- Location
- Utrecht
And also a neat solution to why no one has ever managed it before.
Respect Your Elders v2 - Galactic Boogaloo [Warhammer Lizardmen Quest]
- Thread starter Xantalos
- Start date
- Sci-Fi Fantasy
-
- Tags
- warhammer warhammer 40k fantasy sci-fi science fantasy science-fantasy kitchen sink space fantasy isha kroak (warhammer fantasy) mazdamundi (warhammer fantasy) magic empire quest actions have consequences dinosaurs ia ia kroak fhtagn lasers lizardmen qm likes speculation and questions slann what could possibly go wrong?
- Location
- Russia
That's a glaring vulnerability of psychic field in fact, perfect for luring [kr]orks in a trap, which is exactly what we did here. You don't even need to defend the messing one and the messed one directly like us, just hide and wait until sufficient mass of enemy arrives at the point, then go exterminatus on them - cheap victory. Even if krorks' reaction was much more militarily advanced than "rush with all forces at the offending enemy" like their tactics in general would be, it's still fundamentally capturing strategic initiative from them. They probably wouldn't be a serious threat if necrons could orchestrate the entire war like that, especially remembering that 40k orks' big advantage, one of what makes them actually a galaxy-level threat, is unpredictability
Also we specifically captured warboss of entire local ork population (after making him such) to destroy everyone under him. A would-be researcher doesn't need that, he could isolate small population of krorks and research workings of the field on them presumably without such drastic *instinctive* reaction (other krorks might still win via field connection and a planned foiling plan could be arranged).
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
If the krork wouldn't have lost their ability to think and plan coherently if they felt a threat to the psychic field, then they'd be no more vulnerable from feeling such threats than they would be if they were blind to such threats. Being warned that Bad Shit is going to happen and knowing where it will happen is always better than not knowing.
One possibility is that the kind of ritual that can "hack" the ork/krork psychic field as opposed to just locally nullifying it requires psychic/magical sophistication in its own right. The sort of thing that the Necrons, even at their height, simply did not possess and used workarounds for.
We've already done that kind of research; that's how we knew to design our ritual. It doesn't draw reactions from orks because orks don't really give a shit if you capture other orks. Of course, krorks might be smarter than that, much as we make damn sure not to let the Ayacmanik take any lizardmen alive.
Also, just because you have anti-warp tech? Sure, it can stop the Eldar from magicing into existence a projectile...near it.
It doesnt stop them from making it outside your field.
It doesnt stop said projectile from physically existing after creation.
It doesnt stop them from applying force to said projectile.
It doesnt stop the force of said projectile impacting you at relativistic velocities from being extremely fucking real.
An anti-warp field is merely an area denial tool, not something that completely shuts down the enemy
Xantalos
Turtle-Speed Writing
Horrendously for the last while, I'm afraid - various things going on in my life that weren't anything to do with writing wound up burning me out ... on writing. Which honestly is some silliness. I did write some tonight though, for the first time in ... a while. Still remember how, it seems.
I can't help but also think about the polar gates on Mallus. I wonder if we can somehow replicate them on a smaller scale after we find why it fucked up so badly for the OOs and what they were intending via the plaques it could be useful for transporting troops and resources between worlds for planetary defence and other things.
Though judging how badly it screwed things up, the cons most likely outweigh the pros.
Though judging how badly it screwed things up, the cons most likely outweigh the pros.
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- Pronouns
- He/Him
Probably. I mean, it IS a research option on the Plaques.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
But we have a lot more things taking priority over the Plaques and the Plan right now. The big elements in my putative plans for the next Turn will be Basic Soul Examination, of course, and Qhyash Skink Priests, since those appear to be a requirement for Slaan resurrection/spawning and provide a set of cost reductions.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Yes, however I was just responding on the basis of the query, if it was possible, not advocating for it right now.
Yikes! Sorry I completely missed that on the research options. I'll make sure I properly go back and look at what we have available to us before I ask anything else.
A tv tropes page?
Xantalos
Turtle-Speed Writing
There hasn't been any made yet as far as I'm aware, and I'd feel awfully egotistical if I set it up myself or asked anyone to make one on my behalf.
Turn 13 - Abandonment of Pretense
Xantalos
Turtle-Speed Writing
The march of millions of orks was not something easily hidden. Individual warbands numbered in the hundreds, packing enough firepower between them to flatten great swathes of jungle. Thousands of such groups made up the army that advanced on Yagoqua, masses of infantry and formations of vehicles congealing together into a force eighteen million strong. They hooted and hollered with raucous joy as they went to war, their sheer numbers occluding the horizon and choking the air with smog for miles around them.
In other words, the perfect distraction for a classic kommando operation. This army was, after all, lead by the famed kommando Carvo Orktano, an ork said to have lived for an astounding forty-two years - for the average ork, who struggled to count on their fingers and often died before their first year passed, he was like a legend from ancient times. Orktano had spent every second of those years skulking around like the sneakiest git there ever was, so much so that he hadn't even been seen by any living greenskin. It was whispered in hushed tones that he was so stealthy that he'd invented a new color for it, one that no sensible git could possibly have conceived of - the abhorrent, mind bending hue known as purple. There was no proof of this, though, as no one had ever seen a purple ork.
Indeed, Carvo remained unseen as he drove his army onwards, and were it any other boss the boyz would likely have packed up and left. Word always seemed to drift down from somewhere, though, the nobs being politely informed as to where to go by hulking kommandos who appeared from behind implausibly small pieces of scenery. Orktano had brought a whole slew of the sneaky orks with him, and while the rest of the boyz got tangled in a proper scrap with the scaly lizard gits, Carvo and his assassins would sneak into the city and break Warboss Gardakka out from where the lizardmen were holding him captive. It was a foolproof plan.
In a clearing outside of Yagoqua there laid a stone mosaic the size of a city block, inlaid with thousands upon thousands of stone tiles, each no larger than a grain of sand. Each tile had been painstakingly crafted in the city's transmutation arrays, transformed from rock or soil gathered from precise coordinates across the city and its surroundings. Together they formed a grand interlocking pattern, a mosaic that laid out the layout of Yagoqua in exacting detail. Each tile bore a symbol or color upon it that represented its corresponding origin plot of ground as seen from above. Some were embellished with further symbols designating foliage or terrain features, and even the city itself. What was more, the mosaic was self-updating, and kept track of everything that moved within its auspices - including living creatures. Looking upon the tapestry of tiles, one could see symbols and colors flickering and changing nigh-constantly as the dots representing individual creatures moved in correspondence with their physical counterparts. One could count the saurus sentries manning the walls, view skinks dashing back and forth between temples and barracks and plazas, and even look and see themselves viewing the mosaic from above - the rendition of which was laid out in such fine detail that even this smaller replication shifted and changed.
