HAHAHAHAHAHA
Respect Your Elders v2 - Galactic Boogaloo [Warhammer Lizardmen Quest]
- Thread starter Xantalos
- Start date
- Sci-Fi Fantasy
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
[x] [Transport Ship] Turtle
[X] [Boarding Ship] Write-in name: Parraxuda, for the Barracuda but with x instead of c and P instead of B.
You're right that it's hard for the lizardmen to come back from being bombed into the Stone Age. But an enemy capable of bombing our forces on a given world into the Stone Age is generally going to stick around to finish the job before we could rebuild anyway, so I'm not sure it's a good investment to create extensive mobile backup infrastructure to enable rebuilding.
It might be worth it eventually, but...
For "geomantic portable generator" organisms, we need "physically big, very placid, very willing to spend extreme amounts of time just sitting in one place and not budging a millimeter if that's what it takes." For diplomatic and trading roles, we need creatures that exist on more or less the same scale as humanoids and who are capable of grasping the social nuances of humanoid existence and interaction.
Those are very different things. For the former we want something like a kroxigor or an enormous beast. For the latter we almost certainly want something based on a skink.
[X] [Boarding Ship] Write-in name: Parraxuda, for the Barracuda but with x instead of c and P instead of B.
The thing is, you're describing a thing that an enemy with a capacity to do would already be doing anyway. If they have overwhelming bombardment firepower capable of wiping out our cities, they are probably also capable of wiping out our field armies and generally making the situation untenable for us on that particular planet until the remnants are scattered, undetectable from orbit, and generally bombed into the Stone Age.
You're right that it's hard for the lizardmen to come back from being bombed into the Stone Age. But an enemy capable of bombing our forces on a given world into the Stone Age is generally going to stick around to finish the job before we could rebuild anyway, so I'm not sure it's a good investment to create extensive mobile backup infrastructure to enable rebuilding.
It might be worth it eventually, but...
See, the thing is, we can make warbeasts to that scale in principle, eventually, but the capability is probably always going to represent a major investment. I'm not sure it's worth it, because in the scenario where we need something that exists on that scale, the enemy will just keep shooting with the same apocalyptic firepower it took to level our fully shielded cities in the first place, until the beasts, the army they were supplying with energy, or both are dead.
I think these functions are fairly incompatible.
For "geomantic portable generator" organisms, we need "physically big, very placid, very willing to spend extreme amounts of time just sitting in one place and not budging a millimeter if that's what it takes." For diplomatic and trading roles, we need creatures that exist on more or less the same scale as humanoids and who are capable of grasping the social nuances of humanoid existence and interaction.
Those are very different things. For the former we want something like a kroxigor or an enormous beast. For the latter we almost certainly want something based on a skink.
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Multistage Sails, and Other Warbeast Techs - Bot105
- Location
- The Milky Way Galaxy, Presumably
[X] [Transport Ship] Write-in name: Hydrodon, for Bastila- is associated with Bastille, or 'fort'. So Hydro- for 'water'.
[X] [Boarding Ship] Write-in name: Parraxuda, for the Barracuda but with x instead of c and P instead of B.
AN:
For a measure of how large the sails are, consider AoS's Spawn of Chotec.
Two storms buffet the jungles, one of nature, one of man.
The storm of nature is one without light. It is dark clouds and howling winds. It is rain falling sideways and it is branches torn from trees. Water pools on mud over-saturated, and roughage glistens like the waxy leaves.
The storm of man is one of magic and beasts. Salamanders and Priests under tarps held up by poles. Fire spawned in guts and spun in hands lurch into the flora-line as shambling masses. The woods boil dry, then burn into ash-stained puddles.
The Lizardmen are overcoming the storm, if slowly.
A Slann watches, a single eye from its enochian astral form contemplates the vista as it meditates. It observes the raging storms clash, how the spread of vegetation is beaten back slowly, for every inch of bark is waterlogged, and the winds blow back the flames. The Aqshy and Azyr Priests do what they can, but not enough are available to halt nature in its tracks.
An idea sparks. Salamander spit can burn through the wet, if it merely be allowed to connect. One tendril of thought, sweeping across the canopies and the brush, touches each mind of the Priests lightly. And they each come to the same idea independently.
Magic grasps the maws and the gullets of the beasts, and when next they spit, the boiling acid launches out on trails of steam. Superheated to superspeed.
The storm of man quickens, and the brushline burns away faster. The Slann's astral form retreats to its chambers, the jungle forgotten.
There, it takes its idea, refines it, and enters the Astral Communion.
Today, the Astral Communion takes the form of a ladder– The greater collective of Slann are focusing on a single thought at the top, teasing it apart for its flaws, and correcting them. They buzz around the idea as an incandescent constellation, a web of neurons so brilliant that the light shines down the Communion, down and down.
Filtering through and edge-highlighting the ideas below the apex-thought, and above the Slann who meditates. Then shining even further down, to the base of the ladder. Where the fears and unfounded worries and discarded things the Slann makes lap at the feet of the rails.
It has been a long time since that swamp has been dredged, and the lake stirs unsettlingly. Perhaps the Slann should clear it soon.
But not right now, for the Slann that meditates came to the Communion with an idea, one it wishes to keep and improve. It binds the idea into the rungs, next to the series of prophecies believed to be fufilled, and above a transcript of Lord Mazdamundi's Geomancy lessons.
The idea takes the form of a long string of Anoqeyån, inscribing half-done formulas and long form incomplete dissertations of stone and gems and the memories of two storms lashing out against each other. Any Slann could piece together the end goal of this idea.
A device meant to recreate the spells used to strengthen the Lizardmen's storm, to make the fiery spit more effective. Automating their improvised spells.
The Slann is content, for with the idea strung within the Communion, it is only a matter of time until another contributes to the idea. Whether to prove it inefficient, or improve its design.
The Slann leaves the Communion.
Somewhere between an eternity and a second later, another Slann caught in the constellation at the top frowns. She leaves the neuron web with memories of a scuffle, and she flits away in a huff. Down she goes, until the light of the greater mass of the Communion filters into soft colours. She senses a new idea strung within the ladder, and she approaches it for it may be novel.
It is novel, a new tool to be developed. Its purpose clear, yet narrow. The scope could expand. She touches the formulas, ones of fire manipulation, and tweaks them. Completes them. Another idea is strung to the new tool, preset patterns encoded within the obsinite. An extension of the pre-defined effects of the Glyph Spheres. Merely writing down the intent and the visualisations beforehand.
The she strings the idea higher in the ladder, and resolves to return when her ire is lower. She leaves the communion, returning to her chambers, where she can feel the stone of her chair. Where water drips off of leaves in meditative patters, where her Eternity Warden breathes, and the air shifts in soothing patterns.
When she leaves, a star dims in the Communion. Another star brightens as another takes her place.
Another Slann, who came to the Communion to dredge the feet of the ladder, and clear the refuse left there, stops before he descends. His many winged-eyes catch on the idea, and he is waylaid by its shine.
His focus changes, and he tugs the idea free from the rungs. He deems the idea as low cost, high effect. And he reaches out both up and down the ladder. Notarising others, paging some. And he takes the idea, and moves neither up nor down the ladder, but away. In the perpendicular direction.
The Astral Communion shifts, rungs and rails forming out of nothing, following him. Another ladder sticks out of the sea of discarded thought. At its top is the idea, and a single star orbits it. Quickly, more stars leave one ladder to join the other, and a smaller neuron web forms around the concept of a new tool.
A lamp light in comparison to the first ladder, but fifteen Slann can still illuminate the night with their brilliance.
Ten thousand trains of thought start, every aspect of the idea approached and understood and expanded.
Targetting the systems of the Salamander inhibits the possible effects, as all alterations by necessity must keep the Salamander in a safe and healthy condition. Targetting the spit instead allows for transformations with far more destructive capabilities.
Delaying the transformations of the spit would allow for even more destruction– a secondary detonation to accelerate the fire ball can be achieved if the Salamander is a safe distance away from the shot.
Further, decoupling the spitting of the burning acid with the transmutation of said spit allows for greater flexibility. A Slann projects an image, meteors descending on a forest. Another, a snake of fire winding between and hemming in a crowd.
Pre-set patterns are possible, but no matter the permutations there will be edge cases where the patterns fail. Allowing Aqshy Priests to form their own patterns would introduce the flexibility needed for long term usage.
The constellation assigns a name to their project, the 'Multistage Sails'.
Moving Salamanders to war is a simple procedure– they follow eagerly after their handlers. They yearn for the jungle. Mud under webbed claws and dense foliage ripe for burning. Combustibles are a requirement for their nests, the presence of burnt or unburnt matter soothes.
Moving Salamanders deeper into the city? Where stone and metal make the walls and floors. Where magic spills from the stones as venom-turning power. That is more difficult. Many different encouragement techniques are needed.
It starts with the time and location, mid day. Clouded yet sunny, warm enough to move but not enough to bask. A street with cramped confines but low walls, to mimic the waterways they like to navigate by.
A Kroxigor ahead, with a tank of boiling water in its arms. Puddles strategically splashed to run into shallow streams, warming the stone tiles.
A Skink with a leash, short-lengthed. It connects to a harness that runs across the chest, and over each foreleg. He tugs it lightly, pulling the Salamander from warm-puddle to warm-puddle. In his other hand, a bag of savoury meaty treats burnt charcoal black.
Upon the Salamanders crest, a set of Aqshy trinkets. Small disks placed either side of the sail, and pulled together by magnets. They pulse a steady pattern like pacemakers, like a Salamanders heartbeat. Before they were made to spawn from water, the youngest clung to their mothers back for warmth. The mothers heart rate their lullaby.
With these, the Ancient Salamander they are bringing today can be cajoled into slithering deeper into the city peacefully.
The Salamander flicks a thick tail heavy with fat, and a passing Skink falls to the ground. Head over heels, and scattering the basket of fruits she carried.
Mostly peacefully.
This Salamander is known as Chik-auak Toma'uatletl, fitting for its particularly ornery personality and particularly enhanced physique. It is here, being encouraged towards the forge district, because of its attitude– today they intend to fit the ancient variant prototype of the Multistage Sails. If it can be fitted on the most disagreeable and the largest, it can be fitted on them all.
The forge district is the heading– a special station near the outer edges. The closest forge with both a geomantic furnace and a fuelled apparatus. The Geomancy for the magic, the furnace for the soothing scent of kindling and woodsmoke.
A Kroxigor stands by the entrance, effectively a wall knocked down, with a towel rubbed between his hands. The towel is soaked in oil, and it leaves his hands glossy. He exchanges glances with the Skink and the tank-bearing Kroxigor, and ushers the Skink in. The water-bearer leaves to refill and reheat their water tank, to prepare for the trip back.
"Chik-auak's fitting?" He rumbles. And the Skink with the leash nods, leading Chik into the room.
There is the central heating pillar, tall and thick and shimmering the air with heat waves. Pushed against the corner, under a belching chimney, there is the other furnace, forged with thick granite and obsidian. A chamber to isolate magic from the mundane fire. In between there is the raised platform, with a bed for warm coals to be shovelled underneath. That is the Salamander's station. An artificial warming pad to keep them sedate as armour is fitted.
The slab creaks as Chik-auak climbs atop it unprompted.
"Honoured smith," the Skink begins, "The design was reported complete, yet I see no artifice. Has there been an issue?"
The smith pointed towards a table, where a single sheet of obsinite lay. "The prototype was designed modular. The final parts will arrive shortly."
"So– we wait?"
The smith rumbled affirmative as he moved to the furnace, and he lifted up a shovel full of hot coals. "Prepare Chik-auak."
He poured the coals into the shelf built into the bottom of the platform. And used the shovels long handle to push it far under the hollow of the rock. It warmed the platform under Chik-auak's belly and the Skink's feet. A pleasant warmth.
The Skink slowly moved from tail to nose, with the oil-smeared towel the Kroxigor held. One hand touches the sail, peeling off the Aqshy amulets pair by pair. The other polishes Chik's scales shiny and scented. A scent all Salamanders are trained to associate with idleness.
The pattern the Skink rubbed in– long upward drags– was also intentionally mimicking the way a mother Salamander licked her young free of the egg yolk they were born in. Something that made Chik-auak rumble and close its eyes. Not yet sleep, but certainly relaxation. The fact that the oil held anaesthetic properties when heated was also important.
Outside, a cart was pushed into the room, atop it were the obsinite and gold they waited for.
The Skink grabs these, and lays them at the directed table. "… I do not understand, these are unconnected– there's no harness either. How can this be attached to Chik-auak?"
The Kroxigor leaned up, and shoved his hand into the deep-set shelves mounted above the table. There is the clatter of metal and wood and pottery as the contents are shuffled around. "Aetheric mountings bound to scute-deep inserts. Soldering, to keep the connection strong."
He showed the Skink a small oil lamp, a pan with a wide wick curled into the reservoir. And a thin blowpipe running from the wick to the back, attached across the top. "Twenty four anchoring implants, sunken into the spine. A Gold-tin alloy is to be melted into the seams, to fuse the implants strong."
"I see." The Skink said. "What do I need to do?"
"You will solder, I will ensure Chik-auak does not move."
And the Kroxigor swept a series of small spikes from the table, into his hands.
The Skink knelt by the Salamander, facing the base of its tail. The Kroxigor stood above it, with legs astride the tail, and an insert carefully pushed just off the spine. His palm against the rounded top, and the spike a small pressure against scale. The Skink lit the lamps wick, letting its red flame dance in that silent room. The Skink nodded.
The Kroxigor slammed his palm down a quarter inch. Pushing the spike to its hilt into the scute. A motion painless due to the oil. But the sound of scale giving and the pressure and sensation of flesh pushed aside still roused Chik-auak into urgency. A motion prevented by the Kroxigor's steady hand.
The Skink worked quickly, aiming the end of the blowpipe into the seam where no blood spilt. In one hand it cradled the lamp, in the other a thin pale-gold wire. And with its breath it agitated the flame into a tiny and thin blue stream. A stream hot enough to melt the wire into a liquid seeping between scale and obsinite.
A blow torch, the most primitive possible. The most sophisticated, for its efficiency is far greater then even the magical fuelled– the heat needed to fuse all twenty four implants barely reduced the oil in the pan. Perhaps a few drops were needed at most.
