always_confused
Perpetually unwanted
- Location
- SEA
Include the navy in everything. Even things that don't have to do with water. They have such a fan cast of characters. <3
From a Dead World (Skaven Quest)
- Thread starter Xantalos
- Start date
- Fantasy
Spectrum
Tell me a secret~
- Location
- Behind you~
We don't care about the Elves for at least like 5 more turns. If they mess with us periodically, fine, that's just the cost of doing business, but going after Ulthuan is insanity.
There are lots and lots and lots of other targets closer to home that are easier, to boot.
I'd rather randomly decide to start knocking over Karaks than even plan for going after the Elves right now.
There are lots and lots and lots of other targets closer to home that are easier, to boot.
I'd rather randomly decide to start knocking over Karaks than even plan for going after the Elves right now.
always_confused
Perpetually unwanted
- Location
- SEA
On a slightly more serious note, one skaven weapon I've always wanted to build in huge numbers - once the requisite industry is set up, of course - is warplock Jezzails.
Spectrum
Tell me a secret~
- Location
- Behind you~
I have a tech item in the list already (I think) to push towards widespread firearm manufacture and reorg of the USA towards Napoleon line shooting tactics. It'll take a lot to get there but should hilariously improve our effectiveness.
King Arthur
The Once and Future King
If we want to go to Ulthuan there's a better way to do it.
Namely, invade either the Wood Elves or the Dark Elves first. The Wood Elves will grant us the ability to figure out their forest teleportation trick, and then we can just teleport all our armies directly into Ulthuan through forests. Taking the Dark Elves will get us their Black Arc's, which are almost unstoppable and we can use them to completely shatter their navy and land our army on their shore traditionally.
Both are also super useful in their own right for everything else, the forest teleport trick is amazing logistically/strategically/tactically while the Black Arcs are a handful of super weapons that are useful everywhere cause they fly.
Also, how weird is it that the Dark Elves have a handful of super weapons while we currently have none?
End Times 2 Results - The Estalian War - Skaven Victory - The Human Equation
Xantalos
Turtle-Speed Writing
The skaven grip on Estalia tightened into a stranglehold. In both the north and south they had broken the Estalians, with sword and fang and brute numbers that no amount of military brilliance could stand against. Bilbali burned in the north, its crumbling ruins already occupied by swarms of skaven, who scurried gleefully about, taking every scrap of wealth the manthing city had to offer for themselves. Magritta suffered much the same fate, with many Mors broodmothers already scheduled to be shipped into the new territory the clan had taken for itself. The Grand Temple of Myrmidia was torn down and new, foul altars to the Horned Rat erected in its place, a grand pillar of warpstone shining a malevolent green on the wreck of the holy place.
As skaven claws sank into the lands of manthings they had lurked under for thousands of years, their armies marched on the last pockets of resistance. From north, south and west Mors' legions ground into the Irrana mountains, squeezing the humans out from their remaining settlements like exterminators clearing vermin from a home. Those who fought against the vermintide died hopelessly outnumbered, or were captured and enslaved, shipped off to Skavenblight in droves to display the power of Mors. Those who ran only delayed their fate, for there was only so much space left unoccupied by the skaven, and every day it shrank further. The territory of the ratmen enclosed them on all sides, and there would be no aid from other nations. Though the surviving priests of Myrmidia continued to urge them to have faith, that their god-queen would find a way to save them, the common folk knew in their hearts that they were facing the end of Estalia. Some chose to take their own lives in the face of such a revelation, and some chose a fate worse than death by selling their souls to the Dark Gods in exchange for salvation. Even this accomplished nothing, as the gifts the powers of Chaos granted them availed them nothing against the unrelenting tide of skaven. Still others, those who the ratfolk had taken everything from, stared into the teeth of their incoming doom and sharpened their spears. They would not survive the coming days, but they would be sure to send as many of the bastards to their horned god as they could before then.
In the mountain fortress-town of Llaqueno, there were no civilians anymore, fled west to safer territories. Instead its walls were manned by an eclectic collection of scarred men and women in white, all of them survivors from the battle of the Tagos. After her defeat on the river Myrmidia had split her already-diminished host up, allowing her subordinates to decide where to allocate their efforts. Some amongst her forces refused to abandon their goddess, however, and donned the white robes of the Myrmidian clergy if they were not already ordained to signify their devotion to their goddess. Now they watched anxiously for signs of a skaven attack, for their god-queen had sequestered herself in the central keep of the town and had not come out for days, refusing food and water and burning candles all through the night. Every man and woman there had seen Myrmidia's might firsthand, and so though their concern was stretched by the subdued tone of voice she had adopted, they kept faith that the war goddess was constructing a new ploy, some grand plan that would allow their countrymen to escape the death grip of the ratmen with their lives.
The chamber Myrmidia was in had seen better days. It was furnished in a fairly spartan fashion, consisting of just a bed, armoire, and desk, with no banners or paintings mounted on the wall save for the flag of Estalia over the bed. A fireplace sat in one wall, cold and dark. The room was instead lit by many candles, set wherever they would fit, the long hours of their use dripping wax over their bases and onto the floor. The bed was made to military perfection, not a crease present upon the sheets, and it was evident that it had not been slept in for many months. There was a single window facing the door, next to both the desk and the bed. Sheafs of paper covered the floor, scattered every which way until it was nigh impossible to walk without stepping on one, and the only sound in the room was the endless skritch-skratch of a pen. The papers were covered in names, those of every Estalian that had died in the war. Myrmidia's pen twitched across pages at frenetic speeds, emptying pots of ink nothing down every last person, soldier and civilian, that had fallen to the hand of the skaven. There were so very many, and Myrmidia's eyes burned from the effort of staring into the endless lists of casualties that she had incurred, but she continued without pause or rest, her perfect memory allowing her to remember the names of every one of her people that she had failed.
Ricardo. Joseph. Matias.
How could she have been so foolish? Not seeing the signs earlier had cost the lives of so many good people, truly deserving of life. From the moment she emerged the skaven had been on her tail, sending the deadliest of her assassins to slay her, watching her every movement from the shadows with their beady eyes, plotting her downfall. Such prompt action from the species so prone to infighting should have tipped her off, but she had not seen the true intent behind the assassin's blade - that such an act could only have been the first strike of a preexisting plan to conquer Estalia. She had failed.
Penelope. Gabriel. Rico.
When the skaven had struck at her navy, she should have seen. The ratmen had both taken away her ability to evacuate by sea and intended to further attack her with her own ships before fate had given her a chance by allowing Elharalaeon to intercept the ratmen fleet, though she had not learned the truth of that matter until later on. The mere fact that the skaven were prepared to engage her in multiple theatres of war as a prelude to their true offensive should have been enough warning for her, enough for her to begin evacuating her civilian populace to Tilea or to reach out to someone, anyone else for help. But she had been convinced that she could handle whatever the skaven threw at her. She had failed.
James. Elisa. Tonio.
The assassin's escape had been the last hint she had been granted. The skaven had been subjected to the worst her interrogators could devise, had been locked in a prison designed by her to be inescapeable to his kind, and he had slipped free without any trouble, laughing at the futility of her efforts as he went. It had been a prelude to the entire conflict, a mocking twist of fate that mirrored it in miniature. If the skaven were capable of flaunting her best security measures with such ease, then how could she ever face them on the field of battle and win? But she had been sure of herself, confident that once exposed to the light the skaven's cunning would dry up. How wrong she had been. She had failed.
Isabella. Alberto. Daniela.
Failure after failure after failure. Not realizing the skaven would seek to disrupt her chain of command before their main attack, assuming that destroying Under-Magritta would accomplish anything at all, not adequately preparing her cities for possible assaults from underground, letting the Drillfiends ravage her people's homes for hours while she sought petty revenge, having the gall to think that she could meaningfully oppose the skaven legion marching from the east with raids in the night and harrassment of their supply train... Myrmidia's failures ate at her over the course of those days and nights, regardless of whether they were only visible in hindsight or not. The names and faces of soldiers, civilians, children flashed in front of her eyes and the scratching of her pen became feverish and obsessive. She had to know everyone she had killed with her actions, she had to burn them in her mind's eye forever so they would never go away, would never stop staring accusingly at her, judging her as unworthy to lead her people. She had to, because if she did not then they would all be forgotten and if they were forgotten then their memories would die and then they would be dead forever and it would all be her fault, forever her fault. She had had the power to save them, and she had not done so. It was all her fault.