This was Yagoqua's Omniscient Atlas, a system that not only displayed the positioning of everything within the city's borders with such precision that even the Ayacmanik could not evade it, but also transmitted this imagery into the mind of every lizardman in the city implanted with a channeling device. Thus it was that as the ork armies approached and a swathe of orkoid green symbols overtook the southeastern corner of the map, the city's armies were already waiting in optimized defensive positions, dug in behind field fortifications constructed before the orks had even come close. Whole wings of aerial units commanded by Hexoatl's Master of Skies whirled overhead, and Kroq-Gar lurked miles away under a shroud of perception-muffling magic conjured by slann under his command, waiting for the perfect moment to unveil himself and the entire legion of Xlanhuapec.
And on the walls of the city, Krom'tli waited. The dew-speckled albino kroxigor clutched his bone paddle, spreading trails of creeping mist with every sweep as he intoned reverberating prayers to Ayotzl on behalf of those who would fight and die. The turtle god's attention had been drawn by the efforts of its prophet, and its cool, damp touch could be felt on the hide of every lizardman present, staining scales a pale grey and causing faint wisps of fog to rise from their hides. The turtle god whispered promises of delayed mortality - should they be dealt a mortal wound, Ayotzl would hold their soul within their body for the duration of the battle, allowing the defenders of the city to continue to fight until they were either sufficiently healed or the threat had passed, allowing them to pass into the afterlife. Others, those who had devoted themselves more thoroughly to him, knew that the Mist Swimmer would claim them eventually, but that it would not be this day - they lived with the knowledge of when they would die embedded in their souls, and it was not against these foes.
As the greenskin army came within sight of Yagoqua, multiple slann within the city sunk into deep trances. Their astral forms unfolded from their physical selves, becoming intricate things of many angles and limbs and eyes that resembled their fleshy selves in the same way that a planet resembled a drawing of a circle. They reached out with solidified intent through the Warp and grasped the blistering field of green energy that was carried within and projected by the Uax horde, blasting it with telepathic pressure that fractured and rippled it like a psychic earthquake. The bodies of the Uax roared as their essence was assaulted, and redoubled their pace, racing with monofocused frenzy towards the source of the attack.
On the orks came like an unstoppable tidal wave of green savagery, and up the lizardmen rose to oppose them. The thundering of guns and the hissing wails of Saurus entering battle clashed against the eternal, unchanging warcry of the greenskins, and as Kroq-Gar unveiled his legions and smashed the orks between his forces and the anvil of the city's perimeter defenses, the Omniscient Atlas relayed every detail to the defenders with unrelenting precision, allowing the lizardmen to coordinate without word or sight, faultlessly countering every crude maneuver the orkoids attempted. Omen Mortars rained down from within the city, targeted without the need for spotters. Chameleon skink snipers put gleaming bullets into the heads of warband leaders, leaving the orks disorganized and fighting for leadership just as Stegadon formations were sent charging through their ranks, flattening dozens. Tiktaq'to's airborne legions flowed like liquid mercury around the buzzing clouds of ork fighter planes, evading streams of bullets with millimeters to spare in supreme displays of aerial maneuvering, even when targeted from behind or below.
As the battle raged, the Atlas also displayed something else - approaching the city alone or in pairs, creeping under the cover of brush and mud and congealed psychic obfuscation, their symbols rendered so dim by the effects of the Waaagh!!! that they were hardly even visible, were hundreds of ork kommandos. At any other place and time, the inexplicable stealth of the orks may have spoofed the lizardmen's extensive networks of patrols, sentries, and other detection systems. Nothing was outside the auspices of Yagoqua's Sacred Site, however, and the lizardmen had already arranged a counter-maneuver.
The kommandos crept closer and closer to the walls, eyes set firmly on the prize. Each of them had devised a different method for getting past the walls of the city – some had strapped jetpacks to their backs, others carried grappling hooks, and still others bore rumbling ork-portable drills with which to bore tunnels below the city. All had trained with Boss Orktano for weeks, and despite the high chance of being caught during their mission, there was not a one that did not grin with anticipation. All orks loved a good fight, and the principle of 'dead sneaky', which involved killing everything they came across so nothing could see them, was something they were very eager to attempt on the lizardmen.
The moment the last of the commandos came within firing distance of Yagoqua, the lizardmen's prepared gambit was unleashed. Each of the six hundred and seventy six Uax stealth operatives were hit by a simultaneous barrage of skink priest spells, sniper rounds, Monument Cannon fire, and exploding obsinite pillars. The ground shook and air buckled briefly from the weight of overlapping fire, and all that remained of the first of many ork infiltration attempts was ash upon the breeze.
The bloody grind continued on for days, never fully settling into a proper siege, for neither side required the degree of rest and rearmament that such a term implied. The orks slowed their tempo of assault only when they had run dry on ammunition, and even that lasted only until their feverishly-industrious Meks could churn out more, or for the rank and file to simply load already-spent shells into their guns, or spare teeth where no other material could be found. There was always one collection of boyz or another making an assault on the city, or fending off a lizardmen raid, or tearing through the jungle and engaging with Yagoqua's perimeter defenses. The greenskins were relentless, never ceasing in the pursuit of the warfare they were created for.
The lizardmen, for their part, simply rotated their troops in or out of the city on an as-needed basis. The Omniscient Atlas allowed for the dissolution of formal chains of command, for every lizardman knew what every other was doing, and the collective input of hundreds of thousands of minds was distilled and streamlined by the magic of the Sacred Site. In such a manner, Yagoqua's defenders were able to sustain a practically endless campaign of both proactive and reactive defense, with their legions effectively capable of switching between raiding, fortifying, and counter-assaulting the incursions of the ork force at a moment's notice. It was in this manner that they were able to hold off the weight of Carvo's horde, even pushing them back from the city walls, while taking minimal casualties in exchange.
It was not long before the ork army was whittled away to less than a third of its original strength, and Carvo finally deigned to show himself to his subordinates. It was rumored afterwards that he appeared in their midst as if by magic, stepping out from under the table the various meganobz used to plan their assaults, even though he was clearly too large for such a space to fit his bulk. "Good work, ladz," the kommando boss was said to have spoken, ignoring complaints that the boyz were getting zogged up properly good by the shiny scale gits. "I'ze been wotching dem fight yas, and I figgered out their trick. Dey got some fing wot lets dem fink like da Sameboyz, and use dat level of kordy-nation against us. Dat's why all me understudies keep dyin' when we fink dey's distracted enuff fer us ta sneak in - if one uv dem sees it, dey all see it."