Once the Salamander had twelve implants each side, and its irritated hunger sated with a bucket of blood and raw meat, the Kroxigor holds each segment of the sail above the spine until the implants recognise the corresponding sigils. The magic within now transmitting between flesh and stone to hold the obsinite above. A sail of segments, black sheets and golden rods, waving independently as the Salamander undulates its movements.
And that is how the Multistage Sails is affixed to the Salamander.
"The beast certainly cuts an imposing figure." A mutter, with no clear indication of who spoke.
Agreeable clicking, the squad of Skinks stop their scuttling to glance back to the hill, where the Salamander rests.
And it was true! In the evening sun, the wide and tall sails blocked the light, and formed a shadow atop that hill. A shadow of a canvas atop a beast ornamented.
They spared a moment to see the silhouette cut by the sun, before the creche leader prodded them back to their work. That of ferrying the obsinite spikes and signs and the packages of low explosives and packed dye.
The spikes were Aqshy infused, rendered non-flammable, they sung to the senses and the Warp as concentrate pillars. They were aim markers. Measuring sticks hammered into the soft loam at set distances. Metrics for the Priests and the witnessing Lord Slann to reference from. Then there were the packages– again Aqshy infused. But this time made volatile. They were to be buried deep down, deeper then the roots. They were to test the depth the fire reached. Explosions of multicoloured hue meant great saturation and penetration. Both great labour, first to get the distances precisely right, down to the millimetre degree. Second, to bury the implements the proper way. The proper depth and the proper distance and depth.
"M' bags empty boss," a mutter to the side. The Skink shaking out his empty sack. The Creche leader nodded, then called out to the others.
"Who's not yet done!"
"All out here!" "We're good here!" "One more– done!"
The leader nodded again, pleased. "Right, sound off and link back up. Lets get back."
Some cheering, as they scuttled through the underbrush back to the hill. Mud squished under claws and wide leaves taller then a Skink head to tail were swept aside. The jungle was waterlogged and sodden, natural for the aftermath of heavy rains. It left the Skinks slightly chilly and wet. Such that when they reached the carts and wagons they arrived at the hill with, they curled atop and inside with the furs and warmth-stones they brought.
The leader waited at the base, and with their finger pointed at and counted off each Skink. Ensuring none were still within the jungle and the firing range. They lifted a hand and waved it to the top of the hill. A signal that they were safe. Then they grasped the side of the wagon– a wheel thicker then their hands-width, and hauled themself in.
"What will we be seeing boss?" Someone inside a bundle chirped, with tongue flicking out and glances to that silhouette on the top of the hill. Where the beast waited for the handlers to declare fire.
"A simple enough question." The Skink flicked up a golden tablet, reading it like a venue's brochure. "The first phase is a simple control; seeing if the Salamander can still spit fire unimpeded."
There was a bark and a belch from behind them and from above. Globs of phelgmy fire arced over their heads. And where it hit the trees it burst into a thin layer of fire eating at the green. Yet, with the dampness and the thickness of the roughage, no more. Bark was hollowed brittle, and mud dried to dust, but fire did not spread.
Unimpressive from this distance, but the Skinks could appreciate a good fire.
"Impressive range, however." "Is that so? I've never really noticed."
A bundle of furs lifted up from where it lay. "Oh yes, they say an ancient Salamander can reach one hundred and twenty five paces on a good day, and that one up there? It's hitting one forty."
A round of 'hmmms', some with that questioning uptilt, some without and flat.
The Skink with the golden tablet shifted in place, "Well. We're not here to test the Salamander persay, just what the artefact can do. Speaking of…"
Another belching bark, guttural and congested. The fire soared up high like a sun, and came down in swathes of flat discs. Falling upon the canopy like mortar shot.
"- This parts about the patterns the Sail's equipped with. The ones that anyone can make, no magic needed."
They sat in silence for a while, watching the leaves burn, moss-like fire sitting on top and dripping down. Then, a crackling roar– entirely unlike the sound of a Salamander– that made the crowd jolt in their seats. Above red flowed. Acidic fluid not soaring like a bolt of light or a glob of heat. Instead a winding and entwining stream. A serpent in the air that coiled between the trees.
Then another roar, which hissed. Tight yellow light streaked over their heads, before a booming burst that splattered lightly hissing steam down, and it accelerated as a lance into the jungle.
The first charred trees and bit chunks out of their trunks, felling them as sure as an axe could. The second pierced bark and wood, and then the dirt underneath, and then the stone underneath. Turning all of that black and ash.
Clapping. A small cheer rose.
"Ahh. Quiet down now-" They did, Skinks respect their leader's authority. "This parts the real spectacle; All of this was done without a single Aqshy Priest guiding it. Now, there is."
There was a pause, one that grew in expectations as no fire flew up ahead. The Priests up there were doing something, else the charm that hung from the leaders neck was humming for no reason, althought none down at the floor could tell what.
"... Must be a real ritual, if their taking this lon-"
Then it happened. And it was easy to tell something happened. Beyond the sudden heat behind Topek's charm. Beyond the sound of a Salamander croaking. Beyond the unsound of unheard Aqshy sucking away. It was a dragon's breath. Erupting from the top of the hill and billowing out like a cloud.
Except, the fire stopped widening vertically, instead spreading out on the horizontal. Like a fan. And that fan thickened at the edge and grew swirls and currents and a motion like the tides.
An ocean of fire flew over the little Skink's heads, and it crashed into the jungle and eroded it like the cliff-shores of Monchantia.
AN:
For the beast series of technologies, I knew from the beginning that I wanted to have less total stories-far less- then the Old Ones series. Hence why there's only three omakes for the thirteen Warbeasts (minus titan-class).
I also wanted to get them smaller- like 3k words at most. But, uh.
Here's the last warbeast techs.
A mobility and range boost. While producing a useful material.
Q: Is that a Cold One?
A: IT'S GOT A GUN!
*BLAM
BLAM*
Two for the Horned Ones.
TL;DR, Bigger Veterancy bonus.
And with that, every Warbeast- barring the titans- have gotten their own technology.
Buuuutttt, there's something else- the big guy who wrote the little excerpts at each scene break. He needs a character sheet as well.
And with that I've created a technology for all of the standard Warbeasts the Lizardmen use. Job done.
Got one more idea mildewing inside my mind, but that will happen later.
[X] [Boarding Ship] Write-in name: Parraxuda, for the Barracuda but with x instead of c and P instead of B.
AN:
Appearing as a seemingly decorative piece of obsinite, this structure actually exists to greatly increase the flexibility by which Salamanders can be deployed and used.
This wargear is composed of obsinite sheets and segmented golden rods in the shape of a curved half-circle sail. Ridged and long. It is designed to interface with little implants embedded along a Salamanders spine, and float above the Salamanders own sail-ridge. Appearing as if a man-made extension of the sail, if entirely disconnected from the body.
The purpose of this tool becomes apparent, for with the clipped barks of its handlers in the unearthly tones of Anoqeyån, the Salamanders Sail glows. Its sigils activating to imbue the pyroclastic venom of the Salamander. These imbuements do not work to make the venom more lethal, or alter its properties. But rather to alter the way it moves. To trigger spells of momentum and implant second and tertiary stage velocity spells into the spit, such that as it flies, these spells unwind and change how the spit settles.
The sail exists for nothing more then to change the trajectory and shape of the flaming goo. From a stream of fire to a reoccurring ball of explosive power, to a spear that rockets out of the Salamanders maw and accelerates again in the air and accelerates again as it hits. Or instead, the glob of burning might may soar high into the air, before falling down as a hail of scattered fire.
Non-magical handlers, who cannot change the spells the sigils implant, are forced to rely only on the patterns that were pre-inscribed into the sails. Generalist one-size-fits-all formations. But those who can grasp Aqshy are capable of far more, giving to the shot movement and life unrestricted by enchantment. Serpents of coiling fire and waves of boiling matter can be called upon by those with the right skills.
This wargear is composed of obsinite sheets and segmented golden rods in the shape of a curved half-circle sail. Ridged and long. It is designed to interface with little implants embedded along a Salamanders spine, and float above the Salamanders own sail-ridge. Appearing as if a man-made extension of the sail, if entirely disconnected from the body.
The purpose of this tool becomes apparent, for with the clipped barks of its handlers in the unearthly tones of Anoqeyån, the Salamanders Sail glows. Its sigils activating to imbue the pyroclastic venom of the Salamander. These imbuements do not work to make the venom more lethal, or alter its properties. But rather to alter the way it moves. To trigger spells of momentum and implant second and tertiary stage velocity spells into the spit, such that as it flies, these spells unwind and change how the spit settles.
The sail exists for nothing more then to change the trajectory and shape of the flaming goo. From a stream of fire to a reoccurring ball of explosive power, to a spear that rockets out of the Salamanders maw and accelerates again in the air and accelerates again as it hits. Or instead, the glob of burning might may soar high into the air, before falling down as a hail of scattered fire.
Non-magical handlers, who cannot change the spells the sigils implant, are forced to rely only on the patterns that were pre-inscribed into the sails. Generalist one-size-fits-all formations. But those who can grasp Aqshy are capable of far more, giving to the shot movement and life unrestricted by enchantment. Serpents of coiling fire and waves of boiling matter can be called upon by those with the right skills.
<MULTISTAGE SAILS>
Two storms buffet the jungles, one of nature, one of man.
The storm of nature is one without light. It is dark clouds and howling winds. It is rain falling sideways and it is branches torn from trees. Water pools on mud over-saturated, and roughage glistens like the waxy leaves.
The storm of man is one of magic and beasts. Salamanders and Priests under tarps held up by poles. Fire spawned in guts and spun in hands lurch into the flora-line as shambling masses. The woods boil dry, then burn into ash-stained puddles.
The Lizardmen are overcoming the storm, if slowly.
A Slann watches, a single eye from its enochian astral form contemplates the vista as it meditates. It observes the raging storms clash, how the spread of vegetation is beaten back slowly, for every inch of bark is waterlogged, and the winds blow back the flames. The Aqshy and Azyr Priests do what they can, but not enough are available to halt nature in its tracks.
An idea sparks. Salamander spit can burn through the wet, if it merely be allowed to connect. One tendril of thought, sweeping across the canopies and the brush, touches each mind of the Priests lightly. And they each come to the same idea independently.
Magic grasps the maws and the gullets of the beasts, and when next they spit, the boiling acid launches out on trails of steam. Superheated to superspeed.
The storm of man quickens, and the brushline burns away faster. The Slann's astral form retreats to its chambers, the jungle forgotten.
There, it takes its idea, refines it, and enters the Astral Communion.
Today, the Astral Communion takes the form of a ladder– The greater collective of Slann are focusing on a single thought at the top, teasing it apart for its flaws, and correcting them. They buzz around the idea as an incandescent constellation, a web of neurons so brilliant that the light shines down the Communion, down and down.
Filtering through and edge-highlighting the ideas below the apex-thought, and above the Slann who meditates. Then shining even further down, to the base of the ladder. Where the fears and unfounded worries and discarded things the Slann makes lap at the feet of the rails.
It has been a long time since that swamp has been dredged, and the lake stirs unsettlingly. Perhaps the Slann should clear it soon.
But not right now, for the Slann that meditates came to the Communion with an idea, one it wishes to keep and improve. It binds the idea into the rungs, next to the series of prophecies believed to be fufilled, and above a transcript of Lord Mazdamundi's Geomancy lessons.
The idea takes the form of a long string of Anoqeyån, inscribing half-done formulas and long form incomplete dissertations of stone and gems and the memories of two storms lashing out against each other. Any Slann could piece together the end goal of this idea.
A device meant to recreate the spells used to strengthen the Lizardmen's storm, to make the fiery spit more effective. Automating their improvised spells.
The Slann is content, for with the idea strung within the Communion, it is only a matter of time until another contributes to the idea. Whether to prove it inefficient, or improve its design.
The Slann leaves the Communion.
Somewhere between an eternity and a second later, another Slann caught in the constellation at the top frowns. She leaves the neuron web with memories of a scuffle, and she flits away in a huff. Down she goes, until the light of the greater mass of the Communion filters into soft colours. She senses a new idea strung within the ladder, and she approaches it for it may be novel.
It is novel, a new tool to be developed. Its purpose clear, yet narrow. The scope could expand. She touches the formulas, ones of fire manipulation, and tweaks them. Completes them. Another idea is strung to the new tool, preset patterns encoded within the obsinite. An extension of the pre-defined effects of the Glyph Spheres. Merely writing down the intent and the visualisations beforehand.
The she strings the idea higher in the ladder, and resolves to return when her ire is lower. She leaves the communion, returning to her chambers, where she can feel the stone of her chair. Where water drips off of leaves in meditative patters, where her Eternity Warden breathes, and the air shifts in soothing patterns.
When she leaves, a star dims in the Communion. Another star brightens as another takes her place.
Another Slann, who came to the Communion to dredge the feet of the ladder, and clear the refuse left there, stops before he descends. His many winged-eyes catch on the idea, and he is waylaid by its shine.
His focus changes, and he tugs the idea free from the rungs. He deems the idea as low cost, high effect. And he reaches out both up and down the ladder. Notarising others, paging some. And he takes the idea, and moves neither up nor down the ladder, but away. In the perpendicular direction.
The Astral Communion shifts, rungs and rails forming out of nothing, following him. Another ladder sticks out of the sea of discarded thought. At its top is the idea, and a single star orbits it. Quickly, more stars leave one ladder to join the other, and a smaller neuron web forms around the concept of a new tool.
A lamp light in comparison to the first ladder, but fifteen Slann can still illuminate the night with their brilliance.
Ten thousand trains of thought start, every aspect of the idea approached and understood and expanded.
Targetting the systems of the Salamander inhibits the possible effects, as all alterations by necessity must keep the Salamander in a safe and healthy condition. Targetting the spit instead allows for transformations with far more destructive capabilities.
Delaying the transformations of the spit would allow for even more destruction– a secondary detonation to accelerate the fire ball can be achieved if the Salamander is a safe distance away from the shot.
Further, decoupling the spitting of the burning acid with the transmutation of said spit allows for greater flexibility. A Slann projects an image, meteors descending on a forest. Another, a snake of fire winding between and hemming in a crowd.
