Inheritor Metaverse, Ridgal Galaxy, Tarcitus System, Tarcitus III, Year 50,014, 7th of August.
The Despondance class Juggernaut Pyre of Sin hovered near the farthest orbit of the world of Tarcitus III; a fifty-kilometre long engine of destruction that had seen the ruin of countless worlds; the Black Legionary commander in its bridge folding his arms behind his back as he gazed upon the holodisplay. His black and gold tactical dreadnought armour made the gesture look almost ridiculous, but nobody told him that to his face. No one who wanted to keep theirs that is. Raghrastim the Huntsman, Lord of Devastation, master of Sorcerers, Ruiner of Empires, Cravenslayer of the Black Legion and a great many other nasty, unpleasant titles earned across a career spanning fifteen thousand years of unimaginable atrocities and hideous crimes.
He had waged war across so many galaxies, so many stars, ever since Horus had shown the legion the way of the dark gods, opened their eyes to the truth behind the Emperor and Empress' lies. The primordial truth of Chaos, the only path forward for humanity that would be free from the influence of xenos, from degeneration, where the Astartes would as was their rightful place; dominate the meek, feeble masses of humanity who had allowed the work of the Crusade to degrade into a rotten mockery of all they had fought for. He had killed so, so many people; watched his primarch die and the Black Mournival take charge as the new warmasters of Chaos.
Fifteen thousand years of raiding, fifteen thousand years of black crusades, fifteen thousand years of unholy war. They whispered his name in fear, they counted his tally in the sectors he had laid to waste, they gnashed their teeth about his atrocities. And what had happened with the loyalists? Alliances with xenos such as the Eldar and the Dawi? Hiding behind the Lizardmen as the other nine of the ten Emperors ravaged the stars. Losing Mars to the Void Dragon? Losing...Terra...to GREENSKINS!? Even he wept when he heard the news five thousand years ago. Terra, lost forever to Ghazghkull, to Skarsnik, to Mollog.
He was born on Terra. A lifetime ago, an eternity ago.
Time passed strangely in warp rifts, he did not feel the weight of the ages upon him as those who took the long road through time did. But when he fixed his mind on such definite points in history he felt so very old. Like the crushing weight of time was reasserting itself through the unreality of the empyrean every time he reminded himself that once, he was mortal, that once, he was just a boy.
Like so many of the screaming, noisome children he had slain, that he had butchered. All in the name of power, of glory, of righting the wrongs done to him so long ago. He proudly announced himself as a servant of the Mournival Emperors of the Black Imperium, formed in the wake of the false Emperor's wretched empire crumbling into civil war. The Primarchs it seems, could not get through their vision of reform through the inscrutable will of the High Lords of Terra. Politics, he scoffed. The Black Imperium had done away with such things. There were no politicians in Abaddon's Empire; only might and worth.
Some would say that the Black Imperium was but a meagre shadow of the pre-sundering Imperium, a headless mess of bloodthirsty demagogues, social darwinists slaughtering each other for table scraps, completely dysfunctional supply chains, petty squabbling, and no clear system for anything to get done. Raghrastim would say that this was the point. That the floundering, shambling mess would weed out the weak, the unworthy, those who needed others to provide them with milk of their chest rather than have the strength to survive on their own.
Besides, they were probably the sort of people that would try to tell him that you couldn't just solve famine by killing people until there was enough food for them all. Those sorts of people decorated his skull rack or had their faces stitched into the tanned hides of his daemon-cape. He had no patience for whiners; and he looked at his power claw as it still dripped with steaming blood from the corpse on the ground next to him from the last person to come up to him with complaints he had no mind to hear out. He stepped his heavy boot onto the corpse of the slain cultist, rupturing it like a stinking watermelon as he stepped away from the holodisplay.
"This "Galactic Federation" baffles and disgusts me." He snarled from beneath his heavyset great helm, eyes seeming to burn a brilliant red from within his horned helmet as his ancient suit of armour flexed with his body; segmented plates shifting with him like a living thing as the power of the daemonic realm that he had suffused himself in for so long turned his suit into a diabolical carapace.
"My lord, so far we have only attacked minor outposts and tiny colonies; no more than a few tens of thousands at most. Perhaps it would be best to await for the arrival of the whole of your infernal majesty's fleet before attacking a system inhabited by billions?" Some sniveling wretch said, an aspirant into his warband, one who had hoped to be one of the battle brothers or sisters of his host of astartes.
He looked at the sniveling teenager and sneered with disgust beneath his helmet while he studied them. A scared orderly plucked from some world in his own native reality, a colony he never learned the name of before killing all six hundred and thirty-seven million people on it. Disgust filled his twin hearts, loathing this stripling for whining to his face about the odds. He would not suffer this complaining, and outstretched his twin power-claw fitted hands then clapped them around his torso, reducing him to smoking pulp as the shockwave from the collision of twin daemon infused power fists annihilated any remainder of his body.
Once, he would have been horrified at such an act of shocking, senseless violence. But his heart had grown cold and the raging fires inside were nothing more than smouldering flickers of ash. He no longer cared, The endless pursuit of his schemes, all the betrayals and lies, all the friends and family sacrificed for momentary gain. He no longer cared. There was an emptiness inside of him, a hollowness of so much of what made him human before. But he no longer concerned himself even with that. There was only his glory, his ambition, his perfection, his immortality; should he finally prove to his patrons that he was worthy of the reward of Daemonhood.
"Does anyone else wish to out themselves as a yellow-bellied cur? I have raised billions of Astartes from the muck, I have graced even more Chaos Warriors, Chaos Guardsmen, Gors, and Cultists with my favour. And in return, what I ask for is loyalty and a reprieve from your incessant whinging!" He said, shaking the gore that stained his gauntlets off.
He had all these thoughtless, wretched curs to sort out and one of the emotions he did feel properly in his old hearts stirred again. Anger. Once he tried to lead with charisma and fatherly grace. Now the sight of most of his warband made the worst sort of bile rise up in his throat. A pack of degenerate rabble, so many no longer even sons or daughters of Horus; just any random child who looked vaguely compatible and whatever geneseed they had on hand. How utterly repugnant. Mongrels, he was surrounded by mongrels and mutts and thinblooded rejects. How Horus would have wept to see the state of his legion.
"Your whinging shames Horus, it disgraces Emperor Abaddon and the Black Mournival. You are servants of the Black Imperium, do not make me embarrassed to look upon you. Learn to do your duties without complaint or face my benediction. Have we not come out the better in skirmishes with the "thirteen emperors" the loyalists whinge about?" He said, showing one of his claws and the combi-bolter mounted onto its wrist, letting the power fields around them crackle and the daemon inside howl and shriek with the anticipation of bloodshed to come. The red glow of his eyes beneath his great helm intensified into a blazing inferno of hatred. Once he was merely human, once he was simply one of the Astartes, now, he was a fiend.
Horus would have smashed these so-called "Thirteen Emperors" he was sure of it, though part of him wondered if he was merely kidding himself, his forces took huge losses in nearly every encounter and only triumphed through limited goals, luck, and trying to flood the materium with enough daemons to cover their escape. The Spore Unleashed, the War of the Krork, the Beast Set loose to name the three monstrosities the greenskins had become. The Fireheart's Children, the Gut-Kings, and the Torgotai to name the finalisation of the Ogors. The Nuclear Father of the unfathomable usurpers whose galaxy sized mass spawned nonexistent horrors, the Void Dragon and its robotic hordes who mastered the materium, and the deathhost of Orcus and Abraxa who had obtained some true understanding of Death as Nagash delved into some primal, terrible part of the warp. The Tyranids of course, ever-evolving, ever-adapting into increasingly more horrible forms as they devoured the universe, Archaon who had so effortlessly usurped the control of Chaos from the Astartes, or the Aelindrachai who had become unceasing and unquenchable monsters of shadow whom even Daemons feared. But perhaps worst of all; the Couatl, the Lizardmen, and their ascension; what should have been the ruination of the forces of Order had instead been them stepping to the plate to save it. Grotesque.
And he was to deal with this Age of Monsters with whelps like these?
Whelps who couldn't even remember when the count of Chaos Gods was thirteen? Before the Engine of Extinction? Before the Great Gatherer? Before the ascension of Be'Lakor? Before Drach'Nyen'Ant'Wyr? Before Archaon? Before one had to clarify when referring to the "Emperor and Empress of Mankind" as to whether one referred to the Empyreal Tyrant, the Starchildren, the Corpse-Gods, or the Omnissiah? How many had remembered a time when there were no Tyranids? Before the Necrons awakened? He looked at his thin-blooded army once again and he almost wanted to throw up.
"Look at this world! Look how humanity mingles so freely with xenos scum, how it takes orders from abominable intelligences like whipped dogs. Look at them and their idle lives of debased plenty and degenerate luxury. Look at how lax their defences are as our war fleet benights their starlanes with thousands of warships waiting to lay them low. What sort of degeneracy has taken these curs of this universe hrm? Nothing worth admiring, nothing worth upholding. Let us punish them for their insolence I say. Let us remind them of the costly wages of sin." He shouted, a flicker of his prior charisma showing through as he raised his fist in a cheer. He knew that his own warband made extensive usage of chaotic xenos auxiliaries; but as far as he was concerned his tactics with them were contributing to the sacred mission of xenocide.
"They have sent out a call for aid as soon as we translated into the system my lord." The Dark Mechanicum Techpriest; Skoliosis; beeped in a monotone voice that made the Chaos Lord want to flay whatever remained of her face off for grating on his ears to such an extent.
"Let them cry out, their doom already approaches. Are the dreadclaws and stormbirds ready for landing?" He demanded, his choler rising at an ever-increasing rate while his daemon weapons hungered for slaughter and reaped souls.
"The daemons of the Empyrean tell me that trouble from this federation approaches swiftly upon the Skeins of Fate, dark one." Sorceress Daestra Melganar said, her own tactical dreadnought armour having far straighter standing horns emerging from the sides and brows of her black and brass armour, her staff crackling with her own black magics and fell psyker powers as well as the roiling energies of the daemon bound within, her other hand bearing a ruinous straight sword. She was his most reliable second in command, her service impeccable ever since the unification wars of Terra. Her own gaze, a cold blue to his burning red, was often what calmed him from rash courses of action. She was more skilled in sorcery than he was; yet she had never once tried to stab him in the back. A dependable rock in an army of scoundrels.
"We will have plenty of time." He said dismissively. Even with optimal wormhole hugging and warp corridors assistance would likely need at least another day to arrive in large numbers if the techpriests were telling him the truth about the disposition of other federal territories in this one cluster in their vast intergalactic society. This was deemed a relatively safe set of galaxies, nearly entirely under their grip; and as such their garrisons were light. The Imperium, for all of its foppery, never wrote off territories as large as galactic clusters as "safe" at the very least. His legionaries would soon need to find better targets.
"No my lord, the neverborn claim we have but minutes before a massive force arrives. Heavy fleets dispatched from far garrisons without usage of wormholes or corridors." She said flatly, staring into his face and prompting him to flip around as quickly as he could in the enormous bulk of his Cataphractii pattern Tactical Dreadnought Armour. Every one of his steps being a locally seismically significant event while he stared into the gaze of the nimbler Tartaros pattern Tactical Dreadnought Armour of his compatriot; a crocodilian growl issuing from his throat as he loomed over her.
"Tell your daemons that I am in no mood for their pranks and lies. That is not possible. Do these look like Eldar to you?" He said as the Chrome ships of the Galactic Federation Navy started decelerating out of N-Space behind him while he spoke, the first of the Juggernaut category ships to rival the size of his own flagship emerging with a subspace wake and a battlegroup escorting it. He seemed oblivious to the sight transpiring behind him on the bridge window as he spoke.
"Perhaps the neverborn have let the corruption they mire in deceive them until they see Necrons or Cruorans mayhaps?" More battlegroups emerged around the first, then even more still, all clearly ready for a fight with weapons already in firing position and strike craft already being scrambled; some long-range FTL capable strike craft even just waiting for the order to attack. The functionaries on his ship howling with disbelief and some rushing towards him to beg him for his attention to ask for orders. The first traitor navyman, a defector from the Adeptus Terra's splinter imperium; rushed towards him and was backhanded had enough to leave nothing but steaming legs in the aftermath without even a glance from the Chaos Lord while her daemonic familiar babbled nonsense that made the ancient Black legionary want to bite its throat out.
"Perhaps staring into the sea of souls has given you leave of your senses and made you think these to be the Lizardmen?" He said as the auspexes bleeped a warning that another set of battlegroups was translating out of some manner of higher dimension in another direction; sunwards relative to his fleet and thus pincering off one of its natural routes of escape into the warp. He was still busy talking, so he figured he would set the panicking whelps around him straight on showing proper courage in the face of obvious sensor baffling once he was done.
"Or perhaps the Dawi?" The Federation Army's void corps and its midnight coloured ships had also translocated into the fray, as did the National Void Military of the Memberstate; the Void-Navy of the United Nations of Sol Peacekeeper Corps; the Bluehelms as they were often called for their prominent usage of Blue in their colour schemes; a large armada of theirs translating into realspace behind his fleet.
"Or do those cowardly Daemons think they are looking upon the C'tan?" Another local national military force, the Republican Navy of the Republican Union of Astor and its heavy-bodied fleet of stately, enduring warships designed to its local needs rather than the more generalist capabilities of the Federal Army and Navy it was subordinate to; closing off his vertical escape routes.
"We have waited long enough for proper bloodshed. Let us-" He said before a particularly brave Loxatl mercenary hissed and crackled at him and darted away before he could stomp on its head, the komodo dragon like amphibian making sounds like a steamer about to explode to grab his full attention.
"I AM NOT DONE TALKING!" He said, levelling his right gauntlet's combi-bolters at its head before the Loxatl tapped on a voicebox on its neck to translate its language.
"We are being hailed by the intervention fleet."
"...The...what?" He said before looking at the bridge as his Chaos Astartes and the more reliable Traitor Guardsman disciples had to restore discipline among the screaming mortal functionaries with the traditional brute force; Brother Cholros praising Khorne with every sweep of his powered chain axe as he relieved himself of some of his boredom while Sister Grailon gave the gifts of Nurgle via vomiting all over another panicking ensign to reduce them to steaming, festering rot; the plague marine's helm closing its mouth once she was done and a hearty belly laugh coming from her. But the auspex signs were clear...he was...suddenly surrounded by a larger enemy force and there were orbital defence stations he hadn't detected until now when his sorcerers felt the perturbances of the cloaked stations on the Skeins of Fate that were being marked by scrivener daemons on the holodisplay.
"+This is Admiral Dane of the Galactic Federation Navy. Your fleet is surrounded and your numerous atrocities against defenseless colony and outpost worlds have been recorded. You are being given a chance to surrender yourself to a war crimes tribunal where you may be given some chance at redemption. If you refuse this chance, we will destroy you without a second thought.+" A stately, professional sounding voice came in over the holodisplay.
"+I know not what trickery is this, but know that I am Raghrastim the Huntsman, Lord of Devastation, master of Sorcerers, Ruiner of Empires, Cravenslayer of the Black Legion; I claim your worlds for the Black Mournival Emperors of the Black Imperium of Mankind. Debase yourselves before me and I may grant you the mercy of the Chaos Gods. Resist and your soul will scream in suffering your reality could never imagine! This is my offer to you "Admiral Dane"!+" The Chaos Lord roared.
"+As is to be expected. Open fire.+" The Nurglite possessed daemonship; the battleship Squealing Blessings was the first to be struck; a particle beam racing across the void across a corridor of warped space to make the transition at superluminal speeds before stabbing into the fifteen kilometre fleshmetal pile of rot's void shields. Then n-space missiles followed, dropping into realspace at frightfully close range while its defensive turrets screamed to life. Then the long-range bomber wings dropped out of N-Space and slipped through the void shields, explosions ripping into external systems on the battleship until high intensity gamma lasers from the capital ship tore it to shreds once its shields failed.
Other escorts began to explode, spinal weapons and heavy turrets roaring in the silent void of space as the Chaos fleet, out of position for a battle and unprepared for the foe, tried to engage. Foul sorceries were pooled together and lashed through one of the closer fleets, the warpflames of Tzeentch scouring the army vessels in hellfire that pounded into their shielding; trying to grasp at the metal beneath. Some of the smaller ships died unnatural deaths, twisted by the lash of the changer of ways; but the lead sorcerer ship was targeted with prejudice. Their technology was greatly superior, and scourged his own warships to pieces with unrelenting bombardments with a precision his forces could not match.
He could feel the native esoterical forces of this universe start to be called to life. Battle-Psions and Mystics signed into the Federal military started to study what they could of the cataclysmic chaos energies he was conjuring to try to defend his fleet; he would not allow it. Not even as reports of singular, customised strike craft slipping through the battle spheres of engagement and into a number of his warships came through. All bearing some manner of larger than life super warrior from the Freelancer Guilds or an Ultrasophontic Association. Other boarding teams, studiously avoiding the worst corrupted of his ships, deposited legions of shielding protected and power armoured and multi-species soldiers; all bearing numerous augments to go with their power suits.
While his Traitor Astartes were usually more than a match for most of their line soldiers, his cultist rabble, his beastmen, and many of his chaos tainted xenos were not so lucky. The best his mortals tended to get with any regularity was some suits of powered void-hardened carapace armour for his favourites among his mortals. But most, when in space, were armed with low penetration weapons unlikely to harm the interiors of the ships they fought in. Hardly viable against enemies clad in shielded power suits with guns that hit harder than bolters; energy sheathed mass-driver rounds slicing into anything less than proper carapace armour as if it wasn't there and forcing even Astartes to take cover after brief exposure to the withering gaze of the bolts.