Diego Leo Raul UrsulaSalvadorCarmenJulioNoePaulaKharmenTzeodorNurguelSllavanah
She was well aware that as she sat there wasting time, the legions of the skaven were moving to oust her people from the mountains, to squeeze and squeeze the last drops of human independence from Estalia until there was nothing left but a broken and drained corpse. She could not stop it, so she did nothing. She would fight and kill them when they came to this place until she died in turn, but her dream of the descendents of Tylos united had been killed on the banks of the Tagos. Perhaps it would be better if she had died there, so the specter of her legend could not taunt what Estalians still lived with a vestige of false hope.
The tip of her pen snapped under the pressure she had been increasingly applying to it, smearing the page of names with a great ugly black streak. Myrmidia stared unblinking at it, tears welling up in her eyes for some godforsaken reason. She jerked her head away violently - she did not have the right to cry. As she did, her eyes fell upon her spear, lying disused in a corner by the bed. A thought entered her mind as she looked at it. It was a worthless instrument of death, that had not saved any lives or done anything at all to better the world ever. But perhaps....
Perhaps there was one act of good the spear could accomplish.
The door creaked open, disturbing a small pile of papers that had built up near it. Myrmidia turned, her figure sillhouetted by the light coming in through the window. "What is it," she croaked irritatedly. "Have you forgotten that I'm only to be disturbed if the skaven are about to assault us?" Her throat ached as she spoke; she was suddenly more aware that she had not eaten or drank in a long time.
The door creaked shut as a petite woman in a white robe walked in. Her hair was covered by a hood, and her eyes were a deep blue. Her face was unblemished, a small oval of pale skin that held serenity and grace in its features. "Technically speaking, my queen, we are forever on the precipice of an assault by the ratfolk, given the state of the country." Her voice was quiet but poised and faintly melodious, and Myrmidia chuckled bitterly as she acknowledged the truth in her words. "So what is it," she asked as she sat down heavily on the bed, messing its neat folds. "What brings you here of all places, while the end of our people bears down on our heads? You should join your comrades and enjoy life while you still have it."
"May I?" The woman responded, motioning to the bed. Myrmidia shrugged, and the woman sat down, her weight hardly disturbing the mattress at all. She held a flask out to the goddess, and Myrmidia took it after a moment's hesitation, downing the contents with several gulps. The expected burn of alcohol did not materialize, however - it contained only cool water, surprisingly refreshing to her parched mouth. "I had a sister once," the woman began as Myrmidia finished the flask off, her thirst suddenly resurgent.
"She was better than me at everything. We were the same age, but she was always faster than me, smarter than me, prettier than me. I looked up to her like she was my big sister, and I always worried that I wasn't good enough to be around her. She said she loved me, and I loved her, but I always secretly thought she was a little tired of being around me. I couldn't keep up with her when we were playing with the other children, and she was always the one who solved the puzzles our father would give us. So I found other things I could do, helping my mother out or learning to patch up my toys while she went out and read books and learned how to build things. We grew apart; I didn't mean for it to happen, but we gravitated towards different things, and where we once were inseperable we now barely saw one another. She'd grown strong and tall and beautiful, boys were always swooning over her while she barely gave them a second glance. She had a mind like a razor and a tongue like a whip, while I ..." She gestured to herself dismissively. "We still talked occasionally of course, but not like before, too much time had passed. And I was always a little sad about that, because I'd done that in my stupidity. I'd drawn away from her because I thought I wasn't good enough for her, and now I'd never be close to her in the way that I was when we were young."
The woman looked at Myrmidia, her blue eyes radiating sadness. "And when she died, I'd lost her for good."
"How?" Myrmidia grunted hollowly. "Tales of death are not new to me, might as well hear one more."
The woman shook her head in reply. "It doesn't matter. The point is, when I'd lost her, I fell into despair for a while, I was convinced it was my fault. I cried for days because I was convinced that because I hadn't made an effort to be closer to her, my sister had died. I was inconsolable; she had been the better one of us by far, and if she was dead then why did I deserve to live?
But then I looked at my mother and father and at all the people I knew and I realized that I didn't want to hurt them further. I realized that it wasn't my fault my sister had died, and that it wasn't my fault we had grown apart."
The woman swept a few sheets of paper to the floor as she leaned in, her face exuding compassion that was suddenly unbearable for Myrmidia to look at. The goddess turned away, staring fiercely out the window as the woman kept talking, her voice soft and understanding.
"I realized that sitting by myself, going over the past trying to find a point where I could have changed it, could have saved my sister was pointless. Because there was no specific moment that doomed her to die, no time where I could have chosen to go with her that would have prevented her death. Because it wasn't my fault."
A tear rolled down Myrmidia's cheek and she grit her teeth in shame and indignation. She would not weep, could not!
"Really, it wasn't her fault either. It wasn't anyone's fault that mattered. What mattered was that my sister was gone, and how I responded to that. So I decided to help people. My sister had always helped everyone around her, and her biggest dreams were always of things that could make the lives of whole peoples better. I would be shaming her legacy if I spent all my time trying to figure out how things had gone wrong, rather than trying to make them right."
Myrmidia didn't know why, but she was crying. The tears stung as they left her eyes despite all her efforts to keep them in, her furious blinking availing her nothing. She kept her gaze fixed on the window - she could not face anyone like this, let alone one of her closest followers. She had to be strong for them.
"We all saw your face when you saw those children at the Tagos, Myrmidia. It's not your fault."
The goddess whirled, her tears forgotten in the midst of sudden anger. How dare she say that? How dare she? But just as quickly as it had emerged, her rage evaporated upon seeing the woman's eyes shining with tears of her own. "The reason we love you is because you see our lives as your own," the woman said, her face the epitome of tranquil sorrow. "But you can't take the blame for everything. It's not healthy and it's not right. Just because they died doesn't mean you killed them," she continued, tears spilling freely down her face, while her voice did not hitch or hiccup. "You ran yourself to the edge trying to save as many people as you could, and the only reason anyone in these mountains is still alive is because of you. Just giving up now would be worse than useless - it would be sacrificing all you've achieved in the face of overwhelming darkness for the sake of nihlistic sentiment."
The woman leant over and picked up a sheet of paper, showing it to the goddess. "The names on these pages aren't your failures - they exist in spite of your successes, and nothing can change that. Doing nothing will just make all of us names like these, and then we'll all be forgotten - you, me, everyone."
Myrmidia sobbed as the truth of the woman's words sank into her. She is right, she realized, looking around the chamber and seeing the fruits of her obsession - endless sheafs of paper laden with names, the vast majority of which had died in ways she had had no control over. My failures are my own, and I will not forget them. But fruitlessly ruminating over the fate of my people is not just useless, it is an insult to their legacy. She took control of her breathing with more ease than before and spoke, her voice raw but less laden with guilt. "So what can be done? How can I ensure even a fragment of Estalia survives?"
"I do not know," the woman replied. "I am not so skilled in the art of war as you, Myrmidia. But I am sure there is a way. The skaven have us hemmed up in the mountains like rats in a cage, but their attention cannot be everywhere, and there are surely paths they do not know of yet. Perhaps small groups would avoid notice better?"
"Paths the ratkin do not know..." Myrmidia repeated. Something about that phrase resonated within her, reminding her of something she knew but was not noticing. "A way out of the mountains where we could sneak under their snouts..."
Then it hit her. Her face lit up and her spirits soared. "I have it," she exclaimed. "It will be risky, but - " She was cut off as the woman hugged her, briefly but intensely. She smelled like soap and warm water, and Myrmidia hugged her back without quite knowing why. "But it is a path forward," the woman said, her voice calm and assured. "And regardless of where it goes, you will be leading us on it. That is enough." She drew away and stood up, smiling slightly. "I should go," she said. "You have a lot to do, and the others will be wondering where I've gotten off to. Good luck," she smiled as she slipped out the door.