Pre-set patterns are possible, but no matter the permutations there will be edge cases where the patterns fail. Allowing Aqshy Priests to form their own patterns would introduce the flexibility needed for long term usage.
The constellation assigns a name to their project, the 'Multistage Sails'.
<MULTISTAGE SAILS>
Moving Salamanders to war is a simple procedure– they follow eagerly after their handlers. They yearn for the jungle. Mud under webbed claws and dense foliage ripe for burning. Combustibles are a requirement for their nests, the presence of burnt or unburnt matter soothes.
Moving Salamanders deeper into the city? Where stone and metal make the walls and floors. Where magic spills from the stones as venom-turning power. That is more difficult. Many different encouragement techniques are needed.
It starts with the time and location, mid day. Clouded yet sunny, warm enough to move but not enough to bask. A street with cramped confines but low walls, to mimic the waterways they like to navigate by.
A Kroxigor ahead, with a tank of boiling water in its arms. Puddles strategically splashed to run into shallow streams, warming the stone tiles.
A Skink with a leash, short-lengthed. It connects to a harness that runs across the chest, and over each foreleg. He tugs it lightly, pulling the Salamander from warm-puddle to warm-puddle. In his other hand, a bag of savoury meaty treats burnt charcoal black.
Upon the Salamanders crest, a set of Aqshy trinkets. Small disks placed either side of the sail, and pulled together by magnets. They pulse a steady pattern like pacemakers, like a Salamanders heartbeat. Before they were made to spawn from water, the youngest clung to their mothers back for warmth. The mothers heart rate their lullaby.
With these, the Ancient Salamander they are bringing today can be cajoled into slithering deeper into the city peacefully.
The Salamander flicks a thick tail heavy with fat, and a passing Skink falls to the ground. Head over heels, and scattering the basket of fruits she carried.
Mostly peacefully.
This Salamander is known as Chik-auak Toma'uatletl, fitting for its particularly ornery personality and particularly enhanced physique. It is here, being encouraged towards the forge district, because of its attitude– today they intend to fit the ancient variant prototype of the Multistage Sails. If it can be fitted on the most disagreeable and the largest, it can be fitted on them all.
The forge district is the heading– a special station near the outer edges. The closest forge with both a geomantic furnace and a fuelled apparatus. The Geomancy for the magic, the furnace for the soothing scent of kindling and woodsmoke.
A Kroxigor stands by the entrance, effectively a wall knocked down, with a towel rubbed between his hands. The towel is soaked in oil, and it leaves his hands glossy. He exchanges glances with the Skink and the tank-bearing Kroxigor, and ushers the Skink in. The water-bearer leaves to refill and reheat their water tank, to prepare for the trip back.
"Chik-auak's fitting?" He rumbles. And the Skink with the leash nods, leading Chik into the room.
There is the central heating pillar, tall and thick and shimmering the air with heat waves. Pushed against the corner, under a belching chimney, there is the other furnace, forged with thick granite and obsidian. A chamber to isolate magic from the mundane fire. In between there is the raised platform, with a bed for warm coals to be shovelled underneath. That is the Salamander's station. An artificial warming pad to keep them sedate as armour is fitted.
The slab creaks as Chik-auak climbs atop it unprompted.
"Honoured smith," the Skink begins, "The design was reported complete, yet I see no artifice. Has there been an issue?"
The smith pointed towards a table, where a single sheet of obsinite lay. "The prototype was designed modular. The final parts will arrive shortly."
"So– we wait?"
The smith rumbled affirmative as he moved to the furnace, and he lifted up a shovel full of hot coals. "Prepare Chik-auak."
He poured the coals into the shelf built into the bottom of the platform. And used the shovels long handle to push it far under the hollow of the rock. It warmed the platform under Chik-auak's belly and the Skink's feet. A pleasant warmth.
The Skink slowly moved from tail to nose, with the oil-smeared towel the Kroxigor held. One hand touches the sail, peeling off the Aqshy amulets pair by pair. The other polishes Chik's scales shiny and scented. A scent all Salamanders are trained to associate with idleness.
The pattern the Skink rubbed in– long upward drags– was also intentionally mimicking the way a mother Salamander licked her young free of the egg yolk they were born in. Something that made Chik-auak rumble and close its eyes. Not yet sleep, but certainly relaxation. The fact that the oil held anaesthetic properties when heated was also important.
Outside, a cart was pushed into the room, atop it were the obsinite and gold they waited for.
The Skink grabs these, and lays them at the directed table. "… I do not understand, these are unconnected– there's no harness either. How can this be attached to Chik-auak?"
The Kroxigor leaned up, and shoved his hand into the deep-set shelves mounted above the table. There is the clatter of metal and wood and pottery as the contents are shuffled around. "Aetheric mountings bound to scute-deep inserts. Soldering, to keep the connection strong."
He showed the Skink a small oil lamp, a pan with a wide wick curled into the reservoir. And a thin blowpipe running from the wick to the back, attached across the top. "Twenty four anchoring implants, sunken into the spine. A Gold-tin alloy is to be melted into the seams, to fuse the implants strong."
"I see." The Skink said. "What do I need to do?"
"You will solder, I will ensure Chik-auak does not move."
And the Kroxigor swept a series of small spikes from the table, into his hands.
The Skink knelt by the Salamander, facing the base of its tail. The Kroxigor stood above it, with legs astride the tail, and an insert carefully pushed just off the spine. His palm against the rounded top, and the spike a small pressure against scale. The Skink lit the lamps wick, letting its red flame dance in that silent room. The Skink nodded.
The Kroxigor slammed his palm down a quarter inch. Pushing the spike to its hilt into the scute. A motion painless due to the oil. But the sound of scale giving and the pressure and sensation of flesh pushed aside still roused Chik-auak into urgency. A motion prevented by the Kroxigor's steady hand.
The Skink worked quickly, aiming the end of the blowpipe into the seam where no blood spilt. In one hand it cradled the lamp, in the other a thin pale-gold wire. And with its breath it agitated the flame into a tiny and thin blue stream. A stream hot enough to melt the wire into a liquid seeping between scale and obsinite.
A blow torch, the most primitive possible. The most sophisticated, for its efficiency is far greater then even the magical fuelled– the heat needed to fuse all twenty four implants barely reduced the oil in the pan. Perhaps a few drops were needed at most.
Once the Salamander had twelve implants each side, and its irritated hunger sated with a bucket of blood and raw meat, the Kroxigor holds each segment of the sail above the spine until the implants recognise the corresponding sigils. The magic within now transmitting between flesh and stone to hold the obsinite above. A sail of segments, black sheets and golden rods, waving independently as the Salamander undulates its movements.
And that is how the Multistage Sails is affixed to the Salamander.
<MULTISTAGE SAILS>
"The beast certainly cuts an imposing figure." A mutter, with no clear indication of who spoke.
Agreeable clicking, the squad of Skinks stop their scuttling to glance back to the hill, where the Salamander rests.
And it was true! In the evening sun, the wide and tall sails blocked the light, and formed a shadow atop that hill. A shadow of a canvas atop a beast ornamented.
They spared a moment to see the silhouette cut by the sun, before the creche leader prodded them back to their work. That of ferrying the obsinite spikes and signs and the packages of low explosives and packed dye.
The spikes were Aqshy infused, rendered non-flammable, they sung to the senses and the Warp as concentrate pillars. They were aim markers. Measuring sticks hammered into the soft loam at set distances. Metrics for the Priests and the witnessing Lord Slann to reference from. Then there were the packages– again Aqshy infused. But this time made volatile. They were to be buried deep down, deeper then the roots. They were to test the depth the fire reached. Explosions of multicoloured hue meant great saturation and penetration. Both great labour, first to get the distances precisely right, down to the millimetre degree. Second, to bury the implements the proper way. The proper depth and the proper distance and depth.
"M' bags empty boss," a mutter to the side. The Skink shaking out his empty sack. The Creche leader nodded, then called out to the others.
"Who's not yet done!"
"All out here!" "We're good here!" "One more– done!"
The leader nodded again, pleased. "Right, sound off and link back up. Lets get back."
Some cheering, as they scuttled through the underbrush back to the hill. Mud squished under claws and wide leaves taller then a Skink head to tail were swept aside. The jungle was waterlogged and sodden, natural for the aftermath of heavy rains. It left the Skinks slightly chilly and wet. Such that when they reached the carts and wagons they arrived at the hill with, they curled atop and inside with the furs and warmth-stones they brought.
The leader waited at the base, and with their finger pointed at and counted off each Skink. Ensuring none were still within the jungle and the firing range. They lifted a hand and waved it to the top of the hill. A signal that they were safe. Then they grasped the side of the wagon– a wheel thicker then their hands-width, and hauled themself in.
"What will we be seeing boss?" Someone inside a bundle chirped, with tongue flicking out and glances to that silhouette on the top of the hill. Where the beast waited for the handlers to declare fire.
"A simple enough question." The Skink flicked up a golden tablet, reading it like a venue's brochure. "The first phase is a simple control; seeing if the Salamander can still spit fire unimpeded."
There was a bark and a belch from behind them and from above. Globs of phelgmy fire arced over their heads. And where it hit the trees it burst into a thin layer of fire eating at the green. Yet, with the dampness and the thickness of the roughage, no more. Bark was hollowed brittle, and mud dried to dust, but fire did not spread.
Unimpressive from this distance, but the Skinks could appreciate a good fire.
"Impressive range, however." "Is that so? I've never really noticed."
A bundle of furs lifted up from where it lay. "Oh yes, they say an ancient Salamander can reach one hundred and twenty five paces on a good day, and that one up there? It's hitting one forty."
A round of 'hmmms', some with that questioning uptilt, some without and flat.
The Skink with the golden tablet shifted in place, "Well. We're not here to test the Salamander persay, just what the artefact can do. Speaking of…"
Another belching bark, guttural and congested. The fire soared up high like a sun, and came down in swathes of flat discs. Falling upon the canopy like mortar shot.
"- This parts about the patterns the Sail's equipped with. The ones that anyone can make, no magic needed."
They sat in silence for a while, watching the leaves burn, moss-like fire sitting on top and dripping down. Then, a crackling roar– entirely unlike the sound of a Salamander– that made the crowd jolt in their seats. Above red flowed. Acidic fluid not soaring like a bolt of light or a glob of heat. Instead a winding and entwining stream. A serpent in the air that coiled between the trees.
Then another roar, which hissed. Tight yellow light streaked over their heads, before a booming burst that splattered lightly hissing steam down, and it accelerated as a lance into the jungle.
The first charred trees and bit chunks out of their trunks, felling them as sure as an axe could. The second pierced bark and wood, and then the dirt underneath, and then the stone underneath. Turning all of that black and ash.
Clapping. A small cheer rose.
"Ahh. Quiet down now-" They did, Skinks respect their leader's authority. "This parts the real spectacle; All of this was done without a single Aqshy Priest guiding it. Now, there is."
There was a pause, one that grew in expectations as no fire flew up ahead. The Priests up there were doing something, else the charm that hung from the leaders neck was humming for no reason, althought none down at the floor could tell what.
"... Must be a real ritual, if their taking this lon-"
Then it happened. And it was easy to tell something happened. Beyond the sudden heat behind Topek's charm. Beyond the sound of a Salamander croaking. Beyond the unsound of unheard Aqshy sucking away. It was a dragon's breath. Erupting from the top of the hill and billowing out like a cloud.
Except, the fire stopped widening vertically, instead spreading out on the horizontal. Like a fan. And that fan thickened at the edge and grew swirls and currents and a motion like the tides.
An ocean of fire flew over the little Skink's heads, and it crashed into the jungle and eroded it like the cliff-shores of Monchantia.
<MULTISTAGE SAILS>
AN:
For the beast series of technologies, I knew from the beginning that I wanted to have less total stories-far less- then the Old Ones series. Hence why there's only three omakes for the thirteen Warbeasts (minus titan-class).
I also wanted to get them smaller- like 3k words at most. But, uh.
That didn't pan out.
Here's the last warbeast techs.
This technology is formed of many fine feathers from tropical birds; Rachis cut short, the barbs trimmed, and the barbules trimmed of any hooks they may have. Then, these scraps of feathers are further trimmed and shortened and rolled apart into fine down. This down is then boiled, cleaned, sanctified and prepared for the infusion. Aluminium turned molten, and used to gild the down a fine metallic gray. Priests of Sotek and Ayotzl work in tandem, day and night, to bless and enchant entire batches of this down.
Then and only then, is the material ready for use. It is taken, shaft first, and inserted with fine golden needles into the spine of the Razordon. Up and down its back, and between the spikes, in rows and lattices and layers, until a fine thin layer of fuzz sprouts between the spikes. With time, the down integrates further, growing as the Razordon does.
This down is powder down- down that is soft and fragile, the tips breaking apart into fine particles of keratin. It scatters in the air like dandelion seeds, and collects as downy dust across surfaces. Yet it has far more practical use then building films atop shelves and desks. As down, it provides a keen insulation when massed atop the body- with the magic of the Skink Priests, this extends further, to filter and lesson all kinds of mundane and exotic energies. From thermal to kinetic to sonic to electric to gauss. Yet, curiously, the down has no effect on psychic and magic energies; the down waterlogs and clumps.
There is a further effect of the down- when it powders, as it often wants to do from the violent movements of the Razordon. Where the down collects and coats, it imposes a sort of lightness, a weight negation. This is most effective on biological things, but a simple sprinkling is enough to make even the heaviest statue fall gracefully and daintily. Never enough to overcome gravity, but enough to extend the flight of a volley of spikes tenfold.
Then and only then, is the material ready for use. It is taken, shaft first, and inserted with fine golden needles into the spine of the Razordon. Up and down its back, and between the spikes, in rows and lattices and layers, until a fine thin layer of fuzz sprouts between the spikes. With time, the down integrates further, growing as the Razordon does.
This down is powder down- down that is soft and fragile, the tips breaking apart into fine particles of keratin. It scatters in the air like dandelion seeds, and collects as downy dust across surfaces. Yet it has far more practical use then building films atop shelves and desks. As down, it provides a keen insulation when massed atop the body- with the magic of the Skink Priests, this extends further, to filter and lesson all kinds of mundane and exotic energies. From thermal to kinetic to sonic to electric to gauss. Yet, curiously, the down has no effect on psychic and magic energies; the down waterlogs and clumps.