More of his ships detonated or went silent as their engine power died. His own Juggernaut's batteries were furiously trading blows with the defense station in front of it; the Nova Cannon battery at the prow loading its shells and letting loose with a volley to demolish the smaller station utterly. But red alert sirens warned him to his growing annoyance of strike craft passing through its void shielding. Defensive turrets filling the void with strobe lights and accelerator shells while nimble craft smaller than the usual make of strike craft in his own reality danced with incredible grace; releasing their payloads into his craft with disturbing precision while swarms of daemon or servitor piloted craft vomited out from his fleet's hangars. They weren't able to hold the Federation's fighters, who quickly reaped their tally from their ranks, but they were meant to be disposable.
One of his dreadnought category warships, the Rampager, twisted in half after being pummeled from multiple sides, its debris coming apart and turning into a rain of shrapnel that his own ship had to divert its guns towards clearing to open the targeting lanes from their obstruction. He admonished one of his cowards who suggested fleeing, bidding them to stand and fight while transport craft deposited Marine Mech-Formations on the surface of his prized ship, the machines more graceful than the Astartes Dreadnought Sacrophagi Walkers, the Knights, or the Titans of his own units; some automated, some piloted; all deadly.
His fleet was outnumbered, the enemy had technological superiority, and much of the worst tricks his chaotic benefactors could give to him necessitated ritual or preparation. Daemons crawled on the surface of his ship to defend it, attacking the mechs and their marine escorts. Many did bloody work, stabbing at their shields and armour, wreathing them in pleromic fire or spellcraft, befelling them with deaths unnatural to the materium. But as soon as the breached shield squadrons meant to help prevent nasty melee attackers from closing to their ranks were doing better, many switched to energy bayonets, powered entrenchment tools, or trench raider instruments such as disruptor-maces. To shoot a Daemon was often much less effective than to strike it in melee, for the latter held more symbolic power and meaning over the living stories of the neverborn. With how fast the news of more effective tactics spread, he could only surmise they had some manner of network.
"Fight to the last you cretins, any who are found wanting will feed the Chaos Spawn!" He bellowed as traitor Astartes and Void-Troops emerged to try and fight the external boarders. But the sorceress pointed above him.
"My Lord! Danger imminent!" She said as the ceiling above him began to glow hot until it melted altogether, sending molten duranium falling atop some of the beastmen he allowed to speak with him for at least a few seconds before disemboweling them; the Khorngors thrashing as their bodies came apart from the heat and a giant man of rock and crystal armour dropped from he hole he had made. Some knew him as Spire, the last of the Diamonts. Based on the wave of fire he projected as soon as he landed that reduced the Chaos Lord's less armoured troops to ash before they could fire, he was a powerful foe, and the Chaos Lord laughed with anticipation.
"Yes! Come xenos scum! Face me in battle!" He shouted as the silicoid rose to his full height until he was looking down at the giant in his tactical Dreadnought armour.
Black and Silver Armoured Supermarine Shock Troopers; some of the very best the navy had to offer; followed behind Spire, dropping around him. Enhanced with more powerful bodies and high end warsuits outfitted with a dozen bells and whistles, many simply teleporting next to the Diamont with weapons at the ready, others hot dropping into the face of his Astartes or his Daemons, warp-field mass accelerators striking them down where more specialist weapons such as star-guns, seeker missile launchers, or electrolasers weren't called for.
His Astartes fought well, though the thin-bloods recruited long after the Heresy as ever disgraced themselves. His Tactical Dreadnought equipped Guard though did not sell their lives cheaply, heavy weapons tearing out at the foe while these old guards of his warband formed ranks around their master to let him charge towards the Diamont; grenade harness over the hood of his armour pumping out a volley of anti-materiel krak grenades and the combi-bolters on his wrist letting loose.
Spire was faster than he had any right to be and more than tough enough to simply push through the fire. As the last Diamont Warrior; he was a level well beyond Samus and Arne; a true progenitor warfighter who had deigned to bring in much of his more advanced equipment instead of leaving it behind out of pride like he did in some of his excursions to the silent worlds of the Alimbics. His first blow bowled over the Chaos Lord, the dark halo he wore to augment the shielding in his cataphractii armour flickering in protest as he was nearly knocked off his feet by a punch that would have shattered bunker complexes.
He threw hands right back, balling a power claw into a fist and slugging towards his enemy who caught the fist with his orb hand; forming the magma into fingers and then lifting him off his feet and throwing him through the window like a pitched softball, his Guard turning towards the alien in their ranks and trying to lay him low while his heavy body crashed through into the void of space; tumbling until a portal was opened for him to return to the fray where he had found that Spire had already crushed some of his terminators and was tearing apart his Daemon Guard as well; Chaos Chosen Warriors rushing behind the Diamont only for a sweep of his arm cannon to reduce them to ash. Spire fought in a manner that the Chaos Lord could only compare to a Primarch, especially the way he smashed a Keeper of Secrets called into being shortly after it was summoned from the corpse of one of his champions. Could he be more? Perhaps. But the Chaos Lord deigned to kill him all the same.
A volley of fire from the marine team tore into his back; a hundred guns shredding into his daemon cursed defenses and those who dared to get close to him fired off dash jets to quickly scoot in, get in their blows, then scoot out before his retaliatory blow could meet them. Doombolts ripped from his hands, scattering his foes as he roared his frustrations; determined to kill everyone defiling his ship.
"I am a veteran of fifteen thousand years of unholy war! You are all as nothing compared to me! I AM THE HUNTSMAN, THE RAVAGER OF WORLDS! YOU CANNOT-" He felt a hand grabbing his pauldron and then found his field of vision shifting rapidly as Spire grabbed him and slammed him onto the ground.
"You going to keep on chatting, or are you going to prove any of your bragging?" Spire's rumbling voice said as the Chaos Lord pushed himself up and snarled like some sort of monster rather than a man.
"I will drink from your skull, xenos scum." He roared.
But while he fought with all he had; Spire came equipped as a true Progenitor warrior. Even in Raghrastim's most pessimistic of estimations, Spire was beyond what he was prepared to fight. Spire was a level of foe that Samus and Arne would not become until they had mastered the mystic side of their training and received true warsuits; not when he was dressed for battle in this way. Raghrastim would have lost to either Samus or Arne; still so infantile with the fragments of their potential that they controlled; but given a good account of it; as he wagered that; bloated with Chaos' favour as he was; he could have given a good fight to the Primarchs before they unlocked the true potential of their real natures as gods made flesh. He was a Lord of Lords, who could force many grand hosts to heel before him; who ruled as a noble in his own right in the Mournival's Imperium.
He was now a pile of ash, and his warship soon scrap.
Had the numbers been more even, perhaps the traitors could have given a better fight, maybe even win despite their inferior technology through the powers of chaos and the unbridled battle fury and experience of the Astartes, perhaps were they not surprised and surrounded...perhaps if a true Progenitor Warrior were not among them...but none survived to flee save for those who turned tail and ran as soon as they detected the translation of the Federal Armada from N-space; to retreat back to the outpost worlds the traitors had established as they sought to extend the Black Crusades into new territory just as they did when the Exitus crusades began with the expansion of the garden of the old ones that spanned the expanse of space visible from the milky way to some ten times beyond that. A process still ongoing, but necessary as the Emperors battled for dominance and time had to be bided for reclamations.
A process that he had been part of, but after a momentary fight with Spire deciding it was time to stop playing around, he would be part of no more. The Black Crusade would have to continue without him, and his subordinates would be eager to squabble over the scraps.
His last thoughts before his would escended into the maw of Chaos as all those marked by the Daemon Gods did who were not forcibly stolen by the likes of Nagash or others; were of how he reckoned his child self would have responded if he knew this was how he would end. Would he have still chosen Horus? Would he still have killed so many for power that meant nothing in the end?
And finally.
Would his birth-brother forgive him, if he ever met him again in the sea of souls?
Nothing else could come to mind, as the Lords of Daemons despised one who could not commit to a patron and he had not pledged himself to the Everchosen. As such, the afterlife for him would be terrifyingly brief even by the low standards of the worshippers of Chaos who died in failure.
The last thing he saw were the hordes of Daemons descending down upon him to determine who had the first bite of his soul.
"Oi boss lookit there! Shellboyz!" Zugstomp Shootamuch pointed to one of the impervium armoured Battlelords who commanded the vast, seething alien tide of beings enslaved to the indomitable will of the being known only as the Battlemaster. Insectoid of form, large of stature, and clad in true impervium armour alloyed only with absorbium and some mystic materials to prevent blunt force shock or phasic weapons from slaying the wielder of the virtually impenetrable shell. At its feet were countless species of endless varieties and shapes all commanded to wage war, to absorb potential, to turn the narrative destiny of other species into another facet of the force known as the Battalion.
The Battalion was an army without fear, coming to grips with the Beast Set Loose in cataclysmic bloodshed as they had for years. Their invasion of Earth; planned for two thousand and thirteen as the humans reckoned time, had to be delayed due to the recall of the fleet originally being planned to be sent to Earth to confront the war-hungry brutes as soon as they started to encroach on their empire of chains. To this, they turned the stolen genius of a billion times a billion civilizations to the dread task, terrible weapons of war matched against the unreasoning barbarism of those who were made to be the ultimate weapon for a war more terrible than most could comfortably imagine; now ascended into the pinnacle of true, senseless violence by the overwhelming feedback of their own empyreal might.
Stolen godhood and green brutishness collided in this world as it did on countless other worlds. Thrall races grappled with the endless boyz and squiggly fings of the viridian horde; a panoply of life forms and ideas for waging battle manifested into the most debased sort of grinder in which civilisation went into to die and be smashed into yet further means of self-destruction. Monstrosities from both sides were deployed freely while the air was splitting at the very seams with the collision of cosmic and esoterical energies as the power of the Waaaagh struggled with the stolen Source Potential of the Battalion just as their mortal avatars battled in the physical realm.
The star behind them was torn in half by the rampaging energies unleashed without caution by the void battle above some hours ago and the sun in the sky was starting to fission apart; blaring white and ravenous green energy pushing against each other as Beast battled Battalion. The skies were thick with fliers, whether they flew under their own power, with flight packs, with aircraft, or were some manner of winged beast mattered little save for that so many eventually fell back to the ground in bloody heaps or smoking wrecks.
What was supposed to be the faint sight of a distant gas giant was instead blazing with fusion fire after the salvoes between two fleets fighting within the clouds had ignited the planet and ripped it asunder; bathing this particular rocky world in a wondrous set of lights while unfathomable energies danced around, ripping the ground apart, splitting the sky open, and vomiting forth monsters. Warpspawn of Gork and Mork spat out of rents in reality to meet with Battalion bound Demons hurled forwards in vast numbers from the pits of Hell to do battle for their masters. Giant monsters and thundering war machines wrestled in a way that made the earth crumble apart, and the carpet of Greenskin fungal bloom advanced ever farther even in the face of the sheets of fire pushed forward by the Battalion's own hordes.
Scenes like this played out on billions upon billions of other worlds as the Thirteen Emperors did battle with the Battalion, the Kheldians, the Nictus, the Arikrat, the Jrakim, the Niarte, the Yurye, the True Rikti and other forces who dominated the spacelanes in this metaverse. Though the inhabitants of Primal Earth did not know it, it was the fury of the invaders that came through the Nexus event that had saved them from an invasion in 2013. In a sense, such mindless violence was Earth's salvation.
As far as Megaboss Worldsmasha Redklaw was concerned, this was heaven. Endless war against powerful foes who knew almost nothing of fear as the Battlelords chained their destinies to the will of the Battlemaster. Beings who had sucked out the potential for apotheosis of a billion times a billion different cultures and species. It was glorious, it was beautiful. The loud sounds of gunfire roaring in his ears as he exulted in the Greenskin worship of violence, raw, unrelenting, and matchless in savagery.
"See, Ghazghkull woz roight. Dis is where da gud foightin' is! Come on ladz! Let's get stukk in! Last one ta kill a shellboy iz a git! WAAAAAAAAAAGH!" Warboss Choppalotz bellowed as a stampede of gargants so thick that it was almost as if a tectonic plate had decided to go on the mark rumbled forward, the Tsunami of green flesh and metal at their feet and tracks rolling forward with crude weapons raised and all fear of death utterly subsumed into an apocalyptic hunger to destroy everything that didn't read to them as properly of Gork and Mork.
"Now listen gud 'ere boyz, cuz I'z only gonna say dis once. We'z 'ere fer stompin' runts an' takin' tropheez. If any of ya gitz dun kill sumfing den yooz nuffin' but a ponce an' ye kan zog off of me next waaagh in yer next life. Now, lemme show ya why iz da Megaboss!" Megaboss Slaughahking said, clad in what in another age, might have been called mega armour by imperial scholars, but in this great and terrible manifestation of the Warring Triad; it was something altogether more barbaric, the Ironjaw Orruk exulting in his tremendous size, his impenetrable hide, and his virtually unlimited strength for but a moment before he sucked in and bellowed out a call that could; against all reason; be heard across the stars at the same time.
The cry of havoc granted the Orks zephyr speed, barreling forward impossibly swiftly, crashing into their foe with shockwave inducing might. Shredding into and tearing at their foes and being ripped into in return, a gleeful act of worshipful violence as the ground began to prove to be the weakest link in the contest between the Battalion and the Beast. The earth fractured beneath, the air was so thick with raining shells one could almost imagine walking themselves into space upon a carpet of tracers. Limbs, rent armour, ruined flesh, and heavy explosions in all directions as far as the eye could see, but under their all pervading war cry there could only be one victor. In a brawl where victory went to the one who punched hardest and most often, the Greenskins were winning out by sheer numbers.
The weirdboyz channelled forth mystic furor as a green inferno roared forward, incinerating large swathes of the enemy army in a fire that went beyond any mere measurement of heat, flaming death vomiting forth from their open mouths while others brought down projections of the booted foot of Gork to simply stomp on their foes with meteoric force, laughing and hollering at the billowing shockwaves and jeering at their fellows who were swept up as collateral damage. The Waaagh! boiled against the magic and the stolen godhood of the Battalion, tearing open holes in reality from which more extradimensional aid poured into being on both sides, the world beneath their feet screaming its protests as it bled.
The land split asunder, twisting to the Waaagh!s unrelenting desire to destroy, lava fountained out of the wounded world and changed into an iridescent green hue that lapped onto the Secondary-Impervium alloyed Battle Thralls; mish mashes of endless species all consumed by the fiery rage of Gork, boiled to death in their armour once their shields burst. Spores grew into fully-formed monstrosities, armour and bioniks melded into flesh in a way that was disturbing and simplistic, often bearing too many arms or features replaced with something more suited for war.
Snotlings, Grots, Orks, Trogs, and Biggunz to name the "finkin' boyz"; and endless varieties of Squig from red toothy maws with legs to green short-necked sauropod like monsters to beasts like dragons or even wolves and spiders just to name a tiny handful of the animals that travelled with the Waaagh! as the Orks whooped at the sight of the moon overhead this doomed world being slammed into by another moon; Rokkaz playing devastating exultations in as crimson worldblood leaked out of the moon above and the Waaagh! pulled down roks from the shattered celestial body, already filled with greenskins against all logic or possibility.
Superpowers taken from a million societies were deployed, incredibly fast creatures given the gift of superspeed racing through the viridian Tsunami of the Greenskins; blades of mystic sharpness biting into often poorly armoured green flesh and severing limbs that often grew back in moments where they were not forced to abide, for a moment at least, by the rules of reality with an application of flame. Super strong "flying bricks" smashed through the green tide, pulping flesh or throwing vehicles aside, thunderclaps smashing scrap metal abominations against every principle of engineering back into junk only for these beings to be dragged down by war hungry boyz. Power weapons crackling or swung with simple brute force to smash down these empowered soldiers while others were eventually ripped to shreds by Waaagh propelled dakka or warp power.
Ramshackle scrap vehicles and titanic fungal monstrosities pressed the savages' offensive, hooligan glee driving them to get to grips with the enemy as the Battlelords pressed themselves into the fighting at last, trusting in their godhood and their armour as they smashed aside greenskins and squigs who threw themselves into the fray with contemptuous ease. But the Greenskins wanted to kill them. Every single iota of the Ork essence of being wanted to kill them. That was what the beast did. Slaughter, destroy, kill. That was what the Old Ones wanted of them, to punish all of existence; the C'tan touched, Chaos tainted, and Usurperwarped for killing them, their own creations for failing them, and everything else for daring to exist in a reality not touched by their grace; until there was nothing left but Green.
Even Impervium-Absorbium alloy armour and godhood would have to bend way to such unbridled murderlust given shape and reality and poured into weapons that existed to give voice to the warlust of the green tide; crackling power weapons and glimmering "glowy dakka" sparking at the shields of the somewhat mantid like battlelords as they tore through everything in their path, even shattering Gargants, Bonegrinder Biggunz, and Orkeosauruses where the mightiest of their number strode or called their own grand war machines strode, rallying their flaggering hordes of thralls. But the Megaboss crashed his armour plated Mawkrusha in front of the lead Battlelord, the sumo-wrestler proportioned wyvern beast flying not through any possible set of aerodynamics but out of gravity simply being too afraid of contesting its assertion that it could in fact fly.
A row of tanks was imploded by the massive landing the beast did, while others were reduced to pulp, armour and all, as the Maw-Krusha; Goremayka; let out a roar so loud that the air distorted before its sonerous war cry while Slaughtahking laughed, letting his power choppa glow to life in his clawed gauntlet, whirring chain teeth roaring to life while his other hand let rip with a shoota whose rounds exploded into glowing green power fields that vaporised most of what they touched, including the ground as they burned hemispheres into them before collapsing back in on themselves to create vacuums that sucked in other foes into them to be smashed into white hot orbs; but the Battlelord remained standing, twirling its staff to deflect an orb right back to the Megaboss while taking another on the chin, scarcely flinching from the impact even as the ground was destroyed below it.