Myrmidia took a deep, slow breath that cleared out all of the stale air in her lungs. The light level had not changed, but the room seemed to have gotten brighter, and her spirits with it. She did indeed have a lot to do if her plan was to work, and suddenly the idea of remaining locked in this room was repellent to her. She stood up straighter than she had in days and strode out of the door, spear in hand.
Myrmidia emerged from her solitude buoyed by new purpose, and quickly linked up with what remained of Estalia's command structure. She was forced to work quickly, for the skaven were closing in ever quicker and too many delays would see them all dead. She sent squads of volunteers to hold certain passes for as long as they could while the rest of her forces organized the remaining civilian population for their coming trial. Some of these passes were of actual importance, while others were positioned such that they seemed vital but were actually useless - with luck the skaven would be mislead even to a small degree by the deception. This was no longer a war for victory, but a struggle for survival, and any edge that could be gained was inherently valuable.
Her plans were disrupted somewhat by the need to work from secret and through proxies - the skaven clearly still had eyes on her, for they had sent more of the monsters who had desecrated Magritta after her soon after she returned to her followers - vile Drillfiends filled with fanatic priests that wielded warpstone-filled censers, aimed specifically at eliminating her. The first such instance was a harrowing experience that she barely escaped with her life from, and though she kept her location uncertain afterwards they still zeroed in on her every so often. She was forced to delegate her efforts significantly to her subordinates, but if there was one silver lining to the skaven subterranean deep strikes it was that they helped her find what she was looking for - the Underway.
In most cases she would have considered it suicide to venture into the network of tunnels running under the world to escape the skaven of all foes - the creatures made their homes there, and where they did not dwell, yet worse monsters did, creatures that had never felt sunlight or tasted hot surface blood. But beggars could not be choosers, and all their other options had been exhausted - fleeing to the north, south, or east through the mountain passes would only run into the wall of ratflesh proceeding ever closer to them. The skaven had them pinned aboveground, but such a commitment of military force would translate into comparatively less presence belowground. With luck and the grace of the gods, some of the groups of people they sent out would make it past the myriad horrors they faced and escape to Tilea or the Border Princes.
Myrmidia did not want to entirely rely on luck, however, and the skaven's fixation on killing her was something that could be exploited. As much as it pained her, she could not help guide her people through the Underway - she had underestimated the magnitude of the threat the skaven posed, and there were things that needed to be done if any remnant of her people were to survive them. So she picked select soldiers - volunteers all - amongst her followers and gave them secret ciphers but did not tell them what they meant, only where they must be delivered. Then she helped them to disguise themselves as her, and sent them out.
Some travelled with groups of fellow soldiers, while others went alone. They ventured north, south, east and west, attempting to sneak past skaven lines. None of them expected to make it, and true to expectations for once, reality delivered. Time and time again, the unique screeching cracks and groans that signalled an imminent Drillfiend emergence were heard by the decoys. Each time it signalled their deaths, for although the soldiers cast off their disguises in defiance when they were found, the rabid hate of the censer bearer strike teams would not allow them to leave alive, or in one piece.
With the skaven's attention momentarily diverted, Myrmidia finalized her preparations, sheperding what remained of her people into Underway entrances, escorted in small groups by those of her soldiers that were still alive. Then she donned a grey cloak, concluded the last of her affairs, and left on a mountain pass with a heavy heart just before the skaven tide rolled over the last free part of Estalia.
The lack of a confirmed kill brought Gnawdell's ire to the forefront. She may have conquered Estalia with relative ease, but Myrmidia represented a threat even on her own. More than just being a brilliant general, she would be a symbol to the humans if she escaped, a beacon to rally around and strike back at the Under-Empire in a time where unnecessary conflict was to be avoided more than ever. She must be found and slain, the Arch-Despot declared, and many underlings shied away from her for fear of becoming the subject of her anger. Searches were doubled, the entire military might of Mors bearing down on the one entity their leader desired dead more than (almost) any other.
And in an isolated cavern system somewhere in the Irrana mountains, the cell leader of the local Squeakless Snouts nosed through reams of data, comparing accounts of decoy sightings, times, and the directions they had been heading in before being intercepted. He formed a map with this accumulated information, searching for a pattern. And when it came time to choose, more on a hunch than anything else, he sent a set of coordinates to an asset that had so far remained unused in the entire campaign. An eye whirred open in the darkness, and actuated motors clicked and rumbled.
It was winter by now, and the mountains Myrmidia travelled through were dusted with a thin coating of snow and ice that crackled underfoot as she made her way east, abandoning all trails to avoid encountering anyone. The air was crisp, and her cloak rippled slightly in the breeze as she made her way up the slope of a hill. Her knuckles tightened slightly around the shaft of her spear, a shorter version she'd taken for the sake of convenience and covered the head of with cloth to disguise it. She continued on, pausing for a moment when she reached the top of a slope next to a rock wall. The air held that peculiar sort of quiet that snowfall, even light, brings with it, disrupted only by the faint in, out of Myrmidia's breathing.
The slight scrape of metal on rock was her only warning. Myrmidia dove out of the way but was not fast enough to prevent a warpstone bullet from punching through her side, drawing a growl of pain from her as Veskit of clan Eshin plummeted down towards where she had been standing, shooting at her with twin wrist-mounted warplock guns. Myrmidia grabbed her cloak and flung it towards him to obscure his aim and sprinted towards him, spear in hand. Veskit did not miss a beat, springing off of mechanical legs as his internal generator emitted a high-pitched whirr. From his paws extended twin sets of electrified steel claws, with which he cut through the cloak like it was not even there. Then he was in Myrmidia's range, and the mountains rang with the clash of metal on metal as the war goddess struggled to fend off his vicious assault. He did not fight like any skaven Myrmidia had ever encountered before; there was no overt structure to his movements, no feints, parries or pauses, only a lightning-fast series of swipes and jabs and rending motions that utilized all five of Veskit's limbs, all of which had been weaponized in some way. His arms and legs were fitted with retractable guns of varying calibre and spring-loaded serrated blades that popped out at the touch of a button, his elbows and knees featured retractable spikes tipped with warpstone, and his tail was equipped with the capability to essentially become a prehensile sword or a whip, splitting into segments connected by metallic twine. He was a storm of unmitigated death aimed squarely at Myrmidia, with every tool at his disposal being used to attempt to stab, cut, shoot, smash, and otherwise obliterate the god-queen out of existence.
Myrmidia was put solidly on the backfoot by the bewildering storm of Veskit's assault, struggling to predict and avoid his seemingly random motions that he carried out at a pace that would have left any flesh and blood skaven panting in exhaustion after a short time. A swipe chained into a leaping arc into an attempted footsweep which was followed by a whirling slash from the cyborg's segmented tail, each attack driving Myrmidia back and forcing her to use her spear to block what she could, unable to use its reach in such close quarters. Though she dodged, ducked, and otherwise avoided Veskit's blows to the greatest extent of her supernatural agility, the mechanical assassin's attacks still managed to connect fairly often. A series of jabbing slashes caught her across her upper arms, sending sleeves of blood trickling down to her wrists, and her fingers were quickly cracked and bloodied by errant attempts to wrench her weapon away. The hits began to pile up, and though Myrmidia was able to land a few solid blows on Veskit in return, the cyborg assassin was not slowed by having his throat crushed by the butt of her spear or his arms and legs being slashed at in return. As blood began to drip down into her eyes from an errant cut inflicted by Veskit's tail, she realized that she would have to end the fight quickly, or she would be overwhelmed and killed.