There is a further effect of the down- when it powders, as it often wants to do from the violent movements of the Razordon. Where the down collects and coats, it imposes a sort of lightness, a weight negation. This is most effective on biological things, but a simple sprinkling is enough to make even the heaviest statue fall gracefully and daintily. Never enough to overcome gravity, but enough to extend the flight of a volley of spikes tenfold.
Composed of a set of bits, meant to be attached to the corners of the Cold Ones mouth. These decorative sets are designed as an Axolotl's frills are, stubby brassy tubes branching out and topped by red feathers. Yet, these frills do not serve to assist the Cold Ones breath, but rather, to distribute its paralytic slime and spit.
As spit and slime collects inside the mouth, the bits sucks up the paralytic from the corners of the teeth to the hollow tube to glisten wetly amongst the red feathers. There they stay, losing moisture to the air and condensing. Strengthening, going from a gloopy wet numbing slime to a sludgy sticky nerve-burning spit. A spit insidious in its venom, where a single touch against bare skin can kill, as the sludge spills nerve-agents into the flesh, and up to the heart and the brain, its paralytic touch climbing up limbs to strangle the heart, and suffocate the neurons. A spit disruptive in its nature, for it sticks and it gums; smearing across viewport and visor as nasty opaque streaks, and sticking and glueing tools and weapon shut.
With a twitch of the muscle groups, a flicker of will, and the pressurised chambers of the Trims, the Cold One can launch this spit out with hissing force. Not a venom as strong as a Troglodon by any means, but certainly enough to gain the upper hand against any man-sized foe.
As spit and slime collects inside the mouth, the bits sucks up the paralytic from the corners of the teeth to the hollow tube to glisten wetly amongst the red feathers. There they stay, losing moisture to the air and condensing. Strengthening, going from a gloopy wet numbing slime to a sludgy sticky nerve-burning spit. A spit insidious in its venom, where a single touch against bare skin can kill, as the sludge spills nerve-agents into the flesh, and up to the heart and the brain, its paralytic touch climbing up limbs to strangle the heart, and suffocate the neurons. A spit disruptive in its nature, for it sticks and it gums; smearing across viewport and visor as nasty opaque streaks, and sticking and glueing tools and weapon shut.
With a twitch of the muscle groups, a flicker of will, and the pressurised chambers of the Trims, the Cold One can launch this spit out with hissing force. Not a venom as strong as a Troglodon by any means, but certainly enough to gain the upper hand against any man-sized foe.
A: IT'S GOT A GUN!
*BLAM
BLAM*
Two for the Horned Ones.
The Ivory Wreaths are gold implants placed under the scales, upon the crown and the jaw and the nose bridge, wherever horns grow. There they sit, imbuing their magic into the skin and scales above as the Horned One grows. At first, the result seems negligible, a mere cosmetic change. The Horns of the Horned One grows unusually rectangular, instead of the vaguely conical shape.
This is not true, no horn grows. Revealed further as it ages. The growths are angular and straight, the curves replaced by sharp outgrowths as the main mass pivots away. It does not appear organic, but rather, structured as rock does. Its colouration is white, off-white, bone white. Bleached and smooth without the rumples of horn.
It is Ivory. The material seems normal, but underneath the truth is revealed. Should the Ivory shatter, it will be revealed as hollow, braced not by dense matter, but by interlocking glowing sigils and shapes, a skeleton of magic.
It is Ivory, and Ivory lies.
And so the Horned One does as well.
The magic of the Wreaths serves to cloak the Horned One and its rider. Its position becomes displaced, perhaps it is two feet to the right, perhaps a half-step left. Its actions become shrouded, perhaps it is lunging, perhaps the rider is aiming their rifle. Its numbers become shrouded, perhaps the pack numbers one hundred and sixty, perhaps ninety four, perhaps three.
Small lies, nothing lies, lies that cannot stand for more then a second. But a second is all that a Horned One needs.
This is not true, no horn grows. Revealed further as it ages. The growths are angular and straight, the curves replaced by sharp outgrowths as the main mass pivots away. It does not appear organic, but rather, structured as rock does. Its colouration is white, off-white, bone white. Bleached and smooth without the rumples of horn.
It is Ivory. The material seems normal, but underneath the truth is revealed. Should the Ivory shatter, it will be revealed as hollow, braced not by dense matter, but by interlocking glowing sigils and shapes, a skeleton of magic.
It is Ivory, and Ivory lies.
And so the Horned One does as well.
The magic of the Wreaths serves to cloak the Horned One and its rider. Its position becomes displaced, perhaps it is two feet to the right, perhaps a half-step left. Its actions become shrouded, perhaps it is lunging, perhaps the rider is aiming their rifle. Its numbers become shrouded, perhaps the pack numbers one hundred and sixty, perhaps ninety four, perhaps three.
Small lies, nothing lies, lies that cannot stand for more then a second. But a second is all that a Horned One needs.
The Horn Laurels are bronze implants placed under the scales, upon the crown and the jaw and the nose bridge, wherever horns grow. There they sit, imbuing their magic into the skin and scales above as the Horned One grows. At first, the result seems negligible, a mere cosmetic change. The Horns of the Horned One grows unusually dark, round and smooth.
It is Horn, true. As black and smooth as obsinite. Yet unmarred it is not. For in sections golden rings grow with the Horn. Growth rings with every year. It is not gnarled as a tree is, but instead roughened like worked wood. Almost-divots across the surface, turning something flat into something dimpled and rumpled.
It is Horn, and underneath the magic dwells. It rises with truth and sinks with lies. Rising to the surface as discolourations in between each band. And those markings tell tales, true tales. Stories and deeds and truths of the Horned One.
It is Horn, and Horn speaks truth.
And so the Horned One does as well.
The magic of the Laurels serves to strengthen the Horned One. Every triumph of the Horned One, every challenge won, every milestone reached, gets recorded into the Horns. And when these stories are called upon, told again, then the victory is reached again. The Horned One is struck, and rises. Then again, and they rise again under the weight of words. The Horned One chases, and catches. Then again, and they catch again with tight bound fate. The Horned One fights, then kills. Then again, and they kill again because their story has no other ending.
Each story is tiny, little more then a chain of events mere seconds apart. Short lasting, nothing time that enhances for a single second. But a second is all that a Horned One needs.
It is Horn, true. As black and smooth as obsinite. Yet unmarred it is not. For in sections golden rings grow with the Horn. Growth rings with every year. It is not gnarled as a tree is, but instead roughened like worked wood. Almost-divots across the surface, turning something flat into something dimpled and rumpled.
It is Horn, and underneath the magic dwells. It rises with truth and sinks with lies. Rising to the surface as discolourations in between each band. And those markings tell tales, true tales. Stories and deeds and truths of the Horned One.
It is Horn, and Horn speaks truth.
And so the Horned One does as well.
The magic of the Laurels serves to strengthen the Horned One. Every triumph of the Horned One, every challenge won, every milestone reached, gets recorded into the Horns. And when these stories are called upon, told again, then the victory is reached again. The Horned One is struck, and rises. Then again, and they rise again under the weight of words. The Horned One chases, and catches. Then again, and they catch again with tight bound fate. The Horned One fights, then kills. Then again, and they kill again because their story has no other ending.
Each story is tiny, little more then a chain of events mere seconds apart. Short lasting, nothing time that enhances for a single second. But a second is all that a Horned One needs.
And with that, every Warbeast- barring the titans- have gotten their own technology.
Buuuutttt, there's something else- the big guy who wrote the little excerpts at each scene break. He needs a character sheet as well.
An elder Kroxigor born in the earliest moments of Monchantia. Fought, carved, and toiled for the Lizardmen faithfully and vigorously. Yet B'b's passion is greatest and most prominent for the tasks of beast wrangling- where muscle is needed more then a Skinks quick wit. His passion extends to the point of learning, and speaking, and teaching and understanding all that makes a beast. B'b has no markings signifying him as a Sacred Spawning.
Nowadays he doesn't get to do the violence or the building much, but he doesn't mind– Being the Kroxigor consultant within the Warbeast handler's conclaves is busy enough.
Elder Kroxigor:
Strong, tough, and obdurate beyond belief. B'b exemplifies everything that makes elder Kroxigor elder.
Authority on Beasts:
B'b is recognised as one of the most knowledgeable on beasts of all kinds- a feat admirable for any Skink chief. Downright incredible for a Kroxigor. He is most well-known for writing tomes of such quality that several Temple-Cities have integrated the reading of it into standard training.
Nowadays he doesn't get to do the violence or the building much, but he doesn't mind– Being the Kroxigor consultant within the Warbeast handler's conclaves is busy enough.
Traits:
Elder Kroxigor:
Strong, tough, and obdurate beyond belief. B'b exemplifies everything that makes elder Kroxigor elder.
Authority on Beasts:
B'b is recognised as one of the most knowledgeable on beasts of all kinds- a feat admirable for any Skink chief. Downright incredible for a Kroxigor. He is most well-known for writing tomes of such quality that several Temple-Cities have integrated the reading of it into standard training.
And with that I've created a technology for all of the standard Warbeasts the Lizardmen use. Job done.
Got one more idea mildewing inside my mind, but that will happen later.
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And the reason people don't just destroy the existing infrastructure and cities is they want to capture it an turn it to their own ends. But lizardmen cities both wont work for anybody that lacks understanding of Gemantic web infrastructure, and are the Lizardmens biggest weak point. So the normal priority of capturing cites, that normal armies use will be thrown out, and destruction of cities and infrastructure when attacking the lizardmen become the standard MO of the attacking force, not a last resort of the defenders.
Create a lizardmen that borrows under the crust of the planet and taps the mantle for energy and sorceresses, and just continually grows inplace. Now we have a backup for a city going down that nearly impossible to remove without glassing the planet.
Diplomacy with the Orks is a funny thought, but it does make me wonder if a being sufficiently close to the Old Ones would be able to command the Orks.
[x] [Transport Ship] Turtle
[X] [Boarding Ship] Write-in name: Parraxuda, for the Barracuda but with x instead of c and P instead of B.
[X] [Boarding Ship] Write-in name: Parraxuda, for the Barracuda but with x instead of c and P instead of B.
Interesting seeing a slann using the female pronouns
As far as I knew they all identified as males
Also female skink honestly I think the skinks might be the first to become more individualistic and have pronouns
[x] [Transport Ship] Turtle
[X] [Boarding Ship] Write-in name: Parraxuda, for the Barracuda but with x instead of c and P instead of B
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Lizardmen are far from the only species whose infrastructure is impossible for outsiders to use and often counterproductive to leave standing. Anything Chaos-aligned has that trait. Orks have that trait. I don't think it's actually going to change the doctrine of most of our future enemies to know that nuking our cities repeatedly until the bubble shields crack is going to hurt us, because that always works and that level of destructive firepower is routinely thrown around in this setting. A serious invasion from space of a major enemy-held planet would necessarily begin with heavy orbital bombardment of major centers, because otherwise the enemy will just slaughter your landing force using their own intact defenses anyway. The details of why our cities are important to our fighting capability differ, but not the fact that they do.
People are going to be trying to do this anyway, and to more or less the same degree, regardless.
We've seen a few others depicted thus, I think.
- Location
- USA
Huh, I was honestly expecting reading that that the easier option was going to be bringing the sea IN. Digging out canals and pits near the shore deep enough for any seagoing vessels, then flooding them.
Also cannot believe we still don't have propellers. Need to figure out mechanical engines soon.
Also cannot believe we still don't have propellers. Need to figure out mechanical engines soon.
>need to figure out mechanical engines soon
Hear, hear. Get the Lizardmen to start thinking in terms of artificial constructs and vehicles as solutions to their problems, rather than just using creatures as transport and vehicle-equivalents. Creatures have their limits and can't be scaled upwards as easily with the Lizardman techbase (magical AzTech rather than BioTech). Whereas artificial constructs can be.
- Location
- USA
Yeah, magic can do a LOT of things very well. But being able to do things without magic, without the attention of Slaan or Skink Priests to channel power and refuel batteries, is quite useful.
We're never gonna be a fully technological society, but adopting some full mechanical systems would benefit us.
Or, at the very least, using hydrodynamic designs instead of the apparent wedge nosed bricks of our current seafaring vessels.
- Location
- The Milky Way Galaxy, Presumably
Oh ye that. Ive always been doing that woth my series of omakes. My logics that since the Lizardmens reproductive process is so far from asexual and sexual reproduction, gender is purely a matter of aesthetics. But I believe the logic this quest is ising is that gender is a matter of duty-- a Lizardmens gender shifts as they do different things. Things like fighting and administrating are masculine, wheras diplomacy and reporting are feminine.
Which is a real neat way of making the lizards propper alien, but i can see the gender fluidity making writing a mite complicated and harder to keep track of.
4 words: Space ships and Brachiosaurus
- Location
- Titan
Mainly on magic, fusion reactors as clean mostly safe backup. Antimatter as dangerous supercharge to heat up the reactors in emergency and also in really big bad units as standard for maximum juice. Sure it's gonna take a while but that's basically as good as it gets short of Necron technobabble or Chaos reality hacking.
Thought popped to my head: Is it theoretically possible to spawn a non-sentient antimatter organism to serve as fuel and bombs?
Thought popped to my head: Is it theoretically possible to spawn a non-sentient antimatter organism to serve as fuel and bombs?
You don't want a Lizard of any type as the base for that, you want a coral. Or a Plant.
This sounds more like a tyranid thing than a lizardmen thing
And? We have Saurus Starborn deep on the research list, which would a function the same as a Tyranid synapse creature, but for the Web. Good ideas are good ideas.
We are going to want Starborb Sauris eventually because eventually we will be going on the offensive, so having the means to make sure that the web is stronger locally during an invasion or while setting up a colony in a new system without not always having to plop down entire cities first will always be useful. The fact they can ALSO help maintain the web on the defense is just an added bonus to their role on the offense. Which if done right? We might be able to use them such that the best offense is a good defense.
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Wind Weapons - Bot105
- Location
- The Milky Way Galaxy, Presumably
Wind Weapons
Nuff of the Bullgyrns laughs as he charges. Ahead there is a mob of Lizards– wielding shields like his!