The megaboss batted the shot right back into a whirling melee to his side, his retinue of warbosses and "bully boyz" following behind him on maw-krushas, Squig Wyverns, Squig Hawkz, tellyportaz, Deffkoptaz, or stormboy rokkitz. The Battlelord directed its Praetorian guard forward as it sprinted out of the crater like lightning, outracing its own sound and extending a blade from its staff, Goremayka ducking its head to allow for Slaughtahking swung one of his cleavers to intercept with earthshaking force; the kustom blastyshoota on his other arm retracting on the power klaw mount to give the bladed fingers room to swipe at the six-armed and powerfully built god-thief.
They traded blows with speed and skill that belied their size and seemingly brutish builds, fighting with a mastery that would have had any martial arts expert green enough with envy to pass as one of the rampaging fungal tide. Slaughtahking fighting with untempered, undistilled savagery that was never the less, aimed and directed, clever feints and whirling counters paired with brutish direct blows to pound at the Battlelord's armour; his own blue coloured armour's shields hungrily sucking at the energy of the Battlelord's counterstrikes as they jumped onto the Maw-Krusha's back while it gleefully ate its way through the battle thralls in front of it; trying to flank the megaboss only for a thump to its head to reward the godthief. Something it retaliated with a headbutt that the horn helmed Ork was only too happy to meet in return, a shockwave exploding outwards from the impact that sent even tanks into rolls and swatted low flying aircraft from the air.
"Ya got gutz shellboy, but Orkz wuz made fer fightin' and winnin'. We'ze gonna travel ta all deze ooniverses, we'ze gonna make 'em Orky, and we'ze gonna fight every new fing we seez in 'em till itz all proppa green. Den we'ze gonna find more and more and more! Ain't nuffin' gonna stop us! But I'z alwayz gonna remembuh yoo shellboyz, cuz dis? Dis 'ere iz sum uv da best fightin' I've ever 'ad. So Iz gonna thank ya shellboy. Cuz when Ghazghkull, Skarsnik, 'n Mollog krump the lot of ya, I'z not sure if we'z gonna find anuvva fight like ya." He boasted, perhaps were he just an Ork his boasts would have been clearly empty. But they were not just orks; they were the Beast Set Loose. The malice and spite of the Old Ones channelled through bodies that fully embodied the brutish glee of Gork and Mork. A manifestation of the WAAAGH! so potent that reality itself couldn't help but sag beneath their unrestrained thirst for destruction as rocks began to spontaneously animate into effigies of Gork and Mork; Rogue Idols that would have taken ritual and spellcraft for ordinary greenskins now needing nothing but their simple presence as these golem like giants shrugged off blows that would have shattered mountains to add to the carnage.
"Your power is significant, but the purpose remains undeterred. Life exists in chaos and disorder. Your kind, more than most, embodies this savage self-destructive tendency. Unable to create anything worth remembering save for in barbaric warmongering. The Enthralling is a harsh punishment, but it is the only salvation for life which would otherwise destroy itself. You will one day learn to love your chains." The Battlelord countered as its stolen creative powers swirled around itself, girding itself in divine Strength and throwing a blow that socked the Ork hard enough to stagger him before sweeping the other end of the staff-blade in an overhead sweep that the Megaboss simply took on the shoulder and threw right back off.
The Battlelord pivoted, stepping towards the Ork's guard, but the Maw-Krusha had tired of the fighting on its back and swiped a fat claw at the offending insectoid; grabbing it in hand and tossing it off; smashing into the ground only to find the insectoid to have teleported out of the way. The optics of its helmet began to glow white before powerful beams erupted forth, a tyrant's gaze that had felled many champions of many species. But the megaboss brought his choppa into the path, twisting it to angle the deflection to make the whining beam strike its creator in the neck while he made his crude, cruel laughs.
But as reality weakened, other forces saw the rich energy being so freely thrown around by each side and hungered. Some too much to simply wait, not when there was a chance as the Nexus event bringing these sixteen metaversal clusters together was fluctuating once more, driven and warped by the sourcewell and warp energy being tossed around so casually. And reality would tear open with a purple-white fire as a predatory hunting call was sounded, the unceasing hunger of those on the other side apparent as soon as their semi-real, hyperspace born forms of solidified energy clawed their way into being. A howl going across the winds and a fleet of ships cast in their strange image emerging from a swirling vortex opened between the sundered halves of the system's sun.
The Orks knew these creatures, as Ghazghkull's WAAAGH had fought them plenty of times in the reality that they were most prevalent in. A reality of countless star empires trying to make their mark on a series of gate connected galaxies as galaxy devouring crises and a vicious war in heaven between its once fallen and stagnant and now awakened and furious ancients tore their way across the stars. Where worms in waiting and the heavy price of making deals with beings that one should never have made the mistake of bargaining with danced in the stars and the stars were consumed by the wrath of nanites let loose from the L-Gate and the fury of great Marauder Khans.
The Megaboss squinted as the Battlelord turned with similar recognition in its eyes, seeing the creatures already filter outwards looking to satiate their hunger for the sweet energy of life.
"Oi, unbidden boyz; right proppa name that is cuz you weren't zoggin' invited ta this waaaagh! But if ya don't wantz ta wait yer turn; fine, I'll krump da boff of yaz right 'ere, right now!" He shouted, bellowing his promise of annihilation to the energy beasts as the poor, benighted world almost seemed to cry with rain at the prospect of the already ruinous two-way war becoming a three-way maelstrom of violence.
League Actions
[X]: Sneak off to rescue them. You and Samus will head in to rescue the prisoners on your own. Your team will lack your firepower save for phase-wave sniping for some time; but you'll be able to get in and out quickly and save the people or at least determine which ones are already infected.
Defensive Preparations
[X]: Set up defensive turrets and traps. Clarioli, Galen, and Arcee can set up some defensive turrets and drones that when paired with the electromines and gremlins of Boltdancer; will provide significant obstacles for the enemy to have to traverse as well as adding a great deal of supporting fire capabilities.
[X]: Prepare Hexes. You have a lot of casters on your team who can set up wide area hex spells that will weaken the entire enemy force bearing down on your position, giving a greater chance of nobody getting seriously injured.
[X]: Prepare a major destruction spell: Have the Eldar prepare a ritual that will cast a powerful spell that will burn its way through many of the Genestealer Cultists, killing many of them before they have a chance to get into combat range.
Defensive Planning
[X]: Close up avenues of attack: Do your best to limit the number of directions the enemy can attack you from.
[X]: Organise Lines of FIre: Set up a coordinated system to ensure that anyone who needs fire support is going to get it, thus allowing for better overwatch fire on incoming enemies as well as supporting fire on engaged allies and superior suppression against advancing opponents.
[X]: Organise Melee Sequence: Sort out who's best able to handle what in close quarters combat so that nobody ends up picking fights with things they really shouldn't. Ensures that melee engagements are optimal between team mates.
Samus
[X]: I am a blade of many shapes, a warrior of many forms:
Arne
[X]: The Assassin's Knife, the Silent Death
Group 1:
Samus (Chozo Hunter, Extreme Resistances, Extreme Defence, All Rounder): 1200/1200|1200/1200|1000/1000. Morale: Optimal. Stress: 0
Arne (Alimbic Knight, Extreme Resistances, Extreme Defence, All Rounder): 1200/1200|1200/1200|1000/1000 Morale: Great. Stress: 0
Alyrsero (Asuryani Warlock, Good resistances, Extreme Defence, Ranged Damage, Support): 1000/1000|350/350|200/200 Morale: Great. Stress: 5
Kaeliyae (Rillietann Shadowseer, Good Resistances, Extreme Defence, Melee Damage, Control): 950/950|400/400|250/250 Morale: Optimal. Stress: 0
Group 2:
Arcee (Autobot Commander, Great Resistances, Great Defence, All Rounder): 1500/1500|950/1500|1500/1500 Morale: Great. Stress: 5
Galen (Autobot Masterforce, Very Good Resistances, Great Defence, Ranged Damage, Battlefield manipulation): 500/500|400/500|175/175 Morale: Shaky. Stress: 10
Tyrius (Yntanaer Paladin, Extreme Resistances, Extreme Defence, Melee Damage, Tanking): 1500/1500|1500/1500|1500/1500 Morale: Optimal. Stress: 0
Raelamiel (Choir Angel, Great Resistances, Great Defence, Melee Damage, Control): 100/1000|1000/1000|1000/1000 Morale: Optimal. Stress: 0
Group 3:
Marcus(Boltdancer) (Great Resistances, Good Defence, Control, Support): 300/300|100/100|100/100 Morale: Optimal. Stress: 0
Iybraa (Great Resistances, Extreme Defence, Control, All range damage): 1000/1000|500/500|100/100 Morale: Optimal. Stress: 0
Ormothin (Asrai Spellsinger, Decent Resistances, Great Defence, Support, Control) 1250/1250|100/100|250/250 Morale: Optimal. Stress: 0
Elendria (Aesasurmen Warsage, Great Resistances, Great Defence, All Rounder) 1250/1250|850/850|250/250 Morale: Optimal. Stress: 0
Group 4:
Lelithax (Druchii Shadow Sorceress. Great Resistances, Great Defence, Ranged Damage, Melee Damage) 1250/1250|850/850|200/200 Morale: Optimal. Stress: 0
Korlanil (Ynnari Deathmaker, Ranged Damage, Support) 1000/1000|350/350|200/200 Morale: Optimal. Stress 0
Idaliryn (Hyshari Bladewizard, Great Resistances, Great Defence, All Rounder) 1250/1250|850/850|250/250 Morale: Impetuous. Stress: 0
Clarioli (Ithilyani Factormage, Summons, Control) 1000/1000|350/350|200/200 Morale: Great. Stress: 5
Samus
The count of enemies was rising rapidly, leading you to believe they were either teleporting in more assistance, moving them in from where you couldn't see, or were somehow able to just produce them fast enough. Which meant that you didn't have too much time to work before going between the thicket of cultists would be next to impossible. At least while also trying to get any of the remaining captives out. That made the decision for you at least, easy enough.
"Arne I'm going to rescue the captives, if we don't do it now I don't think they'll leave any of them for rescuing." You said, gesturing to the end of the hallway where the warp and echo visor were telling you that the walls, vents, and maintenance tunnels around you were crawling with enemy signatures. They were going to swarm at you without number soon enough, and it was going to take all your wit and cunning to stop your friends from getting overwhelmed as Arne's initial estimate became outdated so quickly your breath hitched in your helmet.
Whatever was down there was pumping out enough of these things to overrun a whole lot more than just the city if they were to go loud, which they almost certainly would after being revealed. You paused briefly and looked back towards the group.
"Are you sure Samus? Most of our team isn't as tough as we are." Arne said, looking towards them and then back at you. "They depend on us for firepower and troubleshooting. Without our support..." He said before you shook your head and cut him off.
"We won't take too long. Just get the innocents out of harm's way before the fighting begins." You said.
"What are we going to do with the people already infected?" He asked, making you go quiet as you looked to the ground and gulped.
"We'll think of something." You replied, getting a nod of acceptance out of him. He seemed rather, reluctant to fully embrace the idea that you were going to indy ploy this, but he trusted you with his life, so he'd put his faith in your judgement for now.
"Whoa, hold on there trooper. What about the defensive line. In case you haven't noticed; we're not exactly in a match with balanced teams." Arcee said, raising her hand as galen and her minicon shifted back into rifle mode for her, her optics clearly seeing the rapidly amassing swarm heading your way like a tsunami just as you did. She had brought up the battlemask over her features, guarding her optics and mouth with a visor and shield while she tensed for imminent battle.
"...She would have enough time to get them out before the density of the Swarm rises to the point of impenetrability. Particularly with her options to alter the flow to time." Alyrsero said after casting a rune into the air and holding his concentration for a moment, muttering a few incantations before catching the glowing rune back in his hand, moving it back into his pouch and giving a nod of affirmation to you.
"Well if the warseer novice says that it will bear out I guess there's no room for debate at all is there? Much like how in a matter of moments we'll hardly have enough room to breathe at all once the swarm arrives." One of them said, dressed in rather macarbe armour with a skull-like helm with a crown of small daggers around it said, rib cage patterned chest armour flexing with his breaths and even his weapon having a scyth bayonet that struck you as outlandishly impractical; his garb a macabre mix of black, white, and dark blue. The eyepieces of his helm glowing an eerie midnight blue.
"Korlanil, a bit of tact." His exodite counterpart said, his armour seeming to be made of resin, wood, scale, and carapace; the stuff of the natural world carefully teased into a protective shape around his body. Rather...pleasantly form-fitting if the muscular sculpting of the armour was at all truthful about the Eldar's physique. His helm bore antlers like a stag, its back growing with leaves and its facemask relatively plain save for the brilliant green eyepieces amidst the brown mask; floral orchid adding its colouration to his otherwise earthy tones.
"Ormothin, Korlanil; that will be enough. We will soon be rather busied with other stuff." Kaeliyae admonished them, humming to herself as she activated her holosuit to disappear into the mists of invisibility while the Druchii sorceress started to weave a spell with the shadows in the room to mould them into barricades or servants, making a number of frightful hooded men with eerie white eyes staring out of their wratih-hoods alongside other, more monstrous shadow beasts; joining Boltdancer's spawn of living lightning as they took up perimeters.
As much as Lelithax...rankled at you, she had the right idea.
"We need to shut down all the possible routes for them to come through. Board up anything you can. Ice it up, wall it up, close it off. If you let them come at you from every direction as they please you're going to get overwhelmed." You said, taking a look at the three routes that the tyranids were able to use to close ranks with the team.
"Have someone on seismograph duty, you're going to need to be made aware of incoming tunnelers or enemies going through the vents and walls." Arne said, then pointing directly behind you, the route you just came through. "Opposite the door we took to get here is the shortest route out of the building. I'd keep that route barricaded. If we want to get out of here, we don't want to go through the thickest concentration of enemies." He said before Elendria shook her head.
"Please, Arne." She said, getting Boltdancer to raise an eyebrow.
"Come on...you say his name when all you call me is "human?"" He complained before Iybraa muttered "not the time" to him.
"Your tactical advice is sound, but consider that if we are in need of rapid withdrawal and must open that passageway; we would open ourselves to additional avenues of enemy advance. Fighting straight through the thicket of the scuttling swarm is daunting, but it will be easier if we need only watch two paths." She said with a rather polite tone.
"Alright, fair. We'll need to do two things, weaken the enemy with whatever you can manage before they get here, and sort out who's going to be the frontliners and rearguard." You said, almost everyone immediately pointing to Tyrius and Raelamiel, the latter simply shrugging.
"Aight, me and pixy will hold out in front." Raelamiel said as she sharpened her swords against each other, the Angel seemingly tense under the sensation of a shadow throughout the sea of souls starting to dawn over you. Endless scratching and alien voices multiplying in your local area, speaking tongues you couldn't understand but transmitting thoughts you very much could. Consume, infect, eliminate, study. The Eldar seemed to be somewhat pained by it, but pushed themselves through all the same, Alyrsero gulping beneath his helmet while Kaeliyae lowered a hand to his shoulder and whispered something that got him to stiffen his resolve.
"Myself and the Hyshite will join them at the front ranks, doing battle where we can. The others of our kind should remain in the back, save Ormothin and Lelithax who shall stay in the centre where it is safest." Elendria said with a sage nod.
"My blade does thirst for battle. I accept the challenge in Tyrion's name." Idaliryn said, his armour seeming to glow a little brighter still as he flipped his greatsword into position and moved with the Fae, the Angel, and the other Eldar to the front.
"I'll hold at the rear with Galen. Boltdancer, stick to the midlines. Iybraa, with me." Arcee said, getting everyone into their positions.
"When we get back; we'll also join the frontlines. Good luck everyone." You said as you started to leave.
The Eldar joined together for a spell that reverberated throughout the warp to push back against the scratching noise. Iybraa and Boltdancer laid out time delayed traps and zones of reservation, and a series of warpcrafted hexes oozed outwards, ready to seep into the oncoming swarm rushing in from multiple sides. With the remaining time, the Eldar and the team set up their barriers; Arcee deploying instacrete foam to seal off the side passages after Raelamiel had laid down her ice walls, Clarioli had placed down her regenerating plasma mines, and Ormothin had tossed seeds that grew into thick, thorny brambles reinforced with luminous hysh and sparking electricity from Kaeliyae and Boltdancer. The back half of these walls were set up shortly afterwards; and the whole of both passages were soon shrouded by Ulgu in thick, gnawing darkness.
Some defenses were also set up in the front and rear, but not too much, enough to encourage them to go through those paths rather than focus on cutting through the barriers, and also to let you go through with ease.
You both activated your timestops and slipped into the embrace of your agility incarnates, teleporting to the ends of the hallway and then phasing through the door; bypassing the two hallways that lead to it from the other side in the T-crossing with your ghost suits, keeping your holofields up to prevent yourselves from being spotted from anything that might be able to keep awareness through the timestop.
The room was one of a number of aliens who were gathered before new recruits. Faces frozen in terror as they were spread throughout a printing room repurposed as a prison for its inhabitants. Based on the way they were turned to face each other it was clear that they were meant to contribute to the...lifecycle of the beasts as soon as the "kiss" had been granted. Which would explain why there were equal numbers of men and women, all of reproducing age. But some of them were...you had to bite your tongue to hold the urge to throw up back.
But as you looked at the frozen genestealers held in stasis, perched on printers or desks or hanging from the ceiling as they guarded their captives who looked on them with unreasoning, mute terror, you had a thought. They could have infected these people already...so what was with the wait?
"Arne, look for something that would make the Genestealers wait." You said as he clearly and audibly gulped back something in his throat and clenched a fist just as he could see you making brief trembles of repressed anger.