With anyone else, Myrmidia would have been able to read some sort of pattern in their movements, a flow to their style of combat that she could intuitively understand and exploit. Given enough time, everyone would expose a weakness, a flaw, an opening of some sort. But Veskit did not fight like a living being, but more like an abacus or mathematical equation, each move being slotted into place according to arcane machine logic that had nothing to do with economy of movement or any reality of combat. He could not be understood, and as long as she tried to fight him like she would fight anyone else she was doomed to lose. So she did what she would otherwise never do, and deliberately allowed Veskit's claws to latch onto her spear. Seeing an opportunity to get her weapon away, Veskit pulled, and Myrmidia let go. The force he had invested in the pull unbalanced Veskit and he reared back for a brief second, which was enough for Myrmidia to charge into him, sending them both tumbling down a rocky incline, crashing against the ground and each other as their combined momentum flung them downwards. Veskit sank his fangs into Myrmidia's free arm with a death grip, which the war goddess took with a snarl and used to grind his head against the ground, shredding her own flesh but denting Veskit's snout severely and cracking his eye lens. They flipped over and over each other, punching and clawing until Veskit's tail dug into the ground, arresting his momentum with a whiplash-inducing jerk and flinging Myrmidia off him. He leapt back to his feet with whiplike quickness and dashed towards her to finish her off, but was stopped midway by a thrown rock that hit him right in the eye, shattering the already cracked lens. He extended his emplaced guns and fired blindly in her direction, hoping to forestall movement from the goddess while his backup eye activated. But this disruption had finally given Myrmidia the opening she needed, and she bulled into Veskit once more, knocking him over as her weight came down on top of him. Screaming with adrenaline, she hit him in the head with a fist-sized rock, swinging down again and again until Veskit went limp and the light in his eye faded. Breathing heavily and bleeding from a dozen wounds, she stood up wearily and retrieved her spear before standing again over him.
Myrmidia snorted in contempt. "Your kind really are persistent in their malevolence. I never really had an opportunity to appreciate it before, but when the skaven commit to something, they do not relent." She stabbed him underneath the chin, her spear ripping through his flesh but glancing off his metallic spine.
"I suppose some might admire that quality in a twisted sort of way," she continued, stabbing him in the chest, her spear missing his heart for the simple reason that he did not have one anymore. "Greenskins, those touched by the Dark Powers, those individuals utterly lacking any sort of moral code." Her spear butt shattered his eye implant. "Or those detached from the reality of war, analyzing it solely as a set of numbers on spreadsheets, statistics and percentages. They might admire that sort of commitment to destroy your enemies utterly and without relenting." Again her spear flashed down, into his guts, twisting about so as to destroy whatever was left inside his abdominal cavity.
"I might have held it in some respect myself, once," she continued. "But now it only angers me. You discard all regard for common decency in your pursuit of power. You show no mercy to those you subjugate as well as those you fight alongside. You don't fight for the sake of your people, for glory, or even for material gain, really. Each one of you is a coiled-up ball of neurotic hate, seething at the very fact that your power is, by the very definition of the word, limited. It's your twisted ambition that drives you onward, spurring you to atrocities that others would shirk at but you take in stride because the majority of the time the recipient of such pain is not you."
She paced back and forth, sentiment she'd held onto for the entire campaign bubbling to the surface in isolation.
"I don't think you realize how abhorrent that concept is. My people - so many people - died because your race cannot grasp the meaning of sympathy and compassion! You kill and defile and destroy not because you're incapable of grasping that your actions have negative consequences for others, but because they simply don't matter to you. You just don't care!"] You're capable of being better than you are, but you choose not to! None of this had to happen! The fact that you choose to continue in spite of this makes it even worse than it already is!"
She was ready to say yet more, but stopped herself. "Your kind are not worthy of words," she spat, and plunged her spear down one last time into Veskit's chest cavity. It did not pierce his primary generator, but the machine had still recieved enough damage that it was at imminent risk of going offline, taking him with it. Veskit had been forced to reboot due to the head trauma inflicted upon him by the goddess, and had reactivated midway during her monologue, waiting for the moment she would expose herself to what she percieved as a vanquished threat. Now that instant had come, and he would exploit it for all it was worth.
The mechanical assassin's arms doubled in length with a great pneumatic hiss, unseen metal shooting outwards. They wrapped around Myrmidia's torso before she could react, pinning her arms to her sides and anchoring themselves in her spine. As she gasped in pain, Veskit's mechanisms reversed themselves, dragging the assassin up the length of her spear to pin his body against hers. He bit deeply into her shoulder in a grotesque parody of a comforting embrace, and as the war goddess staggered backwards the sound of choking, gurgling laughter issued out of Veskit's throat. He was still laughing when the warpstone bomb embedded in his chest cavity detonated, engulfing both him and the war goddess in a searing cloud of emerald flame.
Veskit was found eventually, most of his body rendered scrap by the blast. It was uncertain if he would even be able to be repaired, and if the result could even be called skaven at all. But Gnawdell would wager many warptokens that Eshin would make the effort nontheless - his utility as a propaganda piece, the skaven who had killed Myrmidia, would make it worth the cost. That the matter had turned out the way it did rankled her still, but she was consoled by the fact that Veskit's actions recieving such attention was solely due to spite. The other Great Clans had attempted to forestall their rise for generations, but the conquest of Estalia had finally proved the tipping point. In a slowly increasing flood, lesser clans were flocking to join the ranks of Mors, or being subjugated under their banner. New leaders popped up all over the map to man the subdisiary parts of Gnawdell's actualized empire, and she felt a grim satisfaction that her lifelong dream had been realized - Mors had become a Great Clan.
As much as Estalia's fall had brought her justly-deserved fame, however, there was one aspect of it she kept under wraps, something known only to her and Eshin (and the Nightlord had been oh so smug at obtaining such prize blackmail). After Veskit's detonation of his suicide device, his handlers had been quick to find him - and only him. His blackened carcass had been quite evident, but Myrmidia's body had been nowhere to be found. Gnawdell had the area thoroughly searched with giant rat packs, and managed to trace a scent trail to a nearby crevasse which led into a system of caverns, upon which it became impossible to tell where the goddess had gone. An unfortunate underling suggested that Myrmidia had surely died from the combination of her injuries, the fall into the caverns, and whatever monstrous creatures resided in that section of the underground. Gnawdell killed him for his impertinence, declaring that until she had seen a corpse in front of her the goddess was to be considered still alive and a priority for the newly ascended Great Clan to find.
There could be no loose ends.
Estalia has been crushed under the might of the Under-Empire! A small portion of the civilian population fled into the Underway and are likely dead, and Executioner Veskit successfully eliminated the manthing goddess Myrmidia. Glory to the Horned One!
Territory overrun - Estalia. See State of the Under-Empire
Rejoice and/or tremble in fear! The strength displayed by Mors during the Estalian conquest proved the catalyst Arch-Despot Gnawdell has been seeking for so long - Mors has become a Great Clan!
The balance of power of the Council has shifted!
Thanquol has attained new titles! See character sheet.
As skaven claws sank into the lands of manthings they had lurked under for thousands of years, their armies marched on the last pockets of resistance. From north, south and west Mors' legions ground into the Irrana mountains, squeezing the humans out from their remaining settlements like exterminators clearing vermin from a home. Those who fought against the vermintide died hopelessly outnumbered, or were captured and enslaved, shipped off to Skavenblight in droves to display the power of Mors. Those who ran only delayed their fate, for there was only so much space left unoccupied by the skaven, and every day it shrank further. The territory of the ratmen enclosed them on all sides, and there would be no aid from other nations. Though the surviving priests of Myrmidia continued to urge them to have faith, that their god-queen would find a way to save them, the common folk knew in their hearts that they were facing the end of Estalia. Some chose to take their own lives in the face of such a revelation, and some chose a fate worse than death by selling their souls to the Dark Gods in exchange for salvation. Even this accomplished nothing, as the gifts the powers of Chaos granted them availed them nothing against the unrelenting tide of skaven. Still others, those who the ratfolk had taken everything from, stared into the teeth of their incoming doom and sharpened their spears. They would not survive the coming days, but they would be sure to send as many of the bastards to their horned god as they could before then.
In the mountain fortress-town of Llaqueno, there were no civilians anymore, fled west to safer territories. Instead its walls were manned by an eclectic collection of scarred men and women in white, all of them survivors from the battle of the Tagos. After her defeat on the river Myrmidia had split her already-diminished host up, allowing her subordinates to decide where to allocate their efforts. Some amongst her forces refused to abandon their goddess, however, and donned the white robes of the Myrmidian clergy if they were not already ordained to signify their devotion to their goddess. Now they watched anxiously for signs of a skaven attack, for their god-queen had sequestered herself in the central keep of the town and had not come out for days, refusing food and water and burning candles all through the night. Every man and woman there had seen Myrmidia's might firsthand, and so though their concern was stretched by the subdued tone of voice she had adopted, they kept faith that the war goddess was constructing a new ploy, some grand plan that would allow their countrymen to escape the death grip of the ratmen with their lives.
