Hi, everyone!
At the encouragement of the IRC, this is a place I'm going to dump updates from my Something Awful CYOA, Talos, which you can find here, so that nobody has to pay :tenbux: to get through its paywall, or deal with all the Gently Caress censorship garbage you get if you're not subscribed. At some point in the near future I'm also going to figure out a way to get a cross-play going so that votes from SA and SV both count, though in the meantime this is just a place for my brother-men who don't believe in padding Lowtax's pockets to read the updates rather than make suggestions. That could change.
In the name of Inkiros, father of Genesis, and by his prologue, and his fifty brass pages, may I be blessed.
In the name of Eurandon, mother of Consciousness, and by her inception, and her hundred silver pages, may I be mindful.
In the name of Rabulaster, son of Civilization, and by his core, and his two hundred golden pages, may I be protected.
In the name of Quist, daughter of Death, and by her termination, and her infinite obsidian pages, may I strike my enemies down.
Let my enterprise gild my prayers with wings enough to pierce the empyrean and deliver themselves to your hands.
For season, measure, and the Golden Book will teach us: mortal works are undone without faith.
And intrepidity.
And zeal.
And giant robots.
The Great Cities have fallen. First to debauchery, then to disrepair, then precipitously to destruction. The crimson flood, brought on, some say, by the displeasure of the Gods, has wiped the continent clean of full half of its life.
The Cities now are overrun by marauders or monsters. It has been three full decades since their despoilment. The huddled remnants of civilization scratch out their existences in the discarded amnion born by their great apocalypse. In the oases, life and resources are scant and fragile.
On the wastes live the Praetors.
Pilots, priests, generals, or bandits, voyaging across the toxic land in massive robots called Automata.
Some are keepers of the shards of their cultures, dedicated to the expansion and continuance of their postcalamitous communities. Some are treasure-seekers, looking for riches and adventure among the bones of the world. Some are ruthless pirates, hellbent on little more than survival and power.
1. What kind of Praetor are you?
A. A priest of the Four Gods of Ophyras, city of gold. A stalwart guardian of the innocent and custodian of civilization.
B. A general of the budding township Anaziphrale, at the helm of the very first Automaton they've managed to build. Venturing into the Wastes to find new lands and resources for your people.
C. A merchant explorer with a fearless crew of mercenaries, out for fame and fortune.
D. A hard-hearted warlord operating from a cold iron fortress in the heart of the wasteland, where only the unyielding survive.
E. A highwayman, in a stripped-down, nimble Automaton envoy, preying on the weak and foolish.
F. A desperate survivor of a recently destroyed village, cast into the wilderness to rebuild the pieces.
Nightfall on the Wastes.
The perspiring steppes of Jutter Crest humidify the air to a distinctly unpleasant sluggishness.
Your Automaton kneels in synthetic sleep.
The Right Arm
"MISTRESS"
MISTREEESS"
The Head
"So noble of you, Princeling," you say.
The thrillant light of the full moon punches through cloud cover and onto the castellated crown atop the Automaton's head.
The Deposed Prince Chakum, disgraced ruler of Anabas, tilts his chin imperiously upward. "A noble soul is weightless in the palm of Quist."
"Well. I reckon even without that you're what, 170 pounds or so heavier-than-air." You chuckle, wickedly. You've been workshopping your wicked chuckle for a while now and you're very pleased that it's finally ready for primetime.
"I fear you not, Tyrant," Chakum says.
"It's gravity that should have your attention right now, Princeling. Not me." Another chuckle here? Maybe not. Don't smother it. You lean forward. The leather-clad tip of your knee touches his. "I'm going to make this simple for you. Tell me how to deactivate the incantation around the Anabas wall, or I'm going to escort you off my Automaton via my boot to your chest."
Chakum scoffs. 6/10 tops. "I will not betray my people."
"You've been exiled, Princeling. One would gather you already have."
"They will one day realize their mistake," Chakum says. "And when they mourn their imprudence, they will mourn safely from behind the insorceled, impregnable walls of my city. The streets of which your cold-iron stench will never befoul." He spits at your feet. "Execute me, then! If the rat indeed has the temerity to lay paw on the lion."
"When I see you in Hell," you say, "you'll have to tell me where on the drop that pretty pride of yours left you and the terror took over."
"My--" Chakum begins,
and then you kick him off the roof.
A strangled, muffled cry of MISTRESS from inside the Automaton's skull and Sketter is up through the trapdoor. His seneschal's journal hemorrhages papers as he runs.
"Mistress," he gasps, forcing air into his wrinkled lungs. "A message from the Emperor of Anabas!" He scrabbles in his book and pulls out a crisp scroll of parchment. "Quote Our Heart Has Softened Toward Our Prodigal Son And We Request Humbly His Return To Our Royal Bosom. We Are Prepared To Exchange One Thousand-- oh--"
His eyes behind their frosted lenses rise from the parchment to your foot, still raised, and then to your face.
"Oops," you say.
So let's get a few things straight.
1. What is your name?
2. What is your reputation?
A. Brutal but noble, with a recognized moral code. The civilized world, though it doesn't accept you, will respect you.
B. Brutal full stop. A vicious khan completely alien to mercy. Such a terrifying reputation may have its uses.
C. An erratic madwoman in command of a gang of lunatics. Prone to being underestimated.
D. A stone-cold man-eating femme fatale; the blackest of widows. To you the heart of most men (and some select woman) is the gateway to their total submission.
E. You have none. Few if anyone have heard of you and lived to tell the tale. 3. What makes you badass?
A. Your 3rd (well, 2nd) eye. Allows for the casting of spells and divinations.
B. You are possibly the best swordswoman on the continent.
C. Beneath your skin you're copiously augmented with unpredictable arcane bionics, making you as much machine as woman.
D. You command a supremely elite and loyal force of veteran warriors.
E. You are silver-tongued and seductive, with a preternatural gift for domination and deception. 4. What is the name of your Automaton?
5. What kind of crew do you command?
A. A fanatical cult of Death Goddess Quist, which recognizes you as her Avatar. Creepy but loyal (as long as you play the part).
B. A bloodthirsty gang of murderers and thieves, numerous, scrappy, and wild. Quantity has a quality all its own.
C. A faceless army of jackbooted soldiers, drilled into unquestioning obedience.
D. A crew of pirates, unscrupulous and mercenary, who are happy to follow as long as there's gold and plunder to be found.
E. A badass, disciplined platoon of veterans, champions, and warmongers (only if you picked D for 3) 6. What kind of Automaton do you pilot?
A. A frontline bruiser, adept in melee. Has a sword.
B. A rapid, streamlined outrunner, relying on dexterity and clever piloting to win. Has jump boosters.
C. A cannonade juggernaut, slow but laden with weaponry and power. Has a big cannon in its chest.
D. A sleek Grappler-Statue. All about the hand-to-hand. Has complex joints and appendages for one-to-one movement.
"WELL," you say, brightly. "I'm sure it wasn't anything important."
"Uhm." Sketter adjusts his glasses.
"Because if it was you would have run fast enough to get to me in time, no? Sketter."
"Uhm, yes, ma'am, that is to say, well, I suppose I would have. Indeed."
You sigh and lower your leg to the floor. "Sketter. What did he say he'd give us."
Sketter looks petrified.
"Are you worried I'm going to kick you off the robot?"
He nods.
"I'm not going to kick you off the robot."
"Do you promise, mistress?"
"I promise."
"Thirty thousand dekadrachmae."
You stare at him.
"Fuck," you mutter. "I promised."
"You promised!" Sketter wails.
Year 19 Post-Flood, day 310
Morning
The earth shakes beneath the Rumbler's steps.
His full name is Tyrant Argus XII.
The people of the Wastes and most of his crew call him The Rumbler.
He weighs 250,000 tons.
He is crewed by 104 handpicked men and women, veterans of dozens of battles and completely devoid of any mercy not bidden by you, their Queen, Victoire Yingtie, known to wastelanders as The Iron Mantis.
There is no other place on the planet any of them would rather be than here.
The nascent nations and villages fear each and every one of them like death, but have a certain respect for them all the same. They have a kind of conqueror's honor, unlike the vagabonds and murderers who spill blood daily across the Crest in search of plunder and debasement.
Among that number are Strix and Pacitar, two Warmages of legendary renown. They are two of your oldest friends.
Onboard, The Rumbler has six cannons: two in the shoulders, two in the palms, one on his crown, and one colossal 30-inch caliber monstrosity where his heart would be.
Her name is Jackpot Jane, and the ordinance she fires weigh just a shade under 1500 pounds.
Any of these cannons are capable of firing several types of retrofitting shells:
-Canister shot, for shredding infantry
-Solid slugs, for punching through armor and fortifications
-Winch Harpoons, for ensnaring and boarding actions
-Witchfire (only five of these, each highly volatile and valued at 300 dekadrachmae), for massive explosions.