"Samus...I think I see it." He said, gesturing to a device that glowed a peculiar blue hue, a cylindrical rod topped with a crystal.
This device is a Kheldian Lure meant to draw a bodiless Kheldian towards it via replicating the signals that the Kheldians and Nictus utilise to seek out suitable hosts. Once in range, the Kheldians will be captured with the secondary portion of this device which is fashioned to forcibly inject the alien into its host. Observation suggests that Kheldians and Nictus would be aware of Genestealer contamination and thus avoid infected hosts; thus requiring the lure to utilise them for their own purposes.
Samus' Notes: This is based on...Weltreich technology based on component analysis and how it's put together. Which means there's probably cults in the Weltreich too, feeding their knowledge to the other cults. But if they're trying to attract these Nictus or Kheldians, from what I've seen of them already they'd be forming an incredibly deadly army. It's...so awful that so much genius is going into this purpose.
Arne's Notes: They already have metahuman abilities and understand how parahuman powers work, so...yes I think I'm getting it now. They want to study Kheldian physiology and send back the data to their fleets. Clever, but horrific. It does mean though, that we need to uproot these nests of kin-thieves before they get out of hand. Especially after all their other abominations against clan and family.
"It's a lure. This is all part of an effort to study and replicate powers." Arne said, steeling himself. "I'm...gods these are just people being used as bait for...breeding experiments!" Arne said as one of his more sensitive issues was being pressed rather hard, his flashes of anger bright in the conduits of destiny.
"We have to burn this, all of this." He said, taking your usual role as the angry and emotive one for now while you tried to keep him focused.
"Arne, the people need to be saved first. They're the ones who are going to get hurt the most. And I...I'm disgusted too, but it's worse to let the innocent die than the guilty go unpunished. We can't just leave them here." You said as he tensed, shuddered, almost balled his hand into a fist and then breathed out and nodded.
"You're right. Let's clear out the kin-thieves while the time stop is still going." He said as he extended his bayonet and armblade. You also got to work quickly; making sure to torch and dice the remains as thoroughly as possible to ensure no regeneration would happen. A brood of genestealers simply disintegrated to ash as soon as time resumed and you had deactivated your holofields to let the people know they were being saved, most of them backing off in a fright, well, as much as they could bound to their chairs. Emma, a curvaceous and somewhat tall redhead whom you at first liked the look of before dashing any hint of attraction as soon as you felt a seed of rot in her spirit. Still, she was in distress, and needed saving and you had, faster than any of them could even perceive that you had moved, cut them all free.
"Come on, we're getting you out of here." You said, letting your scan visor work on the group of twenty or so people in here. No signs of contamination at least; which made you breathe out a sigh of relief as you produced a capture orb meant for securing specimens in a smaller, more portable spaces and pressed the button at the centre to activate it.
"W-what's that?" Emma said, clearly scared out of her mind based on her massively elevated heartbeat and the still profuse sweating she was experiencing.
"This will make getting you out a lot easier. I usually use it to get samples I want back to my ship portably but...it'll keep all of you safe." You said as she gave a slow nod, a tall, thin balding man with green eyes and dark hair managing enough composure to ask a more coherent question.
"Who are you two?" He asked as Arne checked at the walls for a moment and made some sign language to inform you he was sensing movement outside the walls.
"Dawnchild and Duskguard." You said as you activated the Orb.
"Is it going to hurt?" Emma asked.
"Not at all!" You said trying to maintain your cheer as the youngest among them, a dark skinned girl of maybe twelve spoke up just as the capture energy shot out.
"How are you gonna get past all the mons-" Not finishing it before they were contained in the orb which was then dissolved into your zero-point field for safe keeping. You rushed out through the walls, phasing through alongside arne and firing off the speedbooster to go more quickly until you re-emerged outside the compound at the PRT and Protectorate line gathered around the facility, barricades in all directions and guns briefly pointing at you until Kid Win waved them off as you produced the orb once more.
"Hey Dawnchild, uh, just...hanging around doing perimeter dut-Izzat a pokeball?" He asked as he tilted his head at it, your brow kinking in confusion before you released the gathered people who were at least, stood up behind the row of policemen and PRT paramilitants, even some national guard troopers had apparently been called up, dressed in camo fatigues.
"...That is a pokeball what the fuck?" He said before Miss Militia harrumphed at him and he sheepishly apologised for swearing.
"You guys need any help?" He offered.
"If you went in, every single one of your non-powered soldiers would be dead as fast as the inhabitants inside wanted you to be dead. Any of them who make it out would be infected and used to start the cult elsewhere or go to ground in the other cults in the city. Your armour would be your coffin." Arne said bluntly, Dennis gulping audibly while Vista nodded in sad acceptance before offering out a piece of green cloth to him while Dennis looked you straight in the eyes as soon as you made your visor transluscent.
"Be careful out there, alright? Wouldn't want your career as an amazon princess cut short playing Aliens down there yeah? And well, hopefully soon I'll be ready to head down there." He said, giving you a thumbs up that made you feel warm inside. He clearly liked you, and well, was it right to reciprocate that? You weren't sure, but you made a thumbs up back at him.
"What's this?" Arne asked, looking at it.
"Well, you're a knight so I figured you might want a favour from a lady." She said with a smile beneath her helmet as Arne blushed beneath his helmet.
"...Thanks...we'll be back soon." He said as he thumbed at the complex as the vital sign reader of your team indicated that they were heavily engaged in combat.
"Bye." She said with a wave.
"Let's go Arne." You said to him as the two of you rushed down into the area you had left, finding where the rest of your team was as the insane thicket of limbs had outdone even your most pessimistic of expectations. Not merely cultists or genestealers but other organisms were throwing themselves into the killingfields; their bodies teleported back so that nothing was ever lost even if they were slain. You stabbed into the writhing, stabbing frame of a beast with scythe fore limbs that ran in a stooped, velociraptor like position the size of a deinonychus, howling with fury as beady eyes stared at you with hatred until you bisected it with the following upward thrust.
This genus of Tyranid bioform is distinct from that of the Genestealers and is not a product of the typical genestealer lifestyle, instead being produced as a disposable infantry bioform that is expended in enormous numbers to engage foes in melee. Analysis of Eldar records shows that while initially the Tyranids required "synapse organisms" to project connections to the gestalt, the Tyranids evolved past this weakness after incorporating genetic code from much of the "Garden of the Old Ones" that had seen their capabilities continually improve and grow. Now capable of on the fly adaptation and using synapse projection purely to channel additional power into other organisms, the Hormagaunt once known for its tendency to revert to animal savagery if disconnected from the Hive Mind now always operates as part of the enormous gestalt intelligence, contributing the thoughts of every portion of its body to the overall thoughts of the Gestalt intelligence.
Analysis of the Tyranid genome confirms that the Tyranid is alive down to the Quark, Photonic, and Lepton level, which serves as a carrier for its hive mind. These "Tyrannic particles" will cluster together into bodies and genomes which amplify the connection to the hive mind that is comprised out of the gestalted intelligence of all Tyrannic particular organisms. This means that every Tyranid organism is in actuality, a colonial organism comprised out of a vast number of suborganisms. Every organ and limb is capable of acting on its own and directing itself if the colonial creature dies. Tissue will break itself down for recombination and repurposing, often flowing into other tyranids to replace injured tissue. An effect that grows more pronounced the more intense the Tyranid warp presence becomes until Tyranid capabilities flagrantly violate natural law. While some strain of these abilities were always noted, they had grown more extreme in the five thousand years since Tyrannic contact; mingling with the hyper-adaptation, multiplication, and regeneration of the more biomass intensive "Greater Tyranids".
The Hormagaunt itself is a lowly organism, being vulnerable to all of your weapons and having relatively little in the way of protection. However some may develop mutations to increase their toughness and armour, or develop warp shielding from the strength of the hive mind to protect themselves from fire; and like all Tyranids of this strain possess the ability to start adapting and regenerate on the fly; even seeming to draw mass from nowhere. Seemingly dead organisms can be revitalised through multiple processes and complete incineration is recommended to prevent either biopod recovery or regenerative effects. Varying between multiple elemental weapons will be necessary to ensure maximum effectiveness. Also note that the Hormagaunt is extremely fast and while of low strength for a Tyranid melee bioform, remains strong and deadly enough to easily tear apart most combatants of this world and time, with a swarm easily being able to tear an abrams tank apart in seconds and being virtually immune to contemporary small arms fire.
Samus' Notes: These things can, as if they weren't already bad enough, lay eggs on top of all their other multiplication methods. I'm going to need some proper flamethrower type weapons if I'm to have to deal with creatures like this constantly.
Arne's Notes: The Positron beam should, at the very least, be able to ensure no remains are left to regenerate, but I'm going to have to periodically switch it up unless I want to box myself in. Never smart to do against a hyper-adaptive homogenizing swarm.
It was also clear that the Tyranids had found a way to bring far, far more organisms than Arne was initially able to detect; as the halls were already crowded with swarms so thick that you couldn't even see their surfaces anymore, every available space for movement completely covered by the Genestealer Cult and its produced organisms to build a tyranid presence beneath this world's nose. You could only hope that this was the sort of node that if taken out, would seriously disrupt the Tyranids' plans for some time.
Tyrius' blazing sun-sword held the swarm at bay for some time, burning everything it touched, but the creatures grew gradually more and more heat resistant with each passing wave until a Genestealer Alpha rushed through; flesh already mending with its somewhat blackened carapace and slamming into his shield with its claws. Arne's shock coil erupted and vaporised the creature, his charged shot collecting additional universal Ammo as you rushed in; missiles erupting all over. Rocket pods, multi-missiles, and five charged super ice-missiles.
Samus Super Missile Count: 25/40
Sheets of anti-energy exploded around you; encasing wave after wave of enemy in cold so intense that it robbed their bodies of all structure, crumbling into frigid dust while an Eldritch storm of Alyrsero's making raged behind you; Eldar forged warpcraft dancing throughout the halls and seeking out anything they could, twisting and energising them into oblivion while alien ichor raised out; fried to a dead crisp by the energies unleashed. The next wave of cultists had crystalline growths that dampened the powers of the warpcraft tossed their way, forcing Arcee to rip through them with her gun on cyclic mode, the high pitched whine of her weapon drowned out by Arne finding a quintet of particularly massive Genestealers more than twice as tall as the average genestealer, a fearsome pack of lords among the Genestealers whose bodies shimmered with invulnerability taken from a flying brick type metahuman, or the "Alexandria package" as the parahumans would call it; its body resisting the efforts of Arne to cut into its throat or for Elendria's sceptre to break it open.
Genestealer Broodlords are the leaders of multiple packs among Genestealer Purestrains. Far larger and more powerful than even Alpha Purestrains, Broodlords are no slower than their smaller kin and fight with an incredible degree of cunning and skill. Possessing access to a vast array of biomorphs and the benefits of the Tyranid gestalt's insights into ultrasophontic powers as well as formidable warp based abilities, Broodlords are to be underestimated strictly at the user's peril. With their function as nodes for the local hive mind's enhancing aura, the death of a broodlord will cause some disruption to a Genestealer formation; generally prompting the genestealers to withdraw and reconsider their tactics to deal with the loss of such a powerful asset and await for reinforcements and replacements. However in particularly large swarms, the Broodlord is little more than a glorified lieutenant, disposable and replaceable.
Backing off towards another broodlord and its pack of twenty genestealers and quartet of serving Alphas, Arne danced among them, cutting through those with specialist biomorphs he regarded as a greater threat, deflecting claws swung faster than railgun spikes, phasing through guards and tearing apart the Alphas and then gutting the broodlord in charge, stunning the Broodlord pack behind him while you smashed through them in speed booster mode to reduce them to ash, carving a path down the hall and shinesparking back to a safer position; giving Arne a boost with your grapple beam to let him leap into another Broodlord as it flew in an effort to reach Tyrius whose whirling blade was preventing a fierce obstacle for any oncomers. Arne's shock coil roared to life and rapidly incinerated the beast, while your own Gamma beam ripped an aberrant pack making its way to Arne asunder, letting him slink back out of the awareness of their hive mind with the holosuit.
Laser light spilled from the lead of the brick broodlords eyes in a wide sweep that had to be deflected by Idaliryn before it could take Boltdancer's head off, its body moving with supernatural speed to twist out of the way of Marcus' electricity and carving one of his gremlins in twain with a single swipe of its claws, the electricity sucked up by more than a hundred Genestealers adapted with biocapacitators that hummed with living lightning and malignant glee. They built up a charge and launched it at you, warp energies predicting your own evasion efforts and then bolstered by the gathered broodlords and alpha's psychic presence to ram you through multiple walls, sparks dancing across your shielding before further energy was poured into you, the Broodlord swatting Raelamiel aside as a second one slashed its claws into your suit before you could get up; lightning crackling around it while it moved at tremendous speed, scoring a number of further impacts with its fellow kin in a vicious melee struggle with a massive number of foes surrounding you before you tagged it in return with a super missile that stoved in much of its body, pulping the rest of it with beam fire. The shock genestealers, outing themselves as targets, were swiftly eliminated by Arne who swept in invisibly and crashed through them with the speed booster; shinesparking back to where the bulk of the line was being held.
You shot into an Aberrant Alpha with the Ice Beam, making it recoil as its hand was reduced to near absolute zero and frozen to the wall, Arne's radiance beam spitting out and lighting it in judgemental holy fire that made the creature hiss with discomfort; your attentions being turned to helping Raelamiel cut through the unending masses of creatures pushing towards the Angel; adapting to her heavenfrost; some even while still alive, though thankfully it seemed immunity to both cold and heat at the same time was not something in their abilities based on how your star beam scythed through them; rotor blades detaching from your suit and making puree out of neophytes in the backlines setting up their crew-served weapons before returning to you; munitions launcher releasing the corrosion steam to melt the swarm pushing through.
Ranged variants of the Gaunt genus, Termagants as your visor named them, clung to the walls or popped out from vents and flanking positions, firing off organic guns that bore ravenous beetles wreathed in acid, hungry worms, biological railgun launched spikes, or poisoned spines and even barbed, strangling vines. Their weapons fire was unable to cause you any damage, nor were the claws of the hormagaunts, but they were trying to overwhelm the mid-line with fire as heavy roaring could be heard; monstrous things bashing on the barricades set up with deadly intent and forcing Lelithax to divert her attentions to maintaining the shadowfields. You brought your shield out, glancing their impacts back and giving Raelamiel the space to dig her swords into a set of Alphas who had crawled out of some ventilation; deflecting another broodlord's scything talons from her with your shield while Arne vaporised it with his positron beam; the tyranids staggering slightly in the process.
"How are the hexes faring?" You said as you helped Arne stab into an Alpha projecting spellweave that was giving greater speed to all the cultists and their weapons in its vicinity; ducking again under the Broodlord and kicking it hard enough to overcome its rooting effect into the ground and throw it through a wall; Tyrius channeling his divine energy into a sacred fireball and lobbing it forward with a harsh yell to bathe the area in fire; piteous wails emerging as the beasts died in their thousands. Further behind, Iybraa sent forth a cascade of telekinetic blades down range, dicing the entire hallway behind her into gory chunks and then compacting the gore into an orb that she launched so quickly it burned; bursting through a spellcasting Alpha that was guarding its kin against her telepathic scream. But she seemed to be pained as the Tyranids, having already assimilated Mentat psionics like herself, pushed back with psychic attacks of their own, her Vondon metallocrab armour guarding her from the laser fire that skipped off of it.
Clarioli's machines surged forward in an agile, dazzling display of light and furor, Chamon obeying her to crumple the metal of the walls around the Tyranids and squash them into their doom or rip open the guns of their other cultists and using them to flay the creatures; even turning some of them to solid gold outright; her humanoid machines hiding behind a barricade of metal she conjured and laying down streams of accurate exciter guns that made atoms fly apart as their electrons left their molecules behind and made their bodies burn in the ensuing reaction. A single swipe of Alyrsero's sword turning into an Ethereal slash that exploded outwards, ethereal and misty and seeming to cut every beast from the inside out followed by Kaeliyae simply opening a portal from which a blue comet smashed out and straight through a mass of them.
It was enough to make you glad that your own armour was immune to Clarioli's tricks and that it was impossible for such effects to propagate inside of your own body, even while Arne crushed the head of a particularly powerful mutant Broodlord behind you with shockwave producing force; your body flinching back from laser eyes boring into you from dozens of Genestealers, getting you to skid back before your shield returned them to sender and your wingblades hacked apart their leading alpha.
"Well, it bought us some time, enough to slow down their regeneration." The Sorceress said with a strained grunt while Arne shot at organs pulling themselves free of dead organisms to recombine into wounded ones or resurrect dead ones not reclaimed by the biopods. The Superior Broodlord re-emerged once more, reviving despite its head being obliterated, letting it pull itself back together, grabbing at Arne with zephyr speed and smashing him into the wall before raking its claws into him, trying to grab at his helmet while the genestealer swarm materialised to bury him in their thousands, the Broodlords having their first pick and trying to slash at him with empowered claws and teeth; all attempting to open up his helmet; your heart sinking as his shielding started to drop like a cliff. He had already fired off his Resonance Suit blast, and they were holding the blades of his rotor systems steady.
But they had failed to reckon with his strength as he threw his arms forward and sent the massive mob of Genestealers flying off of him. As acolytes and gaunts rushed him, laser weapons and autoguns firing wildly and missiles streaking across the room from their end; he fired off the ghost suit to phase through a hormagaunt horde; unphasing just the tip of his blade and reducing them to puree and then landing back in solid form; breathing hard while your holosuit form danced to his side; swiping off the upper halves of countless gaunts who barely seemed aware of your presence and ripping open another of the creatures with a tug.