---
The chamber Myrmidia was in had seen better days. It was furnished in a fairly spartan fashion, consisting of just a bed, armoire, and desk, with no banners or paintings mounted on the wall save for the flag of Estalia over the bed. A fireplace sat in one wall, cold and dark. The room was instead lit by many candles, set wherever they would fit, the long hours of their use dripping wax over their bases and onto the floor. The bed was made to military perfection, not a crease present upon the sheets, and it was evident that it had not been slept in for many months. There was a single window facing the door, next to both the desk and the bed. Sheafs of paper covered the floor, scattered every which way until it was nigh impossible to walk without stepping on one, and the only sound in the room was the endless skritch-skratch of a pen. The papers were covered in names, those of every Estalian that had died in the war. Myrmidia's pen twitched across pages at frenetic speeds, emptying pots of ink nothing down every last person, soldier and civilian, that had fallen to the hand of the skaven. There were so very many, and Myrmidia's eyes burned from the effort of staring into the endless lists of casualties that she had incurred, but she continued without pause or rest, her perfect memory allowing her to remember the names of every one of her people that she had failed.
Ricardo. Joseph. Matias.
How could she have been so foolish? Not seeing the signs earlier had cost the lives of so many good people, truly deserving of life. From the moment she emerged the skaven had been on her tail, sending the deadliest of her assassins to slay her, watching her every movement from the shadows with their beady eyes, plotting her downfall. Such prompt action from the species so prone to infighting should have tipped her off, but she had not seen the true intent behind the assassin's blade - that such an act could only have been the first strike of a preexisting plan to conquer Estalia. She had failed.
Penelope. Gabriel. Rico.
When the skaven had struck at her navy, she should have seen. The ratmen had both taken away her ability to evacuate by sea and intended to further attack her with her own ships before fate had given her a chance by allowing Elharalaeon to intercept the ratmen fleet, though she had not learned the truth of that matter until later on. The mere fact that the skaven were prepared to engage her in multiple theatres of war as a prelude to their true offensive should have been enough warning for her, enough for her to begin evacuating her civilian populace to Tilea or to reach out to someone, anyone else for help. But she had been convinced that she could handle whatever the skaven threw at her. She had failed.
James. Elisa. Tonio.
The assassin's escape had been the last hint she had been granted. The skaven had been subjected to the worst her interrogators could devise, had been locked in a prison designed by her to be inescapeable to his kind, and he had slipped free without any trouble, laughing at the futility of her efforts as he went. It had been a prelude to the entire conflict, a mocking twist of fate that mirrored it in miniature. If the skaven were capable of flaunting her best security measures with such ease, then how could she ever face them on the field of battle and win? But she had been sure of herself, confident that once exposed to the light the skaven's cunning would dry up. How wrong she had been. She had failed.
Isabella. Alberto. Daniela.
Failure after failure after failure. Not realizing the skaven would seek to disrupt her chain of command before their main attack, assuming that destroying Under-Magritta would accomplish anything at all, not adequately preparing her cities for possible assaults from underground, letting the Drillfiends ravage her people's homes for hours while she sought petty revenge, having the gall to think that she could meaningfully oppose the skaven legion marching from the east with raids in the night and harrassment of their supply train... Myrmidia's failures ate at her over the course of those days and nights, regardless of whether they were only visible in hindsight or not. The names and faces of soldiers, civilians, children flashed in front of her eyes and the scratching of her pen became feverish and obsessive. She had to know everyone she had killed with her actions, she had to burn them in her mind's eye forever so they would never go away, would never stop staring accusingly at her, judging her as unworthy to lead her people. She had to, because if she did not then they would all be forgotten and if they were forgotten then their memories would die and then they would be dead forever and it would all be her fault, forever her fault. She had had the power to save them, and she had not done so. It was all her fault.
Diego Leo Raul UrsulaSalvadorCarmenJulioNoePaulaKharmenTzeodorNurguelSllavanah
She was well aware that as she sat there wasting time, the legions of the skaven were moving to oust her people from the mountains, to squeeze and squeeze the last drops of human independence from Estalia until there was nothing left but a broken and drained corpse. She could not stop it, so she did nothing. She would fight and kill them when they came to this place until she died in turn, but her dream of the descendents of Tylos united had been killed on the banks of the Tagos. Perhaps it would be better if she had died there, so the specter of her legend could not taunt what Estalians still lived with a vestige of false hope.
The tip of her pen snapped under the pressure she had been increasingly applying to it, smearing the page of names with a great ugly black streak. Myrmidia stared unblinking at it, tears welling up in her eyes for some godforsaken reason. She jerked her head away violently - she did not have the right to cry. As she did, her eyes fell upon her spear, lying disused in a corner by the bed. A thought entered her mind as she looked at it. It was a worthless instrument of death, that had not saved any lives or done anything at all to better the world ever. But perhaps....
Perhaps there was one act of good the spear could accomplish.
The door creaked open, disturbing a small pile of papers that had built up near it. Myrmidia turned, her figure sillhouetted by the light coming in through the window. "What is it," she croaked irritatedly. "Have you forgotten that I'm only to be disturbed if the skaven are about to assault us?" Her throat ached as she spoke; she was suddenly more aware that she had not eaten or drank in a long time.
The door creaked shut as a petite woman in a white robe walked in. Her hair was covered by a hood, and her eyes were a deep blue. Her face was unblemished, a small oval of pale skin that held serenity and grace in its features. "Technically speaking, my queen, we are forever on the precipice of an assault by the ratfolk, given the state of the country." Her voice was quiet but poised and faintly melodious, and Myrmidia chuckled bitterly as she acknowledged the truth in her words. "So what is it," she asked as she sat down heavily on the bed, messing its neat folds. "What brings you here of all places, while the end of our people bears down on our heads? You should join your comrades and enjoy life while you still have it."
"May I?" The woman responded, motioning to the bed. Myrmidia shrugged, and the woman sat down, her weight hardly disturbing the mattress at all. She held a flask out to the goddess, and Myrmidia took it after a moment's hesitation, downing the contents with several gulps. The expected burn of alcohol did not materialize, however - it contained only cool water, surprisingly refreshing to her parched mouth. "I had a sister once," the woman began as Myrmidia finished the flask off, her thirst suddenly resurgent.
"She was better than me at everything. We were the same age, but she was always faster than me, smarter than me, prettier than me. I looked up to her like she was my big sister, and I always worried that I wasn't good enough to be around her. She said she loved me, and I loved her, but I always secretly thought she was a little tired of being around me. I couldn't keep up with her when we were playing with the other children, and she was always the one who solved the puzzles our father would give us. So I found other things I could do, helping my mother out or learning to patch up my toys while she went out and read books and learned how to build things. We grew apart; I didn't mean for it to happen, but we gravitated towards different things, and where we once were inseperable we now barely saw one another. She'd grown strong and tall and beautiful, boys were always swooning over her while she barely gave them a second glance. She had a mind like a razor and a tongue like a whip, while I ..." She gestured to herself dismissively. "We still talked occasionally of course, but not like before, too much time had passed. And I was always a little sad about that, because I'd done that in my stupidity. I'd drawn away from her because I thought I wasn't good enough for her, and now I'd never be close to her in the way that I was when we were young."
The woman looked at Myrmidia, her blue eyes radiating sadness. "And when she died, I'd lost her for good."
"How?" Myrmidia grunted hollowly. "Tales of death are not new to me, might as well hear one more."
The woman shook her head in reply. "It doesn't matter. The point is, when I'd lost her, I fell into despair for a while, I was convinced it was my fault. I cried for days because I was convinced that because I hadn't made an effort to be closer to her, my sister had died. I was inconsolable; she had been the better one of us by far, and if she was dead then why did I deserve to live?
But then I looked at my mother and father and at all the people I knew and I realized that I didn't want to hurt them further. I realized that it wasn't my fault my sister had died, and that it wasn't my fault we had grown apart."