There was a rising chorus of realization as the ork commanders saw the truth in Carvo's words. A hulking meganob, his brain alight with his third thought of the day, spoke up. "How iz we supposed ta fight dem, den? Sameboyz don't forteefie nuffin like da scalyboyz do, and even if dey's finking like sameboyz, a scalyboy's still a scalyboy."
"Dat's why I'ze in charge and you ain't," Carvo replied. "We'ze gotta fight dem like we'z fightin both scalyboyz and sameboyz at da same time. Dat's why I'ze drawn up Operashun Distract Da Scalies By Smashin Da Sameboy Powerz Building An' Get Da Boss Out While Dey'z Fightin. Or DDSBSDSPBAGDBOWDF."
The gathered meganobz scratched at their heads, trying to puzzle out the bizarre collection of syllables that the kommando boss had spewed out. "Er, ow's we supposed da say dat, boss? Da boyz ain't gonna know what you'ze talkin about," one ventured after a lengthy silence.
Carvo strode over to the ork who had spoken up, putting his hand on the back of his underling's head. "Dat's easy," he grunted, and smushed the smaller ork's face into the table. "Try sayin sumfing."
"Ddsbdspbagdbowdf," the Meganob grunted, his words muffled and distorted by the table. The other orks murmured in dawning comprehension, and a brawl swiftly broke out as they all attempted to test this method out on each other at once.
At length the ork leaders disseminated their plan to their underlings, and the remaining boyz were riled up for a rousing good fight. Six million orks roared once again towards Yagoqua as they had many times before, but instead of beelining directly for the city itself, they diverted course, sending all the might of their armies towards the Omniscient Atlas itself. In response the lizardmen diverted the majority of their armies towards the site as well - though the artifact was protected by a slew of defensive fortifications, if it were damaged or destroyed, their ability to fight off the greenskins would be dramatically decreased.
Fighting under the auspice of the Atlas was an experience somewhat like what Kroq-Gar pictured the slann Communion being like. He was fully present in his own body, his awareness not diluted or distorted, yet he was also elsewhere, in many places. He saw through the eyes of Khol-oktl, a Saurus spawnling not three days old, as he speared a dead ork upon the bladed barrel of his rifle, hefting the corpse and using it as a bullet sponge while he shot back at an approaching mob of greenskins. He chanted a joined incantation as an Octarine Cabal, shaping skeins of magic into a spell of friction negation that he slung over the wings of a flight of ork aircraft, sending them plummeting from the skies. He bore his own weight upon his back as Grymloq, rider and mount coordinating their movements to such an extent that they functioned as one entity. The minds of other lizardmen flowed past him, smooth as silk, and they knew and responded to his commands before they even became conscious actualizations of thought. Perhaps this was how the Ayacmanik saw the world – moving through many bodies, fighting with no concept of delay or disjunction.
The battle lines blended and swirled like water, and Kroq-Gar moved with them, countering the advance of the orks like an ocean current diverting the path of another. From his limbic perspective, the ancient saurus could see how the Uax army lunged and flailed, moving almost as he did. No individual ork cared for its own life, but there was a semblance of unity in the horde's movements, almost as though it were a single creature, with a mind that was merely half-awake. It was a raging torrent where he was but a stream, and so he did not contest his foe directly - instead he circled its flanks, nipping at the rear of the beast with ambushes and feinted assaults, drawing its attention away from the structure it had come to destroy. It took many attempts, for the Uax, for all that it was foolish, could not be shifted easily from its chosen course, and Kroq-Gar experienced many deaths at the hands of ork choppas and bullets, but at length he was able to draw the attention of the greenskins away from the Atlas. Millions of tusked throats bellowed in excitement, and the monster raised its many slapdash weapons in anticipation of a fight.
A part of him noted the oncoming wave of ork aircraft beelining for Yagoqua's airspace, but while in theory his attention could be everywhere the Atlas was, in practice, the demands of battle meant that his eyes and those of his direct subordinates were needed to manage the oncoming brawl he had lured the Uax into. He felt the sharpened minds of the city's garrison take note of the aircraft and turned his focus back to the foe, raising thousands of shields in reply to the Uax and letting a scale-shivering roar ripple across every one of his bodies.
A storm hung low over Yagoqua, layers of crackling and rumbling clouds churning over the city like a boiling cauldron. Many Coatl soared through its banks, the glimmering serpents dancing around erratic wind currents and dragging the clouds behind them into intricate patterns that resembled themselves, flora or fauna they favored, or more abstract shapes. Some looped coils of lightning around themselves and formed it into great capes or tassels, occasionally casting a bolt down into the teeming masses of green outside of the city. The whimsical creatures even went so far as to alter the sound of the wind itself with their powers, pitching it up or down to form peculiar rhythms that they twirled and spun themselves to.
A low, harsh note introduced itself into the display of the Coatl, a deep droning buzz that presented itself and promptly became impossible to ignore. A massed wave of ork aircraft sailed towards the city, more planes gathered together than the Uax had displayed thus far in the whole of this assault. Many of them were slapdash creations, made from the wreckage of previous casualties – rust-speckled dakkajets with pedal-powered propellers, motorcycles and trukks fitted with gas-powered balloons and teams of gretchin that waved squighide fans to sail them forward, even ramshackle boats that had been flipped upside down, had metal wings bolted to their sides, and their smokestacks replaced with rocket engines that burned with white flame and black smoke to keep them aloft. It was clearly a last-ditch attempt to clear the skies above Yagoqua, and the Coatl turned to regard the droning horde with collective disdain as their storm began to reach out with hungry tendrils.
The cloud of ork planes was swiftly swallowed by the storm, which began its grisly work in much the same manner as it had been performed on previous battlefields – the Coatl shaped the winds to seize and smash the droning aircraft into each other, aided by the magic of a slann in the city below, which coaxed the skeins of air until they were as sharp enough to shear through metal with their mere passage. The sky was soon filled with fire as fuel tanks detonated by the score, and the Coatl weaved a new rhythm out of the keening wails of dying orks.
The orks had not committed to such an assault merely to fight in the sky, however. The assemblage of aircraft punched through the conjured storm with sheer momentum, losing dozens, hundreds of planes to the icy clutches of the wind and thunder, but still retaining an appreciable number of aircraft. Many were functionally wrecked, but that seemed not to matter, for the orks merely pointed their noses to the city below them and turned every engine they had to its maximum burn. The droning intensified and was replaced with a screeching roar of gleeful anticipation, as hundreds of Uax planes began a simultaneous kamikaze assault on the city below them.
The Monument Cannons mounted on Yagoqua's walls and pyramids turned to the skies and unleashed a storm of shrieking obsinite flechettes, saturating the city's airspace with flame and sound as they shot down plane after plane. The orks made no effort to evade their fire, instead accelerating through the wreckage of the aircraft in front of them, using their brethren as impromptu shielding.
