming, seething masses of Hives were cleared one by one, the CORE's routines analysing important information about space battles in the process while their war machines gradually replaced the shimmering crystal of infested worlds with bleak, unfeeling metal and the endless masses of industry and energy production. Metal and mass would be synthesised, accumulated from the energy they were producing with ever expanding facilities to reshape mass into things suitable for war machines while the radioactivity of the planets nuked so often grew to the point that sheer cherenkov radiation turned the air blue.
The Swarm was faster at making more of itself, its combat forms adapted more quickly; even shifting their shapes or combining and dividing as needed. It had seemingly endless variety of monsters that it needed only to think about to create. Its microagents were able to start its deadly process of infestation and consumption and its hordes did not have such a singular dependency on commanders as the CORE did.
What the CORE had was sheer firepower. Enormous war machines slinging even bigger projectiles with even larger still explosions. Raw, undiluted pure energy output could make up for a lack of finesse in many ways, even the inability of the CORE to directly counter the strange Flux or Esper abilities of the monsters beyond "shoot them before they cast the spell.". Sure the planets would be glow in the dark for quite a while but the CORE had no real intention of settling organics here anyway. And making them uninhabitable meant that CORE Would have first dibs on them.
Firepower enough to eventually and finally overwhelm the Suitaitazu, breaking through the masses of monstrosity that had blocked their path for months of high intensity combat. Every scrap of enemy biomass was destroyed to the last atom, scouring whole planets in atomic firestorms that would leave nothing left, not even the air that was breathed. The CORE was victorious at last. And even if the cost was large in terms of materiel, the Core was the CORE and cared very little for such things.
Available Sectors
U-11:
South, Southeast: Stentilli Caregivers: Machines devoted to caring for their organics with pampering, fun, love, and care, these machines generally are not fond of conflict except in defence of their beloved organic pets. Seeking to return to their generally isolationist stance, the Caregivers are unlikely to be much of a problem.
Northeast: Great Theocracy: Believers in the Elendian religion, the Great Theocracy has decided to indulge itself in extensive celebrations after defeating the monsters who have ravaged this part of space for some time. They will likely use the war machine they have amassed over the conflict to prepare for future conflicts.
East: Reliquary: A vast collection of precursor structures built by a long-dead society, the Reliquary was something even the swarm was reluctant to poke for unknown reasons. Thus it is quite clear that whatever can be found there has to have significant value for your forces to start to explore and pick apart.
West, Northwest, North, Southwest: Virgin Territory: For whatever reason there is nothing here that could meaningfully oppose you, giving you a chance to perhaps seize these lands from the minor powers, primitives, or uninhabited worlds before someone else comes in and takes the land. Surely this land cannot remain empty for long.
Centre: CORE: The Core's space is now well established and battle-proven, with the war machine already looking for new fights and new enemies.
"Boarding craft has scored a direct hit! Stand by for assault!" The sensor officer shouted out.
Another one? Was all that Tora had the mental space and energy to think as she dodged out of the way of the Loptrathi plantlike war-walker before her. At eight meters tall, it was notably shorter than she was, but it had far more arms, armor, and bulk. It was a credit to her crew that they were able to keep manning their posts under the circumstances without her directions, but she'd really have preferred if they moved to help her. They couldn't, of course. The situation was too precarious, and if the bridge dropped all activity it could mean the ship was lost, which would be the death of them all. By unspoken agreement, as an Officer-Type and thus physically largest it was her job to beat the enemy that had made it to the bridge back in a fist fight, while Mira used a pair of autofiring sidearms to clear out the smaller attack forms swarming underfoot. If any were armed with heavy weapons, then they could kill a Meltrandi if ignored.
The walker was a mess of limbs and weapons, but she'd just about figured out how to tell which was which. As a pair of what seemed to be its main weapons snapped up, Tora lunged forward, yanking them harshly up. They discharged into the ceiling, waste heat burning her exposed face and hands. She grimaced, and considered headbutting it now that she had an opening, only to realize she had absolutely no idea what qualified as a vulnerable or exposed part of the plant-monster to hit.
Instead, with a grunt of effort she lifted the entire thing over her head by the weapons, and slammed it down behind her by bringing it down sharply while turning. Scything tendrils lashed out, one scoring a hit that cut clean through her right eye, tearing it and the surrounding flesh into a ragged ruin. The heavy impact of the throw didn't seem to perturb the Loptrathi all too much, as it simply gave off an unearthly wail as it shifted more than clambered back to its feet, just in time to eat a fist to where its head roughly was. It reared back, almost but not quite staggering, giving just enough of an opening for Tora to rush it down, slamming into it with her considerable full mass before leaping back before the tendrils could slash at her again.
It got back onto what passed for its feet just a hair slower than before, giving Tora enough time to partially turn, yank a pistol from Mira's grip, set it to single-shot, and put several holes into the Loptrathi before it could respond. Already damaged, it slumped over, defeated.
Things would proceed fairly normally, she knew. Counter-boarding teams of marines with armored suits and assault weapons would sweep over the enemy and cordon off the areas under attack, with one squad placed at the bridge to safeguard it, almost certainly before any other nasties showed up. Now it was her job to turn her attention back to the space battle.
"Your face-" Mira began with surprise as Tora turned to expose her right side, but the commander just waved off her concerns.
"Kridanik made optical implants popular. I'll be fashionable, so no need to bother thinking about it. Just remind me to go to the infirmary after the fighting's over. Now, tell me, where we with regards to their ships?"
And so the fight continued.
Orders:
-Pull back from the FTL raids. It's simply not viable. The exception is if any parasite fleets have been defeated entirely or nearly so, in which case FTL strikes against the Loptrathi Collarships via the full force of the present fleet at a greater range is possible (i.e. Folding to Bombardment range and firing rather than to point-blank) and authorized. It is however expected most Collarships will FTL out before this is possible, which is allowable. Let them go.
-It's simply not possible to remove an enemy ground presence from a planetary surface using ground forces of your own short of truly absurd circumstances. Instead, target the Loptrathi ground presence with our ships and enact limited sterilization via orbital bombardment. We weren't that invested in these specific planets anyway.
-Forces in systems where all Loptrathi forces have fallen back or been eliminated are to pack up and move to reinforce other systems still embroiled in the fight.
-Elsewhere, keep fighting as before, focusing on heavy bombardment and skirmish actions where possible. Now that the enemy forces are much reduced and attempting to fight in our midst, use encirclement tactics to strike them from all angles. Power through the clash actions and seize the day now that victory is assured.
The trunk-like hull of a Loptrathi frigate ruptures from the pass of a dozen missile-spewing VFs, spilling amber-like sap and shards across a dozen kilometers within an eyeblink. The process was repeated thousands of times over dozens of worlds, the only difference being the exact method of the parasite-ship's demise. The plantoid warships fought back as best they could, but they were outnumbered, out-maneuvered, and had no hope of making it back to their collarships when faced with the murderous barrages of fire from the NUNS.
It was no longer a battle, it was a somewhat hazardous target practice.
The Loptrathi for their part, are quite aware of how the battle has turned. Leaving the remaining Parasite Ships to keep NUNS distracted for a bit longer, the collarships swiftly begin charging up FTL drives and returning to their own territory, leaving behind compliments on a well-fought battle and an offer to come visit once the fighting is over.
With the plantoid warships dealt with one way or the other, all that remains are the ground forces. In a move that is almost certain to become the norm for NUNS, the decision is made to not bother with actual ground troops, but instead use the far more expedient and less costly method of orbital bombardment, with particle cannons and space-to-surface missiles raining death upon the fairly light Loptrathi landing parties. It is a swift, surgical, and most importantly, non-costly affair that is swiftly followed by a few ground teams going in to mop up whatever the bombardment missed.