The woman swept a few sheets of paper to the floor as she leaned in, her face exuding compassion that was suddenly unbearable for Myrmidia to look at. The goddess turned away, staring fiercely out the window as the woman kept talking, her voice soft and understanding.
"I realized that sitting by myself, going over the past trying to find a point where I could have changed it, could have saved my sister was pointless. Because there was no specific moment that doomed her to die, no time where I could have chosen to go with her that would have prevented her death. Because it wasn't my fault."
A tear rolled down Myrmidia's cheek and she grit her teeth in shame and indignation. She would not weep, could not!
"Really, it wasn't her fault either. It wasn't anyone's fault that mattered. What mattered was that my sister was gone, and how I responded to that. So I decided to help people. My sister had always helped everyone around her, and her biggest dreams were always of things that could make the lives of whole peoples better. I would be shaming her legacy if I spent all my time trying to figure out how things had gone wrong, rather than trying to make them right."
Myrmidia didn't know why, but she was crying. The tears stung as they left her eyes despite all her efforts to keep them in, her furious blinking availing her nothing. She kept her gaze fixed on the window - she could not face anyone like this, let alone one of her closest followers. She had to be strong for them.
"We all saw your face when you saw those children at the Tagos, Myrmidia. It's not your fault."
The goddess whirled, her tears forgotten in the midst of sudden anger. How dare she say that? How dare she? But just as quickly as it had emerged, her rage evaporated upon seeing the woman's eyes shining with tears of her own. "The reason we love you is because you see our lives as your own," the woman said, her face the epitome of tranquil sorrow. "But you can't take the blame for everything. It's not healthy and it's not right. Just because they died doesn't mean you killed them," she continued, tears spilling freely down her face, while her voice did not hitch or hiccup. "You ran yourself to the edge trying to save as many people as you could, and the only reason anyone in these mountains is still alive is because of you. Just giving up now would be worse than useless - it would be sacrificing all you've achieved in the face of overwhelming darkness for the sake of nihlistic sentiment."
The woman leant over and picked up a sheet of paper, showing it to the goddess. "The names on these pages aren't your failures - they exist in spite of your successes, and nothing can change that. Doing nothing will just make all of us names like these, and then we'll all be forgotten - you, me, everyone."
Myrmidia sobbed as the truth of the woman's words sank into her. She is right, she realized, looking around the chamber and seeing the fruits of her obsession - endless sheafs of paper laden with names, the vast majority of which had died in ways she had had no control over. My failures are my own, and I will not forget them. But fruitlessly ruminating over the fate of my people is not just useless, it is an insult to their legacy. She took control of her breathing with more ease than before and spoke, her voice raw but less laden with guilt. "So what can be done? How can I ensure even a fragment of Estalia survives?"
"I do not know," the woman replied. "I am not so skilled in the art of war as you, Myrmidia. But I am sure there is a way. The skaven have us hemmed up in the mountains like rats in a cage, but their attention cannot be everywhere, and there are surely paths they do not know of yet. Perhaps small groups would avoid notice better?"
"Paths the ratkin do not know..." Myrmidia repeated. Something about that phrase resonated within her, reminding her of something she knew but was not noticing. "A way out of the mountains where we could sneak under their snouts..."
Then it hit her. Her face lit up and her spirits soared. "I have it," she exclaimed. "It will be risky, but - " She was cut off as the woman hugged her, briefly but intensely. She smelled like soap and warm water, and Myrmidia hugged her back without quite knowing why. "But it is a path forward," the woman said, her voice calm and assured. "And regardless of where it goes, you will be leading us on it. That is enough." She drew away and stood up, smiling slightly. "I should go," she said. "You have a lot to do, and the others will be wondering where I've gotten off to. Good luck," she smiled as she slipped out the door.
Myrmidia took a deep, slow breath that cleared out all of the stale air in her lungs. The light level had not changed, but the room seemed to have gotten brighter, and her spirits with it. She did indeed have a lot to do if her plan was to work, and suddenly the idea of remaining locked in this room was repellent to her. She stood up straighter than she had in days and strode out of the door, spear in hand.
---
Myrmidia emerged from her solitude buoyed by new purpose, and quickly linked up with what remained of Estalia's command structure. She was forced to work quickly, for the skaven were closing in ever quicker and too many delays would see them all dead. She sent squads of volunteers to hold certain passes for as long as they could while the rest of her forces organized the remaining civilian population for their coming trial. Some of these passes were of actual importance, while others were positioned such that they seemed vital but were actually useless - with luck the skaven would be mislead even to a small degree by the deception. This was no longer a war for victory, but a struggle for survival, and any edge that could be gained was inherently valuable.
Her plans were disrupted somewhat by the need to work from secret and through proxies - the skaven clearly still had eyes on her, for they had sent more of the monsters who had desecrated Magritta after her soon after she returned to her followers - vile Drillfiends filled with fanatic priests that wielded warpstone-filled censers, aimed specifically at eliminating her. The first such instance was a harrowing experience that she barely escaped with her life from, and though she kept her location uncertain afterwards they still zeroed in on her every so often. She was forced to delegate her efforts significantly to her subordinates, but if there was one silver lining to the skaven subterranean deep strikes it was that they helped her find what she was looking for - the Underway.
In most cases she would have considered it suicide to venture into the network of tunnels running under the world to escape the skaven of all foes - the creatures made their homes there, and where they did not dwell, yet worse monsters did, creatures that had never felt sunlight or tasted hot surface blood. But beggars could not be choosers, and all their other options had been exhausted - fleeing to the north, south, or east through the mountain passes would only run into the wall of ratflesh proceeding ever closer to them. The skaven had them pinned aboveground, but such a commitment of military force would translate into comparatively less presence belowground. With luck and the grace of the gods, some of the groups of people they sent out would make it past the myriad horrors they faced and escape to Tilea or the Border Princes.
Myrmidia did not want to entirely rely on luck, however, and the skaven's fixation on killing her was something that could be exploited. As much as it pained her, she could not help guide her people through the Underway - she had underestimated the magnitude of the threat the skaven posed, and there were things that needed to be done if any remnant of her people were to survive them. So she picked select soldiers - volunteers all - amongst her followers and gave them secret ciphers but did not tell them what they meant, only where they must be delivered. Then she helped them to disguise themselves as her, and sent them out.
Some travelled with groups of fellow soldiers, while others went alone. They ventured north, south, east and west, attempting to sneak past skaven lines. None of them expected to make it, and true to expectations for once, reality delivered. Time and time again, the unique screeching cracks and groans that signalled an imminent Drillfiend emergence were heard by the decoys. Each time it signalled their deaths, for although the soldiers cast off their disguises in defiance when they were found, the rabid hate of the censer bearer strike teams would not allow them to leave alive, or in one piece.
With the skaven's attention momentarily diverted, Myrmidia finalized her preparations, sheperding what remained of her people into Underway entrances, escorted in small groups by those of her soldiers that were still alive. Then she donned a grey cloak, concluded the last of her affairs, and left on a mountain pass with a heavy heart just before the skaven tide rolled over the last free part of Estalia.
The lack of a confirmed kill brought Gnawdell's ire to the forefront. She may have conquered Estalia with relative ease, but Myrmidia represented a threat even on her own. More than just being a brilliant general, she would be a symbol to the humans if she escaped, a beacon to rally around and strike back at the Under-Empire in a time where unnecessary conflict was to be avoided more than ever. She must be found and slain, the Arch-Despot declared, and many underlings shied away from her for fear of becoming the subject of her anger. Searches were doubled, the entire military might of Mors bearing down on the one entity their leader desired dead more than (almost) any other.
And in an isolated cavern system somewhere in the Irrana mountains, the cell leader of the local Squeakless Snouts nosed through reams of data, comparing accounts of decoy sightings, times, and the directions they had been heading in before being intercepted. He formed a map with this accumulated information, searching for a pattern. And when it came time to choose, more on a hunch than anything else, he sent a set of coordinates to an asset that had so far remained unused in the entire campaign. An eye whirred open in the darkness, and actuated motors clicked and rumbled.