20 chickens live in Rumbler's thighs, and 3 milk cows.
He has food enough for one month on the wastes before his crew turn the knife to their livestock.
His coffers hold 1000 dekadrachmae; your fortress' vault has 50,000 more.
That would be 80,000, you remind yourself, if you hadn't killed that dude Chakum.
Or if your seneschal had better cardio.
The Head
He stands before you now in Rumbler's capacious skull, prattling on about the latest tactical reports on the implications of the Prince's death.
You admit: you're kind of zoning out. He is not an engaging speaker.
"Zaphidor." You lean to your right, over to your Bodyguard. He is your greatest, most terrifying warrior, the lance commander of your Berzerkers, and he wields an axe larger than some men are tall. "Hey. Zaphidor."
"Your will, my Queen?" His voice is deep and reverberating in his great helm.
"Guess," you say, "what a bitch went and did last night."
"Oh." Zaphidor's switch is instantly flipped from Terrible Guardian to BFF. "You have the tea?"
"Piping hot and ready to serve."
"Spill this tea, sister."
"So I bring prince Douchenozzle to the roof. Right?"
"I thought I heard some pants wetting at terminal velocity last night."
"Yeah yeah but before I did that," you say, "I broke him off. A little piece. Of the Evil Laugh."
"Gorl. No. You brought it out? You gonna have to kidnap some more royalty, bitch, cause I wanted to be there for that."
"I was like, so what if it doesn't work. He's a grease stain anyway."
"Oh but it did work, right? Cause we've been practicing."
"We've been practicing yes and it rolled out of the diaphragm. Rolled. It killed."
"Queeeeen."
"Oh and then? Just before I showed him the door?"
"Omigod."
"Guess what I said."
"Some nasty shit."
"When I see you in Hell," you say, "you'll have to tell me where on the drop that pretty pride of yours left you and the terror took over."
"Oh my Lort Vic you malevolent bitch. You on some archvillain shit."
"Right?" You squeeze your armrests. "Iron Mantis, motherfucker!"
Sketter ahems loudly.
"Sketter," you say. "It sounds like you just ahem'd me."
"Did you ahem The Iron Mantis, Seneschal Sketter?" Zaphidor's voice is back immediately to its low headtaker rumble.
"Ah, no, mistress, that is, I was, clearing my throat, mistress."
"OK." You cross your legs. "I'm listening, Sketter."
"Thank you, mistress."
"I can multitask, Sketter."
"Of course, mistress."
"The walls of Anabas are as thick as ever, mistress. With masonry and sorcery both. No force, either living or projectile, can come within a dozen paces of it without complete disintegration. The only way to lift this, as always, is with a judicious casting of a deactivating incantation, which we do not know, or by a direct siege of its only unenchanted gate, which is guarded by a dozen automata and two thousand men."
"And Prince Dickcheese was no help," you say.
"As you say," Sketter says. "With his death our tactical options have narrowed. Your tacticians have a few possibilities in mind they have asked me to put forward in the fearful puissance of your fearful presence, O Queen."
1. "We could:
A Launch a full assault on the gate at night time. It will be a brutally difficult battle, and the greatest we have fought, but with the strength of Tyrant Argus we may well prevail."
B Retreat back to your Iron Keep (fifteen days' travel) and wait for Strix and Pacitar to experiment their way to their own magical counterspell solution. If the King doesn't go seeking his son's killers before then."
C Approach Anabas' old enemies ten days' travel to the East, the city-caravanners of Uchuam. Little love is lost between the powers and with our support and convincing they may provide crucial manpower."
D Call upon another exile from Anabas we have discovered three days to the Northwest, deep in the caverns beneath Jutter Crest. A wizened former mage of Anabas, turned away for apostasy, in whose mind may rest the key to her walls."
E Wreak havoc in the Anabas suburbs that lie outside the ensorcelled walls until a force is sent to stop us. The prisoners we take from that encounter, on the battlefield of our choosing, may be more amenable to the divulgence of secrets than the postmortem Prince."
F Dig a massive tunnel underneath the Walls and spring up from within. This was my idea, mistress!"
G Call for a meeting with the Anabas Royalty as an excuse to get a small party inside the City walls, then take the royal palace and force the barrier down from within."
H Pound it with cannon fire from a distance until the shells, melting into dust as they fly and ineffective as they are, do enough damage to bring a section down.
I Winch-shot onto an exposed building higher than the walls' scope and send a raiding party tightroping across it."
I'm at work and away from my tablet, so no pretty pics, but I've written up a couple supplemental tidbits on the world of TALOS that I'd like to share.
On a high shelf in the Iron Mantis' chambers sits a leatherbound, illuminated copy of one of the most crucial tomes of the Wasteland, JOURNEYS, by Aphander Heartlock. Thick as your head and full of more knowledge than could ever fit inside it, and regularly updated with a feverish intensity bordering on madness.
Aphander has traveled the length and breadth of the treacherous continent, and his quill has never left his journal for more than a minute at a time. Almost any subject you could care to name is covered in JOURNEYS, albeit in his slightly fire-and-brimstone cadence.
If any of you, dear readers, ever want something looked up and expounded upon, just let me know and I'll find the right page for you.
On Anabas
ANABAS! City of a thousand succulent indulgences!
ANABAS! Gilded bastion of scent and sensation!
For lo despite the lapping catastrophe of the CRIMSON TIDE man could not be entirely humbled, nor the wild excess of the Old World tamed. In fits and scraps the revelers live on, and they hive about beacons of luxurious memoriam in the high, debauched places.
Such a place is ANABAS!
ARABAS! Division-city! With the worth of her lives measured geographically! Those within her infamously deadly walls live like immortal kings, warmed by young flesh, cooled by plumed fans, plied by delicacy, drink and perfume. Those without make do with the meager scraps from the tables of their betters.
Begun circa 800 pre-flood, Anabas' notorious enchanted barricade was envisioned, by the Magus responsible for its construction, as a facilitator of freedom and peace. There would be made, in the naive temple of his mind, a city whose security was assured, where a race of philosopher kings and warrior poets could seclude themselves in gentle contemplation of Life's great mysteries, smiled upon by Mother Eurandon, matron of thought and cultivation.
But the nature of man is in all things inadequate! And lo! The sultans and dignitaries who populated Anabas' sanctum soon took use of their protection not to the benefit of sensitive beauty but in service to their own base desires! Anabas became the symbol of the inequity and lustful avarice of the Old World, a pleasure-city like none other! The common people and servants were denied the safety of her walls, and were helpless to foment resistance or rebellion to her masters! In despair, the Magus who created its walls threw himself into their embrace, and crumbled to dust!
ANABAS! Seeming fair without, but within, in her spirit, she is in the same state of irreparable ruination as all the Old World. It was a ruination that worked its way from the innards to the surface, and Anabas is seeped through, rotten, rancid, and ripe!
An Excerpt on The Iron Mantis, Victoire Yingtie (this page is heavily dogeared and several sections are underlined)
What is to be said of the Iron Mantis that deed and reputation have not already seared into the minds of the Wastelanders? Of all the outlander boogeymen of whom mothers whisper cautionary tales into sleeping childrens' ears, few stir up more great terror and feeling than the woman named Victoire Yingtie. Fables abound as to how she rose to power in the Wasteland. This scribe now humbly presents the most widely accepted tale.
The name, like the Mantis herself, is indicative of one caught between two worlds; worlds which, with the Crimson Tide, blended into one great wound. Her father was a famous lothario courtier in the castle of Emperor Fan Xiaying, with its brass-polished halls and dancing daggermen. Her mother was in the retinue of the famous Falucan Ambassador Theobastor; so in her infancy Victoire was in the proximity of two great Legends; but the greatest, and most terrible, was yet to come.
Both Emperor and Ambassador met their end in that black time known to the Xiaying royalists as The Night of Weeping Veins. Her parents hid away in the tunnels beneath the palace while royal and foreign bodies choked the streets. Victoire was born shortly after that morbid slaughter, brought into the world as all other traces of the Royal Families were extinguished from it. Her parents kept the child safe and whole through the Night of Weeping Veins, and yea even through the Crimson Tide as it blew old Xiaying's walls to the ground, but they could not protect her from that chiefest of all the devils that apocalypse unleashed: Tyrant Argus XVI!
From the Barbed Throne of his Automaton, named for his saintly and beneficent ancestor, Argus XVI kept great swathes of the New World in slavish thrall to his woeful whims! What hope had the twice-wrecked Brass City but to submit to its thirdfold and final destruction!