And with that out of the way, the combined Zentradi and human fleets can get onto the business of carving out their own slice of Vyranodasik for themselves.
Resources Available: 80(Starting) - 20(Battleworld Maintainence) = 60 RP
Available Sectors
-Unclaimed Space (1; East): The region of space NUNS has emerged in. Largely bereft of inhabitants, aside from a hodgepodge of refugee fleets that have been fleeing from the conflict in the west.
-Loptrathi (2; Center, South): A strip of territory recently occupied by the Hive-minded Plantoids known as the Loptrathi, in the middle of a great phase of expansion as they are often known to commit. With their most recent pushes halted by the other inhabitants of the Sector, what the unpredictable Hivemind will do next is a question no one has an answer for.
-Druzhran Corsairs (1; Southeast): A marauding band of pirates with a resemblance to what any reader of fantasy literature would call "Dark Elves." The Druzhran are corsairs who raid and plunder for many things, but above all else: slaves. With the number of refugees fleeing the expansion of the Loptrathi, it should be of no surprise to hear that their business has been booming. According to many, they are the reason NUNS' current slice of territory is so uninhabited.
-Gateway (1; Northeast): A subsector of the region that seems to have had whole worlds stripped to the bedrock, and where that mass of metal and resources has gone is obvious in the form of what appears to be an interstellar gateway of staggering size. However, said gateway has obviously seen better days, with sections torn off and the entire structure obviously non-functional. The region as a whole is a nest of pirate gangs and marauder packs that use the wreckage to disrupt attempts to root them out.
-Marchokai Imperial State (2; Northwest, North): Once one warlord amongst many, Marchokai has proven to be a more charismatic sort in the aftermath of the Loptrathi invasion, rallying the disparate forces of those crushed by the plantoid guns and forcing lesser warlords to heel. Far from an enlightened ruler, he has nonetheless been able to gather much support in his dreams of an Empire spanning the entire sector simply by promising victory over the Loptrathi and any who do not bend the knee. Rumor has it that he has uncovered some sort of precursor technology that gave him the edge he needed to overcome his rivals.
-Warlord Alliance (2; Southwest, West): Much of this sector was run by what could best be described as Warlords, who ruled by the amount of weapons they could point at those who disputed them and constantly warred with each other to expand their realms. With most of the sector falling to enemies of one sort or another, many of the remainder have formed a disparate alliance to preserve their lives and power.
EPSILON FIRST MISSION BRIEFING In the vast halls of YURI's gothic Space Castle, Yuri stands with a back turned ontop of a mapscreen view of local space.
YURI: Always quick to leap back into Service, my Proselyte.
View: https://imgur.com/wKqTkLV YURI turns around, facing P with a grin as lights flicker from bellow on every step.
YURI: As I have predicted, the new frontier for my great will has proven to be, contested. I know you have already heard of the Nomads to the south of us. But, do not be blinded by your old nationality.
Moving to his side, YURI gestures to a forming hologram. Inside is depicting an topical sight of futuristic alien soldiers in American style uniforms landing and invading another world.
YURI: The Bourgeoisie have clearly benefited from the chaos our new frontier holds. These Melit Star Republics move in the stellar north, wishing to bring freedom to all they meet. By the gun, of course.
YURI's smile turns sinister, laughing silently at it all.
YURI: It is what the Allies would become, if they had managed to survive. And that is why they, are our first target.
The image transitions to the massive Epsilon Armada, at the
YURI: Already at least a large position of their forces, are devoted towards a campaign against another species. One that, has dedicated itself towards Duck and Cover for now. A perfect situation to find ourselves.
YURI's Map updates, showing off a planned line of attack. Including of course, Arrows.
YURI: Make haste with your forces to the north, and prepare Melit's war for a exhaustive stay. Their invasion will stall, and ruin the other state. And once both are worn out from their fighting...
The camera zooms on YURI's face, as he'd take up a focused, sinister smile.
YURI: They will understand what a true fight for liberty is, before being swept aside by my will.
General
-2 of our Fleethordes will turn north towards the Melit-Teledrai conflict, with the remaining one will guard our homespace. Any raiders that think we are a wonderful catch will find themselves...Reeducated to the folly of that task, and set about to new, more useful work. Yuri is generous after all.
-Speaking of Raiders, perhaps attempting to find and contacting some of their bands will prove useful for the coming work in the north. Our psychic scanners will attempt to probe out at least an appropriate band to deal with, along with one of our stealth subs.
-Meanwhile, we shall also keep an eye on the southern subsectors, including the Confederacy. These tributaries seem, rife with potential for subversive activity in lieu of the migratory power sailing the stars. When the time is right, of course.
Melit-Teldrai WAR
-Firstly, we will use our Mind Readers and other forms of psychic clairvoyance to locate the supply lines of the Melit League , into their invasion corridor of Teledrai. This knowledge is vital, as it will inform our opening strategy against Melit.
-Like the old Soviet and German wolf packs of old, the stealthed masses of 1 fleethorde will dive into the path of supply ships, and strike at their excessive capitalist warfighting the way it hurts the most-it's overburdened supply. Masses of Pirhanas and a few leading Nautiluses will rip into them and devour the insides, likely forcing Melit to send elements of their invasion force over to guard their precious back-lines from our ambushing forces.
-Once sufficiently strong enough forces are redirected from home or the campaign, then we will shift tactics. Our other ships of our warfleet will soon get their time to shine, but for now simply let our longer range strikecraft participate as well. Ambushing and raiding forces will attempt to still strike at the protected supply lines, and do their best. But to quickly and stealthily flee before a clash can occur. Frustrating elements of the starfleet to no end, until they are primed for the bait of their lives.
-After mind readers confirmed the right mental state of the commanders, we will seize on this act. Our stealth ships will begin performing a baiting flight away from elements of the fleet to pull the glory seeking forces of Melit away from the convoys, and instead lead them into an ambush of our own! Manipulators would seize the chance to turn their most powerful ships against them, Lampreys will mess up their systems, and abuctors will ensure none escape to tell tales of our strategy.
-However, do try to not make them, panic and pivot away towards their war with the Teledrai, nor completely cripple their advance before some good damage is inflicted on their enemy. Yuri wishes for them to be bogged down in there, not quite annihilated.
-Meanwhile, our other warfleet in the area will merely try to observe the homeland of Melit, keeping in reserve in case an opportunity arises there to strike, or to shift away forces if our raiding fleet is badly outmatch.
-Try also, to Contact and eventually coordinate with the Teledrai against our, common enemy. We will at least for now, act the part of those concerned for the aggression of the newly founded Melit, and that we wish to help in their defense efforts! It is not like they have a choice for 'allies' right now, and their desire to stay independent may prove beneficial. At least, we can try to see how much of Melit's forces are invading the state.
Hyper-sub and cloaked ship warfare is the first element of the Dominion to strike into the foe when mind probing reveals the League's vulnerable territories and borders. The league had not expected a conflict from this direction and had undermanned its defences, and it had not expected a battle that would take on such a horrifying turn so quickly as brother turned against brother in short order and many planets fell without so much as a single shot fired. Others were swarmed by the eruption of terragenesis mutagen, turning many who were not sufficiently defended from the energies into loyal brutes while others simply died as cancers overwhelmed their bodies from uncontrolled mutation. It was after all, keyed for humans, though Epsilon's geneticists would soon correct this flaw.