But not like his, all black-blue and blocky. Unlike his! Which is black-blue and blocky.
Bossman said to smash the wall, so he and his pals (Thudd, Grond, Souf, and the ded'smart one, Stupid) were smashing their way towards them.
But things got weird when they came close. It started raining.
Now, Nuff likes rain. It patters down on his head like his daddy did when he got drunk. But this rain was wrong. Somehow.
For one, it was raining sideways.
For two, it was raining so hard that Nuff kinda couldn't push forwards.
For three, there were big sparky bolts coming from the Lizards. They hurt.
Then Stupid shouted over the howling to start shooting. And they did! But the boom-things didn't make it far through the rain. It was kinda like when Nuff shot upwards for fun, the boom-things slowed down, and exploded before they could get to far.
Then the rain stopped, and the wind became stronger, and was filled with sharp burny rocks too!
Then Nuff was flying away, and he couldn't see anything past the hurricane.
Resembling a tower shield, ornately crafted with many edges formed of jutting blocks on its face. Each edge highlighted in night sky blue against its obsinite form. The plate of clear crystal that acts as a view port sparkles with endless tiny falling meteors in its reflection. It bears two handles, long, at both sides of its back. At the base of the shield, a long lever extends, and with a strong pull, bracing rods extend from the bottom into the ground. And beside that lever there is a ledge with a lip, a place to brace a blocky insert as wide as the shield.
This is a slot for the ammunition, a storm plate.
The shield, when activated (and braced, for it possesses considerable recoil), extends great bolts of lighting and thunder out, and the wind and rain howls from its surface. Short range, but with explosive impact and inertia. Well enough to fling humanoids away. And should the user expend the entire storm plate, enough power to overturn tanks. Not just storms can be pulled from its surface, any manner of meteorological phenomena can be called from it. Be it frost biting blizzards or terrible typhoons or thunderous volcanic eruptions. The Lizardmen have a keen understanding of the destruction a natural disaster can conjure via the Geomantic Rituals. Now the bearers of the Climate Guard can summon it themselves.
Speciality ammo is needed for each Climate Guard. This ammo can only be collected from a Sacred Site equivalent, a Deep Storm Weathervane.
This structure can only be constructed within gas giants, at the depths of their 'surface', where the winds howl fast enough to shear stone. Miles above, a station dwells safely, with a long spiralling staircase down, wide enough for two great beasts to clamber down shoulder to shoulder- and they are required to as well. For even with the wards built into the obsinite, even the stalwart Kroxigors need to brace against something as weighty as a Stegadon to avoid getting ripped away.
The staircase ends at a platform, wide and railed. In a grid four small weathervanes spin wildly atop their own clusters of unidentifiable crystals. As each weathervane spins, the crystals grow in size, and darkens and blues until they become chunks of the night sky.
Those mature crystals are harvested, and carved into plates as wide as the Climate Guard, and as tall as they can fit.
Sometimes, as those panes of night are carried up, lightning strikes upon the crystal, the greatest lightning from the greatest storm. This alters the panes, inters in them dark and roiling clouds. The highest quality ammunition for the highest quality Climate Guards, which only the Temple Guard carry.
This is a slot for the ammunition, a storm plate.
The shield, when activated (and braced, for it possesses considerable recoil), extends great bolts of lighting and thunder out, and the wind and rain howls from its surface. Short range, but with explosive impact and inertia. Well enough to fling humanoids away. And should the user expend the entire storm plate, enough power to overturn tanks. Not just storms can be pulled from its surface, any manner of meteorological phenomena can be called from it. Be it frost biting blizzards or terrible typhoons or thunderous volcanic eruptions. The Lizardmen have a keen understanding of the destruction a natural disaster can conjure via the Geomantic Rituals. Now the bearers of the Climate Guard can summon it themselves.
Speciality ammo is needed for each Climate Guard. This ammo can only be collected from a Sacred Site equivalent, a Deep Storm Weathervane.
This structure can only be constructed within gas giants, at the depths of their 'surface', where the winds howl fast enough to shear stone. Miles above, a station dwells safely, with a long spiralling staircase down, wide enough for two great beasts to clamber down shoulder to shoulder- and they are required to as well. For even with the wards built into the obsinite, even the stalwart Kroxigors need to brace against something as weighty as a Stegadon to avoid getting ripped away.
The staircase ends at a platform, wide and railed. In a grid four small weathervanes spin wildly atop their own clusters of unidentifiable crystals. As each weathervane spins, the crystals grow in size, and darkens and blues until they become chunks of the night sky.
Those mature crystals are harvested, and carved into plates as wide as the Climate Guard, and as tall as they can fit.
Sometimes, as those panes of night are carried up, lightning strikes upon the crystal, the greatest lightning from the greatest storm. This alters the panes, inters in them dark and roiling clouds. The highest quality ammunition for the highest quality Climate Guards, which only the Temple Guard carry.
Azyr
A single streak of light cuts through the night. It starts from Stargazer hill, and passes above the mud-churned plains. It hits the shoddy metal-sheet walls of the fortress, Ork-dung stained. It passes through the thirty three overlapping layers of iron, steel, rust, and iron, and the head of an unfortunate Gretchin to hit the stone walls of the interior building.
Inside, and Ork tosses a coin in the air, and it falls down a torus.
In the next room, a boiler hisses, steam escaping through two new vent holes.
In the next room, a Dok grunts, his plier's falling apart without its lugnut.
In the next room, the Warboss chokes, his throat bleeding profusely. His form slumped backwards in his throne. The spinal cord cut, the fungal cords wheezing into open air.
Only his eyes can move, he looks to the side and sees a hole in the wall.
On the other side, he sees the night sky.
About a hands width longer then the standard automatic rifle, this semi-automatic battle rifle holds a similar appearance to the common guns of the Lizardmen. Same trigger, same snarling barrel, same blocky casing and same melee mounting points. It's more heavily gilded yes, but not to the point of the delicate sniper rifle.
Where it differs is in the colouration- the end of the gun is tinted pale, gold translucent and obsinite greying. This is due to the effects of the unique ammunition and firing mechanism.
Instead of the standard block of obsinite and the complex mechanisms within the reciever, the gun employs a bleached stone insert. White and bright, with an inner glow inside the glassy obsinite.
With a pull of the trigger, the sheared off chunk of stone is not transmuted into volatile powder and bullet. Instead, the chunk is struck by the hammer as-is; Releasing the energy inside as a beam of light cutting through the thin air. Muted recoil and sound, for it is simply a release of an exotic energy.
Where the laser hits, it does not heat, nor does it bleed or bruise or buckle. It shears and penetrates- punching through dense matter as if there was nothing. Barricades and walls and shields are worthless against the laser, for it easily hits the foe on the other side.
The laser is semi-transmutative in nature, for the things it hits become translucent- faded holes within the stone, and flesh turned pale in a ring around the wound.
Speciality ammo is needed for each Torchrifle. This ammo can only be collected from a Sacred Site equivalent, a Lightfetch Press.
Standing tall on either of the geographical poles of a planet, a large tower rises up from the ground. It is entirely hollow- with only the ground floor. Instead, above is a network of cables, strung from wall to wall. And on those cables carefully positioned mirrors charged with Geomantic power rest.
At the top of the tower, there is a small cradle- and within that cradle a satellite rests. Charging. Collecting power from dusk to dawn.
When it is fully charged, it lifts off in an orbit of the planet. It revolves around the planet once- darkened squares upon its body soaking all the light that shines on it. Light from the sun, so blazing and resplendent. Light from the moon, reflected splendour. Light from the stars, ages old light. Light from the little Lizardmen cities below, ordered and aligned.
And, when it is dawn yet again, the satellite- so soaked in light that it resembles a comet- lands back in its cradle.
The satellite releases the absorbed light, down and down into the tower. And it reflects off of the mirrors on the cables into one focused beam of Hysh.
This Hysh shines upon the bleached crystalline altar at the bottom of the Lightfetch Press. And until it is dusk again it will continue to shine. Then the satellite will rest from dusk to dawn, charging again.
All obsinite that is placed within that beam of light becomes saturated, and becomes ammunition well suited for the Low Pass Torchrifle.
Where it differs is in the colouration- the end of the gun is tinted pale, gold translucent and obsinite greying. This is due to the effects of the unique ammunition and firing mechanism.
Instead of the standard block of obsinite and the complex mechanisms within the reciever, the gun employs a bleached stone insert. White and bright, with an inner glow inside the glassy obsinite.
With a pull of the trigger, the sheared off chunk of stone is not transmuted into volatile powder and bullet. Instead, the chunk is struck by the hammer as-is; Releasing the energy inside as a beam of light cutting through the thin air. Muted recoil and sound, for it is simply a release of an exotic energy.
Where the laser hits, it does not heat, nor does it bleed or bruise or buckle. It shears and penetrates- punching through dense matter as if there was nothing. Barricades and walls and shields are worthless against the laser, for it easily hits the foe on the other side.
The laser is semi-transmutative in nature, for the things it hits become translucent- faded holes within the stone, and flesh turned pale in a ring around the wound.
Speciality ammo is needed for each Torchrifle. This ammo can only be collected from a Sacred Site equivalent, a Lightfetch Press.
Standing tall on either of the geographical poles of a planet, a large tower rises up from the ground. It is entirely hollow- with only the ground floor. Instead, above is a network of cables, strung from wall to wall. And on those cables carefully positioned mirrors charged with Geomantic power rest.
At the top of the tower, there is a small cradle- and within that cradle a satellite rests. Charging. Collecting power from dusk to dawn.
When it is fully charged, it lifts off in an orbit of the planet. It revolves around the planet once- darkened squares upon its body soaking all the light that shines on it. Light from the sun, so blazing and resplendent. Light from the moon, reflected splendour. Light from the stars, ages old light. Light from the little Lizardmen cities below, ordered and aligned.
And, when it is dawn yet again, the satellite- so soaked in light that it resembles a comet- lands back in its cradle.
The satellite releases the absorbed light, down and down into the tower. And it reflects off of the mirrors on the cables into one focused beam of Hysh.
This Hysh shines upon the bleached crystalline altar at the bottom of the Lightfetch Press. And until it is dusk again it will continue to shine. Then the satellite will rest from dusk to dawn, charging again.
All obsinite that is placed within that beam of light becomes saturated, and becomes ammunition well suited for the Low Pass Torchrifle.
Hysh
"Shas'ui's down! Kor'vesa, medicea protocol!"
A call amid battle, Kor'vesa Guardian Drone 1776 beeps, recognised. It flits across the ground low, avoiding the plasma pulses, and hovers behind cover. Just above the Shas'ui, and the Shas holding his wounds shut.
Except…
"Sha'ni! Let me up, 'la." The Veteran snarls, struggling against the hands. He does not bleed.
"Hold still sir! Don't aggravate it!" The Warrior says. He is the one bleeding, with misty grey smoke seeping out of his wounds.
"Sha'vash! Kor'vesa, No one here is injured, leave us!" The Veteran barks, and waves a hand at the drone.
"Sir, no– don't just brush it off!" The Warrior pleads, his voice shaky from the bloodloss.
"Override code 1776, 243-a." The Veteran says, and the Drone beeps affirmative.
Leaving the Veteran and the dying Warrior, the Drone hears one last thing. "What's gotten into you soldier? Neither of us were hit!"
This weapon appears as a short-nosed assault rifle. Handheld and light. Its square carved barrel affixed to a grey-steel handle and long stock, and pressed close to the trigger guard is the octagonal magazine, which extends one third up the length of the barrel. At the base of the barrel, an open slit exposes the shrouded insides to the air. A corresponding slit on the crystalline magazine allows for the liquid ammunition inside to feed into the barrel in a long cloudy ribbon.
When the trigger is pulled, the weapon fires. Slivers of Uglu sharp and thin, to pierce and puncture. However, the bullets do not appear as flashing lights and booming sounds, they do not manifest at all. The bullets this weapon fires is the anti-thesis of tracer rounds, undetectable by presence and results. The bullets are not heard, they are not seen, they do not land where the gun points and they do not wound as bullets do.
Where the bullets land, they confuse and estrange. The more that lands, the greater the effect. A soldier taking shrapnel will forget they have been hit, or the medic will find nothing, no evidence of damage despite the blood all over the floor. Or the treatment will be wrong, for the injury is misdiagnosed. The soldier thinks their arm is gone, but everyone will swear it was the throat instead. The chest is bandaged, but the leg is where they bleed.
And should a person die, with hundreds of those misty bullets within them. Well.
The body cannot be found. The body is still alive, they are standing straight and tall. The body does not move. The body talks and walks. The body barks orders. The body is a traitor and has turned their gun upon you. The body has been hit, and you need to keep your hands on their chest, no matter what happens. The body said this to you and that to them, and the moment you blink the body returns to a corpse.
No two people can agree on what the state of the body is. They collide and argue, and plans fall apart.
The only truth is that the body is dead. It is the nature of Uglu to misdirect and mislead, so this is discovered last.
Speciality ammo is needed for each Grayslate Rifle. This ammo can only be collected for a Sacred Site equivalent. The Miscounted Turbines.
Floating under the sea, at the twilight zone where light becomes dark, but it cannot be said which is more prominent, these structures dwell. Box encased fans spinning and turning by the tidal motions. The indeterminate amount of obsinite constructions number more then fifty, but less then one hundred. However, a precise count is not viable given the immense amount of Uglu each Turbine is swathed in.
Each fan is composed of a box of obsinite, unremarkable except for the crystalline octagonal containers affixed to its side. However, the fan blades (five are their number) are far more esoteric, composed not of stone or metal, but wood. Thin translucent petrified wood. Somehow dry to the touch, despite the pyramid-height weight of water above it.
Given the low velocity of the tide this far from shore, the Turbines do not spin very fast. Not to any noticeable degree. However, they are precisely placed such that, of the endless currents of each Wind that the Ocean is soaked in, Uglu lingers between each blade.