Arne (Alimbic Knight, Extreme Resistances, Extreme Defence, All Rounder): 932/1200|1200/1200|1000/1000 Morale: Great. Stress: 0
You heard a cry of pain and saw Tyrius grabbing at his head while cultists and tyranids with distended brains concentrated their attentions on him, trying to overwhelm his mental defenses while he bled from his eyes and nose; surrounding himself in a nimbus of flame to pull off his helmet while he felt the weight of but a portion of the hive mind bearing on his mind; crushing through even his wards with the benefit of the incarnate power the Tyranids had taken for themselves. Even for a fae, the voices were torture, and he couldn't handle it; the Paladin soon vomiting out blood as the hive mind, seeming to have realised that he was a virtually unstoppable physical murder machine, might have been more vulnerable to mental assault if they could overwhelm the defenses his armour and shielding and Paladin blessings gave him.
Something inside you snapped as you heard him call out for mommy, begging for it to please stop. Arne went into a cold rage, but you went into something more potent, more primal as you heard him cry out, tears mixing with blood trailing from his eyes. "Mommy please make it stop! Ytaliana please....I can't! Please, goddess help me! I want my mommy! It's so loud! I d-don't wanna die like this pleaaaaaase!" He wailed like a child as the alien voices tried to burn out his very soul and psyche; dialing up ever more and more psychic pressure as vomited out even more of his glittering life's blood, the Genestealers probing his holy fire shield for weakness, ready to claim their prize.
No. You wouldn't allow this.
"NO!" You shouted so loudly that even the most distant of the beasts turned their head towards you.
Your suit adaptation systems combated with the Tyranids' constantly adjusting weapons, tactics, and transformations; your Berserker boosters being fired up to rip the foe to shreds wherever they might be; most impacts no longer registering to you, even from superstrong broodlords whose blows would annihilate tank columns. Alt-modes were used, shifting into other forms to skitter or roll around, releasing bombs off many sorts and varieties, destroying more and more creatures as you weaved from one end of the battlespace to another. Kill, kill, kill. You were a living weapon, just like them, but you were no monster like they were. Your heart beat with warrior courage and chozo honour; and you wouldn't let your friends down.
Kill, kill, kill; electricity bursting from your alt-mode to slay more beasts, transforming between different forms, multi-missiles, rockets, paralysers, wrist-gun, cannon and more all firing constantly. Foe after foe falling. Allies pulled out of hard situations, reinforcing the line wherever necessary and moving to the next hot spot. You never lost track of how many you killed, but the violence was starting to become a red mist of wrath as you started to scream. You saw K-2L burning, you saw monsters gnawing on the bones of your people, you saw fire and ash. As you hear your friends cry for help, as you watched people like Arcee fall to their knees with injuries from new varieties of beasts your suit named Warrior, Ravener, Abominant, Carnifex, Venomthrope, Zoanthrope, Gargoyle, Simurgh, Kelermorph, Psykmorph, Lictor, Mindwyrm, Cortex Leech, Sky Slasher, Ripper, you lost yourself further and further into the slaughter. As people like Raelamiel fell over, flapping their wings in an attempt to get away, you went from human to blender, and even Arne became indistinct to you.
The roar of hive beasts and mutants was met with the roar of a warrior in training; and your killing rage burned bright, dancing between your foes invisibly or as a cascade of rainbow lights, weapons switched again and again. Ammo replenished by any means you found. You were starting to not see monsters but Space Pirates. The laughing butchers of your homeworld, so smug in the death of your world and your people, laughing as their panoply of genetically engineered freaks carved into the defenceless. Die, they all had to die. Slaughter, blood, vengeance. You needed to make them pay, nobody else should get hurt because of them, because you weren't strong enough. Tears down your eyes and hate in your mouth.
You felt a hand touch you and almost blew the offending head off until you heard your name. "Samus." It was Arne's voice, frightened, worried, concerned. Shame flushed through you as you realised your arm cannon was charging something at his head. You lowered your weapon as you looked around. Most of your friends were injured yes, but alive; being treated by those who could offer healing and repairs. You and Arne were fine. The genestealer cult had been...rendered considerably less than fine as they seemed to realise you weren't something they could deal with using their current assets; pulling back to the lower levels while you breathed out heavily, hearing their awful screeching in the distance and the incessant chatter of alien voices at the back of your mind slowly start to fade. It hurt, but you were used to hurt, especially when it was fading. .
"Samus...they're pulling back." He said, resting a hand on your shoulder as you breathed out, noticing that you were atop a mound of ash, quivering a bit as you stepped back and shook your head.
You took another look around' Arcee's armour was pitted with fusilier shot marks, Marcus was on the ground, having to have Ormothin treat him as poison sank into his body from a spine that had dug into him. He'd live, but the pain he was feeling was unlike anything he ever imagined. Galen was no longer at Arcee's side; having detached to throw off creatures climbing onto her as the battle crescendo'd only to be thrown off later; and was looking at the stump of his arm with horror after some blade carrying Prime beast had hacked it off with a single swing that nearly snuffed out his spark from just that touch until Arcee stomped the creature to death; Kaeliyae reattaching the arm with her biomancy. Clarioli murmured her goodbyes to some of her robotic companions, resting a hand on those not even her powers could save and letting out a few sobs, letting Alyrsero pat her on the shoulder.
Arcee was in halves, her legs missing below the mid-thigh as she crawled to grab the severed appendages, tensing as she rotated herself around and tried to give a reassuring thumbs up. The Eldar at least, were all fine, not even touched. Raelamiel also picked herself up, coughing a bit; her armour remaining inviolate while Tyrius curled into a fetal position, having survived but shaking from the experience the Tyranids had just blasted his brain with. Iybraa had also avoided any injury, but was looking at Marcus with concern.
"He will make it." Ormothin said to her, getting a nod from the Yurye as he urged the boy to lay back down, his wound closing after the spine lodged in him was removed.
"God I'm gonna...shit out my spine..." Marcus groaned.
"Not likely, at least." The Exodite said gently.
"Samus...we're...sorry...we can't keep up..." Arcee breathed as she held her leg stumps together, letting the alloys self-regeneration mould them back together; doing some on field repair jobs with Clarioli's help as Seacar looked down towards her with concern.
"Damn...got my ass kicked...fucking ow..." Raelamiel said with a grimace while she cracked her back and straightened herself, her demeanour shattering as soon as she saw Tyrius. The most surprising thing to you though, was hearing her voice cracking. "Oh baby no!" She said without any of her usual flippant demeanour as she cradled him in her arms, whispering to him that it'd be alright.
Your team was for the most part; broken. And you couldn't help them...neither of you could. Arne sounded like he was sobbing beneath his helmet, heavy breathing coming from him as he murmured about possible scenarios about how to do that better. How they could have changed things up, how they could have avoided so much casualties. You were on the verge of a breakdown yourself for that matter, up until Arcee spoke up, pushing herself onto her reattached feet.
"Hey...trooper. You both did great. We're all alive, and that's more than most people would be able to do in this situation. And...we have you to thank for it. Yeah, we're going to have scars, some of us for longer than others. But, we can fight again another day. We're not beaten. Not yet. I can contact some reinforcements, sub in some help to let the wounded cool down. But you two, I'm only letting you keep going if you really want to. This might be a job for a wrecker crew to just...torch this whole place down honestly." Arcee said, doing her best to preform the role of an understanding big sister, laying a finger on your chin and turning your head towards her as she offered a smile.
"I could cleanse the minds of the broken to give them new courage. If you are comfortable with forcing them back into the fray. I would, understand if you think doing so is barbaric. And I apologise, for not doing enough to ward your friends with my witchcraft. It was my failing, and for that should you wish to despise me...feel free." Alyrsero said, clearly feeling bad about this whole situation.
You barely even noticed your suit's message informing you that you had acquired an upgrade from the Tyranid swarms, you hadn't even felt the sensation of it due to your rampaging bloodthirst.
Extracted from Tyrannic capabilities to produce more ammunition, this upgrade will allow the user's ammo supplies to gradually regenerate over time, allowing for far more endurance on the field and much reduced reliance on quintessence conversion to ensure that user ammo limited weapons will maintain continual fire. This will also enhance the rate at which secondary weapons have their stockpiles restored.
Samus' Notes: Oh...I....guess this is nice...
Arne's Notes: It's...well, that's why I didn't run out of ammo I? Yeah...
What now?
Group 1:
Samus (Chozo Hunter, Extreme Resistances, Extreme Defence, All Rounder): 1200/1200|1200/1200|1000/1000. Morale: Okay. Stress: 25
Arne (Alimbic Knight, Extreme Resistances, Extreme Defence, All Rounder): 1200/1200|1200/1200|1000/1000 Morale: Good. Stress: 15
Alyrsero (Asuryani Warlock, Good resistances, Extreme Defence, Ranged Damage, Support): 1000/1000|350/350|200/200 Morale: Great. Stress: 5
Kaeliyae (Rillietann Shadowseer, Good Resistances, Extreme Defence, Melee Damage, Control): 950/950|400/400|250/250 Morale: Optimal. Stress: 0
Group 2:
Arcee (Autobot Commander, Great Resistances, Great Defence, All Rounder): 25/750|25/750|250/750 Morale: Great. Stress: 5
Galen (Autobot Masterforce, Very Good Resistances, Great Defence, Ranged Damage, Battlefield manipulation): 500/500|400/500|175/175 Morale: Broken. Stress: 100
Tyrius (Yntanaer Paladin, Extreme Resistances, Extreme Defence, Melee Damage, Tanking): 1500/1500|1500/1500|250/1500 Morale: SHATTERED. Stress: 200
Raelamiel (Choir Angel, Great Resistances, Great Defence, Melee Damage, Control): 100/1000|1000/1000|1000/1000 Morale: Broken. Stress: 100
Group 3:
Marcus(Boltdancer) (Great Resistances, Good Defence, Control, Support): 0/300|25/100|10/100 Morale: Poor. Stress: 100
Iybraa (Great Resistances, Extreme Defence, Control, All range damage): 1000/1000|500/500|100/100 Morale: Good. Stress: 25
Ormothin (Asrai Spellsinger, Decent Resistances, Great Defence, Support, Control) 1250/1250|100/100|250/250 Morale: Optimal. Stress: 0
Elendria (Aesasurmen Warsage, Great Resistances, Great Defence, All Rounder) 1250/1250|850/850|250/250 Morale: Optimal. Stress: 0
Group 4:
Lelithax (Druchii Shadow Sorceress. Great Resistances, Great Defence, Ranged Damage, Melee Damage) 1250/1250|850/850|200/200 Morale: Optimal. Stress: 0
Korlanil (Ynnari Deathmaker, Ranged Damage, Support) 100/1000|350/350|200/200 Morale: Optimal. Stress 0
Idaliryn (Hyshari Bladewizard, Great Resistances, Great Defence, All Rounder) 1250/1250|850/850|250/250 Morale: Impetuous. Stress: 0
Clarioli (Ithilyani Factormage, Summons, Control) 700/1000|350/350|200/200 Morale: Wavering. Stress: 50
Actions:
[]: Have Alyrsero restore the team's confidence and morale after everyone heals up, press on. (Arcee will disapprove, autobot standing decreased)
[]: Pull back, this is too intense for your current team, let other people handle it (Leave it up to the NPCs as to whether this threat is properly neutralised. Cool down with your allies. Immediately gain the large SRI rewards acquired.)
[]: Carry on with just the two of you. (This makes it harder, but after your morale is restored properly you can do it)
[]: Carry on with just the two of you and the Eldar. (Easy but you're not really familiar with the Eldar, more are they with you)
[]: Call in for reinforcements from the autobots and starsetters. (Easier but also makes it easier for the Tyranids to track your group.)
[]: Replace injured or morale damaged team mates with more autobot and starsetter allies. (Neutral option)
[]: Blow this whole fucking place up from the sky with unrestrained firepower, your ship too if necessary. (Eliminates this threat completely and lets you gain a whole bunch of salvage but blasting a place of worship to bits and explaining what's going on after the fact is not the best look.)
[]: Write in
Scheduled vote count started by Spartakrod on Jan 24, 2021 at 3:40 PM, finished with 12 posts and 4 votes.
[X]: Sneak off to rescue them. You and Samus will head in to rescue the prisoners on your own. Your team will lack your firepower save for phase-wave sniping for some time; but you'll be able to get in and out quickly and save the people or at least determine which ones are already infected.
[X]: Set up defensive turrets and traps. Clarioli, Galen, and Arcee can set up some defensive turrets and drones that when paired with the electromines and gremlins of Boltdancer; will provide significant obstacles for the enemy to have to traverse as well as adding a great deal of supporting fire capabilities.
[X]: Prepare Hexes. You have a lot of casters on your team who can set up wide area hex spells that will weaken the entire enemy force bearing down on your position, giving a greater chance of nobody getting seriously injured.
[X]: Prepare a major destruction spell: Have the Eldar prepare a ritual that will cast a powerful spell that will burn its way through many of the Genestealer Cultists, killing many of them before they have a chance to get into combat range.
[X]: Organise Lines of FIre: Set up a coordinated system to ensure that anyone who needs fire support is going to get it, thus allowing for better overwatch fire on incoming enemies as well as supporting fire on engaged allies and superior suppression against advancing opponents.
[X]: Organise Melee Sequence: Sort out who's best able to handle what in close quarters combat so that nobody ends up picking fights with things they really shouldn't. Ensures that melee engagements are optimal between team mates.
[X]: Replace injured or morale damaged team mates with more autobot and starsetter allies. (Neutral option)
switch out the ones who can't continue and keep moving, we don't stop until we see that last of this hive dies, we can not let one get away or infect anyone.
Group 2:
Arcee (Autobot Commander, Great Resistances, Great Defence, All Rounder): Shields: 100%. Armour: 100%. Health: 100%. Morale: Great. Stress: 5
Warpath (Autobot General, Sublime Resistances, Extreme Defence, Tanking, All-Rounder Damage): Shields: 100%. Armour: 100%. Health: 100%. Morale: Impetuous. Stress: 0
Joseph (Shadow Magic Defender, Decent Resistances, Great Defence, Support, Ranged Damage) Shields: 100%. Armour: 100%. Health: 100%. Morale: Impetuous. Stress: 0
Doctor Black (Bound Shadow King, Great Resistances, Extreme Defence, Support, Control) Shields: 100%. Armour: 100%. Health: 100%. Morale: Optimal. Stress 0
Ten Shadow Formations (Summoned Shadow Creatures, Decent Resistances, Great Defence: Control, Support) Shields: 100%. Armour: 100%. Health: 100%. Morale: Optimal. Stress: 0. (Comprised of one Nightblade, Three Shadowmen, Five Dark Panthers, Ten Shades, Fifteen Shadow Scorpions, Twenty Nighthounds, Twenty Five Living Shadows, Thirty Shadelings)
Ten Demonic Cohorts (Summoned Demons, Great Resistances, Good Defence, All-Rounder )Shields: 100%. Armour: 100%. Health: 100%. Morale: Impetuous. Stress: 0 (Each Comprised of one Demonic Decurion, Three Demonic Corporals, Five Moloch Bulls, Ten Demonic Legionaries, Fifteen Winged-Demons, Twenty Hellhounds, Twenty Five Demonlings, and Thirty Imps stats are for each unit)
Three Warlock Demons (Summoned Demonic Spellcasters. Good Resistances, Good Defence. Control and Support, can summon their own demons). Shields: 100%. Armour: 100%. Health: 100%. Morale: Impetuous. Stress: 0
Five Hellknights (Summoned Armoured Demonic Cavalry, Great Reistances, Great Defence. Melee/tanking.) Shields: 100%. Armour: 100%. Health: 100%. Morale: Impetuous. Stress: 0
Ten Fire Elemental Cohorts (Summoned Fire Elementals, Great Resistances, Good Defence, All-Rounder) Shields: 100%. Armour: 100%. Health: 100%. Morale: Impetuous. Stress: 0 (Each Comprised of One Pyrocaster, Three Incendiery Warriors, Five Salamanders, Ten Pyro-Phalangites, Fifteen Bonfire-Born, Twenty Flaming Ones, Twenty Five Pyre-Gargoyles, and Thirty Sparklings)
Three Greater Salamanders (Summoned Fire Elemental Warbeast. Damage out the ass. Great Resistances, Great Defence) Shields: 100%. Armour: 100%. Health: 100%. Morale: Impetuous. Stress: 0
Five Elemental Pyromancers (Summoned Fire Elemental Mages. Ranged Damage and Control. Great Resistances, Good Defence) Shields: 100%. Armour: 100%. Health: 100%. Morale: Impetuous. Stress: 0
Ten Golem Cohorts (Golems. Great Defence and Resistances. Tanking.) Shields: 100%. Armour: 100%. Health: 100%. Morale: UNBREAKABLE. Stress: UNBREAKABLE (Comprised of One Golem Master, Three Golem Warriors, Five Golem Watchers, Ten Golem Soldiers, Fifteen Golem Beasts, Twenty Lesser Golems, Twenty Five Golem Men, Thirty Golemlings)
Three Golem Guardians (Golems focused on defense. Great Defence and Resistances. Tanking, Support.) Shields: 100%. Armour: 100%. Health: 100%. Morale: UNBREAKABLE. Stress: UNBREAKABLE
Five Golem Wardens (Golems focused on Crowd Control. Tanking/Control) Shields: 100%. Armour: 100%. Health: 100%. Morale: UNBREAKABLE. Stress: UNBREAKABLE
Ten Ithilmar Warden Claws (Warp-powered automata. Great Resistances, Great Defence, All-Rounder) Shields: 100%. Armour: 100%. Health: 100%. Morale: UNBREAKABLE. Stress: UNBREAKABLE (Each Comprised of One Ithilya Lance, Three Metal Wardens, Five Iron-Hosts, ten Swordbearers, fifteen Spearmakers, twenty Furnace-Spiders, twenty-five metal hawks, and thirty Forgelings; stats are for each unit. Kept in Webway pockets until needed; summoned on the spot when necessary.)