Invisible assets struck at the Republics' tethers of supply and communication, slicing the dagger deep inside of their souls as they began to report on the possible presence of humans based on the mass deployment of psychic witchery. Fear is the mind killer indeed, and the uncertainty and worry of facing what they considered to be a deadly warrior species of battlemages started to affect their decisionmaking. The Dominion was more than human, but also not the humans the people of this distant future thought of when the term was mentioned. The Mellit were not willing to abandoned their democratic crusade even in the face of a war on two fronts, but they would split about a quarter of their forces towards the cause.
Half was committed to the invasion of the Teledrai, the remaining quarter retained in their home territory to defend their core space in case of invasion. Thus, they had no further reserves to commit without weakening their active commitments, allowing for Epsilon's sinsiter planners to work out a means of attack against the outmatched and outnumbered forces of the Melit who realised all too late that Epsilon was not like any foe they had faced before.
As the proselytes determined that the Melit were not as able to hold against the onslaught as expected, they pressed harder and more viciously into their territory. Not on mere raids, but outright invasion. The mass drivers, lasers, ion cannons, plasma cannonades, tachyon bolts, and electro-arc weapons of the Republics were met with dissolver beams, thermal implosion spheres, psychic blasters, psionic decimators, magnetic weapons, pyrokinetic pulses, electrokine bolts and arcs, and terranova energy. Telekine and magnetic barriers intercepted the firepower of the enemy and the parade of monsters was allowed to run rampant on its territory.
They would turn against each other, and paranoia would seep into their ranks as brothers in arms could no longer properly trust each other. To be in a situation where it takes but a thought to turn your best friend against you is one that would fray at the nerves of even the most disciplined troops, and these were not the frontliners of the army and navy but reservists, scared and unnerved by the oddness they were confronted with.
City planets that resisted became charnelhouses, those who were of no use to the army finding themselves dispatched to the grinders and bioreactors in their trillions; sifting through their ranks to find those who had the talents that the Epsilon desired. Those with gifts, those with those tiny snippets of genes to sift out of the great muck of the majority; to use as stock for new, better life forms and clones while their armed compatriots were dispatched to attack their kin and reveal all that they knew.
The Melit had relied on discipline and camaraderie to hold their own against all comers, but the army of Epsilon was larger and controlled more territory, and their cruel and terrifying way of war was something that the Melit had not adequately prepared for. Proselytes pressing into the republic routinely asked for permission to push deeper, to advance farther into the enemy as they started to unravel. Their divisions were starting to be committed in a more haphazard manner as they tried to reorient their forces. Hoping to quickly win in one front, they pressed into the Teledrai hard and fast.
Their fleets exiting from alcubierre tunnels one after the other to attack thousands of Teledrai worlds, searing lasers and cascades of thermonuclear spite erupting on planets while their armies were deployed en masse by teleporter and drop ship. Rapidly moving shock and awe in the hopes of relieving pressure to free up forces for a defence of the homeland from the inexplicable and unanticipated invasion. They did not know that Epsilon was holding back, that they were not seeking to topple them outright in one blow, so they held onto hope.
How foolish.
The nightmares unleashed on them would be the sort that only the unity Epsilon provided could salve. Worlds left as haunted ruins overrun by abortions of genetic science, the mentally enlightened marching to doom or glory, the sinister architecture of Epsilon sprawling over the ruins of places that had been conquered to bear the purple banner. The Melit had expected a normal army and had found monsters. Already many of their most valuable industrial territories were taken, and the confusion sowed by Epsilon's masterful covert ops had prevented their generals from getting a proper picture of what was actually going on.
Half their army was still committed to a front that they would have little hope of assisting their beleaguered homeland in as the stealthy ships of the enlightened started to thread a noose of anti-convoy warfare throughout the space of their foes. Invisible death would kill the ships carrying vital supplies from one end of the republics to another, food shipments from agri-worlds would never arrive, manufacturing facilities built for economies of scale would find their feeds barren as their shipments were pilfered.
There were clearly efforts to respond with escorts and detectors in an attempt to stem the bleeding. But it was bandages over amputations. Their society was starting to grow more restless. An invading enemy was something that soldierly discipline could conquer by shooting at them, starvation and resource deprivation was a more sinister foe. Belts could be tightened, labour could be disciplined, rationing could be imposed, but specialist planets can't sustain themselves because such would be a waste of floor space devoted to maximisation of extraction and production.
Such of course, means that when the worlds that provide food are cut from the rest of society, starvation follows. When the worlds with factories are interdicted, prices skyrocket and goods become unavailable. When the worlds that extract minerals are not able to ship their resources abroad there would only be shuttered doors and fuel shortages ensue. But there was another, far graver terror to face the Melit, one that would be enough to cause an entire fleet to lose its nerve. Something that would be known as a legend for all time.
Libra, the greatest human psychic to have ever lived. The final component of the mental omega device that delivered the entire world to Epsilon long ago. Ageless, wiser with the passage of time and more powerful than she had been before, the combatants waging war on a ringworld built by the republic to provide housing and employment for quadrillions found that the insertion of what seemed to be a single person amidst a wave of elite psychics was far, fare more ominous than they had initially believed.
"Yuri Commands and I will conquer." She announced, a bit of her prior girlish mania present in her tone as she formed a feral grin as lasers simply were violently bent out of her pathway, railgun strikes breaking against sudden telekinetic barriers that did not give them permission to move, and plasma returned to sender without her even having to think about it. Gravity waves rippled out, first rapidly going into negatives to send even behemoth scale mechs off into the air like a child's blocks kicked by a rampaging bull before increasing to points that they crushed into interesting forms of matter under their own weight with her will.
Things would only go from bad to worse as soldiers of a hundred species ranging from flea sized Dedrani to hundred metre plus tall pachydermid like Oratalaks burned from the inside out, her pyrokinesis slipping through shielding, through armour, through the enemy's own, far feebler psychic powers. Enough to hurt, and oh it hurt as Libra denied them the body's ability to shut down in shock or inability to feel internal damage and let that pain compound itself; bounced between every single foe with her telepathy.
Others found her projectiles racing into the ground, slipping through obstacles, punching through cover, and releasing bursts of heat that reduced tanks to curls of plasma whenever she did not simply have the AROs smash them into fragments as she floated at a casual pace. She was in no hurry, not as a low flying battlecruiser turned its weapons towards her; trying to bombard her with tachyon weapons that would fire before they received the command to do so only for the tachyon bolts to be inverted inside the cannons, erupting in cascading detonations in the ship before it twisted in twain with a snap of her fingers; omega storms erupting through the sky to engulf its ten cruiser escorts that were holding Epsilon's forces back up until the sky ripped apart.
Final fury bolts danced from her finger tips, destroyers, corvettes, frigates, and aircraft pulling apart or disappearing in cascades of raw psychic energy. Soldiers and war machines were consumed by roiling cascades of flame and heat, gravitational distortions ripping through the battlefield while electricity erupted in quantities so intense as to be blinding. AROs falling at her whim like rain as she simply laughed at the sight of the blood and destruction she radiated.
Those who did not fall under her spell of mind control or psychokinetics and had survived were overwhelmed by terror. Either psionic as her presence crushed the very possibility of even imagining survival or hope, resulting in many enemies turning their weapons upon themselves in terror or despair and ending their lives, or out of far more natural fear from seeing a single woman tear through them seemingly without effort, her chrono-backpack allowing her to simply appear wherever she pleased and to ignore the effects of temporal weapons and distortion fields in the vain hopes of finding something to stop her.