Twice a day, at highest tides, the Turbines spring the trap, and sever portions of that Grey Wind by the spinning. Such that each Strand coils like hair between the blades, and with the contact with that liminal material, slowly seep into the strange wood. Down and down its veins the Uglu goes, shifting as it does, drinking and changing as it does. It collects within the octagonal magazines as murky off-gray water, held just at the point of boiling. Such that even a hands warmth is enough to collapse the water into grey steam. And the chill of the air is enough to condense it into unclear liquid.
When the trigger is pulled, the weapon fires. Slivers of Uglu sharp and thin, to pierce and puncture. However, the bullets do not appear as flashing lights and booming sounds, they do not manifest at all. The bullets this weapon fires is the anti-thesis of tracer rounds, undetectable by presence and results. The bullets are not heard, they are not seen, they do not land where the gun points and they do not wound as bullets do.
Where the bullets land, they confuse and estrange. The more that lands, the greater the effect. A soldier taking shrapnel will forget they have been hit, or the medic will find nothing, no evidence of damage despite the blood all over the floor. Or the treatment will be wrong, for the injury is misdiagnosed. The soldier thinks their arm is gone, but everyone will swear it was the throat instead. The chest is bandaged, but the leg is where they bleed.
And should a person die, with hundreds of those misty bullets within them. Well.
The body cannot be found. The body is still alive, they are standing straight and tall. The body does not move. The body talks and walks. The body barks orders. The body is a traitor and has turned their gun upon you. The body has been hit, and you need to keep your hands on their chest, no matter what happens. The body said this to you and that to them, and the moment you blink the body returns to a corpse.
No two people can agree on what the state of the body is. They collide and argue, and plans fall apart.
The only truth is that the body is dead. It is the nature of Uglu to misdirect and mislead, so this is discovered last.
Speciality ammo is needed for each Grayslate Rifle. This ammo can only be collected for a Sacred Site equivalent. The Miscounted Turbines.
Floating under the sea, at the twilight zone where light becomes dark, but it cannot be said which is more prominent, these structures dwell. Box encased fans spinning and turning by the tidal motions. The indeterminate amount of obsinite constructions number more then fifty, but less then one hundred. However, a precise count is not viable given the immense amount of Uglu each Turbine is swathed in.
Each fan is composed of a box of obsinite, unremarkable except for the crystalline octagonal containers affixed to its side. However, the fan blades (five are their number) are far more esoteric, composed not of stone or metal, but wood. Thin translucent petrified wood. Somehow dry to the touch, despite the pyramid-height weight of water above it.
Given the low velocity of the tide this far from shore, the Turbines do not spin very fast. Not to any noticeable degree. However, they are precisely placed such that, of the endless currents of each Wind that the Ocean is soaked in, Uglu lingers between each blade.
Twice a day, at highest tides, the Turbines spring the trap, and sever portions of that Grey Wind by the spinning. Such that each Strand coils like hair between the blades, and with the contact with that liminal material, slowly seep into the strange wood. Down and down its veins the Uglu goes, shifting as it does, drinking and changing as it does. It collects within the octagonal magazines as murky off-gray water, held just at the point of boiling. Such that even a hands warmth is enough to collapse the water into grey steam. And the chill of the air is enough to condense it into unclear liquid.
Uglu
Scar Veteran Kil'mal'yan suspected their patrol was ambushed when the hallway's lights shut off.
Kil'mal'yan knew when a Saurus roared, injury-alarm-contact was the message.
The room was too dark to see the foe, outside of the sparse illumination.
The flash of a rifle revealed a jagged edge of steel, deflected off of their club.
The spark of knife against obsinite showed a grinning wooden mask, the face of one assailant.
A sputtering red light, from a flare ripped on, showed a six limbed thing scuttling away from Kil'mal'yan's swipes.
Yet when a second monster attacked from above, neither gunsmoke nor flint spark nor chemical flare lit the beast.
It was a blue-green arc, jagged and claw-like, that streaked behind the Scar Vet's back.
The lights turned back on, to show a bisected beast. Both halves falling to either side of Kil'mal'yan. Something only they could hear rumbled, hunger whetted by the steaming entrails.
This weapon manifests as a little wooden or obsinite thing, typically roughly carved. For the Lizardmen who carve these things are not typically wood or stone workers by trade. The Totem bears a visage of a snarling beast, all teeth and claw and fury. Although, it can only be called a beast- as the Lizardmen typically do not make it resemble any creature in particular.
The Renttasm Totem often has a hole for a string, or a nock for a clip. And the Totem is often clipped or tied to the body, where the magic within can make work.
When needed, or directed to by the user, the Totem activates. It manifests blue spectral claws, ethereal hooked blades, that swing around the user with bestial instinct. Severing and rending. Each claw strikes with titanic force, capable of severing any armour, or diverting any blow, with near prescient precision.
It should be noted that the Totem is always aware and always active. Its enchantment's targeting formula prowls through the air, patrolling around the user like it's its territory. Only revealed by the hint of eye or teeth in the soft blue trails the spectral claws make.
It is in fact, somewhat autonomous, capable of striking out to protect against threats the user isn't aware of.
It is, in all effect, a ghostly guardian beast. Leashed to the user.
The weapon needs no ammunition other then the Winds to feed upon. However, each Totem can only be made at a Sacred Site equivalent, the Dry Waterhole.
It is a waterhole, deep in inhospitable lands. That once provided for an ecosystem, but with time has become nothing but a dusty hole.
Once every two months, a contingent of Lizardmen arrive, with a great tanker filled with Ayotzl blessed saltwater. They fill the Waterhole with that blessed liquid, from bottom to top. And wait. And wait. Until the dead Beasts that remember come. With age, all but their instinct has faded- even their shapes. And so each spirit arrives as a bestial unshape, with fur and claw and scale and beak and talon and maw.
These beasts drink freely, peacefully. And the Lizardmen approach fearlessly, for the law of the Waterhole is strong- any who are thirsty will be safe. These Lizardmen drink as well, to bargain with the ghosts on the same level.
They deal, protection and servitude, for whatever the dead want. Fortunately, as dead beasts, the Totems wants are easy to sate, and bargains can be made easily. A life long friend for the taste of meat. An undying companion for the warmth of a cave. A guard 'till the end for the touch of soft fur.
To seal the pact, a Renttasm Totem is carved. From obsinite or wood. And when the deal is done, and the ghost binds itself to the totem. The Ayotzl Priest takes the totem and binds it in the deal made. Not a proto-spirit with want, but an enchantment with action.
The Renttasm Totem often has a hole for a string, or a nock for a clip. And the Totem is often clipped or tied to the body, where the magic within can make work.
When needed, or directed to by the user, the Totem activates. It manifests blue spectral claws, ethereal hooked blades, that swing around the user with bestial instinct. Severing and rending. Each claw strikes with titanic force, capable of severing any armour, or diverting any blow, with near prescient precision.
It should be noted that the Totem is always aware and always active. Its enchantment's targeting formula prowls through the air, patrolling around the user like it's its territory. Only revealed by the hint of eye or teeth in the soft blue trails the spectral claws make.
It is in fact, somewhat autonomous, capable of striking out to protect against threats the user isn't aware of.
It is, in all effect, a ghostly guardian beast. Leashed to the user.
The weapon needs no ammunition other then the Winds to feed upon. However, each Totem can only be made at a Sacred Site equivalent, the Dry Waterhole.
It is a waterhole, deep in inhospitable lands. That once provided for an ecosystem, but with time has become nothing but a dusty hole.
Once every two months, a contingent of Lizardmen arrive, with a great tanker filled with Ayotzl blessed saltwater. They fill the Waterhole with that blessed liquid, from bottom to top. And wait. And wait. Until the dead Beasts that remember come. With age, all but their instinct has faded- even their shapes. And so each spirit arrives as a bestial unshape, with fur and claw and scale and beak and talon and maw.
These beasts drink freely, peacefully. And the Lizardmen approach fearlessly, for the law of the Waterhole is strong- any who are thirsty will be safe. These Lizardmen drink as well, to bargain with the ghosts on the same level.
They deal, protection and servitude, for whatever the dead want. Fortunately, as dead beasts, the Totems wants are easy to sate, and bargains can be made easily. A life long friend for the taste of meat. An undying companion for the warmth of a cave. A guard 'till the end for the touch of soft fur.
To seal the pact, a Renttasm Totem is carved. From obsinite or wood. And when the deal is done, and the ghost binds itself to the totem. The Ayotzl Priest takes the totem and binds it in the deal made. Not a proto-spirit with want, but an enchantment with action.
Ghur
Fifteen Wyche's dance through the danger. One falls to co-ordinated fire.
Fourteen Wyche's cackle through the gunfire. Two fall to sheer massed fire.
Twelve Wyche's thirst as they approach. Whips crack like spines. Thorn-pistols fire. One for four.
Eleven Wyche's descend on the Skinks, mere moments away from bloodshed.
The Saurus with the short barrelled gun reaches them, and fires between the scaled ranks.
One Wyche soars in the air and ash, molten bones jutting from her limbs.
The Saurus fires again.
Resembling a short barrelled gun about an arms length, this ranged weapon menaces with streaks of red gold down its obsinite shape. Its head is decorated as the blocky maw of a Salamander, with its forked tongue extending out, down, then back up. A small fire burns from twin holes at the tips of the tongue. This fire forms the shape of a thin burning ring before the open mouth.
The underside of the barrel connects to an opaque canister, screwed into the handle. It is warm to the touch, and when shaken, sloshes. Liquid sunshine.
With a pull of the trigger, a short-ranged blast of blazing hot sunfire extends out. Half conflagration, half red glowing death. A roiling cloud of cosmic flame. Flesh vaporises, stone boils, metal melts. It is not a flamethrower, for the liquid sunshine is not ignited and sprayed out in a torrent of liquid fire. It is not a plasma weapon, which energises the liquid sunshine into plasma, and accelerates the mass as a lethal bolt. It is not a thermal ray, which decomposes the liquid sunshine into a tight-focused beam of intense searing heat.
The red-yellow heat it produces does not adhere to any of those paradigms. It explodes out as a cascading bolt and flows in the air as molten smog. The clouds shift and roil as if they were the surface of a star, sunspots forming amidst the craggy surface of hot plasma. The entire structure cooling away in moments, revealing a world molten.
Speciality ammo is needed for each Sunfire Thrower. This ammo can only be collected from a Sacred Site equivalent, a Suncatch Apiary.
A grand arm atop a round base, affixed by bearings and a large central gear and many smaller handhelds such that it may spin as needed with Kroxigor strength, such that the grand arm may make a whole rotation. Smaller spouted arms extend from each tooth of the gear, and each at rest hover over one of seven small square and squat beehives. Each spouted arm connects to the grand arm's little channel. And that little channel goes all the way to the cradle at the top of the arm, a small hemi-sphere facing up, hollow.
Every day, at the moment before sunset, the Apiary is turned so that its long cradle rests just below the suns pass. And when the sun dips such that it aligns with the cradle, the Apiary collects its liquid sunshine. This sunshine trickles down the little channel on its cradle, all the way down to the centre of the Apiary, where it is drip fed into the numerous hives at its base as the finest nectar. And when that nectar is condensed and stored by the bee's and the magic of the hives, the operators can draw from those hives panes of wax-sealed liquid sunshine.
The underside of the barrel connects to an opaque canister, screwed into the handle. It is warm to the touch, and when shaken, sloshes. Liquid sunshine.
With a pull of the trigger, a short-ranged blast of blazing hot sunfire extends out. Half conflagration, half red glowing death. A roiling cloud of cosmic flame. Flesh vaporises, stone boils, metal melts. It is not a flamethrower, for the liquid sunshine is not ignited and sprayed out in a torrent of liquid fire. It is not a plasma weapon, which energises the liquid sunshine into plasma, and accelerates the mass as a lethal bolt. It is not a thermal ray, which decomposes the liquid sunshine into a tight-focused beam of intense searing heat.
The red-yellow heat it produces does not adhere to any of those paradigms. It explodes out as a cascading bolt and flows in the air as molten smog. The clouds shift and roil as if they were the surface of a star, sunspots forming amidst the craggy surface of hot plasma. The entire structure cooling away in moments, revealing a world molten.
Speciality ammo is needed for each Sunfire Thrower. This ammo can only be collected from a Sacred Site equivalent, a Suncatch Apiary.
A grand arm atop a round base, affixed by bearings and a large central gear and many smaller handhelds such that it may spin as needed with Kroxigor strength, such that the grand arm may make a whole rotation. Smaller spouted arms extend from each tooth of the gear, and each at rest hover over one of seven small square and squat beehives. Each spouted arm connects to the grand arm's little channel. And that little channel goes all the way to the cradle at the top of the arm, a small hemi-sphere facing up, hollow.
Every day, at the moment before sunset, the Apiary is turned so that its long cradle rests just below the suns pass. And when the sun dips such that it aligns with the cradle, the Apiary collects its liquid sunshine. This sunshine trickles down the little channel on its cradle, all the way down to the centre of the Apiary, where it is drip fed into the numerous hives at its base as the finest nectar. And when that nectar is condensed and stored by the bee's and the magic of the hives, the operators can draw from those hives panes of wax-sealed liquid sunshine.
Aqshy
There is a wall, with crenellation of thick Obsinite. Atop that wall ten statues of man stand. Magic hums in their torsos, pulsing in and out, and pushing the chest in and out in time with the breath. Simulacrums.
A goodly distance away, a Saurus stands. Slung at her waist is a multi-barreled gun. Gilded gold. It rattles as it fires at the top.
The constructs react as ordained, crouching down and under the golden bullets. Yet their mass cannot move faster then the droplets. And some topple off, not suppressed, but fully blasted back.
The gun stops, the Saurus moves. Inspecting the carnage.
The crenellations suffers cracks, structural faults slowly opening up. The obsinite puppets huddle fetal position. Limb-movement is inhibited, slow. Even glancing shots render them sluggish and weak.
At the bottom lies the puppets most hit, six of them. The magic within strains, manifesting as the grinding of stone against stone. The motions mimicking life are halted, shuddering. Overstressed motor-enchantments sputtering against the goldweight.
This weapon resembles a long multi-barrelled gun. Ten thin barrels placed in a ring and held by many barrel clamps, attached to a thick and long receiver. By the side of the receiver, a spool of golden wire sits- feeding a thick and strange gold length into the machine.