In Argus' wake, Victoire's parents lay slaughtered. Though young, she was already possessive of the sharp beauty that now walks hand in paradoxical hand with her fearsomeness. Argus recognized her as a jewel among the wreckage, and while her fellow citizens were shackled in grey lines to troop across the wastes into charnel house work camps, Victoire was whisked to the Conqueror's harem, to be trained in womanly mystery by the Mad Tyrant's fulsome concubines, and await the day of her womanhood and despoilment by her master.
But lo! did Argus' lustful gaze blind him to the girl's true, deadly potential! The weeping girlchild who had been torn away from her parents' bodies had been tempered in death and forged by destruction, and her soul was steel!
Her quiet conquest began with Argus' other most prized possession, the fighting slave eunuch Zaphidor, who, when not cleaving heads in his name, guarded his painted women from the envious hands of his subordinates. Yingtie learned early the art of binding hearts to hers, and she quickly became the close friend and confidante of that abused, beaten berzerker.
So while her days were spent learning the ways of love, her nights were embroiled in the ways of war. Zaphidor trained her at swordsmanship, strategy, and the maintenance and use of the Automaton's mighty array of weapons. She began to seduce Argus' officers into her chambers with the promise of a taste of the Tyrant's most forbidden fruit; but when they arrived at her bedside she whispered not the honeyed words of a courtesan but the stirring entreaties of an insurgent! As Argus gleefully awaited the ripening of his slave wife, that wife was one by one turning his crew against him!
On the night he had appointed to finally enjoy his prize, Argus entered Victoire's chambers with his traditional conqueror's swagger and roughly took the delicate-seeming slave into his arms. And she smiled, and cooed as the courtesans had taught her, and gave him wine and played on the harp for him. And finally she approached the mesmerized Argus, and for the very first time and the last, as Zaphidor looked mutely on, she kissed him.
Coating her dark lips was a poison so potent that his blood curdled on the instant. His heart shuddered and froze, and in seconds he was dead at Victoire's feet. With a nod to her new Right Hand, the Iron Mantis began the Purge.
Those she had recruited unsheathed their blades and turned them on those Yingtie had seen as too loyal to approach. The Automaton ground to a halt, and from its joints and murderholes the blood of Argus' forces dripped down to distant ground!
When the killings concluded, Victoire Yingtie was the undisputed Queen of the Tyrant Argus XII. She quickly freed all the indentured and enslaved crew of the lower decks, and kept her promises to the officers she had led to rebellion. She knew too well the power of resentment, and although her orders were unquestionable, she treated her men not as subordinates but as equals. This won for her a fierce loyalty that she has kept to this very day; to the extent that it is whispered (but always sotto voce) among her detractors that the arts of the paramour she learned in her youth she now uses to reward her minions.
Even now, the Tyrant Argus XII, now called THE RUMBLER by his turncoat crew, strides mightily across the wastes. His captain may no longer be ruled by mercurial fiat; but those who see in this a lessening of the danger he presents are fools.
(The following section has been emphatically circled)
How the Mantis received her characteristic eyepatch I asked her once, when last I dared step foot on the Rumbler. Her face grew stormy and her foot with sudden alacrity was placed an inch from my jaw; but then she remarked with delight that the look on my face was priceless, and she told me she lost it in a fishing mishap. I find this story doubtful, but having been informed frankly by Zaphidor as to where my journal would be forcefully inserted if I intruded on the Mantis' tranquility again, I allowed the matter to rest.
Heartlock, you charmer!
; has been written in the margin.
"Have a look, Pacitar?" You hold the spyglass out to the old mage.
"My eyes strain and water looking through that devilish contraption," Pacitar says. "Blur and bloom is all I can ever make out."
"That's cause you're going blind." You click the spyglass shut.
"Blind as a nightfinch." Pacitar nods his bluebeard head. "Look and consider, girlie, the ravages of the seasons' passage. There you are, robbed of full half the organs of sight by some violent something-or-other, and yet even so: with vision thricetimes clearer than these old eyes with no scars but the scars of time. A poetry most tragical, aye."
"I reckon your eyes would be better if you hadn't spanked it to weird wizard porn every night after dark," you say. "And got laid instead."
"And worse still than the barbs of time the barbs of youthful tongues." Pacitar tuts. "Prodding their elders. When they ought to know infinitely better. It all goes to hell, girlie."
"You wish this youthful tongue prodded its elders," you say.
"You have an invasion to plan," Pacitar says.
"Right." You step down from the parapet and turn to the Three Talons.
Ghostly Anastasi, Zaphidor, and Crik.
The three deadliest soldiers on The Rumbler and key to every small arms action he takes.
"Morning, Talons," you say.
"It's quite bright, isn't it," Ghostly Anastasi says.
Crik twangs his bowstring lightly. "I think I smell Anastasi's skin burning off."
"Hi, boo," Zaphidor says. "Love the look. Serving Conquistador Realness."
"Love you, Zaphidor."
"Love you, Vic."
"This is cute," Crik says.
"You all know what we're here for." You jerk a thumb over your shoulder. "Come nightfall we're pointing a great big harpoon at those pretty gold arches and you're taking the men you need and crossing into the city. Because I want it. And I can't get it until its walls are defanged. I've called you here to tell me how you're gonna do it. In any order."
"OK, honey, you know how I do," Zaphidor says. "My shit is killing shits, n'cest-ce pas? You give me a gaggle of motherfuckers and some powdermen. Wall's only magic on one side. We blow a big fuckin' hole, kill whoever tries to stop us, and stroll thru the hole."
"Simple but effective," you say. "Anastasi."
"The king is guarded," Ghostly Anastasi says. "The Mages are maybe guarded too but I have more knives I think than guards. I will sneak in by myself or with my assassins and find a mage and make him bring the spell wall down. Or perhaps we may storm the Mage Halls in force. Less subtle: but subtler than an explosion. And then The Rumbler can do his work."
"We have him," you say. "We might as well use him. Crik."
"Right. Right. Yeah. Here's what I'm thinkin," Crik says. "You gimme some guys. Like Zaph and Ann and some other guys. The real good guys. And we don't even NEED to blow up the wall, right? OR get rid of its zap juice." He sniffs the air. It's a habit. "So so what I'm thinkin. We sneak in, hide ourselves, maybe have a good time for the night, I'm just kidding boss, you know I'm all business, and THEN the next day, right, you march Rumblefish right up to the front gate, right, and you raise some hell, you kick some shit, you get all attention on you, and while THAT'S happening suddenly boom. There we are, up on the parapet, knife at the King's throat, right, because while you were distracting them WE came through and nabbed the fucking king! And we have him say Hey! Let these nice guys through! Or they're gonna cut my throat wide open! And BOOM. We're in, baby. Wall fully intact and now it's ours and we get to zap shit with it."
"That is a potent picture you're painting, Crik."
"I'm all about the vision, Vic."
1. Whose plan are you going with?
A Zaphidor
B Anastasi
C Crik
D What about you, Pacitar? Surely you have some kind of magical solution.
E None of those plans are good. Here's what we're going to do: _______________
2. How many men are you alotting for their plan? Pick any that apply.
A Just Ghostly Anastasi.
B The Three Talons exclusively. They're all you need.
C No more than a dozen. Quick and quiet.
D A complement of 20 soldiers, the most the Rumbler can spare before his crew has gaps in its roles.
E 80 soldiers, leaving the Rumbler with a skeleton crew. They'll all be back soon enough it won't matter.
F And while we're at it, you yourself are coming along.
"Oh." Zaphidor crosses his arms. "I didn't think about getting down."
"Feather fall." Pacitar idly cracks a knuckle. "Best cantrip I ever learned."
"There you go," Zaphidor says. "Spooky magic shit. And then we make an entrance in 5 minutes tops."
The Talons and their marines are practiced in a particular form of death-defying reboard where the Rumbler fires a winch cable at the ground, they pile on, and then ride the pull back into the Automaton, tucking and rolling to avoid grievous bodily injury when they get back inside. It looks near-suicidal but they insist on doing it even when they don't need to. Nobody's ever gotten hurt from it so you let that practice continue. Process takes the better part of 30 seconds, although the cannon that winch fired is inoperable for that duration.
[*]How confident is Anastasi in his ability to capture a mage without raising the alarm?
"The brick and mortar is easy enough," Pacitar says. "The enchantment cannot be repaired without the knowledge of the Magus who first cast it, and he's been dead for centuries."
"Well what happens if we only do a chunk of it?" you ask.
"Once a rent is made the body cannot hold," Pacitar says. "It'll all unravel eventually. So it is with all mortal things."
"We really need to get your mind off this whole age thing."
[*]What are Pacitar's thoughts? No sense not hearing everyone out.
"The enchantment along the wall is a magical abomination of the worst order." Pacitar strokes his beard. "No true magus would weep its passing. But you're not a Magus, are you."
"That thought was just crossing my mind."
"Crik's plan," Pacitar says, "is the only one that will keep the Wall's magic intact."