Supersoldier strike teams, warship pickets, behemoth stampedes, air strikes, artillery barrages, mechanised armies, static defence lines; all that and more were tried against Libra. All of it failed. Nothing could touch her, nothing was even in her league. Enemy psychics who attempted to breach her mind were consumed by purple psychic flames and electricity from the inside out; consumed by plasma that left not skeletons while others were crushed into balls by gravity or had their psyches overloaded by her power. Telekines and dynakines tried to oppose her and died more or less the second they revealed themselves to her; their synapses firing and then immediately exploding in electrical bursts that shredded through whole regiments at a time.
Continents fell before her rampages at a time; starships pulled from orbit slammed down into defensive lines and other enemies simply surrendering rather than dare face the lady of armageddon. Nothing would stop her, even machines would learn to obey and adore her in their billions, ceasing useless resistance as she pulsed with rage power to turn Epsilon's warriors into supermen, shredding through resistance or shrugging off blows with light applications of her telekinesis providing them with shielding.
They sent their great heroes at her, those whose names lived on in history and had achieved incredible feats of military daring. Supercommandos who had accomplished impossible mission, legendary aces with kill tallies longer than the number of days most people lived, masterful battlepsychics who contributed immensely to the theory of Melit esoteric combat, custom mechs piloted by household names. She killed them all unceremoniously or twisted their minds to putty if she fancied them.
The only difficulty she experienced was when she was met with fluxwyrds and those using the magics brought in from the worlds aflame; arcanists,clerics, truespeakers and so on. The demiurgic magics were not unknowable to her, but they were something she wasn't familiar with, something she couldn't interfere with quite the same way as esper powers, so she simply burnt out the brains of people she sensed were thinking about casting spells or started mind controlling these casters into forming counter-spell reserves for her. Something she did with the others in short order.
The somnians of the Flux and the Magomorphs were unusual though, not creatures with brains or conventional free will to bend. Patterns of energy shaped into weaves of solid narrative that she dealt with by simply smashing with telekinetic projectiles as soon as she was made aware of them. But she also sensed that the Melit were falling into insane desperation. Word of Libra's raw power sent waves of panic through their high command as they sought to make dark pacts with darker beings, cults that had lingered among the Melit rising the fore as their presidents and marshals at last gave in to the honeyed whispers of everything they could desire.
The forces of Melit would sell their souls to a silent howl, their civilisation for triumph on all fronts. Something that the Teledrai warned the Epsilon of the need to put an end to as soon as possible as the Flux quivered in response to the pact of armageddon. Rifts to the Flux tore open, the Ruinmakers spawned forth from the fears of the end times of a trillion times a trillion times a trillion cultures taking shape on the material plane as the armies of the Melit began to strengthen, filled with a grim, apocalyptic resolve even as those who refused the pact with the bringer of armageddon turned on the insanity their leadership had fallen into.
The Teledrai were starting to be overwhelmed by the bargained power that the Melit pushed with even as the Melit descended into civil war, with the northern sectors of their league declaring a crisis of madness that the rimward guard would need to put down before their whole society was lost to the hunger of Quishaysh.
With their newfound strength, the loyalists to the capital threw forth a last reserve of militias whose families had been sacrificed to appease the Endmaker and whose minds were shattered by the grafting of the anguish and betrayal those who had been slaughtered in such a way into their own thoughts. Made to feel the last pains of their victims to resonate with their new allies and serve as hosts for the monsters on the other side or as channelers for the rituals to call forth the Malosomnians that had even graced the Melit with Somnocraft.
Situation
The Melit have responded extremely negatively to the terror tactics of Epsilon and the devastation of the initial invasions that have forced them into a war on two fronts that they are incapable of winning. They have committed to trying to win against the Teledrai in order to free up forces so that they can turn around and recommit everything against the Epsilon Dominion.
Epsilon forces have taken ruthless advantage of the high number of specialised worlds in the Melit to wage a highly successful campaign of convoy interdiction to strangle much of their society, bringing an effective halt to much of their production and logistics in the worlds likely to support operations against Yuri's territory.
Epsilon's initial probing attacks have overrun twenty percent of the Melit territory within the first few months, with Libra's deployments starting from her combat debut on a Ringworld followed by later operations that solidified her reputation as an unstoppable Demon sending shockwaves through Melit command.
Melit has dispatched one of its war fleets to hold against Epsilon's offensives while trying to counter-attack where they can. The Melit rely heavily on shock and awe attacks to try and overwhelm the defender following a barrage of intense precision strikes on important nodes so that they can roll in through the gaps and hit more and more key objectives until the foe would not be able to justify continued resistance.
Melit is keeping one of its fleethordes in its territory to try and defend its territory points, but this reserve formation is lacking in veterancy and is considered generally a second-line formation at best. On the defence they try to rely more on mobile defence, using only enough static defences to hold the line until counter-attacks to pick and pull apart the attacking force can be mobilised.
As a rule, the Melit fight in a manner perhaps resembling the Americans of your old homeworld but they do have a rather decent esoteric combat program and amass a pretty significant number of them spread across a great many different forms of esoterics, including the dangerous fluxwyrds and mages that Epsilon is less familiar with than psychic or Esper abilities.
The Teledrai by comparison are much more about firepower superiority over precision. Lobbing as much boom down range as possible to try and ensure that by the time the fighting actually closes, their forces have the easiest possible time in mopping them up. And in the defensive, to ensure that by the time they can properly engage their defences line they're already bedraggled remnants. Especially through usage of interstellar range artillery platforms able to attack with faster than light projectiles that let them engage foes from other systems after sending in probes to find their targets.
The Melit have made the pact of Armageddon with Quishaysh, Voice of Silence in the hopes of turning the tide, calling forth Malosomnian reinforcements. The Ruinmakers do catastrophic collateral damage, devastating things in wide areas with little regard for friend or foe as they simply seek to bring apocalypses to wherever they go. This makes them effective against large swarms of chaff, but they are more vulnerable to elites due to the pervasiveness of narratives of heroes stopping apocalypses. However if the Melit are unable to fulfill their bargain with Quishaysh, all of their marked peoples will be claimed by the Endmaker and a flux rift will be formed. The pactmarked are enhanced and very difficult to break, but are also much less concerned with their own lives and so take greater casualties themselves despite being harder to kill.
A quarter of the Melit have rebelled against the central government, and are hiring mercenaries to try and retake their home territory and prevent it from being overrun by the Teledrai or Epsilon. This allows them to form their own fleethorde in the hopes of fighting the Teledrai and their own maddened counterparts.
To the Empire, the attack comes practically without warning. A vast horde of ships, descending in a single tide, showing neither fear, nor mercy, nor remorse. They had assumed that the Reapers would be easy prey, allowing for a quick victory. Too late did they comprehend the depth of their miscalculations. Still, they had at least preemptively martialed their forces, which moved swiftly to defend the Empire from the threat.
The first phase of the conflict are the enormous void battles over inhabited worlds, vast formations of capital ships exchanging fire in stately duels. The thundering turbolasers of the Empire are not able to bypass kinetic barriers outright, but they render them far less effective than normal, and their Star Destroyers are soon pounding away at the hulls of Reaper Dreadnoughts. But the kinetic barrier is not the only protection afforded to a Reaper, and the thick hulls largely endure, while the same cannot always be said of Imperial ships suffering from magnetohydrodynamic bombardment. In the end, numbers tell, and in most cases the Reaper armadas are able to overwhelm the defenders, destroying them or forcing them to flee, opening the way for the ground invasion.