With a press of the trigger, both barrels and spool spin, gold fed into the receiver, and small cuttings of that gold fed into the barrels. Counter-intuitively, each barrel is fed a small length at the same time. And those drops of gold accelerate out with the force of Chamon.
As the gold is sent out, a terrible racket screams from the gun- a rattling, clunking sound as barrel, receiver, and gold whine.
Where the gold bullets hit, the magic bound to the bullets release. And the tearing force normally attributed to bullets is instead converted to blunt ethereal force- a charge halting and movement breaking impact. Such is the inertia that the target is often sent stumbling backwards, with crumpled bone and flat-squished flesh just under bruised skin.
Yet that is not the main effect, because the gold disappears where it lands. Or rather, it dissipates into the body. Weight in the blood, in the flesh and in the bone. Goldweight that lingers. That weighs the body down. That makes every movement more exhausting, as gold drags down the soul.
The most common cause of death against the Rattler is venous insufficiency, as blood cannot travel back up to the heart. The second most common is asphyxiation, as the lungs cannot expand against flesh that weighs more then lead.
Speciality ammo is needed for each Goldweight Rattler. This ammo can only be collected from a Sacred Site equivalent, the Sunkcost Cenotes.
Far outside the lands of the local Temple-Pyramid, where the bedrock is limestone soft. There are two pits side by side, two hollows in the land. Within those two hollows there are two lakes, clear and pure. Clear and pure enough that one can look inside, and see all of the gold sacrificed to the water underneath.
Ridiculous amounts of wealth are submerged under those lakes, and every year a small troupe of Lizardmen arrive. And those Lizardmen lower boats filled with gold into the lakes. And those boats sink, and a kings hoard is sacrificed to the Cenotes again.
Again and again, that gold is sunk, with no gain, no benefit. Yet, sometimes, if enough gold is spent, sometimes the Cenotes give back. The boats rise back up, with a special rattling gold- that rasps and clacks as it moves- in their cargo. Gold thick with Chamon. Gold plentiful, and far more then the Cenote was ever given. Gold that can be wrought into fine wires, and fed into a Goldweight Rattler as ammunition.
With a press of the trigger, both barrels and spool spin, gold fed into the receiver, and small cuttings of that gold fed into the barrels. Counter-intuitively, each barrel is fed a small length at the same time. And those drops of gold accelerate out with the force of Chamon.
As the gold is sent out, a terrible racket screams from the gun- a rattling, clunking sound as barrel, receiver, and gold whine.
Where the gold bullets hit, the magic bound to the bullets release. And the tearing force normally attributed to bullets is instead converted to blunt ethereal force- a charge halting and movement breaking impact. Such is the inertia that the target is often sent stumbling backwards, with crumpled bone and flat-squished flesh just under bruised skin.
Yet that is not the main effect, because the gold disappears where it lands. Or rather, it dissipates into the body. Weight in the blood, in the flesh and in the bone. Goldweight that lingers. That weighs the body down. That makes every movement more exhausting, as gold drags down the soul.
The most common cause of death against the Rattler is venous insufficiency, as blood cannot travel back up to the heart. The second most common is asphyxiation, as the lungs cannot expand against flesh that weighs more then lead.
Speciality ammo is needed for each Goldweight Rattler. This ammo can only be collected from a Sacred Site equivalent, the Sunkcost Cenotes.
Far outside the lands of the local Temple-Pyramid, where the bedrock is limestone soft. There are two pits side by side, two hollows in the land. Within those two hollows there are two lakes, clear and pure. Clear and pure enough that one can look inside, and see all of the gold sacrificed to the water underneath.
Ridiculous amounts of wealth are submerged under those lakes, and every year a small troupe of Lizardmen arrive. And those Lizardmen lower boats filled with gold into the lakes. And those boats sink, and a kings hoard is sacrificed to the Cenotes again.
Again and again, that gold is sunk, with no gain, no benefit. Yet, sometimes, if enough gold is spent, sometimes the Cenotes give back. The boats rise back up, with a special rattling gold- that rasps and clacks as it moves- in their cargo. Gold thick with Chamon. Gold plentiful, and far more then the Cenote was ever given. Gold that can be wrought into fine wires, and fed into a Goldweight Rattler as ammunition.
Chamon
What the ritual does, does not matter. It could be dedicated to Green, or Red or Purple or Blue.
But what the ritual is doing, that matters more. It is blackening the grass. It is shadowing the skies. It is turning the dirt to Dhar and the air strange.
The captive in the circle gurgles, their body is broken, their mind violated, their spirit strung out into a fishnet in the Warp.
The knife rises with the chanting, and is brought down with fervent action.
Yet it does not touch flesh, it touches flora. A seed has landed within the hollow guts of the sacrifice.
It is large, and round, and sticky with some goop. And it opens to show a single root peeking out. That root peirces the cultist twice over as it grows in a flash.
And it spirals out, expanding further and further. Its wild motions cracking the bones of those it connects, and its thirsting roots drains them of their blood.
And when the corpses stop moving, the tendrils grow from the coil down, into the soil. Turning the Dhar-muddy dirt into dry powdery dust. And the profaned stone of the altar becomes eroded limestone, flaking away in parts.
The grass wilts, out competed. The air turns arid, humidity stolen. The land all around becomes inhospitable. A single weed draining all nutrients, all minerals, away into its singular root.
Its better this way.
A crossbow-like gun half as tall as a Saurus, and as wide as the chest with its gilded limbs and a string of ethereal dripping sap. Obsinite and wood is its construction- young obsinite, old wood. The oddest part of its construction is its fligth groove; it is not a notch for an arrow, but rather a guiding tube. Two half-circle pipes held a distance from each other. To allow the string to pass through, and to allow the accelerating magic to bleed off ammunition-damaging energies.
This is because the shot is alive, and cannot handle forces as extreme as a bullet can.
The shot is a seed, heavy and round, and with a thick and sticky dermis.
When the user cocks the crossbow, and aims with the ladder-style sights, the seed launches out with a great thoomp. And it soars through the air on a trail of jade smoke- power intentionally wasted as light instead of life-damaging heat.
When it lands, it sticks, and power floods into the seed now. A wake-up call. The seed breaks through its shell with a barbed root and iron tip, and the seed burrows into the surrounding land with ravenous hunger. Soil is depleted and absorbed, stone and metal is broken into fragments and incorporated, and flesh is consumed within minutes.
Unerringly it destroys, growing with a speed that pierces the toughest fortifications. And its fresh life grows back any damage accumulated. Its single root branches off lessor tips periodic as it burrows- and those branches coil around the seed, spreading the terrain draining hairs.
From afar, the shape the root takes looks like the coil of life; the symbol of Ghyran.
Unfortunately, the nutrients it takes from the flesh and stone and dirt is never enough to sustain its growth or its existence, and at some point the fat stores run dry. The magic can force growth in spite, but every second thereafter is exponentially more expensive. And when even the magic bound to the seed runs dry, the roots start to cannibalise themselves. Turning thin, brittle, and woody. Fit for nothing but kindling.
Speciality ammunition is needed for each Ruinroot Arbalest. This ammo can only be collected from a Sacred Site equivalent, a Thin Beltwoods.
In the middle of lifeless inhospitable nowhere, there is a hunk of matter. It may be stone, or wood, or metal. Or some mixture of these things. Slag and mulch piled up into a vaguely rigid shape.
Its shape and consistency does not matter. What does, is that anything too close to the thing dies- lesions and pustules and decaying biomatter from the energy it emits.
However, further from that thing- there is an intangible ring, a thin belt around the Beltwoods. There, plant life grows. Aberrant plant life, not dying to the Cosmic radiation. Instead mutating into strange life. Life that is sometimes better, and thrives in the environment. Or life that is sometimes worse, and quickly dying out.
Evolution ran quick, inside that thin belt.
New life constant sprouts from the Thin Beltwoods, flora adapted only to its radioactive design. However, every three months, a peculiar plant always develops. A plant with thick roots and parasitical thorns. The seeds of that plant is the ammunition of the Ruinroot Arbalest.
This is because the shot is alive, and cannot handle forces as extreme as a bullet can.
The shot is a seed, heavy and round, and with a thick and sticky dermis.
When the user cocks the crossbow, and aims with the ladder-style sights, the seed launches out with a great thoomp. And it soars through the air on a trail of jade smoke- power intentionally wasted as light instead of life-damaging heat.
When it lands, it sticks, and power floods into the seed now. A wake-up call. The seed breaks through its shell with a barbed root and iron tip, and the seed burrows into the surrounding land with ravenous hunger. Soil is depleted and absorbed, stone and metal is broken into fragments and incorporated, and flesh is consumed within minutes.
Unerringly it destroys, growing with a speed that pierces the toughest fortifications. And its fresh life grows back any damage accumulated. Its single root branches off lessor tips periodic as it burrows- and those branches coil around the seed, spreading the terrain draining hairs.
From afar, the shape the root takes looks like the coil of life; the symbol of Ghyran.
Unfortunately, the nutrients it takes from the flesh and stone and dirt is never enough to sustain its growth or its existence, and at some point the fat stores run dry. The magic can force growth in spite, but every second thereafter is exponentially more expensive. And when even the magic bound to the seed runs dry, the roots start to cannibalise themselves. Turning thin, brittle, and woody. Fit for nothing but kindling.
Speciality ammunition is needed for each Ruinroot Arbalest. This ammo can only be collected from a Sacred Site equivalent, a Thin Beltwoods.
In the middle of lifeless inhospitable nowhere, there is a hunk of matter. It may be stone, or wood, or metal. Or some mixture of these things. Slag and mulch piled up into a vaguely rigid shape.
Its shape and consistency does not matter. What does, is that anything too close to the thing dies- lesions and pustules and decaying biomatter from the energy it emits.
However, further from that thing- there is an intangible ring, a thin belt around the Beltwoods. There, plant life grows. Aberrant plant life, not dying to the Cosmic radiation. Instead mutating into strange life. Life that is sometimes better, and thrives in the environment. Or life that is sometimes worse, and quickly dying out.
Evolution ran quick, inside that thin belt.
New life constant sprouts from the Thin Beltwoods, flora adapted only to its radioactive design. However, every three months, a peculiar plant always develops. A plant with thick roots and parasitical thorns. The seeds of that plant is the ammunition of the Ruinroot Arbalest.
Ghyran
There is only one true flower of death. And it is not one Nurgle can understand.
Certainly, the fetid cook can make flowers of dying– secreting oils of such toxicity a single drop can kill worlds– and the fly king can make flowers of corpses– which grow only from the ripest of mass graves. But they are flowers of killing and of feeding. Only the Lizardmen wield the flowers of death.
It germinates in a realm of only the dead– with no rot, no consumption, only timeless cessation.
It grows only on soul-rending stone, Black Cubes made hostile to sapience.
It blooms only when the Lizardman demands, and when it does, it blooms like a Purple Sun does.
Sometimes you just have a big room filled with big guys. And you just need a big gun to clear it.
This is that gun.
A weapon too large and too bulky to be manoeuvred easily, half again wider and taller then the standard rifle. This monstrosity of a weapon cannot be fired unbraced.
It resembles a rifle, but unusual in its shape- a stock all sleek and smooth. A barrel blocky and black and strange with its regular outcroppings. For its barrel is made of Cubes of Darkness, melted together into one spiky log. Its muzzle is a flower bud, black with purple highlights. A lotus bud.
The Cubes of Darkness are linked together, designed such that the energy they absorb is spread between each prison.
When the trigger is pulled, no projectile leaves the barrel, instead a great force is pushed onto the user- enough to tumble then back unbraced. They must not, for this weapon's collateral is great, and if mis-aimed can decimate the user's allies.
The flower bud blooms, and extends out. A stem unnaturally sprouts from the barrel, and pushing the flower out at a speed higher then expected. As the flower opens it reveals crystalline petals, purple and shiny. As reflective as a mirror.
Any being reflected in those petals feels a terrible soul-sucking pressure, and they die.
Flowers turn towards the sun, yet the Hereaftermath turns towards souls. The flower seeks out life-force, creeping through the air and past walls and through corpses towards what it sees- the only protection the user has is that the Hereaftermath can only see what is before it.
With each soul the Cubes of Darkness that are the barrel fill, and when each Cube is full the flower closes again, and the stem retreats back to the Hereaftermath.
The Hereaftermath needs no ammunition beyond magical charge, but the seed that blooms the flower can only be collected from a Sacred Site equivalent. The First Swamp.
Deep in a place thick with Ghyran, in a snarl of space twice hidden by Coatl's wearing masks of crystal and purple, there is a pocket dimension. A space strange. A space that only opens once a year.
Inside that snarl is a place of water and goop. The sky is red, there is no sun. There is only a waist deep layer of water thick with slime and wilted lily pad leaves. Slime that sticks to the body, and waterlogged roots that drag down.
Nothing there can be considered life. The algae is dead; discoloured, matted and soupy. The lilypads are lifeless, withered and curled brittle. Not a single note of rot in the air, not a single glimpse of browning leaf.
One could walk for an eternity without encountering anything. But if they walk for an eternity more, they will find a stone sticking out of that swamp, a little stone with a crack in it.
Inside that crack there is a seed, the only seed that remains. A seed that has been in this dead sea for eternity. From when the seeds were scattered and the cultures were placed. From when they bloomed and rooted deep into the muck below. As the ground was drained fallow and the water was left stagnant. And it was there while the plants died, and were left as a sea of corpses- no creatures to eat, no micro-things to decompose.
The only fuel remaining inside that plane is the seed. And if that seed is taken back out, it will grow into a flower bud.
The Hereaftermath's flower.
Only one seed, enough for only one Hereaftermath. Until next year.
This is that gun.
A weapon too large and too bulky to be manoeuvred easily, half again wider and taller then the standard rifle. This monstrosity of a weapon cannot be fired unbraced.
It resembles a rifle, but unusual in its shape- a stock all sleek and smooth. A barrel blocky and black and strange with its regular outcroppings. For its barrel is made of Cubes of Darkness, melted together into one spiky log. Its muzzle is a flower bud, black with purple highlights. A lotus bud.
The Cubes of Darkness are linked together, designed such that the energy they absorb is spread between each prison.
When the trigger is pulled, no projectile leaves the barrel, instead a great force is pushed onto the user- enough to tumble then back unbraced. They must not, for this weapon's collateral is great, and if mis-aimed can decimate the user's allies.