Samus took a look at the team gathered before her, so many in need of healthcare, both mental and physical. So many broken or injured, so many badly hurt or in tears. You knew she felt awful about it, you did too. You felt the crushing pain of guilt heavy in your heart for not being strong enough to keep them all safe. But rather worse than that you felt like you had been a disappointment as a knight, your stomach twisting in knots with disgust at yourself as you couldn't meet the injured in the eyes as they whimpered in pain or in horror. But Samus differed from you with a rather different sensation; rage. She felt angry. Righteously angry and the heat from her anger burned in your mind's eye, a red throbbing glow of fury in her heart that glowed like a sun as she punched into a wall hard enough to cave it in, a roar of frustration coming from her while you simply looked down and exhaled.
"Send them back. Call in reinforcements." Samus growled as you felt the urge to recoil at her anger brewing inside, a simmering volcano looking to erupt once again. In her battle-fury few things could match her; your own ice-cold desire for vengeance paling in comparison to her world-shattering rage against injustice. Strange then, that you used scorching anti-matter lightning and she preferred frigid anti-energy frost. She breathed in and out, heavily, grinding her teeth beneath her helmet as she pushed herself back and looked at Arcee calling in a ground bridge vortex; the green maelstrom moving out to the wounded.
"You guys...ugh...kick their asses kay?...Gonna like...bleed here a bit more..." Marcus groaned, giving a thumbs up that you wearily returned before Alyrsero made his incantation and sent forth a cleaning wave of Hysh to tend to your minds. Clarity returned to your thoughts, stress melted for a bit, and the determination to go on; already unbreakable; is mixed in with renewed enthusiasm for the endeavour rather than simple grim obstinancy. You could do this. You would win. You were already ready to do this to the bitter end, even lay down your life if such was unavoidable. But now hope was fully restored, and the darkness seemed to flicker and dim a bit.
The newcomers came, four in total. The familiar costumes of Alice and Joseph slid through with armies of summoned assistance behind them, cawing demons, crackling fire elementals, and flickering shadowmen. Alice of course, came with an army of demons, riding on the shoulders of Winterpyre alongside Joseph as they waved towards you. Warpath thundered forwards in Tank mode, his aura eager for violence and thrilled for the prospect of battle with worthy opponents. Then Dawnmaker slid through, the Kheldian's radiant form brimming with solar power.
It wasn't hard to see why Dawnmaker was sometimes called the big guns of the Starsetters, or at least one of them. Even Tyrius, Raelamiel, Xaeon, or Iybraa had a bit to go before they could quite match the raw might of Dawnmaker and Duskkeeper; the Peacebringer and Warshade duo who formed the team's hardest hitters. While Dusksetter was busy elsewhere, Dawnmaker would be free to get cracking; the Yurye quite literally cracking the knuckles of his fingers and looking forward with his blazing eyes.
Alice came forth with a much greater host than since you last saw her; having mastered the ability to conjure up far more help from beyond than she could before, flooding the room with an army of not just demons and fire elementals, but a great host of golems that she had learned to construct, bind, and command with spells taught to her by Winterpyre and Caustos; now accompanied by her newfound Knightly Lord of Golems, a large figure made of metal plates riding upon a metallic wingless dragon beast, its powerful metal hands clutching a mystic sword etched with purple runes that glowed against its white and grey armour, the other a mighty shield. Talosii; her defender and champion, who would defend her until destruction; whereupon she could just recreate him. His helmed head had a crown of blades, and purple eyes stared out of the holes in the helm, the golems quickly marshalling into parade formations alongside the elementals and demons as she inspected them.
"Where are we needed?" He said, referring notably to his team; rather than to himself. Kheldians pointedly did not speak in the plural according to your scans. A few did, but most considered themselves singular even if hybridised.
"We need to purge this nest without destroying the building and any evidence inside." You said, looking ahead and stealing yourself as your eyes met the dark depths of an increasingly deep hallway. Eudaimonica though clicked her fingers and pointed to her demons and then had them start to move forward in teams of two squads, her fire elementals following suit; keeping close to the demons under her command as she folded her arms and gave a confident smile. Her demons and elementals were now clad in proper armour, forged in planes of fire and the frostfire hell, their hands now carrying weapons such as swords or metal claw add ons, others wielding shields or whips or crossbows and guns. Winterpyre himself also wore a suit of black, green, and orange plate, his wings folding behind him like a cape as the heavily bound form of the apocalypse demon king thundered forwards; Caustos' roiling body of a fiery knight clanking with every step.
The Eldar took a brief step back at the army that Joseph and Alice brought, weapons presented before Kaeliyae bid them to lower them as she offered a gracious bow to the newcomers. "The day finds you well as I offer you my hand of friendship. I would only ask that you return in kind, so that this may be the beginning of a fruitful relationship." She said before raising her head up again, her movements graceful as ever as she spoke in her pleasant, sing-song voice that made your heart ache to know what might lie beneath.
"Ya see kids, these here are Space Elves 'ccording to our reports on their metaversal cluster. Now, lemme explain a bit more to ya. Things there are fragged straight to the pit. Take a wrong turn and KABLAMMO you just found yourself into a pit of monsters." Warpath said to Alice and Joseph, a slow nod coming from Dawnmaker as Iybraa gave him a gentle wave and was given one in return.
"And these demons?" Idaliryn said, his greatsword ready to launch into a kill-frenzy.
"Are strictly under her control...and nice anyway." You said, gesturing for him to lower his blade as he stared at the creatures warily.
"So you say..." The Hyshari scowled.
"So uh...yeah, monster hunt. I'm down with that. Just uh...make sure we get through this place quickly." He said as he looked around and almost jumped when a clattering bit of furniture fell near him, almost getting a laugh out of you and cheering Samus up just a bit. "...Because this place is...mega-creepy." He said, rubbing at his arms and looking up before shuddering.
"The skeins of fate are difficult to read far in advance here. I am having some trouble finding where we are to head." Alyrsero said as he threw up a rune to try and illuminate his path only for it to fizzle with scarcely any important revelations, getting a sigh out of the warlock as his other hand retreated to beneath his robes.
"Just let my crew make a map for you guys. Hey boys, you ready to go dungeon crawling?" She said, a wide grin on Alice's face as her soldiers stood to attention and offered her a salute.
"Yes mistress Alice, we'll have those tunnels cleared for you in no time!" One of the Demonic Decurions snarled, giving her a stiff salute with his trident and letting loose a crackling hiss of icy power as he straightened himself while the young girl gave a salute right back. They dutifully swarmed out, cackling and roaring as they did to draw as much attention to themselves as possible, flashes of light following them as they found their targets and dove into the fray with the courage of those who knew they weren't at risk.
"Hrm, the joys of cannon fodder." Korlanil wheezed as the air thrummed with violence as Alice's legion spread outwards in an effort to purge the facility wherever they could.
"Better them than us dearie." Lelithax sniggered as she relaxed slightly.
"Well I guess...that helps." Samus said, flicking her attentions to the sounds of biobeasts squealing in alien voices and the roar of demons and elementals who had run into engineered monstrosities. The sound of spells being loosed, weapons being swung and the realm of Frostflame and Earth Bet being connecting time and time again, distortions from the fabric of reality being altered apparent as faint ripples in your mind's eye.
"Hrm, will need to put in orders for better weapons. Losses quite heavy." Said a scrivener demon Alice kept with her, an impish thing with a bovine skull head and wings that carried a spindly body around the size of a baby wrote down on a tablet, hissing to her as the robed thing wrote down a tally and sketched out notes on the events that her army was experiencing as she looked them over.
Her demons, Golems, and elementals had spells bound into them to let members be replaced after 6.66 seconds with another outsider from the realms of the planes so long as at least one member of the cohort was there; the fallen simply being sent back to their plane of origin to await when they could return to the material world. They had to make use of this quite frequently, as the hissing monsters were relentless in their assault on the intruders, hellish fury pitted against alien killing instinct and often being found wanting. But the demons, golems, and elementals were fearless, knowing full well that they were at no permanent risk to themselves as they fought their way through the seething tide of monsters.
Joseph's shadow armies moved with Clarioli's winds of magic powered machinery in the rear, constantly scouring around for any possible threat behind you in a display of unity that for people who had just met was quite impressive indeed; though Doctor Black was busy speaking to the Technologically inclined Eldar all throughout, something you were at least...decently sure was the cause for the coordination.
"Elves hrm? They say my kind are also Elves you know." Iybraa said before Dawnmaker raised a hand.
"Iybraa, perhaps we should wait before boring out friends with the tale of the Yurye?" He said until Lelithax shrugged.
"Mh, even if you have pointed ears, similar features, and powers of your own; you still aren't Eldar." She said before Kaeliyae harrumphed at her and shook her head in disappointment.
"Oh come on, Kaeliyae. Are you going to show me that disdain all day hrm?" She said, tilting her head while Kaeliyae simply stared more intently at her, getting her to sigh.
"You really are impossible." She said as she started to walk forwards down the hall.
"Now hang on there buckeroos, I'm gonna wham-bam and grand-slam my way through! Follow me and let's give these cultists a big ol' BANG to the head!" Warpath cautioned before you had even taken your first step forward, seizing from you the position of point man as the immensely durable autobot changed into tank mode and pushed down the wide hallways, clearly made to evoke both a sense of awe in visitors and allow the cult to swarm enemies properly or move larger beasts of the brood.
"Everyone, dessant up." Samus said as she let her battle focus return, getting a few confused stares from some of the group as she hopped onto the top of the tank. You, eager to not look foolish; pulled yourself up quickly and sat next to her, peeking over the top of the tank's turret to have a look around and then nodding when your other visors detected no apparent threats.
"It means ride on the top of the tank." She said as Warpath gunned his engines, the roller drum in front of him transforming into a whirling mine-flail that quickly spun to life with red coloured energy fields in front, the heavy cannon of his T-95 alt mode looming large in front of him and the urban-warfare refits of rocket pods, grenade racks, two twin machine-gun mini-turret and a rotary heavy machine gun mini-turret thrummed to life as they started to sweep for targets. You got on yourself, taking a moment to analyse his alt-mode and finding yourself nodding in approval. It was a good design to be sure, solid, dependable. You'd like to compliment the designer some day, assuming they're alive.
Samus looked at you with a smile, feeling confidence building on the back of the beast as the Eldar piled on top, Iybraa and Dawnmaker conversing briefly about whether they should go through with it before deciding to simply float at the sides to provide cover while Arcee and her minicon Seacar hanged at a flank; walking opposite to Eudaimonica and winterpyre and letting Joseph and his shadow army guard the rear. A sensible formation to be sure, but one that might struggle if you had to get into tighter spaces.
"Hrm, this seems a rather...barbaric way to ride into battle." Alyrsero remarked as he took a look at the rotary gun, a camera on top swiveling around to stare the warlock in the face.
"Hey, in case you haven't noticed this ain't an IFV. You want to get into the fight quick and give these guys a good ol' KAPOW?! Then you've gotta ride up top." Warpath said with relish for the coming fight while Alice looked at the tablet and gestured a way forward.
You couldn't help but hear the distant roars of faraway battles. Intense, furious; the scrivener demon Alice had writing nonstop. But this facility was vast, and after what felt like half an hour's journey you found that the imagery used by the cult was getting increasingly surreal after going down secret passageways marked by the demons Alice had exploring the area. They grew increasingly frightfully alien and apocalyptic, almost seeming to shimmer as your red eyes looked across them. All reporting of monstrous scenes of a grim transcendence into the body of a great swarm whose tendrils wrapped around all things, hungry, vast, without number. Choking stars, galaxies, planets, civilisations, everything; all food for a cavernous maw made of more than a hundred to the hundredth power mouths. At least, if you were reading the inscription right; it seemed likely they were being poetic with the numbers, you strongly doubted they were interested in giving an exact count.
Secret Roll: 98 (Artifacts discovered by Demons)
Your thoughts though were interrupted by a messenger demon carrying item containers in its hands, having found them while Alice's army was exploring the area. The creature, a pleasant looking red skinned boy in professional looking armour with wide bat wings, lustrous black hair, and red-green robes, offered a curtsy before the seemingly teenaged being handed the orbs to you, his tail wiggling behind him as you studied his face and couldn't help but blush, his yellow eyes bright and his valet boy hat being tipped to you and Samus as he brought his hands behind his back and grinned.
"He's cute." Samus whispered to you, a nod coming from you as the Demon boy gave you both some finger pistols while Alyrsero couldn't help but keep the tip of his spear towards the Demon at all times.
"Yeah...maybe we could ask Alice to introduce us to him when well...we're not busy?" You said, giving her a smile beneath your helm as she nodded eagerly.
"Present for mister Duskguard and miss Dawnchild. Crew found it lying around while they were marching out and the missus tells us to hand the stuff from these statues to ya. Well...it's got stuff I don't get so...enjoy!" He said as you grabbed the Alimbic Item carrier; an inverted pyramid artifact, and then crunched your fingers around the shell with enough force to implode graphite into diamond to reveal the prize on the inside that dispersed into light around you, Samus simply shooting her orb and absorbing her artifact afterwards.
The Rune of Fate is the first Arcanotech upgrade for yourselves and is bound to your soul rather than your armour and as such, will always apply. The Rune of Fate will mitigate the effects of hostile luck manipulation, enhance your own luck and fortune, and bend fate to turn dangerous hits into misses, mitigate received damage, enhance accuracy, and significantly improve performance in games of chance to the point that it is recommended that the user disclose this ability if participating in these games unless deception is necessary or desired. Note that the user will require the Rune of Malignant Fortune to induce misfortune upon enemies as well as the Rune of Shared Blessings to confer this to allies to achieve the full potential of the Rune of Fate.
Samus' Notes: Oh! This must mean that we're going to start delving into the esoterical early then! I'm so excited! I want to learn spells as fast as possible! DD
Arne's Notes: I uh...hrm, well. I feel different, but better different at least. So I can in fact, get upgrades that go straight to my mind, body and soul.
The Power Bomb and Pulse release a contained zero-point energy explosion of enormous force, able to destroy nearly anything it touches. The extreme heat and force of the blast are accompanied by a particle disruption effect that will tear apart the bonds of most forms of matter and overload the coherency of most forms of energy screens, reducing most of what is caught in the blast to states of being where fundamental forces begin to collapse in on themselves into more unified forms in a planck state, allowing only materials and energies reinforced beyond material limitations by immaterial means to survive. The containment helps to prevent excessive collateral damage, but as the bombs are physical munitions; the user must concentrate to produce more of them if they lack the munitions regenerator upgrade.
Samus' Notes: I'll have to make a note to only use these when necessary. The amount of damage one of them can do is really unfortunate to think about. Being able to clear out Denzium obstacles would be quite useful though. Could the area of effect be modified somehow?
Arne's Notes: There's a slight delay between creating the bomb and detonating it that needs to be adjusted to, but I'm wondering if that could be filed down to something more immediate.
The "handshake" protocol was done to pass on your upgrades to each other as well as you had to resist the urge to test fire the power bomb. First because you had 10 and they would need time to regenerate, much like super missiles or mega-grenades. Second because you were in the middle of a crowded area and didn't want to blind people with an explosion of this magnitude.
The Rune of Fate though, that seeped into your very spirit, making you breath in and out as you felt a tingle rush through your body, your posture straightening and your fingers opening as far as they could go as your eyes briefly saw flashes of realms beyond the material. You hitched your breath and murmured a prayer to your gods, clutching towards your chest before shaking your head and seeing things a little more clearly and sharply now, looking at the back of your hand and then towards Samus who seemed to be looking skyward, as if in awe.
"Now...I've got a few more things for ya, but they're less impressive honestly...sooo...here ya go!" He said, whistling to some imps who flapped their wings to drag a box full of goodies that were broken open to show items your suits quickly read as assorted pick-ups. All minor upgrades honestly, but clearly useful.
"On your way then." He said, tipping his cap to you and humming as he disappeared back into hell, letting the group proceed with its descent down the catacombs while Kaeliyae, face close to your own, tapped at where her lips would be under her mask.
"Curious, very curious." She said, humming mostly to herself.
"Some quiet please, I'd like to use this time to do some work." Clarioli said, exhaling as she pulled out her toolkit and began fiddling with something, turning away from the rest of the group in a way that made you feel a bit bad, like she just wasn't comfortable in your presence. Not that you could blame her, your armour devoured some of the gear she had been working on.
"So what are these creatures then?" Joseph said, riding on the back of one of his umbral beasts, the shadowy wolf sniffing around the area while Doctor Black stuck to the shadows, seeming to melt between them at will.
"Vanguard organisms for the Great Devourer, or as the humans call them; the Tyranids; or to use our own term; the IllMurreead. A hive minded swarm that consumes all mass and energy from beyond the veil of reachable or explorable space; taking from each prey their strengths and cunning and moving on. One of the so called Thirteen Emperors of the End Times." Alyrsero said with a cold voice, wiping down the haft of his singing spear and then glancing towards the rest of the group who seemed...less than encouraged by the dramatic title.
"The End Times?" Joseph said as he got up onto the tank and sent his Umbral beast to the backlines to join the rest of his armies in exploring around.
"The Rhana Dandra. The final war for the survival of civilised people against the time of monsters." Clarioli said with a sigh, Doctor Black sticking to the shadows of Warpath's alternate mode as it rumbled forwards, the thuds of Talosii in the back scarcely perceptible from the rumbling of the tank.
"Well, we've stopped the end of the world lots of times. I think we'll be fine." Iybraa said with confidence.
"It's already begun. And the darkest iteration of that prophecy has become the one to take shape. Where worlds careen into one another as the pancosmic firmament decays in advance of the war to end all wars." Clarioli said with a dreary, pessimistic tone, a sad sigh emerging from her as she hugged her legs to her knees.