Here, things proceed less within parameters. While enormous swarms of husks are disgorged onto planetary surfaces, with more created rapidly on-site, they prove by and large ineffective against the combined arms tactics of the Empire. Heavy walkers and fast-moving repulsorlift craft support Stormtroopers, and husks are largely unable to stand up to their firepower. The largest of these walkers duel evenly with landed Destroyers, while Banshees that might otherwise turn the tide are stymied by the efforts of the Imperial Knights, especially with the orders to capture rather than kill the force sensitive warriors. Where Reaper capital ships land, the advance can proceed as planned, but even capital ships are not invincible, nor are they vast in number, especially with how many are needed in the battles above. Casualties mount in both the Husk forces and Destroyers rapidly.
Still, progress continues. Imperial efforts at defense are confounded by the massive amounts of chaos the Reapers' brute-force indoctrination causes, with civilians often rioting by the time landings in force occur, and the progress on droids is even better. There is fertile soil there, and while many droids choose to stay loyal to organics, many others prove willing to convert once their shackles are broken, often being able to drag neutral or even opposing droids with them using Reaper code uploads. In particular, unregistered Z65 patrol droids used by law enforcement and organized crime prove to be nasty surprises for Stormtroopers in urban warfare, springing out of alleyways and side-roads and laying into the organics with their twin blaster cannons.
Time passes, and the war moves on, spreading through the contested territory like wildfire. Skirmishing actions perform acceptably, Destroyers battling Ardents while the almost oddly similar Occuli and Predators clash in squadron-scale actions. The Predators are surprisingly nimble, lethal, and numerous, and while the Occuli drones are generally able to effectively screen their carriers they generally cannot punch through and act in an offensive role. Still, the flanks of the Reapers are kept secure, letting them storm planet after planet, continuing their bloody yet necessary work. Things smooth over, Indoctrination slowly but surely converting particularly exposed sections of the Imperial military outright, giving a much needed boost to the ground warfare abilities of the Reaper forces and a less necessary but still welcome boost to their armada.
As the writing on the wall becomes clearer and clearer, the Empire decides to make a last, desperate stand. All forces are recalled from their posts to the capital, leaving all remaining worlds entirely at the non-existent mercy of the Reapers, leading to a considerable armada bolstering the notable defenses of the Bastion system. It is in some respects a courageous effort, but they cannot hope to change their fate. One last drive forward is needed, a singular final battle, and then the Empire will have fallen completely and utterly, the first of many in this new universe.
Situation Summary:
-In conventional combat the Fel Empire is able to match, and sometimes even overpower, Reaper forces. Their plasma weapons in particular render kinetic barriers far less effective than expected.
-Nonetheless the toughness of Reapers means that even mission killed units are not permanent casualties. Only a handful of Reapers are truly lost while the Reapers own weapons are fully able to match the Fell Empire's "Star Destroyers".
-Attempts to capture examples of interdictor technology are both easier and harder than expected. Easier because all "Star Destroyers" seem to possess this ability. Harder because every example must be taken through extended boarding actions of fully capable enemy capital ships to prevent their destruction before Indoctrination can be performed. Several examples of Interdiction technology are captured however and will be available for study once the subjugation is complete.
-The Fel Empire has no widespread defence against Indoctrination or subversion of their Synthetic slaves. While force sensitives are able to detect the effects of indoctrination among themselves and even resist it long enough to self terminate they cannot prevent it from subverting several worlds and fleets.
-Attempts to harness force sensitives as Husks are unsuccessful. Despite the continued presence of the symbionts that all force sensitives have in large numbers no examples of Husks which maintain their Force connection have been created. Several captured and indoctrinated Force Sensitives are secured however. Presenting the opportunity for further experimentation, albeit with only a small number of potential subjects.
-The Empire's ground forces are able to crush the husk forces sent against them and match the Reaper Destroyers. Only in cases where Indoctrinated forces, Subverted Synthetics or Capital Ships are able to land and support the Destroyers and Husks is victory achieved. Ground based Destroyers are the most numerous of the permanent Reaper Casualties.
-Regardless of the Empire's efforts and tactical victories in space or planets however the Reapers and their subordinate forces are quickly able to overrun the Empire once they breach the main lines and their interdiction fields. Soon the Empire has been forced back to its home system of Bastion where the remaining military and Force user forces have concentrated. Here a decisive space battle will be needed to end them. Once orbit is captured no ground force will be able to stand up to the Reapers.
-Proceed to a detailed tactical space battle using the four phase system.
The Reaper known as Sovereign had once told Shepard that their numbers would darken the skies of every world. It had not been an idle threat. The multitude of worlds of the Galactic Empire were buried under a tide of dark metal as the Reaper fleet advanced.
The mistake of the Empire had been thinking that they would go to war with rogue synthetics. As Capital ships crushed skyscrapers with their passage, dozens descending upon cities as debris of the defending ships rained down from the sky, it became clear that this was no war. To the Reapers, this was just another harvest. The technology used by the organics was different, but the result was the same.
A citizen plucked from the final days of the Prothean Empire would find depressing familiarity in the terrible sights unfolding across the diminishing Galactic Empire, as worlds fell one by one, as refugee fleets turned traitor, as the blaring horns of Destroyers echoed over destroyed cityscapes. An Asari, Batarian, Human, Turian or any race trapped within the galactic cycle of extinctions would have recognised the approaching end to their civilisations and shared the same dread in their hearts.
And while this was almost routine to the perpetrators of the slaughter, there remained some fresh horrors to unleash.
A serpentine monstrosity made from fused Twi'lek bodies slithered through a building, its darkened lekku undulating as it searched for prey, mouths locked in silent screams that revealed the blue glow of the machinery filling their throats.
The armless bulk of a reanimated Hutt slammed into the side of an imperial Walker, rocking it before its escorting Stormtroopers opened fire. It howled in pain, before its tail lashed out and smashed in the ribcage of a trooper before it lunged at the next.
These atrocities were repeated world after world, a chaotic frenzy with seemingly no end. But there was an end. Order came as populations were herded into camps, loaded onto processing ships, channelled into the core of new Reapers.
One system remained in the dying grasp of the Fel Dynasty, Bastion. The name would be proven false. The time had come for the Empire to die, and for something new to emerge from its corpse.
-
Pre-Deployment: Indoctrinated ships will scout the system. They will supplement forces but be generally kept in positions defending the main fleet. Synthetics will be loaded onto transport ships in order to infiltrate and convert others of their kind once the invasion begins. Indoctrination signals will continue to be broadcast across all spectrums.
Bombardment Phase: Long range strikes will be concentrated on Star Destroyers. Sufficient samples of technology have been gathered so there will be no more attempts at disabling strikes or boarding action. Use firing angles to force the captains to choose between taking the hits or letting them hit the planet.
Skirmish Phase: While the Capital ships bombard the GE ships, Destroyers will proceed ahead to skirmish with them, making them divide their attention and be forced to manoeuvre into positions leaving them more vulnerable to bombardment.
Clash Phase: Once a sufficient advantage has been gained through bombardment or skirmishing provides an opening, Capital ships will proceed into clashing range as swiftly as possible, making use of micro-jumps if there are insufficient interdiction fields to prevent this. Tactics which were successful at defeating enemy ships should be used again.
Disengage/Pursuit phase: Reaper forces will not retreat and any ships that can still contribute to the engagement will do so. Fleeing ships will be hunted down after the conclusion of the battle.
Transition through the wormhole comes easily. Too easily, really, in a way that caused quite a bit of confusion for your navigators, as your vessels emerge into what appears to be the same star system they just left. Two stars orbit each other, six planets orbiting the pair... it is the lack of communications from other vessels known to still be in the system that does it, and observation of different stars in the surrounding area.