"And there's no way you can restore it?"
"Perhaps there will be clues enough in the fragments of the enchantment to begin a reconstitution," Pacitar says. "But I cannot do it. Out of principle."
"Bet Strix would love to try."
"She certainly would." Pacitar scowls. "The madwoman."
"As always, my Talons, your input is deeply appreciated," you say. "Kudos especially to Crik for actually having a plan that could work this time."
"Vision, Vic."
"I'm actually leaning towards it," you say. "With some elements of Anastasi's in the mix."
Zaphidor deflates some. "Aw."
"Zaphy don't fret," you say. "There is always room for explosions and decapitation somewhere along the line. Like am I me or am I me?"
"You you, boo."
"True true, boo." You rub your chin. "Though if we're going to play it by subterfuge like Crik says we might be able to push it further. What do you all think of a siege situation?"
"Whoa. Sieges? Crik don't do sieges," Crik says. "Sieges are boring."
"They are if your enemies are used to eating dogs and burning their shit for fuel," you say. "The good people of Anabas might just give in as soon as they can't get their daily wine bath in the mornings. I think we need someone with an economic mind and a pussy's perspective on this."
"If you bring that toad Sketter into this meeting I'm gonna plotz," Zaphidor says.
"My queen, my Talons." Sketter bows low and a loose sheaf of paper spills from his book. "To be invited to a Crown Meeting is an incalculable honor."
"I'm gonna plotz," Zaphidor says.
"Those the stats I asked for?" You nudge the pile of parchment on the floor with your boot.
"Indeed. Indeed." Sketter scrabbles to gather them back up. "Ahem. On the readiness of Anabas to siege. Ehrn: the noblemen of Anabas, aware of their unpopularity and dependence upon the citizenry, have, in addition to heavy investments in psychologically and physically intimidating peacekeepers, ensured an inordinately generous stockpile of luxury and food items be kept within the walls. Food production and storage is kept zealously inside the walls themselves; the majority of provisions produced by the lower classes are immediately seized as taxation by the Anabas elite, and sparingly redistributed. As such I now present an estimation of the Anabasian stockpiles. ITEM: five hundred gallons of perfume, lavender. ITEM: five hundred gallons of perfume, vanilla extract. ITEM:"
"How long can they hold out, Sketter, please?" you interrupt.
"Ah." Sketter leafs through about five pages of small-font lists. "Forty five days of customary excess, or seven months of siege conditions. I predict a final number roughly halfway between. Early in the siege they will likely send out a large contingent of their forces to attempt a counterattack. When that fails they will batten down their proverbial hatches."
"That's like four months," Crik says. "I'll die of boredom before they die of starvation. We have the stuff to take this place out tonight. Why wait?"
"There is middle ground." Anastasi puts a hand on his shoulder. "Do not cry."
Crik shakes her hand off. "Who said anything about crying?"
"I did. Do not, please."
"Let me run a few plans by you, Sketter." You sit on the parapet. "Going for the peasants. Turning them on their masters and having them fight for us."
"Possible. Possible." Sketter sucks air through his teeth. "Their losses would be quite great. Dispiritingly so. And they would do nothing to shorten the siege."
"Well their bodies is trash," Zaphidor says, "but we could pick their brains. Servants gotta have floor plans, inside scoops, access to noble homes. Kinda thing. Give Anastasi that lowdown."
"But any lurking loyalists we approach and our element of surprise is destroyed," Anastasi says.
"What about periodic raiding groups? To despoil their food?"
"Well. Well. Perhaps." Sketter sucks his teeth again. "But I am inclined to think that our tactic of winch-entry will work very few times before they become aware of it; and I cannot see any other method of entry. If we were to enter the city our resources would be far better spent on bringing the wall down. Their overconfidence in its protective enchantment is their single greatest weakness."
"What if we have Strix poison the incoming supplies?" you ask.
"Hmmmm." More tooth sucking. You wince. "Perhaps. Perhaps. The reprisals toward the peasantry would be swift and merciless. The Anabasi elite prefer decimation in this case." He squints at his papers. "Ah, that is, literal decimation. Villages brought into file and every tenth man, woman, or child beheaded or crushed to death under an Automaton's foot in full view of the survivors."
"Queefing Quist," Crik says. "These guys are stupid evil."
"Still." Sketter looks brightly up from his papers. "It would throw the Nobility into admirable disrepair, and the blame would be laid on the peasantry rather than us. And the roaming death squads would be ripe for ambush and whittling down. Actually that's quite a clever idea as long as you don't mind sentencing a few hundred villagers to death."
1. Here's what we'll do, then:
A Foment insurrection among the peasantry and starve them all the way out. We'll be patient. (4 months)
B Send agents out among the peasantry to gather intel, find additional options, and formulate a solid infiltration plan. (7 days, risk of discovery)
C Poison the food supplies. While the nobility is dying and their armies are out extracting revenge they'll be highly vulnerable. (7 days, lots of blood on your hands)
D Move tonight. Enact Plan Wentley: Combine Crick and Anastasi's plans. Make Crick's the primary, but assassin support by taking out key personnel, namely officers and magic users who would be huge problems if things go to shit.
E Lay siege for a while to draw out and destroy their counterrattack and then go from there.
F Go with Crik's original plan.
Submit the following plan to the various advisors for consideration:
Step 1: Retrieve the dead prince's body.
Step 2: Infiltrate special forces into the city to rouse the peasantry and prepare them for a rising at a key moment of our choosing.
Step 3: Present the prince's body to the city with full honors, showing all respect for a gallant foe who stood by his city to the end and was willing to die trying to escape rather than to betray his city, etc. etc., make up a good story here. Offer to send an honor guard delegation to the prince's funeral, which may or may not be accepted, it doesn't matter that much.
Step 4: At the time of the prince's funeral, signal for the uprising to begin. In the chaos of the uprising, the embedded special forces units strike at the unenchanted gates, opening them from within and exposing the defenders to the full power of the Warbot.
Delightfully dastardly.
The same risks and time commitment go into this plan as other actions involving coordination of the peasantry. A week's time commitment and a risk (let's call it one in five) of having your conspiracy discovered.
Hmm. What's the odds of success on actually breaking us into the city, though? Do our advisors think it's feasible to actually hold and open the gates long enough for the Warbot to break in?
"If done with alacrity and purpose, it is eminently possible," Sketter says. "Moreso if our own warriors are hidden among their masses. Altho many peasant provocateurs, I fear, would be killed."
"On their feet, though," Crik says. "Maybe with some highborn blood on their hands. That's a good death."
1. All right: A Plan Tomn it is. Let the peasants die for their own freedom. The strongest will survive and we won't have to take anyone out of the Rumbler and into danger.
B Plan Tomn it is. We'll embed a score or so of our best soldiers among the rebellion to make sure it succeeds.
C I'm not convinced. We should still go with Plan Wentley (Combine Crik and Anastasi's plans. Make Crik's the primary, but assassin support by taking out key personnel, namely officers and magic users who would be huge problems if things go to shit.)
"Do you know what I think," you say. "I think it's time for the return of the prodigal son."
The Head
You clear your throat and step up to the PA microphone. Your Talons gather expectantly around you.
1. You begin: A Afternoon, everyone. This is Vic.
B Attend, warriors of Argus XII. Your Queen speaks.
C Yeah hey everyone shut up for a second and listen up.
D Gather round, children. Mama Mantis has a plan.
"Bad news first: We are not moving on the city tonight. I know. I know. It's in our sights. It's nearly in our grasp. It's very shiny.
"Here's the good news.
"Tonight, and every night this week, I'm looking for volunteers to form up under Crik and spread the word to the unwashed masses. The Rumbler is here. This is the last and best chance any of them will have in their lives to break free from their chains. What we see before us is an overripe fruit of a place: an oyster place. Stone without, pale gasping goop within. I don't know about you but I'm getting pretty fucking hungry."
A muted roar of acknowledgement from below.
"I'm just about ready to crack them open and scrape them clean," you say.
"Nailed it," Zaphidor whispers.
You indicate daps and he reciprocates.
"This place," you say, "These people, have forgotten the brutal, beautiful central principle of existence.
"That strength is required to survive; the kind of strength you can't artifice or magic into fruition; the kind that comes from hard minds and hard hides and hard hearts. That's the kind each and every one of you have. You've proven that to me and to each other a hundred times. I think it's time to remind them what that's like. To stand up without a palanquin on your shoulders or a servant to hoist your ass off your cushions.
"There will be those you approach who show fear, or doubt, or even resistance. When you see that you'll crush it. In this way we'll take our time, erode the royalty's support from the inside out, and strike when he least expects it. That sound at all familiar to any of you?"
Laughter from below decks.
"Hey," you say. "If it works it works, right?