"...Well...Arne and I have saved the universe a few times. We can manage, I'm sure of it." Samus said with infectious optimism.
"Mmh, they can write that on your tombstone when the jaws of the uncounted monstrosities close upon us all! Maybe some of them will even appreciate the irony?" Korlanil said before Kaeliyae slapped him across the skull mask and wagged her finger at him.
"Since embracing the cult of Ynnead your morose humours have grown ever the fouler. I beg of you to change your material to something to rid yourself of the title of the grand demoralizer!" She said with a flash of anger before she let out a sigh and stared ahead.
"So they're a hive mind swarm. We have faced similar horrors and triumphed before." Dawnmaker said with the utmost confidence from a distance.
"I would not get too comfortable in comparing the Great Devourer to Hamidon or the Deovuring Earth. The scales at work are quite...different." Ormothin said calmly as your group descended into the true catacombs of the lair, finding all traces of attempts to pass as simply some esoteric new age cult having simply vanished; instead of furniture or placards or posters there was chitinous ribbing and decorations seemingly scrawled into the walls in a way that made you uneasy. The thrum of the hive mind in your head was more intense, alien whispering curling past your mind's ear as you breathed in and then out to steel yourself against the horror to come. The tunnels were designed more like the arteries of a living thing than a passageway carved by artificial intent, and you could swear that at times eyes peeled their way into being along the walls.
You heard skittering, distant wailing and roaring and the squelching of things that sounded rather more organic than you'd like. And you could swear that the air here was moving backwards and forwards, almost like it was being inhaled and then exhaled. A double pulse could be felt, and the walls seemed to contract and then expand regularly.
This wall appears to be a seamless mixture of living tissue and inorganic stone and metalwork, combined at the subatomic level into new substances combining the capacities of both. It will regenerate when damaged, and serves as a conduit for warp energies that allow the collective to better channel their abilities while interfering in that of others, siphoning energy from them and passing it onto the warp-casting entities of the enemy. While the user has weapons able to slow the regeneration of the substance and kill it, it will still regenerate ad infinitum so long as matter and energy are available. Find alternative means of dealing damage.
Well, at the very least you had a goal then. Find something that could help with putting an end to this...thing, whatever it was. Your stomach churning somewhat inside at the thought that you were likely in the body of some awful creature that seamlessly blended together organic and inorganic matter. The lack of violence so far, when you had been facing nearly constant attack beforehand though, was eerie.
You knew they were nearby, everyone knew it. But they kept to the shadows. Waiting for something, some moment to strike. What could it be? You weren't sure, but you didn't like the implications of them choosing to hold back. Already you could feel the scratching at the back of your mind, pushing it back out of your mind's ear but never quite ceasing to pay attention to it altogether.
There was a sense of outrage that you had gotten so far, alien minds clearly finding your presence here to be suboptimal for its outcomes. But you also sensed something perhaps worse. Questions, why were they here? How did they get here? What abilities did they have? Words you gave to primal questions that you were struggling to interpret as you allowed yourself only brief glimpses into the roiling cloud of exchanged thoughts that formed this massive brood mind.
Alice's forces had still raced ahead, consolidating into three groups now to deal with the greater opposition and to ensure her most elite minions would be able to support each facet of their advance. Corpses strewn around, only for the biomass to quickly be recycled, component parts disassembling when they still lived and recombining in disgusting displays of melting flesh and flowing body parts. You realised the maxim that "if you start finding a lot of weapons and upgrades, trouble is usually around the corner" held among freelancers was all too true in this case.
The fleshy material began to mould into tyrannic life forms all around, only Alyrsero's quick thinking to slam his spear into the ground and cast forth blazing hysh preventing the boils starting to form beneath your feet from growing into new creatures as the sea of meat, chitin, and bone began to pulse and undulate while making the worst slapping and slopping noises you ever heard as spasmed together into new life. Before your very eyes, a Carnifex, six meters tall and built with a degree of thick muscular power that would make a Tyrannosaurus seem like a light weight with a club headed tail, two scythe like upper limbs that ripped out of its body with amniotic sacks, and a gun-beast that wriggled its way into a perfect fit in the form of a long cannon with four barrels and the thrum of the biological railgun of a heavy venom cannon.
Broodlords clawed their way into being, while Cultists seemed to be simply woven into existence, nude bodies quickly being covered with specially grown gear by tissue that knitted together the necessary inorganic substances to cover its infiltrators and even fashion guns for them, some of them needing to wait a moment for their eyes to crawl into place and fit into sockets or open their mouths to receive their tongues that they soon licked across their teeth. Some genestealers and cultists seemed to have especially amorphous bodies, often marked by the growth of octopus like tendrils in rings around their mouths, their flesh changing and altering; proportions adjusting without pause to suit the needs of the moment while they let out their birth howls.
All over, already born biobeasts joined in, cultists chanting sinister hymns and loading up their weapons and skittering pureborns scampering through sphincter doors that lapsed into opening in a manner that made Joseph shake while Iybraa grimaced beneath her Vondun Metallo-Crab Bio-Power Suit; even the demons with Alice pausing in amazement at how utterly repulsive the sight was. Airborne phage cells kept only in these chambers, out of the sight of meddlers who might bring the wrath of others upon the cult; clumped together, first into dust particles, then into more beasts that wriggled with partly complete forms and limbs until they were made whole, a terrible hunger filling them from birth as these gaunts howled with their first breaths.
"Oh sweet Primus..." Arcee said with a deeply shocked gasp as she stumbled backwards out of this refuse chamber; flesh rapidly growing over blast doors and then secreting resin that hardened into chitin laced with adamantine that in turn sprouted crystals that shimmered to create warp energy barriers to seal off the way past the rapidly growing beasts; your exits similarly being locked out as you found yourselves trapped in the Arena like room; the size of a football stadium and somehow contained beneath the city below even its sewer lines with nobody noticing.
"Open fire!" Samus shouted as the swarm started to descend from all sides. Winged creatures tearing their way free of biomass that seemed to spontaneously birth them and descending on flapping limbs with hate in their eyes; sonerous calls echoing out as your beam lanced out and incinerated a brood of thirty in a single shot; the star beam shot engulfing talon armed Simurghs that to you looked like little more than winged hormagaunts with throat bulges for spitting acidic poison and reducing their bodies to quark-gluon plasma.
You fired again and again, no normal human being able to discern the individual sounds between shots but the swarm here being far thicker than they were above. You switched between beams as soon as you needed more than one pellet of your split beam to kill any of them; watching the prism bounces and the penetration effect of the seismic beam to determine how you were clearing out the hordes. It wasn't quite enough.
You and Samus released two hundred and forty mini-missiles each; letting them arc out with as many different warhead types as you needed; all charged and fitted with super-warheads for maximum impact. The cataclysmic detonation eradicated the thicket; gore, ash, and other particulates raining down while Warpath stood up, guns ablaze as he shouted with excitement, unfurling a large rotary gun from a storage space and letting the Ionic Gatling Gun rip into the creatures starting to come in from all sides.
"Circle formation now! Alice, call your demons back!" You said, everyone backing into their positions while the Eldar cast forth bubble shields and swirling mystic walls to give your band of friends additional space; Alice sucking in a breath and reaching through to retrieve her army and sending them charging out into the swarm as it scuttled into view from all sides.
"Ensure the children are kept alive. Slay the machines." One of the cultists clad in more impressive looking gear than most hissed in English, briefly startling you as you hadn't even considered they could speak the language of the locals.
Gunfire both organic and not crashed against the barriers the Eldar maintained, the armies of your allies forming a circle of spears, guns and spells to cut their way through the ever growing legions. But all too often a puree'd beast would simply knit itself back together or be repurposed to regenerate another. The Cultists were as numerous as their trueborn counterparts grown in sinister vats to seed this world with their vanguard, and you could only imagine that these creatures had vast underground networks; spread across many timelines to prepare the way for their work.
Cultists suited for melee dropped from the ceiling, dilating openings in the ferro-chitinous ceiling weeping sickly sweet smelling fluids briefly before metamorphs and acolytes dropped onto the bubble or onto the circular army holding the tide back. Alice's whip lashed through more than thirty cultists until the thirty first was now too resilient to the hellfire for her to cut through, forcing her to discorporate the whip before it could grab at it and replace the hellfire with a gout of conventional flame; a fireball to incinerate the beasts by the truckload.
More were still coming, consuming even ash when they needed to or simply being sent back to the biopods for regrowth. Dawnmaker had shifted his form into a squid like Bright Nova, letting forth luminous energy in all directions; living artillery tearing apart every creature that he sensed had shifted its adaptations to the point where it was no longer resilient to light based weapons; the ruin he wrought rivalled only by very few among the team.
Certainly not by Joseph whose dark energy blasts often struck creatures who had already developed adaptations to it, instead of cycling to those who hadn't adjusted their physiologies to compensate or had to drop nether energy adaptations to deal with other attacks; the swarms approaching his flank getting perilously closer as rampaging Carnifexes, built like a tank with legs with the size to match and a squat, powerful tusked head at the end of a hunched back, were birthed out of the walls, infantile fury backed up by swives of crab claws and organic scythes that would level skyscrapers; smashing through Demon, Golem, Elemental, and Shadowman alike.
The Carnifex loped forward at surprising speeds; a living battering ram you neutralised with a super missile that took out its upper body, a follow up shot eradicating the other half. The second in its brood was injured rather than dead from the next super missile, losing a limb but still requiring a follow up barrage of standard missiles and unguided rockets to finish off. The third staggered and bled from a super missile, but regrow the injured flesh until your shock coil lashed into it and ripped it apart, spearing through the swarm and howling with an ever higher pitched keen as it tore their bodies apart.
"Haven't seen a horde of enemies this thick since we stirred up the insecticon nest at Thyrax 3. Good ol'days wasn't it Arcee? I still remember the KABOOM! we had to scrounge up to sink 'em!" Warpath said as he simply changed between weapons, having no short supply of guns with different killing agents or effects to continually stress the cultists and vatbirthed's ability to adapt. Clever, certainly was giving him one of the top kill counts, but you were hoping he'd be able to keep it up while Samus busied herself with keeping the skies clear; taking to the air with her suit's wings outstretched and disappearing with her holofields; viscerae and debris falling around wherever her invisible form went.
As abominants smashing into the barrier after breaking their way through the summoned fireline raised their power hammers to strike; the half of their number that stood after Warpath's gatling ion weapon had vaporised them getting his rad-flamer from his wrist to melt them where they stood without a second thought. When his missiles weren't doing enough, his chest cannon spat out an ultra-velocity shell whose thunderclap alone could cause enemies to rupture, smashing through tanks that the cultists were moving in through the arterial canals of this hellscape in a sight that made you want to vomit when they were squelched out of orfices tearing their way into existence.
"This isn't working." You said, Alyrsero sweeping his spearhead to decapitate a Metamorph next to you and a sigh of agreement issuing forth from the young Eldar. A glance told you that it was adapted with special crystals to let it survive contact with the barrier that had so far incinerated each of its kind that touched it.
"I'm quite aware of that, or do you think I'm enjoying my time here?!" Alyrsero said with a displeased grunt as you vapourised the head trying to bite at Kaeliyae's foot as she switched between her various pistols with abandon; distracting illusions confounding the monsters all around you and exertion notable in her breath. Alyrsero thrusted again to let the force weapon blaze the beast from the inside out; absorb its animal soul and then send it forward in a ghost-slash that pulped a whole wave of monstrosities, twisting even the warriors inside out before they were cut to rapidly burning gore.
"Keeping the ever growing weight of voices and mystics from descending upon you strains me, darling girl. I ask your consent to loose my chains a little more; that I may create a path for us." Winterpyre said, the Apocalypse Demon King's arcs of hellish magics alternating between hellfire, toxin, flame, cold, or lightning; whatever was needed to bypass the Cult's adaptation; his energies shifting to avoid resistances and his aura causing many to die simply by being close to them.
He grabbed a particularly large warrior and crushed it in his hands, letting his breath speak for him to repel the crushing warpborn blast waves of cultists with enlarged brains and cables fitted into their heads; his green-orange energy clashing with their own purple prowess until Kaustos swept them aside with his fire tornado; dialing up his heat more and more to overpower ever-growing resistance to it.
"They've got us boxed in, they're just going to keep recycling the dead and keep throwing bigger and badder gribblies at us until we run out of fight to give." Arcee said, stabbing her blade into a serpentine beast that stabbed psychoactive claws into the barrier to pull them open, letting her flesh-disruptor fire to reduce the rhinoceros sized beast to bits.
"Clever machine, but if you want to continue function, we ask of you only one thing. Leave the children and command them to remove their armour." Another cultist said, clad in a sinister carapace like exosuit that flashed with some manner of teleporter every time she was about to be struck; disappearing from one place to another as she laughed, her warp presence burning like a fire on your warp visor.
"How's about I ZAP ya huh?" Warpath said bluntly, counting down her teleports as he smashed his fist down into a metahuman powered broodlord hard enough to smash through its electric barrier field and obliterate its body. As soon as she appeared again, she was met with a lightning gun that sparked electricity into her, throwing her back and making her briefly convulse before she dispelled the electricity and growled.
"Nuisance." She said as she pulled back, melting into the shadows before you could get a good look at her, a curse forming on your lips in frustration as you saw that the circle the summoned help had made was falling apart, half of it broken open even as Iybraa used Carnifexes as wrecking balls to sweep aside charging cultists or intercept abominant swings; other foes simply exploding when she manifested telekinetics inside of them and pushed out or getting diced apart when her fields formed in the gaps between molecules and then rotated. She was making a valiant effort, but not enough to stop the breach.
"Alice, reconsolidate your forces behind us. Samus, Dawnmaker, Warpath, Elendria, Kaeliyae, Idaliryn, Talosii and...yes, Lelithax. Charge." You said, Dawnmaker having shifted into his massive white dwarf form; the crustaceoid neutron star born luminscent white life form pulverising everything it touched with swats of the hand.
"We should make our way to the central door. It's the fastest way towards something we can properly purge." Samus said as she readied herself, the group forming into a single unit behind warpath as he crackled his fists together and let power fists slot in over his hands, his rotary gun moving to his shoulders and his boots extending emitters to cover them in energised fields.
"Arne, want to use the power bombs to clear some safe paths?" Samus said with a smirk beneath her helmet as you gave a small nod.
"Let's crack some heads." Warpath shouted.
"SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF ELDANESH, CHILDREN OF MANKIND! Uhh..." Idaliryn said as the Cultists' metamorphs were pressing against the now less defended barrier as your shooting briefly stopped, his mind racking around what to say while Elendria palmed her helmet's facemask with a hand and Lelithax cracked up. "OTHER ALIENS AND MACHINE MEN! TO GLORY AND RUIN! TO THE DAWN AND THE END! CHAAAAARGE!" He said, flipping his great sword into motion as he ran forward, the white wind of Hysh burning around him as the remaining summoned help retreated to the other flank, letting the remainder of the team hold the front side.
You carved into the foe like a blade through air, nothing getting in your way as the bodies piled up around you and were burnt as thoroughly as possible. Power bombs detonated with cataclysmic thunder, yellow flashes of all destroying light annihilating anything in their path with waves of destruction that defied conventional durability. Samus' speedbooster slammed through the foe in endlessly large numbers, everything splattering against her while you wrestled with beasts who could give even the neutron degenerate matter body of Dawnmaker in his white dwarf form some pause in terms of sheer strength; ripping them apart or blasting them to pieces; Warpath's every blow crushing more and more of the creatures while the Eldar danced through the fields of battle, leaving death in their wake.
But the foe just kept on coming, counting them was pointless when they were without number. Dead meat stitching itself onto other dead meat or the still living or the newly born, splitting, recombining, reshaping utterly endlessly. These were not the Tyranids of the 41st millennium who could be held back with just Melta, Bolter, Flamer, Plasma, and Blade; but were of the Emperor Strain. One of the Thirteen Masters of the Apocalypse whose monstrous armies ravaged the universe of the galaxies of darkness. You felt a sudden chill, your danger senses flashing as you made note of the movement of detached and severed body parts and even viscerae or splattered cells.
The bioporters that kept the Cult from suffering permanent losses weren't currently being used to their fullest extent because they weren't necessary. And you had a chill go down your spine as you realised that an increasingly large pile of tyrannic biomass, some of them little more than clusters of phage cells that melted the "dead" flesh back into raw biomass, were pooling together, flowing through the drainage systems of the building from so many of the dismembered body parts you had left behind earlier.
"Killing" a tyranid meant nothing when a Tyranid was a Tyranid down to the most fundamental level. Beasts started to pull themselves together, piteous and nauseating birth cries being heard as throats congealed into being with grotesque wet slops amidst a floor with the most unpleasant glistening purple flesh floors. Eyes crawling on nerves dug into pits of flesh that opened on heads melting together while the skittering and scratching in the distance grew louder and louder.
Drifting airborne cells kept underground to avoid detection by parahumans if they tried to start an infestation above ground clumped onto these beasts as the components of dead tyranids melted into each other; chanting Cultists exulting in the formation of the growing monstrosity until it had grown into a creature like a Genestealer but larger, more powerful, with a mouth ringed with tentacles, shifting arms that continually changed what weapons they were formed into, and a pair of wings splitting from its back along with a long, sinuous tail. Its chest sometimes opened with teeth, a long flicking tongue hungering for food before it melted back into its flesh as clusters of eyes stared out, shifting around its body like fish swimming through water to keep you all in its sight.
Chitin and scale formed around soft spots, thickening as its body bulged with muscle, the quivering beast's height making it more than a head taller than even Warpath while it let out a squealing, ululating roar that shifted between a thousand different pitches while its throat flowed into proper place, head expanding to suit the formation of a powerful brain while acidic drool leaked from its mouth and toxic spores puffed from its body. The lifeblood of the creature hissed on the ground, and curling wads of its flesh dripped down with sickening splats that festered, squirmed, and wriggled into smaller shapes in the image of their dread father.