Only a few ork planes survived the descent intact, yet it made little difference - the Uax had not intended to use the aircraft again. Like an avalanche of flaming hornets, the ork aircraft fell onto the city, impacting at full speed into Yagoqua's central pyramid and the surrounding district. The pilots and crew, eager as any greenskin for a fight and only moderately charred and concussed from the impact, leapt out of the flaming wreckage they had made of their crafts and began wreaking havoc, hooting and hollering incoherently.
Most of these were swiftly contained by Yagoqua's defenders, who had positioned themselves accordingly in the minutes before the orks fell. Kroxigors hefted portable walls that hooked into the buildings on either side of the street, boxing groups of orks into containable areas, and skinks stationed within nearby buildings deployed their stockpiles of Glyph Spheres to immobilize or incapacitate groups of orks until help could arrive. In areas where large mobs had congregated, phalanxes of Stegadons were sent charging down the city's boulevards to scatter and trample the orks, after which teams of Saurus mopped up the disoriented survivors.
"Course, I figgered dat would happen when I planned all dis before we took off," Carvo Orktano mused. He cast a smirk towards the severed head of a Saurus that he'd mounted on the head of a gun and propped up against the wall of the foodstock room he was hiding in. "Any git knows the scalyboyz iz like a nest of squig-bees - the closer ya get, the harder dey sting. Any random mob of boyz dropping into da base ain't gonna distract you'ze for long, even if we don't break da magic map fing you got."
He paused and held his breath as the telltale thumping of a kroxigor passed by the door - he'd covered his tracks well enough getting in here, but it wasn't worth getting caught for a bit of monologuing. Once the sound and vibration had faded, he turned to the head once more and raised a finger. "What it did do was let me own ladz dat I put into explodey-proof barrels on da planes to sneak over to da big pyramid while da rest of da boyz does wot dey do best. Sure, some of them wouldn't survive the drop, or get caught by you lot and get chopped up, but I knows orks and I reckon I know you'ze too." He leveled his finger at the head, which stared back at him with slitted pupils. "Da boyz, dey'ze simple, dey just wanna smash stuff, and you gits? You'ze simple too - you wanna smash whoever smashes yer stuff. Throw the two of ya's at each other, and Mork willing, there'll be room for us sneaky gits to do what we wanna do, and get da Boss back, so he can bring us ta bigga fights later."
Something exploded outside, shaking the room enough that the head fell off of Carvo's gun. "Dere's da ladz now," he quipped as he scooped the weapon up. "Time ta get to work."
Krom'tli waited and prayed within Yagoqua's primary Eternity Chamber as his brethren fought and died outside. His eyes were shut, his body knelt in a meditative pose, and yet it was as if he stood at the side of each of his kin. He felt their wounds as his own, stood witness as they brought death to the Uax bodies before them, and whispered the words that would guide those who fell to Ayotzl's side. The magic of this city was truly a potent aid to his task of shepherding the dead, and the kroxigor prophet's mind thrummed with inspiration. He would commune with the Great Swimmer on this topic in the following years - perhaps something could be made of it.
Something detonated in the exterior hallway and stone shifted aside with a harsh creak, shattering the stasis-like silence that hung across the room, and Krom'tli's abyssal eyes blinked open. He rose to his feet, hefting his long oar of carved white bone, and regarded the greenskins that were entering into the chamber, their forms shrouded by a cloud of smoke. There were ten, with none being especially large by the standards of their kind, even their evident leader, who stood a head taller than the rest. They wore dappled squig-leather, which had been tailored to be form-fitting with a moderate degree of skill, had purple paint daubed over their faces, and seemed to be armed with blocky, jagged knives and short pistols rather than the higher-calibre weapons their more boisterous kin favored. Assassins, then.
The biggest among them, who was swathed in a knee-length coat and wore a metal mask shaped like an ork skull, stepped forward and cocked his head. "You ain't da boss," he stated in broken, but passable Saurian. "You ain't even da scalie boss. What gives? Dis is where da froggy boyz always sit around in."
"The mage-lords foresaw this gambit, Uax," Krom'tli rumbled. "Your warboss is located in another temple-city."
The mask-clad ork looked to one side, then the other, as if making sure the statement was not in jest. "Iz you kidding?" He grunted in evident frustration. "An' I came up wif a plan name an' erryfing. Buncha wasted time," he grumbled, descending into a low-pitched mutter as he turned about-face and began to make his way out of the chamber.
"Uh, boss," another kommando asked. "We ain't gonna krump dis wun?" He motioned to Krom'tli, who resembled a silent ivory monolith towering in the center of the room. "'E'z right dere, an' he ain't doing nuffin. Just standin dere, menacing-like. I bet we could take 'im."
Carvo snorted disdainfully. "An' 'ow do you fink dat's gonna turn out for ya? Fightin' a weirdboy kroxigit wif magic fart gas driftin' off dat big stick 'e's holding? You wanna die gettin nuffin done like a yoof who just popped out da ground, go ahead. Me, I got work ta do."
With that, the irritated assassin trod heavily out of the chamber, followed sheepishly by his understudies. One of them pulled the door shut behind him as he exited, muttering an apology about the mess they'd caused, and the Eternity Chamber was empty once more.
Krom'tli stood for a moment and blinked. A definitively atypical encounter, to see an Uax retreating from a potential fight. This information would have to be shared with Sotek's chosen-
Something snapped and pulsated through the Warp, shifting the Eversea like an earthquake, and Krom'tli heard screaming. In a single stride he was through the door, flowing through the low entrance in a way no ordinary kroxigor could have managed, his oar held in a battle stance.
He beheld the Uax assassins clutching their heads and screaming, a sound that only increased in volume as it went on, as if the creatures had limitless space for sound contained within them. Krom'tli flinched as Ayotzl poured prophetic energy into and through him, and he saw for a flickering moment a fraction of the death the beast before him would inflict over the course of its existence. If Ayotzl were a guardian large enough to encompass a world, the ocean of lives the Uax would and had and was claiming was so vast as to make the turtle-god into less than a droplet of water. Something had awakened a fragment of that potential in the bodies before him. The touch of other minds brushed against his, as other lizardmen reported the same phenomemon - this was no isolated incident.
The albino prophet swept his oar outwards, ending ten of the Uax with a single strike. Their leader, forewarned by some fragment of intuition, or perhaps simply able to better process the commands imposed upon him by the thing that passed for his soul, rolled away from the blow with merely a glancing hit that knocked his mask away. He clambered back up to his feet and met Krom'tli's eyes for a moment.
Whatever semblance of an individual that had previously existed in that body was gone. All that remained was a frenzied beast that was focused upon precisely one thing.
"WAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!" thundered the body of Carvo Orktano, and it plunged its knife into the kroxigor prophet's neck with a level of strength that belied its size. It continued to fight through forcible arm removal, a shattered skull, no less than sixteen spinal breaks, and a pulped cerebellum before it stopped moving. It never stopped screaming as it fought, a guttural howl that rose forcibly from its throat, as though uttered by something far larger.
Krom'tli's wounds dissolved into mist as he looked at the corpse below him, and he sent prayers to Ayotzl as he experienced many of his brethren fall to the sudden ferocity of the Uax. Whatever this sudden onset of monstrosity was, it was undoubtedly a sign of much death in the very near future.
If anything, that was an understatement, though neither Krom'tli nor any other Lizardman knew the truth. A fragment of a weapon long thought broken and degenerated had arisen from half-asleep dormancy. A fraction of a segment of a galaxy-consuming apocalypse had been unleashed.
It was fitting, in a way. The Heirs of the Old Ones had emerged, diminished yet growing. The Yngir Star-Hungry were beginning to awaken once more. The curtain was being opened, slowly but surely, on the War in Heaven's second act.
And no reprisal of that most terrible of cataclysms would be complete without the monster that had ended it.
A/N: With tremendous thanks to @Kaboomatic, whom I probably wouldn't have been able to finish this without him reminding me of it.
In other words, the perfect distraction for a classic kommando operation. This army was, after all, lead by the famed kommando Carvo Orktano, an ork said to have lived for an astounding forty-two years - for the average ork, who struggled to count on their fingers and often died before their first year passed, he was like a legend from ancient times. Orktano had spent every second of those years skulking around like the sneakiest git there ever was, so much so that he hadn't even been seen by any living greenskin. It was whispered in hushed tones that he was so stealthy that he'd invented a new color for it, one that no sensible git could possibly have conceived of - the abhorrent, mind bending hue known as purple. There was no proof of this, though, as no one had ever seen a purple ork.
Indeed, Carvo remained unseen as he drove his army onwards, and were it any other boss the boyz would likely have packed up and left. Word always seemed to drift down from somewhere, though, the nobs being politely informed as to where to go by hulking kommandos who appeared from behind implausibly small pieces of scenery. Orktano had brought a whole slew of the sneaky orks with him, and while the rest of the boyz got tangled in a proper scrap with the scaly lizard gits, Carvo and his assassins would sneak into the city and break Warboss Gardakka out from where the lizardmen were holding him captive. It was a foolproof plan.
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In a clearing outside of Yagoqua there laid a stone mosaic the size of a city block, inlaid with thousands upon thousands of stone tiles, each no larger than a grain of sand. Each tile had been painstakingly crafted in the city's transmutation arrays, transformed from rock or soil gathered from precise coordinates across the city and its surroundings. Together they formed a grand interlocking pattern, a mosaic that laid out the layout of Yagoqua in exacting detail. Each tile bore a symbol or color upon it that represented its corresponding origin plot of ground as seen from above. Some were embellished with further symbols designating foliage or terrain features, and even the city itself. What was more, the mosaic was self-updating, and kept track of everything that moved within its auspices - including living creatures. Looking upon the tapestry of tiles, one could see symbols and colors flickering and changing nigh-constantly as the dots representing individual creatures moved in correspondence with their physical counterparts. One could count the saurus sentries manning the walls, view skinks dashing back and forth between temples and barracks and plazas, and even look and see themselves viewing the mosaic from above - the rendition of which was laid out in such fine detail that even this smaller replication shifted and changed.
This was Yagoqua's Omniscient Atlas, a system that not only displayed the positioning of everything within the city's borders with such precision that even the Ayacmanik could not evade it, but also transmitted this imagery into the mind of every lizardman in the city implanted with a channeling device. Thus it was that as the ork armies approached and a swathe of orkoid green symbols overtook the southeastern corner of the map, the city's armies were already waiting in optimized defensive positions, dug in behind field fortifications constructed before the orks had even come close. Whole wings of aerial units commanded by Hexoatl's Master of Skies whirled overhead, and Kroq-Gar lurked miles away under a shroud of perception-muffling magic conjured by slann under his command, waiting for the perfect moment to unveil himself and the entire legion of Xlanhuapec.
And on the walls of the city, Krom'tli waited. The dew-speckled albino kroxigor clutched his bone paddle, spreading trails of creeping mist with every sweep as he intoned reverberating prayers to Ayotzl on behalf of those who would fight and die. The turtle god's attention had been drawn by the efforts of its prophet, and its cool, damp touch could be felt on the hide of every lizardman present, staining scales a pale grey and causing faint wisps of fog to rise from their hides. The turtle god whispered promises of delayed mortality - should they be dealt a mortal wound, Ayotzl would hold their soul within their body for the duration of the battle, allowing the defenders of the city to continue to fight until they were either sufficiently healed or the threat had passed, allowing them to pass into the afterlife. Others, those who had devoted themselves more thoroughly to him, knew that the Mist Swimmer would claim them eventually, but that it would not be this day - they lived with the knowledge of when they would die embedded in their souls, and it was not against these foes.
As the greenskin army came within sight of Yagoqua, multiple slann within the city sunk into deep trances. Their astral forms unfolded from their physical selves, becoming intricate things of many angles and limbs and eyes that resembled their fleshy selves in the same way that a planet resembled a drawing of a circle. They reached out with solidified intent through the Warp and grasped the blistering field of green energy that was carried within and projected by the Uax horde, blasting it with telepathic pressure that fractured and rippled it like a psychic earthquake. The bodies of the Uax roared as their essence was assaulted, and redoubled their pace, racing with monofocused frenzy towards the source of the attack.
On the orks came like an unstoppable tidal wave of green savagery, and up the lizardmen rose to oppose them. The thundering of guns and the hissing wails of Saurus entering battle clashed against the eternal, unchanging warcry of the greenskins, and as Kroq-Gar unveiled his legions and smashed the orks between his forces and the anvil of the city's perimeter defenses, the Omniscient Atlas relayed every detail to the defenders with unrelenting precision, allowing the lizardmen to coordinate without word or sight, faultlessly countering every crude maneuver the orkoids attempted. Omen Mortars rained down from within the city, targeted without the need for spotters. Chameleon skink snipers put gleaming bullets into the heads of warband leaders, leaving the orks disorganized and fighting for leadership just as Stegadon formations were sent charging through their ranks, flattening dozens. Tiktaq'to's airborne legions flowed like liquid mercury around the buzzing clouds of ork fighter planes, evading streams of bullets with millimeters to spare in supreme displays of aerial maneuvering, even when targeted from behind or below.