"Now I predict, and I wouldn't bet against myself on this one, that sometime very, very soon a royal funeral will be held in that shiny oyster." You squint at the horizon and compass Anabas between your fingers. "Right at the center of the pearl. I think I'll be attending. It's been a while since I've been to a good party, and I'm inviting the rest of you along.
"Twenty of you get advance seating. Volunteers for that go to Zaphidor. You'll be infiltrating thoroughly into the peasant populace. And when the time comes, and the signal sounds, you're the vanguard. A week can steel the people's minds; it can't make steel of their bodies. That's where you come in.
2. During the fight, I want you to: A focus on making sure the gate opens at all cost. The Rumbler needs to get inside ASAP.
B focus on supporting the peasants as they get the gate open and keep as many of them alive as possible. We want to take over a city, not a mass graveyard.
C focus on capturing the king. He'll be the one blowing into the gold leaf hankie. If we take the head of the snake the body dies.
3 You close your speech with: A They live in a city of gold. We live in a Warrior of Iron. Where gold bends, iron murders. Go Forth and Murder.
B I'd tell all of you to make me proud if I thought any of you needed reminding. Now group up and kick ass.
C Wake them up, boys and girls. Remind them how it feels to be alive. Even if you need to kill the shit out of them. Iron Mantis Out.
D We will crush their empire, butcher their warriors, strip their walls of gold, and erase their impotent royal line from existence. So I have spoken and so it will be.
Year 19 Post-Flood, day 310
Morning
You stand on the Rumbler's crown. The hot wind in from the wastes wafts your hair gently off your shoulders. At your side the wrapped body of Prince Chakum, a look of dumb surprise across his drained face.
Before you Anabis glitters.
The crossbowmen come out first: a full complement of them, forming ranks and aiming their steel-tipped quarrels directly at you.
The emperor's chair is carried on the sun-and-whip tanned back of two ripped slaves.
They maneuver him into place and stand, muscles shaking.
Crik immediately levels an arrow at the Emperor's chest. The crossbowmen nearly stagger in surprise, then bark at him in the clipped Anabasi tongue.
"JUST MAKING IT FAIR," he calls out to them.
"Crik," you say.
"Just making it fair." He winks behind his shades.
"Is that him?"
The emperor's voice carries. It's bulbous in the way fat men's voices often are, but he's used to public speaking, and the imperiousness of his tone cuts through.
You step forward. "It is."
The emperor's face is hard to make out at this range, but you can detect the flight of something from him in that moment.
For an instant he looks like nothing more than a sad, plump man with a dumb hat on, in a chair being carried by two strangers who hate him. A tragic buffoon dignity takes him above himself.
"He was so...." He looks for words. "Full. Of."
He gives up.
The wind blows.
"How did he die?" he finally asks.
4 And you say (choosing all that need apply): A He died well. That's all I'll say.
B With your name on his lips.
C He requested a trial by combat for his freedom. I could do nothing to dissuade him. I'm afraid he lost his footing in the brawl.
D He ingratiated himself to the crew. He became like a brother to us. He died in a skirmish, saving the lives of two of my men.
E A I pushed him off my robot and he fell on the ground.
F I don't know. We found him in the wastes like this.
G How about you invite me in and then I can tell you.
H I've returned your son to your Royal Bosom. As requested. There's the matter of my payment.
I'd like to break away from the tragic tableau up top for a moment and take you into the Rumbler's guts.
In the red lowlights of the chest where Jackpot Jane sits, oiled and full of potential violence, a crewman sits on a crate containing a hunk of canister shot nearly ten times his weight and writes a letter to his mother.
Dear mum,
Wow and how ones luck can truly change very quick, is what I am saying to myself! You may recall from my last letter I wrote you that I had become a slave.
Thoug come to think about that I never got to send that letter on account I was a slave at the time I writed it and my master, who was a fat fellow named Crabbor, said slaves ought not to write letters and certainly shouldn't know how to write in the first place. Then he broke my fingers and it sure did smart but that's all fixed now. Still, rotten luck there and I had a rough year of it for a while.
Anyway how it came that I got out of that jam is this. I was in a big long caravan on the Wastes in a wagon Crabbor owned and wed booked passage to go to Busetta, which is a place Id never heard of but maybe you have. Crabbor said it has lots of oil but not the kind you put on machines its a kind you eat. Sounds wretched if you ask me but there it is. Wide world and all.
Well all of a sudden we're going our merry way and all of a sudden the wagon is flipped right up a__ over ankles, floor becomes wall and all, and theres these tremendous booms from outside, and I look and there's an automaton!! HUGE one. Anyway Crabbor and me tried to leg it but where really are you going to go and I couldn't right well carry him and all of his accouterments at once (accouterments is how nobs call hats) so he was bonking me with his cane and then next thing you know we're surrounded by these awesome looking folks all in red. Mum they were very bada__, if youll pardon my Busettese!
I just realized writing that that that phrase actually has something to do with the town with all the oil. Always wondered what that meant.
Anyway were taken with the rest of them from the caravan and put all together and this woman come's out of the robot. Shes little right, and she has an eyepatch. And she walks up and down looking us all over and asking people what they were worth and their folks would pay to get them back and she points at me and says How about you, Musk Ox, or something to that nature. And I say well miss I dont reckon my folks can afford me as I fetched twenty Dekadrachmae last time on the block and she got a funny look. And she asked what my name was and Crabbor says He is Tyndaereus my Gentlemans Gentleman which is the posh name and title he made up for me. And she got an even funnier look after that.
Ive drawn her here for you. Not to get ahead of myself but she's my new boss, Victuar Yingtay (which I'm sure isnt how you spell it but its one of those foreign names so I'm not even going to try!) and shes the Praetor of the automaton Im on now. And the fellow with her is called Crik who's my other new boss. He's a shaytan but tell dad not to worry he must be one of the good ones. Theres another shaytan on board named Sketter who twitches a lot and we all get to hide his things and have a right laugh about it but he's all right too.
Anyway back to the story so she whistled and all the folks she had with her got in a great big circle and me and Crabbor got pushed in the middle. And she said to us I've got room in my hold for one of you but only one of you and I'm going to let the two of you sort out which yourself. And then she tossed a dagger on the ground between us. Well Im not too quick on the uptake but I figured out what that was about pretty quick but Crabbor I guess figured it out quicker since he went for the knife right away but I still hadn't forgot about my fingers from what I told you before so I broke his. Then I stabbed him to death but mum please don't be cross you would have really hated him. He was a right a__.
So now instead of a slave I'm on the crew of this great big Automaton and its aces!!
It's called some posh name but all my mates on Jackpot Jane (that's my team's cannon its the biggest one) call it The Rumbler. You ought to see me in my uniform and Im going to see if theres anyone on board I can pay for a sketch but heres what it kind of looks like.
Wasnt sure about the scarf since theres heat for the nights in here but Bombat told me everyone here needs some red on them. Bombat is one of the fellows on my team and one of my best mates now. His skin is so dark you cant hardly see him when the lights go off!
Anyway my job is to operate the Winch, which is what they use to get the big cannonballs into Jackpot Jane. Me and three other fellows turn these great big wheels to lift it up to where they can load it in which sounds like an awful drudge but there's this great chant we do and by Inkiros when she fires its a hell of a sight and we're front row for it!! My ears ring a little all the time now but Bombats given me little plugs for them for next time.
Ive always wondered how folks inside Automatons dont all just fall all over the place when they walk but it turns out that the ground works all different in here! Basically you can walk on anything. I was really nervous my first day on account that all the platforms are really narrow and there's no railings but that's because if you fall off you just trip and end up standing on the other side of them! Its jolly odd at first when your walking and you get to a wall and you start walking up the wall or youre in a hallway and theres a fellow walking on the ceiling and you have to move to not bump heads but when you get the hang of it its great fun! Theres place's where if you jump just right you just hang in the air and you have to wiggle until you get in range of one ground or the other.
I dont mind telling you that I still get lost all the time!! But Ive been getting the layout into my head and all the bottoms of everywhere is painted red just in case something happens to the enchantment and gravity starts working the right way again, so that helps. Sometimes though I pass a window and look out and the ground is the sky and the sky's the ground and I think, Inkiros! I sure am a long way from home.
But anyway Im doing very well for myself now and Im happy as a clam. Zaphidor whos one of my other bosses has said he ought to get me out of the Guts and train me to be one of his berzerkers and thats very exciting! Will write you more later as we're just getting ready to attack a big city made out of gold. Im not sure if its entirely gold or just gold on the outside and regular stuff on the inside but Ill send you and dad some gold next letter. We all get equal shares even the praetor gets paid the same as we do! And the food is really good everytime we finish raiding somewhere as we just take their food. But we're not baddies all right maybe a little but Crik explained the reason Victuar does everything she does and I didnt quite get it but it sounds like she knows what shes doing.