The creature needed no time to adjust to its body, no moment to deal with its sudden birth. It formed a pair of swords of bone in its upper hands and thick, powerful rending claws in its lower hands and let out a roar heard mentally, physically, and spiritually as its body shimmered to cloak itself from visible light before reappearing again to let out a chilling shriek that made the entire room shake with its sonerous wails, the tyranids and cultists seeming to feel some perverse ecstasy as you recognised threads of incarnate energy weaving through them as the Brood King functioned as a miniature well for its hive. Their eyes briefly glowing with fragments of divine power.
"...Isha preserve us." Ormothin said with fright as you briefly took a step back from the monstrosity that had been created.
You steeled yourself, a look of determination creeping across your face while Samus grit her teeth and pointed her cannon straight ahead. You looked at the creatures and saw many fates, many of them terrible. You pushed out the thought of your own possible demise as you were trained to. Samus adjusted her stance as the Ymgarl Brood King rumbled out their challenge to the group, stalking and hollering as the cult marched into its positions from the shadows, exulting in the incarnate power the Brood Kings offered.
Warpath punched a hand into his palm and Lelithax produced her halberd staff in short order, growling even as she shook slightly in fear of the beasts before her. Idaliryn's sword blazed and Elendria's sceptre crackled as they adjusted their stance, while Winterpyre and Kaustos roared in challenge.
Organism is a higher strain of Tyranid that serves as a liaison between the Broodlords and Brood Tyrants and the Patriarchs of the Genestealer Cult. With the ability to continually and rapidly alter its physiology to bizarre degrees such as changing the basis of its biochemistry or altering its mass on command as well as truly enormous regenerative capabilities, this organism would be enough of a threat on its own were it not for the creature's bonding with a substantial amount of incarnate threads that have allowed it to forge a connection to the Source of the Sourcewell metaverse; adding to its power tremendously. Able to choose between a large repertoire of metahuman powers from the Sourcewell metaverse and other unknown sources while also having powerful Warp based abilities and more conventional Psionics, this creature's threat profile is difficult to ascertain beyond that it is a significant threat that will typically prefer to fight primarily in melee combat and that its death would weaken nearby tyranids by depriving them of the augmenting synapse aura it provides.
Samus' Notes: If we could just kill these creatures, I think we'd be able to buy the team some reprieve. But I'm wondering why it took so long for them to arrive. Small mercies I guess.
Arne's Notes: This genome is incredibly, ridiculously complex. Kind of like my own I guess. As horrifying as it is though, I think there's something I could extract from it that'd be useful. It'd be nice to repurpose such evil into something better.
------CAUTION------
TYRANID GENESTEALER BROOD KING
THE SHIFTING INFESTATION
HEALTH: 100%
Situation:
The Shifting Infestation is empowering the Tyranids with incarnate power harvested from Primal Earth and its related dimensions and it will continue to do so as long as it lives.
The Shifting Infestation is blocking the way for any further reinforcements, preventing an Autobot sweeper team from teleporting in to cleanse the Tyranid biomass
The Tyrannic catacombs are alive and are able to change their layout and will endlessly spawn more and more tyranids and cultists until a biopurge is done to eliminate all tyrannic matter.
For whatever reason, the Tyranids would prefer to call on a hive fleet rather than simply infesting the planets they are present on with their ability to absorb and subvert biomass so the Tyranid Apocalypse counter is still somewhat far away from triggering a LAST CHANCE mission.
The team is at full strength and is uninjured.
Even with Alice, Clarioli, and Joseph's summoned help you are vastly outnumbered.
A Genestealer Magus has been spotted but has retreated deeper into the catacomb network, given the likely size of the infestation, she has likely gone to another node.
This is an important node of Tyranid biomass, containing a great deal of harvested superhuman tissue that the Cult seems to be interested in studying. Destroying it will set back the Tyranids' understanding of Superhuman powers and slow down their production of superpowered Genestealers, Cultists, and Vatborn True Tyranids.
Destroying the Brood King will weaken the Hive Fleet signal and buy more time before I start rolling for "Tendril Fleet arrival".
Group 2:
Arcee (Autobot Commander, Great Resistances, Great Defence, All Rounder): Shields: 100%. Armour: 100%. Health: 100%. Morale: Optimal. Stress: 5
Warpath (Autobot General, Sublime Resistances, Extreme Defence, Tanking, All-Rounder Damage): Shields: 100%. Armour: 100%. Health: 100%. Morale: Impetuous. Stress: 0
Joseph (Shadow Magic Defender, Decent Resistances, Great Defence, Support, Ranged Damage) Shields: 100%. Armour: 100%. Health: 100%. Morale: Impetuous. Stress: 0
Doctor Black (Bound Shadow King, Great Resistances, Extreme Defence, Support, Control) Shields: 100%. Armour: 100%. Health: 100%. Morale: Optimal. Stress 0
Ten Shadow Formations (Summoned Shadow Creatures, Decent Resistances, Great Defence: Control, Support) Shields: 100%. Armour: 100%. Health: 100%. Morale: Optimal. Stress: 0. (Comprised of one Nightblade, Three Shadowmen, Five Dark Panthers, Ten Shades, Fifteen Shadow Scorpions, Twenty Nighthounds, Twenty Five Living Shadows, Thirty Shadelings)
Ten Demonic Cohorts (Summoned Demons, Great Resistances, Good Defence, All-Rounder )Shields: 100%. Armour: 100%. Health: 100%. Morale: Impetuous. Stress: 0 (Each Comprised of one Demonic Decurion, Three Demonic Corporals, Five Moloch Bulls, Ten Demonic Legionaries, Fifteen Winged-Demons, Twenty Hellhounds, Twenty Five Demonlings, and Thirty Imps stats are for each unit)
Three Warlock Demons (Summoned Demonic Spellcasters. Good Resistances, Good Defence. Control and Support, can summon their own demons). Shields: 100%. Armour: 100%. Health: 100%. Morale: Impetuous. Stress: 0
Five Hellknights (Summoned Armoured Demonic Cavalry, Great Reistances, Great Defence. Melee/tanking.) Shields: 100%. Armour: 100%. Health: 100%. Morale: Impetuous. Stress: 0
Ten Fire Elemental Cohorts (Summoned Fire Elementals, Great Resistances, Good Defence, All-Rounder) Shields: 100%. Armour: 100%. Health: 100%. Morale: Impetuous. Stress: 0 (Each Comprised of One Pyrocaster, Three Incendiery Warriors, Five Salamanders, Ten Pyro-Phalangites, Fifteen Bonfire-Born, Twenty Flaming Ones, Twenty Five Pyre-Gargoyles, and Thirty Sparklings)
Three Greater Salamanders (Summoned Fire Elemental Warbeast. Damage out the ass. Great Resistances, Great Defence) Shields: 100%. Armour: 100%. Health: 100%. Morale: Impetuous. Stress: 0
Five Elemental Pyromancers (Summoned Fire Elemental Mages. Ranged Damage and Control. Great Resistances, Good Defence) Shields: 100%. Armour: 100%. Health: 100%. Morale: Impetuous. Stress: 0
Ten Golem Cohorts (Golems. Great Defence and Resistances. Tanking.) Shields: 100%. Armour: 100%. Health: 100%. Morale: UNBREAKABLE. Stress: UNBREAKABLE (Comprised of One Golem Master, Three Golem Warriors, Five Golem Watchers, Ten Golem Soldiers, Fifteen Golem Beasts, Twenty Lesser Golems, Twenty Five Golem Men, Thirty Golemlings)
Three Golem Guardians (Golems focused on defense. Great Defence and Resistances. Tanking, Support.) Shields: 100%. Armour: 100%. Health: 100%. Morale: UNBREAKABLE. Stress: UNBREAKABLE
Five Golem Wardens (Golems focused on Crowd Control. Tanking/Control) Shields: 100%. Armour: 100%. Health: 100%. Morale: UNBREAKABLE. Stress: UNBREAKABLE
Ten Ithilmar Warden Claws (Warp-powered automata. Great Resistances, Great Defence, All-Rounder) Shields: 100%. Armour: 100%. Health: 100%. Morale: UNBREAKABLE. Stress: UNBREAKABLE (Each Comprised of One Ithilya Lance, Three Metal Wardens, Five Iron-Hosts, ten Swordbearers, fifteen Spearmakers, twenty Furnace-Spiders, twenty-five metal hawks, and thirty Forgelings; stats are for each unit. Kept in Webway pockets until needed; summoned on the spot when necessary.)
[]: Purge Tyrannic biomass wherever possible: Eliminate Tyrannic matter to reduce the rate at which more Tyranids spawn to reinforce the Brood King and reduce its ability to draw on matter to adjust its capabilities.
[]: Focus on Buff Aura Creatures: Attack the synapse creatures providing synaptic aura buffs to the swarm, lowering their overall capabilities
[]: Focus on the Brood King: Eliminate the Brood King as fast as possible to remove the incarnate buffs it gives to other tyranids.
[]: Focus on the Casters: Take out the casting capable Tyranids and Cultists before they start throwing hands with various forms of esoteric attacks.
[]: Focus on Staying Alive: Put all efforts into avoiding infection by the phage cells, the genestealers, or being eaten alive by the tyranids.
[]: Focus on breaching the Tyranid Shroud: Put efforts into trying to get a ground-bridge connection to the autobots for them to bring in a Sweep team to do a biopurge of this nest, risky but calls in a high-grade autobot crew of Sweeps; wreckers who specialise in eliminating virulent homogenizing swarms like the Tyranids.
Group Actions:
[]: Prepare Buffs: Fire up some buffs before the battle is engaged to rebalance the odds in your favour.
[]: Prepare Hexes: Try to weaken the Hive Mind's swarms before battle is engaged.
[]: Target supporting Organisms: Focus Not on the Brood King but its support such as Zoanthropes, Venomthropes, or Lesser Cult Magi.
[]: Look for any terrain advantages: Look for where there might be any features of the battlefield that might help, such as volatile energy generation nodes that could burn the swarm if burst or places you could siphon energy from for immediate shield recharge. You can feel two trapped Progenitor relics too, which can provide immediate upgrades when acquired, but once the Hive Mind understands your connection to them; they'll probably move them elsewhere.
[]: Take the Brood King's Challenge Head on: Take the beast on yourself, the Hive Mind has no sense of honour, so its challenge is almost certainly bait, but the Hive Mind likely doesn't quite recognise the combat capabilities of a pair of Inheritor Warriors, backed up by Post-Freedom from Slaanesh Eldar able to use their Warp born gifts without fear of She who Thirsts. If it dies, the fight will be much easier.
[]: Farm extra incarnate energy from the swarm: Kill creatures with larger concentrations of Incarnate energy, using that power to enhance your team and yourselves. This will rapidly ensure incarnate power progress as well as make your team more able to contribute in later rounds, adding to the time the encounter will last but having long term benefits.
Samus Actions:
[]: Swift as Lightning, Deadly as Thunder: Rush in and out of melee with a combination of your various movement powers, alt-modes, timestops, teleportations, and phase-outs. Never let the enemy focus you down for too long, but they'll soon realise the futility of attacking you and focus more on other team mates.
[]: The Gauntlet Thrown, the Die Cast: Make yourself the most obvious target possible, rushing into the very thick of battle and draw all eyes on yourself as you purge everything you get into melee with. You'll take more damage, but allies will take less.
[]: Spirit of War, Goddess of Justice: You have incredible ranged firepower that could lay low nations and mountain ranges were their energies not precisely contained and shaped; concentrate them to the maximum upon the most dangerous targets your group decides to deal with, annihilate everything you see without pause or mercy.
[]: A glacier's curse, a winter's smite: Make heavy usage of immobilization weapons such as your paralyzers, the ice beam and missile, and judicious usage of time-stop and teleportation to stop the enemy from moving as they please, pushing allies about to get hurt out of harm's way or locking down threatening enemies before they can close in. Lower damage but better support.
[]: Shifting Warrior, Transforming Master: Use your alt-modes for maximum mobility, crawling around enemies like the brood king with the spider-ball, dropping power bombs, transforming into a jet or helicopter as needed; never giving them an opportunity to really grab onto you while hitting at vulnerable points, even going inside the Brood King's mouth in morph ball mode to drop power bombs where possible.
[]: I am a blade of many shapes, a warrior of many forms: Take a neutral, adaptive stance; adjusting your techniques and your style as the situation demands, not really having the benefits of any one of them but none of the weaknesses of any; but mitigates risk the most overall for the entire team.
Arne Actions:
[]: Blood of the Einherjar, Scion of the Alimbics: Unleash the true fury of the Uskarlings and your status as an Alimbic Knight, dealing massive damage in close quarters as you go full rip and tear mode; likely talking damage in the process but annihilating enemies in a vicious blur; your shock coil being used to restore energy where needed.
[]: The Lightning Incarnate, the Storm's Son: Make heavy usage of the Shock Coil, the Positron beam, and the Electrowave Beam; frying your enemies and stopping them in their tracks with convulsing bolts of lightning and anti-matter; never missing, striking foe after foe without mercy. Deals a great deal of damage but is intensive on your Universal Ammo and Missile stock piles.
[]: The Assassin's Knife, the Silent Death: Move stealthily, going between foe to foe deal sneak attack damage, keeping the risk to yourself low but dealing intense burst damage well suited for overpowering the healing factor of your opponents, striking at key moments to deal critical blows.
[]: Knight of Honour, Paladin Aspirant: Make yourself the rock upon which the enemy will shatter against. Rushing into the very thick of battle and draw all eyes on yourself as you purge everything you get into melee with. You'll take more damage, but allies will take less.
[]: Pilot Extraordinary, Child Ace: Take the possibly risky option of having the Sleipnir provide air support with its bunker-buster and object penetrating munitions guided by yourself in tandem with the ship's Synthetic consciousness. This will take some of your attention to coordinate the shots in a way that ensures nobody gets hurt who isn't supposed to, but the ship has plenty of firepower and can breach through the complex and rain fire upon the Brood King.
[]: Champion of the Clan, Strength of Sylux: You are just a bit physically stronger than Samus, though to most the slight difference is mostly academic and is more born of being a bit taller than she is. Still, sometimes raw strength is its own weapon, disrupt the enemy formation by grabbing onto its creatures and smashing them into the rest of the foe like a club or throwing them around. Don't let them coordinate, don't let them even stand. Even if they adapt to blunt force trauma, their ability to make a coherent attack will be egregiously disrupted by your crowd control as you simply smash them around or fling them aside; making everyone's job easier. And you'd like to bet that most of the Tyranids aren't adapted to being impaled with their own melee bio-weapons either.
[X]: Focus on the Brood King: Eliminate the Brood King as fast as possible to remove the incarnate buffs it gives to other tyranids.
[X]: Prepare Buffs: Fire up some buffs before the battle is engaged to rebalance the odds in your favour.
[X]: Shifting Warrior, Transforming Master: Use your alt-modes for maximum mobility, crawling around enemies like the brood king with the spider-ball, dropping power bombs, transforming into a jet or helicopter as needed; never giving them an opportunity to really grab onto you while hitting at vulnerable points, even going inside the Brood King's mouth in morph ball mode to drop power bombs where possible.
[X]: Pilot Extraordinary, Child Ace: Take the possibly risky option of having the Sleipnir provide air support with its bunker-buster and object penetrating munitions guided by yourself in tandem with the ship's Synthetic consciousness. This will take some of your attention to coordinate the shots in a way that ensures nobody gets hurt who isn't supposed to, but the ship has plenty of firepower and can breach through the complex and rain fire upon the Brood King.
[X]: Focus on the Brood King: Eliminate the Brood King as fast as possible to remove the incarnate buffs it gives to other tyranids.
[X]: Prepare Buffs: Fire up some buffs before the battle is engaged to rebalance the odds in your favour.
[X]: Shifting Warrior, Transforming Master: Use your alt-modes for maximum mobility, crawling around enemies like the brood king with the spider-ball, dropping power bombs, transforming into a jet or helicopter as needed; never giving them an opportunity to really grab onto you while hitting at vulnerable points, even going inside the Brood King's mouth in morph ball mode to drop power bombs where possible.
[X]: Pilot Extraordinary, Child Ace: Take the possibly risky option of having the Sleipnir provide air support with its bunker-buster and object penetrating munitions guided by yourself in tandem with the ship's Synthetic consciousness. This will take some of your attention to coordinate the shots in a way that ensures nobody gets hurt who isn't supposed to, but the ship has plenty of firepower and can breach through the complex and rain fire upon the Brood King.
ok this goes without saying, we need to kill that Brood King, this Earth Cannot handle a Tendril. But we can't let the Hive get the upper hand in this fight, so making sure the buffs are gone is a good start
[X] Plan Buffs and Slaying
- [X]: Focus on Buff Aura Creatures: Attack the synapse creatures providing synaptic aura buffs to the swarm, lowering their overall capabilities
- [X]: Prepare Buffs: Fire up some buffs before the battle is engaged to rebalance the odds in your favour.
- [X]: Shifting Warrior, Transforming Master: Use your alt-modes for maximum mobility, crawling around enemies like the brood king with the spider-ball, dropping power bombs, transforming into a jet or helicopter as needed; never giving them an opportunity to really grab onto you while hitting at vulnerable points, even going inside the Brood King's mouth in morph ball mode to drop power bombs where possible.
- [X]: The Lightning Incarnate, the Storm's Son: Make heavy usage of the Shock Coil, the Positron beam, and the Electrowave Beam; frying your enemies and stopping them in their tracks with convulsing bolts of lightning and anti-matter; never missing, striking foe after foe without mercy. Deals a great deal of damage but is intensive on your Universal Ammo and Missile stock piles.