As the battle raged, the Atlas also displayed something else - approaching the city alone or in pairs, creeping under the cover of brush and mud and congealed psychic obfuscation, their symbols rendered so dim by the effects of the Waaagh!!! that they were hardly even visible, were hundreds of ork kommandos. At any other place and time, the inexplicable stealth of the orks may have spoofed the lizardmen's extensive networks of patrols, sentries, and other detection systems. Nothing was outside the auspices of Yagoqua's Sacred Site, however, and the lizardmen had already arranged a counter-maneuver.
The kommandos crept closer and closer to the walls, eyes set firmly on the prize. Each of them had devised a different method for getting past the walls of the city – some had strapped jetpacks to their backs, others carried grappling hooks, and still others bore rumbling ork-portable drills with which to bore tunnels below the city. All had trained with Boss Orktano for weeks, and despite the high chance of being caught during their mission, there was not a one that did not grin with anticipation. All orks loved a good fight, and the principle of 'dead sneaky', which involved killing everything they came across so nothing could see them, was something they were very eager to attempt on the lizardmen.
The moment the last of the commandos came within firing distance of Yagoqua, the lizardmen's prepared gambit was unleashed. Each of the six hundred and seventy six Uax stealth operatives were hit by a simultaneous barrage of skink priest spells, sniper rounds, Monument Cannon fire, and exploding obsinite pillars. The ground shook and air buckled briefly from the weight of overlapping fire, and all that remained of the first of many ork infiltration attempts was ash upon the breeze.
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The bloody grind continued on for days, never fully settling into a proper siege, for neither side required the degree of rest and rearmament that such a term implied. The orks slowed their tempo of assault only when they had run dry on ammunition, and even that lasted only until their feverishly-industrious Meks could churn out more, or for the rank and file to simply load already-spent shells into their guns, or spare teeth where no other material could be found. There was always one collection of boyz or another making an assault on the city, or fending off a lizardmen raid, or tearing through the jungle and engaging with Yagoqua's perimeter defenses. The greenskins were relentless, never ceasing in the pursuit of the warfare they were created for.
The lizardmen, for their part, simply rotated their troops in or out of the city on an as-needed basis. The Omniscient Atlas allowed for the dissolution of formal chains of command, for every lizardman knew what every other was doing, and the collective input of hundreds of thousands of minds was distilled and streamlined by the magic of the Sacred Site. In such a manner, Yagoqua's defenders were able to sustain a practically endless campaign of both proactive and reactive defense, with their legions effectively capable of switching between raiding, fortifying, and counter-assaulting the incursions of the ork force at a moment's notice. It was in this manner that they were able to hold off the weight of Carvo's horde, even pushing them back from the city walls, while taking minimal casualties in exchange.
It was not long before the ork army was whittled away to less than a third of its original strength, and Carvo finally deigned to show himself to his subordinates. It was rumored afterwards that he appeared in their midst as if by magic, stepping out from under the table the various meganobz used to plan their assaults, even though he was clearly too large for such a space to fit his bulk. "Good work, ladz," the kommando boss was said to have spoken, ignoring complaints that the boyz were getting zogged up properly good by the shiny scale gits. "I'ze been wotching dem fight yas, and I figgered out their trick. Dey got some fing wot lets dem fink like da Sameboyz, and use dat level of kordy-nation against us. Dat's why all me understudies keep dyin' when we fink dey's distracted enuff fer us ta sneak in - if one uv dem sees it, dey all see it."
There was a rising chorus of realization as the ork commanders saw the truth in Carvo's words. A hulking meganob, his brain alight with his third thought of the day, spoke up. "How iz we supposed ta fight dem, den? Sameboyz don't forteefie nuffin like da scalyboyz do, and even if dey's finking like sameboyz, a scalyboy's still a scalyboy."
"Dat's why I'ze in charge and you ain't," Carvo replied. "We'ze gotta fight dem like we'z fightin both scalyboyz and sameboyz at da same time. Dat's why I'ze drawn up Operashun Distract Da Scalies By Smashin Da Sameboy Powerz Building An' Get Da Boss Out While Dey'z Fightin. Or DDSBSDSPBAGDBOWDF."
The gathered meganobz scratched at their heads, trying to puzzle out the bizarre collection of syllables that the kommando boss had spewed out. "Er, ow's we supposed da say dat, boss? Da boyz ain't gonna know what you'ze talkin about," one ventured after a lengthy silence.
Carvo strode over to the ork who had spoken up, putting his hand on the back of his underling's head. "Dat's easy," he grunted, and smushed the smaller ork's face into the table. "Try sayin sumfing."
"Ddsbdspbagdbowdf," the Meganob grunted, his words muffled and distorted by the table. The other orks murmured in dawning comprehension, and a brawl swiftly broke out as they all attempted to test this method out on each other at once.
At length the ork leaders disseminated their plan to their underlings, and the remaining boyz were riled up for a rousing good fight. Six million orks roared once again towards Yagoqua as they had many times before, but instead of beelining directly for the city itself, they diverted course, sending all the might of their armies towards the Omniscient Atlas itself. In response the lizardmen diverted the majority of their armies towards the site as well - though the artifact was protected by a slew of defensive fortifications, if it were damaged or destroyed, their ability to fight off the greenskins would be dramatically decreased.
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Fighting under the auspice of the Atlas was an experience somewhat like what Kroq-Gar pictured the slann Communion being like. He was fully present in his own body, his awareness not diluted or distorted, yet he was also elsewhere, in many places. He saw through the eyes of Khol-oktl, a Saurus spawnling not three days old, as he speared a dead ork upon the bladed barrel of his rifle, hefting the corpse and using it as a bullet sponge while he shot back at an approaching mob of greenskins. He chanted a joined incantation as an Octarine Cabal, shaping skeins of magic into a spell of friction negation that he slung over the wings of a flight of ork aircraft, sending them plummeting from the skies. He bore his own weight upon his back as Grymloq, rider and mount coordinating their movements to such an extent that they functioned as one entity. The minds of other lizardmen flowed past him, smooth as silk, and they knew and responded to his commands before they even became conscious actualizations of thought. Perhaps this was how the Ayacmanik saw the world – moving through many bodies, fighting with no concept of delay or disjunction.
The battle lines blended and swirled like water, and Kroq-Gar moved with them, countering the advance of the orks like an ocean current diverting the path of another. From his limbic perspective, the ancient saurus could see how the Uax army lunged and flailed, moving almost as he did. No individual ork cared for its own life, but there was a semblance of unity in the horde's movements, almost as though it were a single creature, with a mind that was merely half-awake. It was a raging torrent where he was but a stream, and so he did not contest his foe directly - instead he circled its flanks, nipping at the rear of the beast with ambushes and feinted assaults, drawing its attention away from the structure it had come to destroy. It took many attempts, for the Uax, for all that it was foolish, could not be shifted easily from its chosen course, and Kroq-Gar experienced many deaths at the hands of ork choppas and bullets, but at length he was able to draw the attention of the greenskins away from the Atlas. Millions of tusked throats bellowed in excitement, and the monster raised its many slapdash weapons in anticipation of a fight.