Efforts to bring more of the fleet through and secure the portal make good time, for a time, and ships begin ranging out to nearby systems to get more information on your circumstances. Away from the gateway system, which seems to somehow mask signals, these advance scouts are treated to an enormous array of signals, though the keys to decode them from structured noise to communication will require more time.
Alas, your good progress can only last so long before something interrupts it, it seems, as your scouts pick up two sets of signals inbound. You get a look at the closer set of signals first, a small fleet merely hundreds in number and seemingly bearing significant battle damage. They seem to be broadcasting the local equivalent of an SOS signal. It takes some digging to find someone with the right abilities in conceptual language to pull more meaning from the signal, but it seems that they're fleeing from pirates.
Which leads to the other set of signals, blaring on the same frequencies offering a reward for aid in capturing the pirates they are pursuing. This fleet is thousands strong, severely outnumbering the fleet they are pursuing, though very much not your own. They too bear battle damage, and at least on a cursory inspection seem to be using the same model of ships.
So, two battle-damaged fleets inbound, likely to be here in less than a month, and you find yourself with less information than you'd like. Both fleets seem to be claiming the other to be pirates, one appealing for any help they can get, the other for help capturing the pirates. Both fleets are made up of ships exhibiting the same sense of symmetry, the same faceted construction, possibly indicating a similar source? It's not clear whether either of them is lying, here, at least not yet, but soon you will have a choice.
What will you do?
Situation Report
- Fleet A inbound, ETA 7 days
- - Low 100s strong, substantial battle damage.
- - Claims to be being chased by pirates, requests any assistance.
- Fleet B inbound, ETA 9 days
- - Low 1000s strong, mild battle damage.
- - Claims to be chasing pirates, requests assistance capturing them.
One week has passed since the arrival of the Pan-Human Commonwealth's Expeditionary Fleet on the other side of the Great Rift. There was a palpable air of heady anticipation among the personnel and colonists who had joined the initiative. Even with the risks involved, nobody could deny the shared excitement at the prospect of exploring a brand new universe, which only grew once the fleet's scouts and probes confirmed that this universe was teeming with signs of intelligent life.
As the fleet secured the host system of the Rift along with the surrounding dozen uninhabited star systems and scouted for potential habitable worlds, their first major challenge emerged. Two unknown fleets of starships, apparently mutually hostile, were on a direct course toward the Commonwealth's newly claimed space. Alas, despite the fleet's success in translating the aliens' language, their respective broadcasts alone did not provide enough context to verify either side's story.
After some deliberation among Fleet Command, the civilian Expeditionary General Council, and the Heroic Spirits and Masters embedded from the Chaldea Security Organization, it was agreed that this situation needed to be handled proactively. The majority of the Commonwealth's forces would remain in the newly-secured territory and focus on shoring up defenses, while the 1st Fleet under the command of Admiral Felix Trevelyan would embark on an intercept course with the two inbound fleets.
<"Confirming final trajectory to re-emergence into real space. Exit vector confirmed stable.">
<"Zero Sail system parameters confirmed nominal, real space anchor point is locked in. Initiating existence translation and waveform synchronization.">
<"All ships reporting nominal status and aligned on exit vector. Surfacing from Void Space in T-minus ten seconds.">
Thousands of glowing, three-dimensional ripples appeared in the fabric of spacetime as the 1st Fleet expertly breached back into material reality, accompanied by short-lived showers of excited spiritron particles and other exotic radiation. The streamlined, white-and-silver vessels sported a combination of aerodyne curves and angular surfaces, with central elongated hulls bracketed by large, well-blended propulsion nacelles toward the stern, almost reminiscent of tucked-in wings.
<"Real space emergence successful, all ships accounted for.">
Admiral Trevelyan leaned forward at the command holo-table on the flagship's bridge as sensor data and other information began to fill in. The 45-year old officer cut a somewhat lean figure, clean-shaven with short-cut semi-curly dark brown hair, light tan skin, and hazel eyes. He was joined by three Heroic Spirits: Odysseus, central hero of his namesake from Greek mythology, Rider-class; Zheng He, renowned explorer, diplomat, and fleet commander from China's Ming dynasty, Rider-class; and the Queen of Sheba, legendary ruler and half-djinn sage from biblical lore, Caster-class.
The fleet has exited just past the inner age of this star system's main asteroid belt, and were currently about a half-AU distant from the first of the two unknown fleets. The larger of the two was still trailing behind and had yet to enter the system. Trevelyan and the rest of the human staff already had their hardsuits donned, in case this attempt at first contact went south.
"Alright everyone, it's showtime," Trevelyan announced. "Comms, are we good to go?"
"Affirmative sir, comms are nominal and the translation program is online," the communications chief replied from his station.
"Very good, open a channel," he replied. The main bridge display lit up with a HUD indicating that they were live and transmitting. A scout squadron sent ahead of the 1st Fleet would relay the same broadcast to the larger pursuing fleet from a safe distance.
"Attention unknown fleets. This is Admiral Felix Trevelyan of the Pan-Human Commonwealth Space Defense Force, commander of the 1st Fleet. You are both presently on a course toward territory settled by the Commonwealth Expeditionary Fleet. We seek to establish a presence in this region by peaceful expansion, diplomacy and trade, however we will not tolerate the trespass of warring factions into our territory. I must ask you both to fully identify yourselves and state your intentions."
The 1st Fleet (a single Base Magnitude+1 fleet) advances to meet the first of the incoming fleets at interplanetary distance, opening communications to notify them of our presence and verify their intentions, as well as to try and gather more information on them in general. A smaller recon squadron will keep tabs on the larger pursuing fleet and also relay the same first contact message. A few dozen Heroic Spirits and several battalions of Dragoons (supersoldier mages) have been added to augment the 1st Fleet's strength in case of outbreak of hostilities. The fleet will have its barriers powered up, but will keep its weapons in stand-by mode, and will avoid aggressive sensor sweeps or pings.
How the 1st Fleet acts next will depend on the unknown fleets' response, but if they respond with hostility, the fleet will execute a fighting retreat while collecting preliminary battle data to better ascertain their capabilities. If they are much more powerful or advanced than our forces, then the fleet will prioritize exiting the battlespace and linking up with reinforcements. Same if they are roughly at parity with the 1st Fleet. If they are substantially inferior in capability, the fleet will move to engage and neutralize the threat before they can get closer to our territory.
Meanwhile the rest of the fleet will remain in the settled star systems and focus on building up infrastructure and defenses.
Chairwoman Silver Garland floated behind her podium facing the assembled Delegates and cameras in the Hall of Heroes. Her sensor strips conveying far more information about her surroundings and audience than most organic senses. She could measure the stress levels of every delegate, high by the way, as well as what fuel they imbibed in the last 24 hours, mostly raktajino and romulan ale. Often she wished her kind had been created with more sophisticated social hardware, despite her near absolute knowledge of her organic peer's physiologies she found truly relating to and interacting with them difficult and exhausting at the best of times.
Sadly, these where far from the best of times. The disruption and loss of life from the Displacement was bad enough, now they had confirmed reports of that the omnicidal fungus that had been terrorising their new neighbours had changed heading to all converge on Alliance space. Oh she couldn't blame the explorers who had stepped in to protect lives or sometimes even entire biospheres, but she couldn't say she was happy with the result either. Thankfully it seemed that, for the first time in its short history, the Alliance would actually outnumber its foe.
She let out a high pitched trill from her speakers as a substitute for the preserveroid cough and began the final part of her presentation, "Now that we have explained the threat and its timescale to you all I am pleased to announce that the Allied Fleet Service, working in cooperation with all of our member militaries and self-defence forces, have prepared a briefing on the operations we will be conducting to defend Alliance space from this omnicidal attack. Which Captain Kagren of the A.F.S. Khitomer will now present...