---
It was winter by now, and the mountains Myrmidia travelled through were dusted with a thin coating of snow and ice that crackled underfoot as she made her way east, abandoning all trails to avoid encountering anyone. The air was crisp, and her cloak rippled slightly in the breeze as she made her way up the slope of a hill. Her knuckles tightened slightly around the shaft of her spear, a shorter version she'd taken for the sake of convenience and covered the head of with cloth to disguise it. She continued on, pausing for a moment when she reached the top of a slope next to a rock wall. The air held that peculiar sort of quiet that snowfall, even light, brings with it, disrupted only by the faint in, out of Myrmidia's breathing.
The slight scrape of metal on rock was her only warning. Myrmidia dove out of the way but was not fast enough to prevent a warpstone bullet from punching through her side, drawing a growl of pain from her as Veskit of clan Eshin plummeted down towards where she had been standing, shooting at her with twin wrist-mounted warplock guns. Myrmidia grabbed her cloak and flung it towards him to obscure his aim and sprinted towards him, spear in hand. Veskit did not miss a beat, springing off of mechanical legs as his internal generator emitted a high-pitched whirr. From his paws extended twin sets of electrified steel claws, with which he cut through the cloak like it was not even there. Then he was in Myrmidia's range, and the mountains rang with the clash of metal on metal as the war goddess struggled to fend off his vicious assault. He did not fight like any skaven Myrmidia had ever encountered before; there was no overt structure to his movements, no feints, parries or pauses, only a lightning-fast series of swipes and jabs and rending motions that utilized all five of Veskit's limbs, all of which had been weaponized in some way. His arms and legs were fitted with retractable guns of varying calibre and spring-loaded serrated blades that popped out at the touch of a button, his elbows and knees featured retractable spikes tipped with warpstone, and his tail was equipped with the capability to essentially become a prehensile sword or a whip, splitting into segments connected by metallic twine. He was a storm of unmitigated death aimed squarely at Myrmidia, with every tool at his disposal being used to attempt to stab, cut, shoot, smash, and otherwise obliterate the god-queen out of existence.
Myrmidia was put solidly on the backfoot by the bewildering storm of Veskit's assault, struggling to predict and avoid his seemingly random motions that he carried out at a pace that would have left any flesh and blood skaven panting in exhaustion after a short time. A swipe chained into a leaping arc into an attempted footsweep which was followed by a whirling slash from the cyborg's segmented tail, each attack driving Myrmidia back and forcing her to use her spear to block what she could, unable to use its reach in such close quarters. Though she dodged, ducked, and otherwise avoided Veskit's blows to the greatest extent of her supernatural agility, the mechanical assassin's attacks still managed to connect fairly often. A series of jabbing slashes caught her across her upper arms, sending sleeves of blood trickling down to her wrists, and her fingers were quickly cracked and bloodied by errant attempts to wrench her weapon away. The hits began to pile up, and though Myrmidia was able to land a few solid blows on Veskit in return, the cyborg assassin was not slowed by having his throat crushed by the butt of her spear or his arms and legs being slashed at in return. As blood began to drip down into her eyes from an errant cut inflicted by Veskit's tail, she realized that she would have to end the fight quickly, or she would be overwhelmed and killed.
With anyone else, Myrmidia would have been able to read some sort of pattern in their movements, a flow to their style of combat that she could intuitively understand and exploit. Given enough time, everyone would expose a weakness, a flaw, an opening of some sort. But Veskit did not fight like a living being, but more like an abacus or mathematical equation, each move being slotted into place according to arcane machine logic that had nothing to do with economy of movement or any reality of combat. He could not be understood, and as long as she tried to fight him like she would fight anyone else she was doomed to lose. So she did what she would otherwise never do, and deliberately allowed Veskit's claws to latch onto her spear. Seeing an opportunity to get her weapon away, Veskit pulled, and Myrmidia let go. The force he had invested in the pull unbalanced Veskit and he reared back for a brief second, which was enough for Myrmidia to charge into him, sending them both tumbling down a rocky incline, crashing against the ground and each other as their combined momentum flung them downwards. Veskit sank his fangs into Myrmidia's free arm with a death grip, which the war goddess took with a snarl and used to grind his head against the ground, shredding her own flesh but denting Veskit's snout severely and cracking his eye lens. They flipped over and over each other, punching and clawing until Veskit's tail dug into the ground, arresting his momentum with a whiplash-inducing jerk and flinging Myrmidia off him. He leapt back to his feet with whiplike quickness and dashed towards her to finish her off, but was stopped midway by a thrown rock that hit him right in the eye, shattering the already cracked lens. He extended his emplaced guns and fired blindly in her direction, hoping to forestall movement from the goddess while his backup eye activated. But this disruption had finally given Myrmidia the opening she needed, and she bulled into Veskit once more, knocking him over as her weight came down on top of him. Screaming with adrenaline, she hit him in the head with a fist-sized rock, swinging down again and again until Veskit went limp and the light in his eye faded. Breathing heavily and bleeding from a dozen wounds, she stood up wearily and retrieved her spear before standing again over him.
Myrmidia snorted in contempt. "Your kind really are persistent in their malevolence. I never really had an opportunity to appreciate it before, but when the skaven commit to something, they do not relent." She stabbed him underneath the chin, her spear ripping through his flesh but glancing off his metallic spine.
"I suppose some might admire that quality in a twisted sort of way," she continued, stabbing him in the chest, her spear missing his heart for the simple reason that he did not have one anymore. "Greenskins, those touched by the Dark Powers, those individuals utterly lacking any sort of moral code." Her spear butt shattered his eye implant. "Or those detached from the reality of war, analyzing it solely as a set of numbers on spreadsheets, statistics and percentages. They might admire that sort of commitment to destroy your enemies utterly and without relenting." Again her spear flashed down, into his guts, twisting about so as to destroy whatever was left inside his abdominal cavity.
"I might have held it in some respect myself, once," she continued. "But now it only angers me. You discard all regard for common decency in your pursuit of power. You show no mercy to those you subjugate as well as those you fight alongside. You don't fight for the sake of your people, for glory, or even for material gain, really. Each one of you is a coiled-up ball of neurotic hate, seething at the very fact that your power is, by the very definition of the word, limited. It's your twisted ambition that drives you onward, spurring you to atrocities that others would shirk at but you take in stride because the majority of the time the recipient of such pain is not you."
She paced back and forth, sentiment she'd held onto for the entire campaign bubbling to the surface in isolation.
"I don't think you realize how abhorrent that concept is. My people - so many people - died because your race cannot grasp the meaning of sympathy and compassion! You kill and defile and destroy not because you're incapable of grasping that your actions have negative consequences for others, but because they simply don't matter to you. You just don't care!"] You're capable of being better than you are, but you choose not to! None of this had to happen! The fact that you choose to continue in spite of this makes it even worse than it already is!"
She was ready to say yet more, but stopped herself. "Your kind are not worthy of words," she spat, and plunged her spear down one last time into Veskit's chest cavity. It did not pierce his primary generator, but the machine had still recieved enough damage that it was at imminent risk of going offline, taking him with it. Veskit had been forced to reboot due to the head trauma inflicted upon him by the goddess, and had reactivated midway during her monologue, waiting for the moment she would expose herself to what she percieved as a vanquished threat. Now that instant had come, and he would exploit it for all it was worth.
The mechanical assassin's arms doubled in length with a great pneumatic hiss, unseen metal shooting outwards. They wrapped around Myrmidia's torso before she could react, pinning her arms to her sides and anchoring themselves in her spine. As she gasped in pain, Veskit's mechanisms reversed themselves, dragging the assassin up the length of her spear to pin his body against hers. He bit deeply into her shoulder in a grotesque parody of a comforting embrace, and as the war goddess staggered backwards the sound of choking, gurgling laughter issued out of Veskit's throat. He was still laughing when the warpstone bomb embedded in his chest cavity detonated, engulfing both him and the war goddess in a searing cloud of emerald flame.