A part of him noted the oncoming wave of ork aircraft beelining for Yagoqua's airspace, but while in theory his attention could be everywhere the Atlas was, in practice, the demands of battle meant that his eyes and those of his direct subordinates were needed to manage the oncoming brawl he had lured the Uax into. He felt the sharpened minds of the city's garrison take note of the aircraft and turned his focus back to the foe, raising thousands of shields in reply to the Uax and letting a scale-shivering roar ripple across every one of his bodies.
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A storm hung low over Yagoqua, layers of crackling and rumbling clouds churning over the city like a boiling cauldron. Many Coatl soared through its banks, the glimmering serpents dancing around erratic wind currents and dragging the clouds behind them into intricate patterns that resembled themselves, flora or fauna they favored, or more abstract shapes. Some looped coils of lightning around themselves and formed it into great capes or tassels, occasionally casting a bolt down into the teeming masses of green outside of the city. The whimsical creatures even went so far as to alter the sound of the wind itself with their powers, pitching it up or down to form peculiar rhythms that they twirled and spun themselves to.
A low, harsh note introduced itself into the display of the Coatl, a deep droning buzz that presented itself and promptly became impossible to ignore. A massed wave of ork aircraft sailed towards the city, more planes gathered together than the Uax had displayed thus far in the whole of this assault. Many of them were slapdash creations, made from the wreckage of previous casualties – rust-speckled dakkajets with pedal-powered propellers, motorcycles and trukks fitted with gas-powered balloons and teams of gretchin that waved squighide fans to sail them forward, even ramshackle boats that had been flipped upside down, had metal wings bolted to their sides, and their smokestacks replaced with rocket engines that burned with white flame and black smoke to keep them aloft. It was clearly a last-ditch attempt to clear the skies above Yagoqua, and the Coatl turned to regard the droning horde with collective disdain as their storm began to reach out with hungry tendrils.
The cloud of ork planes was swiftly swallowed by the storm, which began its grisly work in much the same manner as it had been performed on previous battlefields – the Coatl shaped the winds to seize and smash the droning aircraft into each other, aided by the magic of a slann in the city below, which coaxed the skeins of air until they were as sharp enough to shear through metal with their mere passage. The sky was soon filled with fire as fuel tanks detonated by the score, and the Coatl weaved a new rhythm out of the keening wails of dying orks.
The orks had not committed to such an assault merely to fight in the sky, however. The assemblage of aircraft punched through the conjured storm with sheer momentum, losing dozens, hundreds of planes to the icy clutches of the wind and thunder, but still retaining an appreciable number of aircraft. Many were functionally wrecked, but that seemed not to matter, for the orks merely pointed their noses to the city below them and turned every engine they had to its maximum burn. The droning intensified and was replaced with a screeching roar of gleeful anticipation, as hundreds of Uax planes began a simultaneous kamikaze assault on the city below them.
The Monument Cannons mounted on Yagoqua's walls and pyramids turned to the skies and unleashed a storm of shrieking obsinite flechettes, saturating the city's airspace with flame and sound as they shot down plane after plane. The orks made no effort to evade their fire, instead accelerating through the wreckage of the aircraft in front of them, using their brethren as impromptu shielding.
Only a few ork planes survived the descent intact, yet it made little difference - the Uax had not intended to use the aircraft again. Like an avalanche of flaming hornets, the ork aircraft fell onto the city, impacting at full speed into Yagoqua's central pyramid and the surrounding district. The pilots and crew, eager as any greenskin for a fight and only moderately charred and concussed from the impact, leapt out of the flaming wreckage they had made of their crafts and began wreaking havoc, hooting and hollering incoherently.
Most of these were swiftly contained by Yagoqua's defenders, who had positioned themselves accordingly in the minutes before the orks fell. Kroxigors hefted portable walls that hooked into the buildings on either side of the street, boxing groups of orks into containable areas, and skinks stationed within nearby buildings deployed their stockpiles of Glyph Spheres to immobilize or incapacitate groups of orks until help could arrive. In areas where large mobs had congregated, phalanxes of Stegadons were sent charging down the city's boulevards to scatter and trample the orks, after which teams of Saurus mopped up the disoriented survivors.
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"Course, I figgered dat would happen when I planned all dis before we took off," Carvo Orktano mused. He cast a smirk towards the severed head of a Saurus that he'd mounted on the head of a gun and propped up against the wall of the foodstock room he was hiding in. "Any git knows the scalyboyz iz like a nest of squig-bees - the closer ya get, the harder dey sting. Any random mob of boyz dropping into da base ain't gonna distract you'ze for long, even if we don't break da magic map fing you got."
He paused and held his breath as the telltale thumping of a kroxigor passed by the door - he'd covered his tracks well enough getting in here, but it wasn't worth getting caught for a bit of monologuing. Once the sound and vibration had faded, he turned to the head once more and raised a finger. "What it did do was let me own ladz dat I put into explodey-proof barrels on da planes to sneak over to da big pyramid while da rest of da boyz does wot dey do best. Sure, some of them wouldn't survive the drop, or get caught by you lot and get chopped up, but I knows orks and I reckon I know you'ze too." He leveled his finger at the head, which stared back at him with slitted pupils. "Da boyz, dey'ze simple, dey just wanna smash stuff, and you gits? You'ze simple too - you wanna smash whoever smashes yer stuff. Throw the two of ya's at each other, and Mork willing, there'll be room for us sneaky gits to do what we wanna do, and get da Boss back, so he can bring us ta bigga fights later."
Something exploded outside, shaking the room enough that the head fell off of Carvo's gun. "Dere's da ladz now," he quipped as he scooped the weapon up. "Time ta get to work."
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Krom'tli waited and prayed within Yagoqua's primary Eternity Chamber as his brethren fought and died outside. His eyes were shut, his body knelt in a meditative pose, and yet it was as if he stood at the side of each of his kin. He felt their wounds as his own, stood witness as they brought death to the Uax bodies before them, and whispered the words that would guide those who fell to Ayotzl's side. The magic of this city was truly a potent aid to his task of shepherding the dead, and the kroxigor prophet's mind thrummed with inspiration. He would commune with the Great Swimmer on this topic in the following years - perhaps something could be made of it.
Something detonated in the exterior hallway and stone shifted aside with a harsh creak, shattering the stasis-like silence that hung across the room, and Krom'tli's abyssal eyes blinked open. He rose to his feet, hefting his long oar of carved white bone, and regarded the greenskins that were entering into the chamber, their forms shrouded by a cloud of smoke. There were ten, with none being especially large by the standards of their kind, even their evident leader, who stood a head taller than the rest. They wore dappled squig-leather, which had been tailored to be form-fitting with a moderate degree of skill, had purple paint daubed over their faces, and seemed to be armed with blocky, jagged knives and short pistols rather than the higher-calibre weapons their more boisterous kin favored. Assassins, then.