We all give our letters to a lady with a weird face named Anastassy and Im not sure how she delivers them but they get delivered. She told me to tell you please dont look for her when she brings the letters as she doesnt like when people see her.
Much love to you and dad! Keep feeding Crusher unless theres not enough food to go around in which case let the little blighter starve I guess. Will send some plunder and that ought to help.
-Rook
Main Story update (and maybe something about the Crimson Tide) coming soon. Until then :justpost:
(( Opening A and closing C won for Victoire's speech; her attitude toward her men is casual, breezy, and a little sassy. Less a mother to her men than a cool older sister.
Combat plan A won; opening the gate is priority and the peasants will mostly have to fend for themselves.))
"He requested a trial by combat for his freedom," you say. "I tried to convince him you would pay his ransom but he insisted. On your honor, he said. He lost his footing in the duel."
The emperor's eyes are glassy.
"I'm told he died with your name on his lips," you say.
"We see." The emperor blinks rapidly. "We see. His and yours are such ways. And to us are left the pieces."
He sits back on his palanquin and the shift in bulk causes a tremble in his slaves.
"Leave him at the front gate," the Emperor says. "We will prepare his pyre and tomorrow evening observe the cremation of the scion of our royal line and ponder the conception of his successor."
He looks to you, probing your face for some kind of pity, maybe.
Your lips are drawn. You've found your contempt for him again.
Aging idiot.
"We must not invite you," he says.
"I wasn't planning on it."
"The sight of you makes us sick in our heart," he says.
"You're not the first." You turn on your heels. "Zaph. Crik."
Your Talons file out after you.
Zaphidor stoops to pick up the son's battered corpse.
"The Royal We," he says, as you descend below decks, "really bugs the fuck out of me."
The Right Shoulder Cannon
Early Afternoon
"Good morning, boss." Feng clacks her visor up off her face. "Y'r on the wall."
"Good morning, Feng," you say. "I think there's a rider somewhere in your contract that whatever your Queen is on is the ground."
"You talk to the emperor?" Feng asks.
"I did. He seems very..." You gesture vaguely.
"Fat."
"I was going to say solemn. But yes. Also very fat."
"'S why I'm glad I'm a cannoneer and not a noble. Keeps you trim. You'll be plump as a pear in a few years, boss. Me I'm staying rangy."
"Would me cutting your meal allowance help?"
"I'm a Rumbler-ganger, boss. We eat warriors whole and shit the armor out, or hadn't you heard." Feng turns the twig she's chewing over with her tongue. "Our cannons seeing action, then?"
"You bet."
"Make sure you favor the right side," Feng says. "Boys from lefty say they're beating us now but that's just cause they count a footsoldier same as an Automaton. You oughta put your foot down about that."
"I came to ask you what kind of ammunition fit you were thinking," you say. "For going into the battle."
Refitting a cannon in the middle of a battle to take a different form of ammunition takes about a full minute to do. For that reason it's best to have an idea when you're going in about which cannon should be firing what.
"Have you read the tactical reports?" you ask.
"Yep." Her teeth click against the twig. "12 Automata, thousand on foot."
"That's a lot of automata, huh."
"Yeah well. They ain't the rumbler, are they. Word is they're a lot smaller'n we are."
"So what do you reckon?" you ask.
"Don't know," she says. "Slug'sll be the workhorse, course, since when we got a ground army to take on theirs we'll probably be tangling with the Autos. But if we're city fighting they might get close enough to make canister shot useful against em. Canister has enough punch to get through that armor, as long as you're in sneezing distance. Plus you get a good canister shot into a slug hole on those smaller automatons, you shred a lotta crew. Do good damage quick."
"You see any use in winch shots?"
"Well sure," Feng says. "They'll be small enough we can hit em and drag em but the question is what we do then when we're down 20 crew out on the field. Suppose the peasants could swarm up on them as soon as they're grounded, if they've got the balls for it. Oh and since we're city fightin we can do triplines. Winch shot a building in a runner automaton's path and send it sprawling, good area denial. Course if you gave me one of them witchfire shells then we could REALLY stick it to those lefty bitches."
"I'd need your promise you wouldn't just hide it in their locker room and blow them to shit with it."
"That wouldn't be sporting, now."
Time to pick what sort of configuration you want going into combat tomorrow evening.
The hand cannons have by far the best firing arc of any of your armaments, mounted as they are on the Rumbler's hands. They can fire off just about anywhere.
The downside to this is that they have the smallest bore of any of the cannons; their slugs won't do too much damage to an automaton and are even in danger of glancing off unless it's a direct hit, their canisters don't have the same amount of ball bearings and black powder in them, and their winch shots have less tensile strength and tow slower.
Neither of them can use Witchfire shots.
1 What kind of ammo will you fit to the left hand cannon?
A Slug (armor penetration anti-automaton; effective medium to long range)
B Canister (shredding anti-personnel; very effective against automatons at close range)
C Winch (tow cable; goes out to medium range)
2 What kind of ammo will you fit to the right hand cannon?
A Slug
B Canister
C Winch
The Shoulder Cannons are a more even tradeoff between mobility and firepower. They can hit respectively anything to the left and right of the Rumbler.
3 Ammo for the left shoulder:
A Slug
B Canister
C Winch
D Witchfire
4 Ammo for the right shoulder:
A Slug
B Canister
C Winch
D Witchfire
Jackpot Jane is the real deal. She sits in the center chest of the Rumbler and has the longest, heaviest, most devastating range and damage of any of his cannons. Her slugs can tear Automaton limbs off and her canister shots are showers of steel that can turn a column of men into chunky salsa. Her winches have the heft to go all the way through an Automaton's chest and out the other side. She's slower than the other cannons due to her ammo's massive size and can only fire directly to the front. Jane can always shoot Witchfire rounds without having to be refitted for them, as they were originally intended for her.
5 Ammo for Jackpot Jane:
A Slug
B Canister
C Winch
"The same as its effect on everything," Feng says. "They blow up. A-oh-Ee is even biggern canister and a hit at center mass with a Witchfire'll blow an Auto to literal pieces."
Do the cannons have rate of fire inversely proportional to bore?
"This fight we have one big advantage and one big disadvantage," Feng says. "Disadvantage is that we're gonna be a lot taller than the bad guys and in an urban environment that means there'll be times they can see us and we can't see them. We'd be wise to keep to the palace plazas and open areas cos if they lure us into the narrower streets with lower buildings they've got us blind."
"What's the advantage?"
"They give a shit about their buildings and their people," Feng says. "We don't. One of their praetors stomps on a heiress or knocks a hole in a royal vacation home it's his head. They're gonna have to check their fire and their movement in ways we won't. Big help."
What if we load both hand-cannons with winch-shot, deliberately miss anything to anchor into and then spin around like crazy?
Feng raises an eyebrow. "Don't got the turn speed for that, ma'am."
"But like imagine. A blender of death."
"Pretty picture, but just a picture," Feng says. "Guess we could use the winches as whips and get good speed from em if we put one on our hand, but that would only really be good for footmen and a bitch to aim. Autos reckon you'd just rather punch em or shoot em."
Would a hand or shoulder cannon winch be strong enough for us to fire it into the ground/a sturdy building when moving at speed to use as a pivot for sudden hard turns?
Feng nods. "Knew a ganger out from Aspholme used to swear by somethin like that. Called it the Piston Pirouette. Reckon we could try it if we get the speed up for it."
Yo, Wiz, what are the enemy mages going to be doing? Imagine worst-case scenario here. Anything you can do to protect us? Anything I should do?
Also, there is a bunch of them and only one of us. Could you like, make a mirror image? it doesn't have to be great, just something to tank the alpha-strike.
The mages of Anabas favor flashy court magic. That means elemental evocations and grand illusion. Expect fireballs, crushing ice, and choking clouds, hardly any of which will actually have any effect on the Rumbler.
In most battles any magic user but the most powerful of archmages is usually a strictly secondary target in comparison to Automata. Strix the pain-mage is most effective when she uses her magic to wreak havoc directly on enemy crews rather than the hard armor exterior, and Pacitar specializes in defensive and utility magic and runs counterspell when he can. A mirror image is in his wheelhouse, though it will quickly lose its convincing effect and dissipate after too much physical contact.
I'll dump a full combat magic list for him and Strix when we get closer to the action.
And that, for now, is all. Will update this thread concurrently!
I put this thread here on advisement from folks in #svcommand. As this isn't technically a place to receive updates it might better belong in User Fiction but I'll leave that up to the esteemed moderating team.
Time for another visit to Scribe Heartlock's JOURNEYS.
This time, on the Crimson Tide. Or at least the beginning of the entry, which continues in veins of lamentation and conjecture for over two hundred pages. The Tide is something of an obsession for Mr. Aphander.