The flower bud blooms, and extends out. A stem unnaturally sprouts from the barrel, and pushing the flower out at a speed higher then expected. As the flower opens it reveals crystalline petals, purple and shiny. As reflective as a mirror.
Any being reflected in those petals feels a terrible soul-sucking pressure, and they die.
Flowers turn towards the sun, yet the Hereaftermath turns towards souls. The flower seeks out life-force, creeping through the air and past walls and through corpses towards what it sees- the only protection the user has is that the Hereaftermath can only see what is before it.
With each soul the Cubes of Darkness that are the barrel fill, and when each Cube is full the flower closes again, and the stem retreats back to the Hereaftermath.
The Hereaftermath needs no ammunition beyond magical charge, but the seed that blooms the flower can only be collected from a Sacred Site equivalent. The First Swamp.
Deep in a place thick with Ghyran, in a snarl of space twice hidden by Coatl's wearing masks of crystal and purple, there is a pocket dimension. A space strange. A space that only opens once a year.
Inside that snarl is a place of water and goop. The sky is red, there is no sun. There is only a waist deep layer of water thick with slime and wilted lily pad leaves. Slime that sticks to the body, and waterlogged roots that drag down.
Nothing there can be considered life. The algae is dead; discoloured, matted and soupy. The lilypads are lifeless, withered and curled brittle. Not a single note of rot in the air, not a single glimpse of browning leaf.
One could walk for an eternity without encountering anything. But if they walk for an eternity more, they will find a stone sticking out of that swamp, a little stone with a crack in it.
Inside that crack there is a seed, the only seed that remains. A seed that has been in this dead sea for eternity. From when the seeds were scattered and the cultures were placed. From when they bloomed and rooted deep into the muck below. As the ground was drained fallow and the water was left stagnant. And it was there while the plants died, and were left as a sea of corpses- no creatures to eat, no micro-things to decompose.
The only fuel remaining inside that plane is the seed. And if that seed is taken back out, it will grow into a flower bud.
The Hereaftermath's flower.
Only one seed, enough for only one Hereaftermath. Until next year.
Shyish
AN:
And with that- I've done every technology I wanted to create. Ten for the Old Ones. Thirteen for the Warbeasts. Eight for the Winds.
…
Got nothing else for the thread now. No more ideas. Job done. Pack it up team.
…
okay so what iF I MADE ONE FOR EVERY NAMED SLAN-
Vote closed
Turn 14 - A Dream of Storms
Xantalos
Turtle-Speed Writing
Relic Priest Consultation, Equipment Research
Above Huilcatlan, the sky was bubbling.
The Sky City was never subject to completely normal atmospheric conditions, of course - the metropolis' spawning pools had a propensity for producing Azyr and Aqshy skink priests with far greater frequency than usual, and the magical layout of the city attracted the mages like a lodestone, the vast currents of the red and blue magics that pulsed through the brickwork enabling the skink priests to exercise their powers to their fullest. The air currents above the city were a convoluted maze as a result, a tangled mix of up and downdrafts that frequently ensnared unwary Terradon riders in almost-inescapable pockets of air. A neverending series of experiments was constantly being conducted on the effects of every sort of imaginable weather, resulting in miniature monsoons pouring down over one city block while the next was beset by an intense blizzard, and a third section blistering under a windless, baking sun. Whatever effect needed to be tested, the weather-sages of Huilcatlan could conjure up, resulting in the city becoming an overlapping tapestry of conflicting environmental conditions.
What was happening now was no ordinary pattern of weather alteration that affected a mere subsection. The entire city felt the atmospheric pressure over their heads shift, and looked to the skies as they began to darken and rumble. Something of unprecedented magnitude was taking place, and as the city's veteran meteorologists looked up, they displayed one of two reactions to what they saw. Most experienced a sudden recollection that they had been neglecting to properly document their studies and would, unfortunately, need to spend the day - or perhaps the next few days - within the depths of a pyramid. A smaller fraction, those gifted by the Old Ones with bravery or merely a lack of concern for occupational hazards, gathered what observational equipment they could and made their way to the tallest temples in the city, often struggling to carry everything they would need to properly conduct data collection.
Above the City of the Sky, a storm was birthed, and it dwarfed all that had come before it like a kroxigor dwarfed a skink. Every smaller pocket of weather in the city found itself engulfed, the magical currents sustaining their existence unwound, spun into a new configuration within the brewing maelstrom's depths. Clouds that were thicker than soil and darker than night expanded across Huilcatlan's skyscape, bulging at the seams as the suppressed howls of whirling wind and crackling lighting seeped out from within them. The air seemed to empty itself as the growing maelstrom sucked in all the air that it could, creating an atmosphere that was almost suspensefully dry. The clouds pulled apart in places as they swallowed the last of the light above the city, revealing boulder-sized chunks of ice whirling like grains of sand, veins of lightning as thick as trees pulsing between them in a wild, erratic, flickering rhythm. The heartbeat of the storm quickened as it swelled to its fullest extent, and the city below held its breath.
A pulse of geomancy warped out from atop Huilcatlan's central pyramid, where the slann lord Itzahuindide watched over the proceedings with a serene expression. As the underbelly of the clouds parted and the full wrath of the storm began to descend, every drop of rain and ice, skein of wind, and bolt of lighting was drawn with an inexorable grip towards that pyramid's peak, where something gleamed with a radiance intense enough to be seen from across the city. A funnel that was hundreds of meters high, of dark clouds striated with streaks of light and rippling patterns of erratic wind, formed as the essence of the storm was siphoned in, concentrated and pulled into the source of the gleaming brilliance atop Itzahuindide's pyramid. It was over within an hour, a storm that ought to have flattened kilometers of jungle conjured and dismissed by the will of the slann. The meteologists who had been braced for the impact of the tempest found themselves frantically noting down every detail of the weather event, filling stacks upon stacks of temporary limestone tablets for later review, for there was no telling whether anything like this would happen again, at least in any reasonable timeframe.
As the day's light crept back in, and the city's ordinary weather patterns began to slowly, almost tentatively, reassert themselves in the wake of the behemoth stone's departure, Itzahuindide gazed with contentment upon what he had been able to craft. He had commanded the manufacture of one hundred crystals of the purest quartz, each one standing as tall as a skink and shaped into a perfect sphere with a specific pattern of jagged fault lines radiating out from the exact center. He had then brought the spheres up onto the peak of his ziggurat and called upon the memory impressed into him during his visit to the Relic Tombs earlier that decade. His long-dead mentor Weeraj'akkit had whispered to him from bones flecked with rainwater of the secret ways by which he might call up a storm from the ether, and then condense all its fury and might down to a pinprick, to be contained within an appropriate vessel and called upon to scour the skies. Long ago, the Tempest Prisms had ensured that even the massive dragonflights of ancient history had thought twice before approaching a lizardman stronghold upon the wing, lest they be brought low by sheets of icy lightning and cruel, cutting winds. The means of their making had been lost in the Catastrophe, and now the time had come for their rebirth.
The rows of crystals had been turned a rich, deep blue by the skeins of magic layered into them. Sparks of bright energy crackled along the fault lines, illuminating the core of the spheres as they glowed with an ominous white luminescence. The light reflected off of Itzahuindide's eyes as he gazed into them, seeing glimpses of the fury that they would unleash.
The Relic Priests have granted the secrets of reconstructing the long-lost Tempest Prisms! These brilliant blue crystals are a counterpart to the Solar Engine, specialized for ground vs air defence, and will be used in similar capacities by the lizardmen military - mounted upon warbeasts, bunkers, and fortifications, ensuring that the skies above the lizardmen are safeguarded, particularly from smaller numbers of more powerful airborne enemies.
Additional secrets have drifted from the Relic Tombs into the minds of the Sublime Communion, whispering truths that are, as of yet, only partly realized. Spellscale Sigils has gained 173 progress.
—————
I rolled for which technologies were gonna be selected and I'm honestly surprised none of @Bot105's came up (I've been regrettably slow with actually categorizing all of them, but I have incorporated a large number of them into the options list as of next turn! However, the numbers came up as they did, and it feels kind of appropriate for Spellscale Sigils to finally come around.
As per usual, I've got more updates queued on my Patreon if you want to preview them, and my discord server's linked in my signature if you wanna get pinged when I update! Let me know if there's any questions you have or mistakes I've missed.
Above Huilcatlan, the sky was bubbling.
The Sky City was never subject to completely normal atmospheric conditions, of course - the metropolis' spawning pools had a propensity for producing Azyr and Aqshy skink priests with far greater frequency than usual, and the magical layout of the city attracted the mages like a lodestone, the vast currents of the red and blue magics that pulsed through the brickwork enabling the skink priests to exercise their powers to their fullest. The air currents above the city were a convoluted maze as a result, a tangled mix of up and downdrafts that frequently ensnared unwary Terradon riders in almost-inescapable pockets of air. A neverending series of experiments was constantly being conducted on the effects of every sort of imaginable weather, resulting in miniature monsoons pouring down over one city block while the next was beset by an intense blizzard, and a third section blistering under a windless, baking sun. Whatever effect needed to be tested, the weather-sages of Huilcatlan could conjure up, resulting in the city becoming an overlapping tapestry of conflicting environmental conditions.
What was happening now was no ordinary pattern of weather alteration that affected a mere subsection. The entire city felt the atmospheric pressure over their heads shift, and looked to the skies as they began to darken and rumble. Something of unprecedented magnitude was taking place, and as the city's veteran meteorologists looked up, they displayed one of two reactions to what they saw. Most experienced a sudden recollection that they had been neglecting to properly document their studies and would, unfortunately, need to spend the day - or perhaps the next few days - within the depths of a pyramid. A smaller fraction, those gifted by the Old Ones with bravery or merely a lack of concern for occupational hazards, gathered what observational equipment they could and made their way to the tallest temples in the city, often struggling to carry everything they would need to properly conduct data collection.
Above the City of the Sky, a storm was birthed, and it dwarfed all that had come before it like a kroxigor dwarfed a skink. Every smaller pocket of weather in the city found itself engulfed, the magical currents sustaining their existence unwound, spun into a new configuration within the brewing maelstrom's depths. Clouds that were thicker than soil and darker than night expanded across Huilcatlan's skyscape, bulging at the seams as the suppressed howls of whirling wind and crackling lighting seeped out from within them. The air seemed to empty itself as the growing maelstrom sucked in all the air that it could, creating an atmosphere that was almost suspensefully dry. The clouds pulled apart in places as they swallowed the last of the light above the city, revealing boulder-sized chunks of ice whirling like grains of sand, veins of lightning as thick as trees pulsing between them in a wild, erratic, flickering rhythm. The heartbeat of the storm quickened as it swelled to its fullest extent, and the city below held its breath.
A pulse of geomancy warped out from atop Huilcatlan's central pyramid, where the slann lord Itzahuindide watched over the proceedings with a serene expression. As the underbelly of the clouds parted and the full wrath of the storm began to descend, every drop of rain and ice, skein of wind, and bolt of lighting was drawn with an inexorable grip towards that pyramid's peak, where something gleamed with a radiance intense enough to be seen from across the city. A funnel that was hundreds of meters high, of dark clouds striated with streaks of light and rippling patterns of erratic wind, formed as the essence of the storm was siphoned in, concentrated and pulled into the source of the gleaming brilliance atop Itzahuindide's pyramid. It was over within an hour, a storm that ought to have flattened kilometers of jungle conjured and dismissed by the will of the slann. The meteologists who had been braced for the impact of the tempest found themselves frantically noting down every detail of the weather event, filling stacks upon stacks of temporary limestone tablets for later review, for there was no telling whether anything like this would happen again, at least in any reasonable timeframe.
As the day's light crept back in, and the city's ordinary weather patterns began to slowly, almost tentatively, reassert themselves in the wake of the behemoth stone's departure, Itzahuindide gazed with contentment upon what he had been able to craft. He had commanded the manufacture of one hundred crystals of the purest quartz, each one standing as tall as a skink and shaped into a perfect sphere with a specific pattern of jagged fault lines radiating out from the exact center. He had then brought the spheres up onto the peak of his ziggurat and called upon the memory impressed into him during his visit to the Relic Tombs earlier that decade. His long-dead mentor Weeraj'akkit had whispered to him from bones flecked with rainwater of the secret ways by which he might call up a storm from the ether, and then condense all its fury and might down to a pinprick, to be contained within an appropriate vessel and called upon to scour the skies. Long ago, the Tempest Prisms had ensured that even the massive dragonflights of ancient history had thought twice before approaching a lizardman stronghold upon the wing, lest they be brought low by sheets of icy lightning and cruel, cutting winds. The means of their making had been lost in the Catastrophe, and now the time had come for their rebirth.
The rows of crystals had been turned a rich, deep blue by the skeins of magic layered into them. Sparks of bright energy crackled along the fault lines, illuminating the core of the spheres as they glowed with an ominous white luminescence. The light reflected off of Itzahuindide's eyes as he gazed into them, seeing glimpses of the fury that they would unleash.
The Relic Priests have granted the secrets of reconstructing the long-lost Tempest Prisms! These brilliant blue crystals are a counterpart to the Solar Engine, specialized for ground vs air defence, and will be used in similar capacities by the lizardmen military - mounted upon warbeasts, bunkers, and fortifications, ensuring that the skies above the lizardmen are safeguarded, particularly from smaller numbers of more powerful airborne enemies.
Additional secrets have drifted from the Relic Tombs into the minds of the Sublime Communion, whispering truths that are, as of yet, only partly realized. Spellscale Sigils has gained 173 progress.
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I rolled for which technologies were gonna be selected and I'm honestly surprised none of @Bot105's came up (I've been regrettably slow with actually categorizing all of them, but I have incorporated a large number of them into the options list as of next turn! However, the numbers came up as they did, and it feels kind of appropriate for Spellscale Sigils to finally come around.
As per usual, I've got more updates queued on my Patreon if you want to preview them, and my discord server's linked in my signature if you wanna get pinged when I update! Let me know if there's any questions you have or mistakes I've missed.
- Location
- Canada
It's a windy day
Wear a jacket
The Lizardmen have regained the capability to recreate british weather. The world will know fear.