The biggest among them, who was swathed in a knee-length coat and wore a metal mask shaped like an ork skull, stepped forward and cocked his head. "You ain't da boss," he stated in broken, but passable Saurian. "You ain't even da scalie boss. What gives? Dis is where da froggy boyz always sit around in."
"The mage-lords foresaw this gambit, Uax," Krom'tli rumbled. "Your warboss is located in another temple-city."
The mask-clad ork looked to one side, then the other, as if making sure the statement was not in jest. "Iz you kidding?" He grunted in evident frustration. "An' I came up wif a plan name an' erryfing. Buncha wasted time," he grumbled, descending into a low-pitched mutter as he turned about-face and began to make his way out of the chamber.
"Uh, boss," another kommando asked. "We ain't gonna krump dis wun?" He motioned to Krom'tli, who resembled a silent ivory monolith towering in the center of the room. "'E'z right dere, an' he ain't doing nuffin. Just standin dere, menacing-like. I bet we could take 'im."
Carvo snorted disdainfully. "An' 'ow do you fink dat's gonna turn out for ya? Fightin' a weirdboy kroxigit wif magic fart gas driftin' off dat big stick 'e's holding? You wanna die gettin nuffin done like a yoof who just popped out da ground, go ahead. Me, I got work ta do."
With that, the irritated assassin trod heavily out of the chamber, followed sheepishly by his understudies. One of them pulled the door shut behind him as he exited, muttering an apology about the mess they'd caused, and the Eternity Chamber was empty once more.
Krom'tli stood for a moment and blinked. A definitively atypical encounter, to see an Uax retreating from a potential fight. This information would have to be shared with Sotek's chosen-
Something snapped and pulsated through the Warp, shifting the Eversea like an earthquake, and Krom'tli heard screaming. In a single stride he was through the door, flowing through the low entrance in a way no ordinary kroxigor could have managed, his oar held in a battle stance.
He beheld the Uax assassins clutching their heads and screaming, a sound that only increased in volume as it went on, as if the creatures had limitless space for sound contained within them. Krom'tli flinched as Ayotzl poured prophetic energy into and through him, and he saw for a flickering moment a fraction of the death the beast before him would inflict over the course of its existence. If Ayotzl were a guardian large enough to encompass a world, the ocean of lives the Uax would and had and was claiming was so vast as to make the turtle-god into less than a droplet of water. Something had awakened a fragment of that potential in the bodies before him. The touch of other minds brushed against his, as other lizardmen reported the same phenomemon - this was no isolated incident.
The albino prophet swept his oar outwards, ending ten of the Uax with a single strike. Their leader, forewarned by some fragment of intuition, or perhaps simply able to better process the commands imposed upon him by the thing that passed for his soul, rolled away from the blow with merely a glancing hit that knocked his mask away. He clambered back up to his feet and met Krom'tli's eyes for a moment.
Whatever semblance of an individual that had previously existed in that body was gone. All that remained was a frenzied beast that was focused upon precisely one thing.
"WAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!" thundered the body of Carvo Orktano, and it plunged its knife into the kroxigor prophet's neck with a level of strength that belied its size. It continued to fight through forcible arm removal, a shattered skull, no less than sixteen spinal breaks, and a pulped cerebellum before it stopped moving. It never stopped screaming as it fought, a guttural howl that rose forcibly from its throat, as though uttered by something far larger.
Krom'tli's wounds dissolved into mist as he looked at the corpse below him, and he sent prayers to Ayotzl as he experienced many of his brethren fall to the sudden ferocity of the Uax. Whatever this sudden onset of monstrosity was, it was undoubtedly a sign of much death in the very near future.
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If anything, that was an understatement, though neither Krom'tli nor any other Lizardman knew the truth. A fragment of a weapon long thought broken and degenerated had arisen from half-asleep dormancy. A fraction of a segment of a galaxy-consuming apocalypse had been unleashed.
It was fitting, in a way. The Heirs of the Old Ones had emerged, diminished yet growing. The Yngir Star-Hungry were beginning to awaken once more. The curtain was being opened, slowly but surely, on the War in Heaven's second act.
And no reprisal of that most terrible of cataclysms would be complete without the monster that had ended it.
A/N: With tremendous thanks to @Kaboomatic, whom I probably wouldn't have been able to finish this without him reminding me of it.
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I just want to see D&D Prismatic Spray Orks at this point. The idea of full-on-murderhobo greenskins acting like the most preposterously archetypal mad wizards and arguing over the best color with violent displays of rainbow cruelty tickles my fancy. And all of them with their own minions in color-coded tribes, complete with Power Rangaz with shifting Dreadnoughts.
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- Pronouns
- He/Him
Of course it is, Krom'tli. It's the big question that everyone knows the answer to...
"When you cross paths with a beast, are there ever any guarantees that you will not be mauled?"
Great stuff this update, Xantalos! The bit with Plan Ddsbdspbagdbowdf was funny, the action in the various sections was all fun - Carvo made for an entertaining character, and his descent into a Beast was all the more dramatic for it.
Xantalos
Turtle-Speed Writing
This update hamstrung me for a long while, along with a bunch of different IRL stuff that basically boiled down to me being stubborn with myself. Mostly past that now, and the next few updates are chock-full of exciting scenes so I'm hoping to get them out in a faster time period than ... 7 months.
- Location
- Warsaw
Xantalos
Turtle-Speed Writing
Yeah, the actual effect of what happened to Carvo's attack force will be elaborated on in the next update, but basically they fought whatever was in front of them for about a minute or they could break free, upon which they basically booked it due south-west as fast as orkily possible.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Hooray, Xantalos is back in the writing game!
You did great! Look forward to seeing more ahead.
You did great! Look forward to seeing more ahead.
Nix's Warden
Welcome to Hades
- Location
- United States
.......Ah. We partially woke up The Beast. Welllllllllll shit. Atleast they don't have the crazy magical powers yet.
I do not like the sound of that at all, not one bit.
Hope there doesn't emerge a third act, of this damnable war.
And, Thank You @Xantalos for the update!!
- Location
- Planet Earth
Hah, wonderful! Everything to do with Corvo was awesome, but then we get that ending and its just gloriously ominous. Somehow, I don't think anyone expected we might be poking a bit of Krork back into the Orks, but I imagine that galaxy will bleed for it.
Let the War in Heaven begin anew, if hopefully not any time soon so the Lizardmen can grow first!
Let the War in Heaven begin anew, if hopefully not any time soon so the Lizardmen can grow first!