On the Crimson Tide
Not long ago I had the fortune of supper in the modestly furnished but warmly inclusive hut of a former scribe of the Zestal courts. As we enjoyed the redolent taste of that snowy country's signature pekoe, her son innocently shuffled through the dry and ancient tomes and scrolls she had salvaged from her library as flames and frenzy engulfed it.
The boy pulled a map of the Old World from a particularly decrepit volume and asked his mother, finger tracing along a pockmarked western coast, What is that?
A coastline and a great ocean, his mother replied, to which the boy inquired if we could go and see it. I found myself seized with a sudden weight of tragic feeling. A look into the pained eyes of my dinner companion showed its reflection there.
There are no more coasts in the world this child has inherited. There are no more oceans, nor nations, and a new map of the world is but uniform red ruin.
There will, I trust, be chroniclers in their time and measure who will preserve with ink and vellum their memories of the Old World. Its storied cities and citizens would fill untold libraries of volumes so thick as to dwarf this humble journal. You are aware, reader, of my singular interest in the frightening postcalamitous and unsettling newness of modern nature's deviant order. And yet though my own works now find far greater application than the obsolete ways of the courteous and romatic past I urge those who have never known the Old World to take up its study; and therein to learn of its beauty, and its sensitive things, and yea even its excesses and overabundance. Lessons are to be learned from our behavior in ancient times of plenty, lessons of forebearance and humility. For the adherents of the Golden Book tell us that the Crimson Tide is the world's punishment; and who of the dwindling number that enjoyed the Old World and survived its diluvian fate can protest this proclamation in the face of such legendary destruction?
O, the Crimson Tide! O division of light and joy from this wretched planet!
O liminal horror! O boatman poling the planet to Bedlam! And O the survivors; and their children; and however many generations struggle and die in its aftermath before life surrenders to its crushing mortality made mountainously manifest!
It began in the Taric Ocean. In some abyssopelagic depth no living eyes had seen it was birthed. The water began, gradually at first but we must imagine with gathering speed, to turn red.
It commenced to curdle into a silty, scentless clay, and as it spread, and solidified, and pushed, it expanded, so that what once was a thimbleful of water became a fingerling of sludge. In the flatland basins of the once-oceans great skeletons can be seen of undiscovered sea creatures forced up and crushed by the pressures of the surface, and whole boats, miraculously unsmashed and preserved, left grounded in the center of what was once endless water. The colonies now huddled beneath those derelicts, with respect to the historical holocaust, are the lucky ones.
For lo! By shorefall the corruption had become a force of profound tidal devastation! The coasts and lowlands were buried entirely; villages, entire cities, civilizations known and unknown were simply and immediately erased. Where layer upon layer of Tide settled atop one another the bottom portions hardened and congealed into scabrous sheets of impenetrable, dull-red rock; so that when the agonizing task of digging through the clay surface was complete the abominably scant survivors found that no shovel or tool could ever extract their homes from this new Golgotha, yea nor even access again any unfouled loam or moisture required to eke out an existence where once their ancestors had spent lifetimes!
The highlands, peaks, and dry places of the world were in many cases less affected, at least to the point that with fervent digging patches of tillable land and ravaged former lives could be extracted from the hardening muck; but about lakes and rivers the choking corruption spread like virus, and overflowed once more, so that the strangulation spread across entire continents. There exist vistas now of heartbreaking scale where one can climb ten feet and be atop a peak that not twenty years ago was insurmountable by all but the stoutest of hearts.
Starvation quickly swallowed as many survivors as the initial deluge had, and the violence that began that day over the precious water and resources that remained has continued unabated even unto this present moment, when the Tide has solidified to clay in places, and sand in others, and great fields of shale elsewhere, pocked by shivering survivors and roamed by twisted, haggard beasts and twisted, haggard men, and all over red; red and rough and grotesque as a monstrous scab over all of creation.
In my opinion Sevis Loa is the best quest on SV, but now it has strong competition ... admittedly from the same author. No one man should have all that power etc.
I really like this. A lot of fantasy relies on a golden age background but very little of it really engages with the idea of the world being ruined - the golden age was usually thousands of years ago and the modern day is just grassy meadows and dragons and what not. This has some really good Mad Max vibes with Praetor Irate-or and her Big Rig Tyrant of the Wasteland. Only, you know, more of a comedy. Victoria is a great protagonist: cool looking, a little bit silly and obviously pretty badass on top. I love the cheesy little bff interactions between her and Zaphidor's huge helmet. Just great stuff.
Canister fists, slugs in Jane and the Left shoulder, and a winch on the right.
Feng might complain but you'll make sure to give her side something juicier next time.
You stand on the Tyrant's crown as the industrial clamor of battle preparations vibrates through your feet.
It's been a while since you've been in a scrap like the one you're anticipating. A lesser Praetor would feel trepidation staring out at the golden city before them.
But you know yourself and your crew. And your heart is as cold and fatal as the Rumbler himself.
"Vicky really, like, after staring at that place all day I think I am over gold." Zaphidor clanks up to your perch. "Honestly I can't hear myself over how loud their color scheme is."
"Oh my God, I know," you say. "Like bring on silver."
"Someone should have told them metallics are like cologne. A light touch goes a long way."
"You're head to toe metal and you smell like a horse barn," you say.
"Excuse you, hunty. I'm a motherfucking raider. I have an excuse." Zaphidor sits on a crenelation. "You think their shitters are golden, too?"
"I intend to find out."
"I think it is rather beautiful." Anastasi is sitting next to Zaphidor. Both of you jump in surprise.
"Bitch I am going to make you wear a jingly bell collar," Zaphidor says.
"When I close my eyes it makes a little ghost on my eyelids." Anastasi blinks slowly. "I am glad I am here with all of you."
"Come a long way since Argus, huh?" Crik is here too now. The city's glow bounces and refracts off his dark glasses. "Ever think when you were in chains you'd be looking with a conqueror's eyes at something like this?"
"Yes." You close your eye and watch the little ghost Anastasi mentioned fade on your pupil. "Every day, matter of fact. That was the only way not to go insane."
"Well once you convinced me I bet that was when you were sure," Crik says.
"I couldn't have done it without you. Any of you." You open your eye and turn to your talons. "And now here we are. The Mantis, the Talons, and the Rumbler. The be-all end-all kill-all badasses of the wastes."
Zaphidor raises a mailed fist. "A-fucking-men."
"If we all die tomorrow it'll have been a good run." Crik rolls his nonmechanical shoulder. "Not that I think that's in the cards."
"It might be," Anastasi says.
"Nice, Stasi," Zaphidor says.
"Won't happen," you say. "We're ready. Crik? You got the booze?"
"You know it." Crik pulls out a leather canteen half full of rum, uncaps it, swishes it around, and takes a gulp. "Tomorrow."
He passes it to Zaphidor.
"Just so you know if this little tradition gets germs in me Imma throw up on all of you," Zaphidor says. He drinks. "Tomorrow."
Anastasi sniffs the canteen delicately, and takes a sip. "Tomorrow."
You take the canteen from her and look into the dark rum.
The very first time the four of you did this was the night before your eighteenth birthday, when you had an iron collar and tears of fear running down your face. You study your reflection now and try to find a trace of that terrified girl. There is nobody looking back up at you but the Iron Mantis.
You tip the canteen's bottom to the sky and nearly drain it. "Tomorrow," you say.
"Tomorrow the Slaughter," the four of you chorus.
You tip the last of the rum out and away, and let the wind carry it into the night.
Tomorrow
Inside Anabas' ensorcelled walls the funeral has begun.
Outside the Tyrant Argus XII waits.
In his head, on the barbed throne behind his eyes, you watch for your soldiers' signal.
1 The attack is set to begin:
A During the ceremony in the central courtyard. The enemy will be massed in one place, but it's the closest to the gate so the Rumbler will be able to enter play soonest.
B During the funerary procession to the sepulchres. The enemy will be spread out for several miles along the road, but they'll be watching the peasants closely here to ensure none of them try to sneak away.
C During the feast. Their guard will be down and their men will be drinking. Your would-be revolutionaries won't be allowed inside the feast hall or anywhere near the nobles at this point in the day, though, so any attempts at securing the king or hostages will be much more difficult.
The cloud to flag transition is super cool, as is that final image of Victoria on her throne. i normally don't go for the surcoat thing, but it works here.
I'm thinking about ways to open up voting on Talos; thing is that would really mess with in-thread and IRC discussion, both of which (I would assume) happen on both Something Awful and Sufficient Velocity.
I'm considering a shift from running this primarily on SA to SV. What's stopping me is the conversation currently going on on Sufficient Velocity about Original Content Quests, which you can read here.
The generally agreed upon TL;DR of it is: with a few exceptions, Original Quests are run here are doomed to a small niche, they don't fit the tastes of the average Sufficient Velocity quester, remove thyself from mine sight O filthy original universes, no naruto no buy.