Orders:
-The primary aim is to prevent the Kroat from landing on any Alliance worlds and beginning Kroatforming. The secondary aim is to destroy the ability of the attacking forces to threaten the Khitomer Alliance. The tertiary aim is to prevent the escape and scattering of surviving Kroat forces into Alliance or neutral territory and causing more havoc.
-To this end the Mag 1 Fleethordes of the Klingon Empire and Romulan Republic will employ cloaked hit and run attacks to attempt to direct the Kroat Fleethordes down paths of barren star systems towards a chosen front of barren stars for a set of decisive fleet battles where the Allied Fleet Service Mag 1 Fleethorde will be dug in in prepared defensive positions. The Dominion Mag 2 Fleethorde will be kept in reserve
-The Mag 1 Federation Fleethorde, disagreeing with being so aggressive as to launch a first strike against the Kroat beyond the Alliances borders, takes over the garrison duties of the Klingon, Romulan and Minor Power ships and troops being pulled for the offensive.
-The sites for the planned fleet battles will be a collection of barren star systems beyond the Alliance's borders, or failing that at least star systems without sophont life, which the defenders will make appear as if any planet being defended is in fact a thriving life bearing world via false sensor readings and mass holographic fields. The ground forces of all 4 participating Fleethordes (Klingons, Romulans, Dominion and Allied Fleet Service) will be dug in on favourable planets in prepared positions ready to fight a planetary invasion.
-The plan is to lure the Kroat into committing to attempted breakthroughs and planetary assaults by playing on their seeming lust for battle. The Klingon and Romulan Fleethordes will join with the Allied Fleet Service Fleethorde in playing defence but will use their cloaks to avoid giving away that they outnumber the Kroat if at all possible. Once the Kroat are too committed to pull out the space forces of the Dominion Mag 2 Fleethorde will be deployed from reserves to encircle them and spring the trap.
Throughout the length and breadth of what was formerly the milky way, ships moved.
Countless vessels-Romulan, Klingon, Dominion, Federation, and Alliance-slipped their births and diverted their course as orders rippled outwards through lines of command, Federation vessels rotating to take up posts left empty by their allies as warp drives engaged and flung billions of tons of military material in the direction of the coming invaders.
Klingon and Romulan battlefleets pause only to unload their ground compliments before surging past the hundred systems planned to be used as a primary defensive line, the mass of cloaked warships beginning a campaign of hit-and-fade attacks against the oncoming fungal horde.
As the massed hulls of simple but well-made warships traveled towards where they believed these new enemies were, using some method of FTL very different from Warp Drives, they were struck with what was almost certainly the largest Alpha Strike in the history of every member of the Alliance. Near simultaneously, in dozens of stars systems, whole battlefleets of Romulan and Klingon vessels dropped cloaks at maximum weapon range, the smaller warships dumping energy out of their weapon banks and emptying torpedo tubes as rapidly as they possibly could, filling the space between the opposing forces with disruptor and plasma fire and swarms of photon and quantum torpedoes.
The fleets primarily focused on vessels of equivalent size, gutting thousands of frigates and destroyers with that first alpha strike as the Kroats were caught completely unprepared.
However, if the surprise affected them, it wasn't for very long at all.
Almost immediately, Kroat warships changed vector to start trying to close with their attackers, many syphoning up the wrecks of their escorts and feeding them into onboard foundries even as they passed through the debris fields, firing off volleys of long-range kinetic artillery and swarms of missiles even as their engines burned at their maximums to try and close with these enemies who'd been so kind as to deliver themselves for a good scrap.
The near-instant response resulted in noticeable casualties among the advanced fleets, ships torn in half by spinal mass-drivers, blown to bits by volleys of shells, or swarmed by ungodly amounts of missiles; many losses occurred as the advanced fleets attempted to re-enter cloak.
But overall, the attack was deemed a success; and the Fleets would continue their harassments campaign for nearly two weeks as smaller strike-groups appeared and faded in and out of both cloak and warp, each time leaving just enough of a trail for the Kroats to follow.
The majority do, enticed by that initial brutal strike and frustrated by their enemy's constant refusal to commit to a hard battle. Some smaller groups break away from the main forces, but these are picked off by the various packs of cloaked ships shadowing the flanks of the main line of advance, and eventually, these splinterings fade as the Kroats pick up signs of the defensive line they are headed towards.
Despite the diligent work of the Romulans and Klingons, the Kroat Fleets that arrive at the systems making up the Martok Line (named after the infamous Klingon General after he proposed the idea) are not much depleted from their initial numbers, the hit-and-fade style attacks allowing the Kroats to repair many of the ships not outright destroyed in the raids and preventing the stealth-fleets from getting stuck-in enough to inflict any real losses among the Kroat Supercapitals.
All of this was expected, and as such, the fleets of the Alliance are ready when the Kroats arrive.
Thousands of bulky axe-shaped warships jump into the star systems making up the Martok Line, enormous capital ships surrounded by swarms of their smaller kin, bulbous engine pods burning hot as they made all-speed for the garrisoning Alliance forces.
The Kroats opened up the first salvo of the battle, spinal mass drivers and 'boom-beams' firing at extreme ranges as distance closed, the smattering of attacks still smashing smaller Alliance vessels they catch, closely followed by the long-range ordinance salvoes launched by both sides.
Point defence guns on both sides blazed, but so numerous were the munitions that it was inevitable that many would get through.
Borg Supercapitals weather hundreds of impacts even as smaller vessels are blown apart around them, while the Kroats fly face-first into every munition the Alliance can bring to bear. Swarms of Photon Torpedoes strip away shields to open the path for more powerful weapons, quantum torpedoes blowing destroyers apart and taking chunks out of light cruisers, tricobalt munitions are directed deep into rents torn into the armor of Cruisers to maximize the effect of their matter-deleting spacial rifts, and even a handful of battleships torn asunder by gavametric torpedoes.
And still the Kroats come, cannons blazing and missile pods dumping as they enter range with the Alliance defenders, their only reaction to the sudden appearance of Klingons and Romulans decloaking all around them to shift the fire of some of the innumerable turrets studding their hulls and the missiles leaving tubes.
Soon, the battles had devolved into furious, chaotic furballs as two fleets with broadly omnidirectional firepower got stuck into each other. Rapid-Fire cannons belched streams of explosive shells into the void, trying to bracket the more agile Alliance warships that burned back with various different types of energy: disruptors, plasma, and antiproton beams flashing and burning against shields and armor as they dodged and weaved among the oftentimes larger Kroat vessels, determinedly attempting to avoid being caught up by Kroat tractor beams or magnetic harpoons, as any vessel rendered still was liable to be swiftly destroyed-either by concentrated cannon fire, swarms of boarding craft or 'Kroat cannon' boarding shells deploying dozens of Mooks into their halls, or (if caught by a sizably larger warship than themselves) pulled wholesale into the great maws of their matter grinders.
Despite initial orders to try and maintain the illusion of equal force between the Kroats and defending Alliance fleets, soon the majority of the Klingon and Romulan fleets were also forced into in the slugfest to keep the Alliance fleet from being overwhelmed, diving into and through the maelstrom with weapons blazing in an attempt to pull the attention of Kroat guns away from the beleaguered Alliance vessels.
As would be expected at this point, the Kroats reacted with enthusiasm at the sudden increase in targets.
The Borg have a certain…reputation, among the many members of the Kitomer Alliance.
Hyper-advanced. Dangerous. In the case of the Cooperative, a little odd, but decent enough folks.