Veskit was found eventually, most of his body rendered scrap by the blast. It was uncertain if he would even be able to be repaired, and if the result could even be called skaven at all. But Gnawdell would wager many warptokens that Eshin would make the effort nontheless - his utility as a propaganda piece, the skaven who had killed Myrmidia, would make it worth the cost. That the matter had turned out the way it did rankled her still, but she was consoled by the fact that Veskit's actions recieving such attention was solely due to spite. The other Great Clans had attempted to forestall their rise for generations, but the conquest of Estalia had finally proved the tipping point. In a slowly increasing flood, lesser clans were flocking to join the ranks of Mors, or being subjugated under their banner. New leaders popped up all over the map to man the subdisiary parts of Gnawdell's actualized empire, and she felt a grim satisfaction that her lifelong dream had been realized - Mors had become a Great Clan.
As much as Estalia's fall had brought her justly-deserved fame, however, there was one aspect of it she kept under wraps, something known only to her and Eshin (and the Nightlord had been oh so smug at obtaining such prize blackmail). After Veskit's detonation of his suicide device, his handlers had been quick to find him - and only him. His blackened carcass had been quite evident, but Myrmidia's body had been nowhere to be found. Gnawdell had the area thoroughly searched with giant rat packs, and managed to trace a scent trail to a nearby crevasse which led into a system of caverns, upon which it became impossible to tell where the goddess had gone. An unfortunate underling suggested that Myrmidia had surely died from the combination of her injuries, the fall into the caverns, and whatever monstrous creatures resided in that section of the underground. Gnawdell killed him for his impertinence, declaring that until she had seen a corpse in front of her the goddess was to be considered still alive and a priority for the newly ascended Great Clan to find.
There could be no loose ends.
Estalia has been crushed under the might of the Under-Empire! A small portion of the civilian population fled into the Underway and are likely dead, and Executioner Veskit successfully eliminated the manthing goddess Myrmidia. Glory to the Horned One!
Territory overrun - Estalia. See State of the Under-Empire
Rejoice and/or tremble in fear! The strength displayed by Mors during the Estalian conquest proved the catalyst Arch-Despot Gnawdell has been seeking for so long - Mors has become a Great Clan!
The balance of power of the Council has shifted!
Mors has risen 1 slot, to seat 3.
Moulder has fallen 1 slot, to seat 10.
Moulder has fallen 1 slot, to seat 10.
Thanquol has attained new titles! See character sheet.
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- Location
- USA
Did I see Chaos slipping in there when she was remembering the names? Oh my... also a hollow victory. We want Myrmydia to be dragged to the Altar to feed the Horned Rat. And we need to hunt down the survivors, make no assumptions that they died until we see their bodies.
Edit- also did we actually confirm Myrmydias death or just that she is no longer there?
Edit- also did we actually confirm Myrmydias death or just that she is no longer there?
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- Pronouns
- He/Him
Not hollow, just not the maximum possibility. Better her dead than still alive.
Very nice, very nice indeed.
Spectrum
Tell me a secret~
- Location
- Behind you~
Oh god please no
Noooo just lay down and die, don't turn to Chaos.
...*tilts head*
That could work out?
Yesssss, you delicious criminal intelligence agents, we put you on this theater for a reason.
*shakes head*
I'm not sure that even if Queek was alive and sent after her he'd win.
Hell yeah! Veskit isn't even a demonic Skaven, he's even better.
And he lives!
Glory to the Horned One!
Nice. And Mors didn't entirely push the other Clans out, which is good.
I don't see anything in Tech and shame we didn't somehow manage a capture on Myrmidia (I'm not even 100% convinced she's really dead) but the econ advantages are fine.
- Location
- USA
No body so not sure if she actually died or not. We should hunt down the fleeing population in case she somehow reformed amongst them.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Check it.
Xantalos
Turtle-Speed Writing
Generally for the higher-tier hero units the humans get you'll want to send multiple heroes after them at once to get a good chance at victory. This generally means incarnated gods, high-tier wizards and the like - those are the guys that carry their respective factions somewhat, so they're naturally gonna be corresponding harder to take out. Though Veskit was playing dead for a good while there, I should note.
You did get 2 things that I'm kinda uncertain about actually putting on the tech list - you managed to capture some of those ciphers Myrmidia sent out, and you've got access to Myrmidian artifacts from all the temples you looted. I'll probably put the second one there, it's more the first one that I'm not sure.
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- He/Him
This rise is more than just a status symbol, it'll help our war effort as a whole thanks to Mors' increased capability.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Mm, I'd say just have the Grey Seers work over them, turn them to the Horned Rat's principles and distribute the results among heroes and potential heroes.
Chimeraguard
We do deserve to exist.
@Xantalos
What's the reaction to this conquest going to be in Tilea? I imagine it involves a lot of panicked screaming in the immediate aftermath?
Also, with the no doubt plethora of farming land and food that Clan Mors now has available from Estalia, I wonder if we could use Estalia as a "base" to expand their Stormvermin program into something more advanced.
What's the reaction to this conquest going to be in Tilea? I imagine it involves a lot of panicked screaming in the immediate aftermath?
Also, with the no doubt plethora of farming land and food that Clan Mors now has available from Estalia, I wonder if we could use Estalia as a "base" to expand their Stormvermin program into something more advanced.
Hmmmm.... Myrimdia has a sister, right?
Chimeraguard
We do deserve to exist.
Yeah. Shallya: Goddess of healing and mercy.
Xantalos
Turtle-Speed Writing
1. Initial reaction from the general populace once the news hits resembles this:
2. Totally, if you wanted to go for that I'd allow it.
Mors plus USA for an actual professional conventional military force worth the name?
CrossyCross
A+ RIDING
Well, that was lame, Myrmidia. Got taken out like a chump.
Though frankly, Veskit still being recoverable even after that warpbomb explosion strong enough to kill an incarnate goddess is stretching my belief.
Though frankly, Veskit still being recoverable even after that warpbomb explosion strong enough to kill an incarnate goddess is stretching my belief.
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Spectrum
Tell me a secret~
- Location
- Behind you~
The USA already vaguely is that.
Also Mors still feels a little threatened by them.
Xantalos
Turtle-Speed Writing
It's less 'recoverable' and more that most of his parts can be replaced so long as he survives. Normally it'd cost an action but Eshin paid some dosh to get him working again before next turn.
CrossyCross
A+ RIDING
The fact he 'survived' at all is exactly what I have a hard time believing. Myrmidia went down too easily especially considering she was facing him when the grappling claws came up, and that was after Myrmidia spent a lot of time stabbing the fuck out of him, meaning a lot of internal components shouldn't be protected anymore, and be fully vulnerable to said warpstone explosion as opposed to potentially hardened.
I don't mind the result of "Veskit kills Myrmidia", but the way you wrote it, the actual series of events that led to it, I have difficulty seeing as comprehensible. Because one, Myrmidia should have left him a pile of hacked up bits of scrap metal. Two, Myrmidia saw the attack coming rather than having been blindsided (it attacked after she turned around again and moved to strike), and she was dodging him the entire battle beforehand anyway. Three, that he survived at all after all that punishment and a goddamned warpbomb explosion that killed Myrmidia.
Skaven, even cyborg skaven, aren't what I would call excessively durable. They don't even have a special metal, and unless Veskit turns out to be have been made by gromril brute forced forged by excessive warpstone use, he's at best steel, and thus perfectly "hacked apart into finger-sized scrap metal"-able by Myrmidia, especially considering how much you wrote about her venting on it.
An example here.
She literally just uses a bit of leverage and muscle power to twist the limb and apparently "nearly tear it off".
That's not showing off incredible steel toughness here. It looks really damned contrived, especially as Myrmidia seems like she actually went through the checklist of "make sure cyborg is fucked up enough to not work anymore".
EDIT: There's other factors beforehand, like how the leader just so happens to send what is apparently the best combatant available (even better than the Mors war heroes) on the right track based on a hunch, but whatevs. Rolls do whatever, I just get really anal on the battle sections because that's my thing.
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Xantalos
Turtle-Speed Writing
Hmm. Entirely fair points, and my thanks for the criticism. I will admit that I wrote that part at something like 1 in the morning so I wasn't at my best critical thinking capacity.
I'll probably rewrite the fight scene somewhat in a way that keeps the original intent of it without veering into SoD territory.