You can see from my comments in that thread that I was kind of shaken by it, and the activity from most of my established original quests on here dipped considerably in its wake. I've never really been a "popular" author; I have a lovely, dedicated core of suggesters on my quests, but despite having a bunch of staff members among my fanbase I've never had a big sticky banner on the top of the website tugging crowds my way (not to be a prima donna about it). I'm not pulling heavyweight numbers and I don't know if I ever will. Acclaim and adulation, while wonderful, has never translated into mainstream acceptance or numbers.
Talk of XP and skinner boxes and advertising in exchange for power levels and the superiority of established universes and stuff like that kind of blew my mind. Where I come from that's totally reversed; fan quests are considered subordinate to OG work, and it's a bit of a paradigm shift coming into an environment where that's flipped on its head. I'd never even thought of putting experience systems in my quests; the idea of adding Skinner Box elements to them seemed nuts!! It just kind of seems like what folks look for from their quests on here and what I look for (and produce) are different. One's not better than the other; they're just different.
Also (and this is going to maybe reduce me in some estimations) I don't watch any anime that isn't Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, I've never read Worm, and Crusader Kings 2 put me to sleep. That, combined with being one of two art questers on this site (the other one of which gets about 50 billion suggestions per update while I average +- a dozen), made me seriously feel like a black sheep here.
It was in reaction to that that I started running on Something Awful in the first place, as a matter of fact. Their questing scene is a lot younger (they call them CYOAs over there, whaaat?) and a lot smaller, but it feels like there could be more of a chance for it to grow there.
What I'm asking myself right now:
- Is there a suggesting audience for this quest on this site? Is it reasonable to believe that it will grow and reach more people here than there?
- Do you guys agree with the general sentiment of the Analyses of Original Content presented in that thread?
- Would you still tune into this thread even if it remained a repository for story updates / have any of you paid the :10bux: required to hit it up on Something Awful?
- Whom is best waifu?
- Is running this CYOA/quest/whatever concurrently with my others leading to a downturn in quality?
I think one of the really sad things is that Hymnal, and then Sevis Loa, were/are basically the best quests on SV yet haven't achieved the kind of viewership I think they deserve. Even taking into account the non-participatory nature of this thread, I would have thought that it would have garnered more interest: it's just straight up cool bean. I can't see the SA thread (yet) but from what's been cross-posted it seems like there's a lot of investment which is happening over there, and if their questing scene is still young then you're basically getting in on the ground floor.
It would be one thing if you thought you could bring your audience from SA to SV, but I think realistically your chances for growth are much greater on SA. That's a little sad to say given that I own this place, but I would prefer to know this quest is getting the attention and hype it deserves rather than seeing it languish in relative obscurity.
I would absolutely continue to follow this quest even if it's just an archive, and I appreciate you putting it up here. When I heard about this quest it was the first thing to make me want to sign up to SA, when not even the LP of Danganronpa or @FBH literally offering to pay my :tenbux: managed. Certainly, I don't think there's been any reduction in quality (though honestly I worry about your health there's animation in both these updates jesus christ).
There is certainly grains of truth to be found in @Cetashwayo's so far incomplete analysis of original questing, and I do think it's tough for original quests (and other original content) to really make it on SV, which I think is exacerbated by the relatively high level of effort and work put into your quests. In future things might be different, but currently things are really rough.
Magic is divided into the schools of FORM and the schools of EMPTINESS.
The schools of FORM focus on magical effects designed to make something happen, create something new, or manipulate something solid.
The schools of EMPTINESS focus on magical effects designed to prevent something from happening, remove something already present, or manipulate void and vacuum.
Each school of Form has its opposite school of Emptiness, as shown in the diagram I just drew on my lunch break in MS Paint.
The Schools of Form are in orange. The schools of Emptiness are in blue. Each has its opposite directly across from it.
Let's delve deeper into these, hmm?
TIME vs SPACE (The Reality Magics)
Time Magic deals with the flow and alteration of events. Magic based on luck manipulation, divination, and direct affectation of cause and effect and the flow of time. Time is the most difficult school to master, and even its greybeards recognize it as something to be delicately navigated rather than closely controlled. Students of the Time School can see snatches of the past and future, and with meditation can influence the threads of fate in subtle ways. With experience a time mage can intermittenty freeze time itself, and cause impossible or improbable chances to beome sure and cemented.
Space magic deals with distance, movement, and location. Teleportation, acceleration, and the folding and distortion of distances all factor. Students of the Space school can Blink from place to place, disapearing and reappearing instantly several feet away. Masters can move from one side of the world to the other in the flicker of an eye, or collapse and collide occupied spaces to destructive and implosive effect.
PAIN VS SOLACE (The Life Magics)
Pain Magic deals with negaive emotion, terror, transfiguration, and, obviously, pain. Hexes, curses, malevolent evocations, and mind-affecting magic is its wheelhouse. Students of the Pain school can cause debilitating agony with a touch, or from afar weave annoying, nasty curses and hexes, Masters can summon plagues woeful enough to impact whole societies, twist human bodies to woeful or empowering ends, and with a glance cause such supernatural terror and anguish to induce cardiac arrest.
Solace magic deals with purgation, tranquility, and negation. It commands subschools of healing, hypnosis, protection, and nullification. Solace students can seal wounds, magically bolster defenses, and calm aggression. Solace masters can miraculously repair entire ruined buildings, cure lethal diseases and poisons, and wipe minds entirely, even irreversably, clean.
ELEMENT vs VOID (The Substance Magics)
Element magic deals with Earth, wind, fire, water, and creation. The most classical and straightforward of forms, Elemental students learn early the classic Fireball evocation and go from there. Masters can cause great hurricanes or destructive earthquakes, and summon great golems or magical beasts from the ether.
Void magic deals with nothingness, erasure, and dissolution. Its magic is considered by many to be even darker and murkier than Pain magic; for where Pain mages twist and defile, Void mages simply end. Void Magic is unique in that it has only one spell: Erase, which makes things go away. Void students, for the first few years of their training, vanish pebbles or pieces of things, or small animals or chunks of larger ones. As a Void mage gains strength, the amount they can Erase at once grows. The most powerful Void mages do not speak of the extent of their ability, but one must imagine it is terrifying.
Many mages specialize in one School of magic or another, but it is also common to dip into several different disciplines, unifying spells by effect and effector rather than school. A particularly powerful spell, one which requires a great deal of practice to learn and effort to cast, is called a HIGH MAGIC.
STRIX is a single-school specialist in Pain Magic, with a dollop of Element. She's also the one responsible for creating the Witchfire Rounds awaiting their targets in the Rumbler's gut. Her list of High Magics going into combat today is:
HELLBAT SWARM: Create a storm of winged needles that fly through the cracks in an enemy Automaton to torment its crew. Where they sting they cause violently red, painful sores.
FEARCURSE: Temporarily fill the mind of an enemy Praetor with terror and irrationality. The stronger the will of the enemy, the less effective this spell.
AMPLITUDE OF FLESH: Transform whomever she touches in alarming, biological fashion. This spell can either increase physical prowess mightily or seriously cripple it. It lasts as long as Strix cares to keep it going, and has more immediate potency when cast on a willing (or at least not entirely reluctant) subject.
TAR BURST: Borrowed from the Element School, Strix causes a surface of about 10 cubic feet to bleed forth a bubbling, melting pool of hot, flammable, ensnaring tar. Land based mages find this spell ineffective, since attentive enemies can leap out of the way before the pool fully forms, but when used in the confining halls of an Automaton, on its porous outer armor, or when paired with her magicked Witchfire rounds, things get messy.
PACITAR is a more multi-purpose Mage specializing in guardianship, utility, and restoratives. His prepped High Magics are:
FORCESWITCH PORTAL: A portal trap woven in midair that catches any projectile or physical attack going through it and redirects it somewhere else (determined when the portal is first placed, so it can be tough to hit a moving target with it).
FORTUNE'S FAVOR: An attempted action will succeed, or get a significant chance to succeed if it was absurdly improbable. This is for single events like aiming and firing a cannon, not "Win a Battle".
BASTION: Create a shimmering wall of force all around the Rumbler that, for one round of combat, prevents anything meaning the Mage or his friends harm from entering. Anything already inside that wall will be blasted out of it.
MENDING: Instantly repair the damage from any one attack.
These spells are indicative of the Mages taxing themselves to their magical limits. If not called upon to cast them they'll still be in the fray, using their lesser spells on a more intimate, infantry-based level. Each mage, in combat, has a cumulative 15% chance for their spells to sizzle and do nothing. The first spell is free, the second is 85% a sure thing, the third is 70%, and so on. A sizzle still imposes an increased penalty. Three sizzles and a violent Backfire results.
; has been written in the margin.
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