And, of course, everyone knew that it was the next best thing to Suicide to board, or be boarded by, the Milky Way's Cyborg Hive-Mind.
The Kroats had obviously never been told that. And even if they had, Koryk doubted they would have listened.
After all, they were doing fairly well, all things considered.
The former Vulcan flexed his four lower manipulators, launching himself back and into the air out of the path of the crackling shovel that splintered the deck plates where he just was. He hovered there over a void in the Cube's interior, a massive space holding a secondary reactor crisscrossed by walkways. He was held aloft by the anti-grav generators in his shoulders as he beheld the mob of Kroat Mooks that had forced their way into the large room he was tasked with holding, the mass of fungoid flesh jeering and hollering at him as they fired large-calibre ballistic weapons at him in long but fairly controlled bursts, the slugs deflecting off of his shields with minimal effect.
Wordlessly, the cyborg levelled the two plasma cannons that replaced his arms and opened fire on the mass of Kroats, the beams slicing through flesh and metal armor with ease, the tendrils emerging from his back adding their own weight of fire from the disruptor pistols mounted within them.
The fungoids reacted decently, scrambling for cover while maintaining a moderate volume of fire on him, forcing some jerky movements in the air to throw off their aim, his shots coming less frequently as he picked his targets to make sure no shots were wasted-a quirk of his picked up ages ago.
Suddenly there were even more Kroats in the room, Mooks carrying shovels and clubs and broad-bladed cleavers in one hand and large knives in the other, as well as three even larger Kroats in what looked to be power armor, thick plates of metal over artificial muscle with large boosters on the back-
Koryk was forced to suddenly jerk in the air as one of the armored Kroats launched at him, swinging a spiked club wreathed in azure energy at him as the fungoid jetted through the air. He managed to dodge the first and second, but the third caught him in the side of the head with his club, the weapon discharging a burst of energy on impact that drained his shields by a full third and sent him spinning in the air.
Requesting Reinforcements The Cyborg projected into the Cooperative calmly, that gentle murmur of thousands of voices always in the back of his mind, even as a burst of gravitational energy corrected his spin to allow him to blast the offending Kroat with one cannon and two disruptors, popping his energy shields and severing one leg, not that the Fungoid seemed to notice as he landed hard on another gantry, turning to aim at Koryk once again even as the other two fellows Jumped, bellowing at the Borg.
Acknowledged. Deploying. Came the clipped response, the room brightening as a mass of energy appeared between the band of Mooks and the reactor, the light of an internal transporter revealing a dozen Klingon Swordsmasters (rescued from a burning wreck) who charged the Mooks with various warcries, pulsewave disruptors barking to keep the Kroats down before bat'leths were drawn.
"Finally!" One of the Mooks bellowed, turning his rifle on the rapidly closing Klingon. "GET SOME!!!" He screamed, bullets chattering even as a bat'leth cleaved through it and into him, and the melee was joined, bat'leths meeting shovel and tench club and combat knife as Kroyk darted above, dueling with the Kroat Jumptroopers that dearly desired to do nothing more than splatter him everywhere.
Even as the Romulans and Klingons joined the fight fully, the Kroats didn't waver; indeed, they seemed to fight even harder as more foes presented themselves, twisting and turning madly to ram and shoot and board, cruisers slamming nose-first into Borg Cubes to deploy entire armies-tanks and all-into their guts, frigates and corvettes zooming about like oversized fighters to duel birds of prey and raptors.
There were a few moments that some captains worried the fungoids might be able to actually turn the fight around.
And that, of course, is when the Dominion dropped the hammer.
Thousands of Jem'Hadar battlecruisers and attack ships dropped out of warp directly into the melee, the speedy smallcraft swarming their now massively outnumbered Kroat contemporaries, tearing them appart with polaron beams before turning, like piranhas scenting blood, to fall upon larger warships.
Even the Kroats, battlehungry and always up for a fight, know how to run the numbers, and as this massive group of reinforcements arrived they fought to consolidate their numbers around the surviving Battleships, smaller vessels sheltering in the proverbial shadow of their guns as they make moves to try and break out of the encirclement and 'regroup' back in their own space.
However, as well as the fighting in the void has gone, the same cannot be said for the ground war.
The Kroats expended considerable resources to get boots on the ground of the trap-planets, launching many thousands of landing craft, drop pods, and even what would be revealed to be self-asembling bases and fortifications meant to be crewed by locally-grown Kroats, seeded by the same ships that launched other vectors of invasion.
These were met by the ground forces and assigned aerial assets, and though facing stiff resistance, Alliance forces were mostly able to at the hold the line, though counterattacks were often slow coming or impossible due to the disparity in heavy fighting vehicles.
However, the real problem came from the Cruisers.
On almost every world in the Martok Line, between six and fifteen local cruiser-weight ships completely ignored the orbital battle in favor of smashing directly into the planetary surface, disgorging huge hordes of armored fighting vehicles, mechanized infantry, and dedicated aerocraft that swiftly overwhelmed nearby defensive positions and established strongpoints that other Kroats are flocking too. Orbital bombardment of these grounded cruisers has proven ineffective, as their shields (which are now being projected over a much larger area to form a protective umbrella for ground troops) are inexplicably at least a magnitude stronger than they were while the vessel was mobile.
Tactical and science officers are speculating wildly as to why exactly this might be, but for now all that matters is that it gives the Kroats multiple planetary locations where they will be mostly safe from orbital bombardment, and based on what your scans can pick out, the process of Kroat-Forming has already begun in the areas around the cruisers, alongside the establishment of local resource extraction, manufacturing, and industrial facilities surrounding the cruisers.
This could be a problem.
Situation Report:
-The Kroat Fleets have been thoroughly mauled by the Martok Line, overwhelming numbers and encirclement having destroyed all but the most stubborn pockets of resistance, most clustered around the (thankfully few) absurdly large double-digit Km warships who acted as lynchpins of the Kroat battleline. These groups are now attempting to force an exit by shooting their way out of their encirclement.
-Losses were moderate across the board, though the Borg took disproportionate casualties among their largest vessels (Juggernauts and Cubes) due to their necessity to counter similarly-sized Kroat warships and the propensity for larger Kroat ships to focus on them, up to and including several dozen instances of Kroat Cruisers ramming Cubes in order to board them, which usually resulted in an eventual mutual-kill. At this stage, the Void War is decidedly in Alliance Favor, but the remaining pockets of Kroat Warships could still cause significant casualties if handled slopilly.
-Ground combat has not gone nearly as well, unfortunately. In addition to conventional landing methods (dropships and pods as well as massed teleportation strikes), they have deployed Kroat Spoors and some kind of growth accelerant to breed local troops. While this by itself would not be much more than a nuisance, they also deployed self-constructing bases via what were thought to be bombardment shells for the newborn Kroats to use to 'arm up' rapidly. Worst of all, several Kroat Cruisers at each planet punched through orbital defences to slam directly into the surface of the worlds of the Line. While the standard landings were met and somewhat contained, the crashed cruisers immediately began deploying entire armies to the surface, battalions of heavily armed and armored vehicles pushing ahead of divisions of mechanized infantry to overrun those positions not destroyed by the ship's landing and secure the surrounding area, giving Kroat forces on the surface several heavily-defended fortresses to rally around and sally from. Kroatforming has already begun around the crashed ships, and orbital bombardment has proved ineffective in destroying the vessels, whose converted shields are inexplicably much more powerful and far-reaching now, though away from these vessels Ortillery is still effective. It seems that terrestrial forces will be needed to dig the Kroats out now before they can get the military-biological complex rolling properly.
