[X]
Focus on the Dominion. The Chronus Dominion is both at its strongest and weakest in recent years. Attempting to knock them out before they can get entrenched should be the priority of the Federation.
[X] Naval Combat.
"I can't believe you spent two months in my body," says Jen as your girlfriend tries to hold back giggles as you finish your tale of your absence.
"I needed a disguise to fit in and I barely got the shape flesh successful the first time," you reply, "It wasn't my first choice, but it was workable and I didn't want to risk failure with a second attempt."
"I'm just surprised that you are so okay with this," says Jen as she leans against you, "Most men would be more concerned about their masculinity."
"Jen, I think we established long ago that I am not most men," you tell her in a dry tone, "Besides, dignity and pride weren't my priority at the time. Getting back home and keeping anyone from finding out the truth about me were what I was focused on. A bit of embarrassment and discomfort were more than acceptable prices for those things."
"You don't need to justify yourself to me, big guy," replies Jen, "I won't deny that my first usage of shape flesh was to give myself a bigger bust."
"No, your first usage of shape flesh was to lower the physical age of your sister down to your own so she would play with you," you retort, rolling your eyes at Jen as your girlfriend has swelled her chest as she spoke, "Jen, I can assure you that interest in shapeshifting is purely practical and utilitarian."
"Then you won't mind experimenting for me?" asks Jen as she looks up at you eagerly.
"Experimenting?" you ask inquiringly and a little warily as sometimes Jen needs to be reigned in before things go too far, especially when it comes to the Warp and her psyker abilities.
"You as a girl," explains Jen, "I want to see what girl Drake looks like and we could have a girl's night out or something. And you could model for me. Mirrors are nice and all, but I bet it would be better to make someone else look like me and have them model for me. Ellen refuses to do that for me. Scaredy cat is too afraid that she'll be stuck with my body permanently."
"Last time you gave her a physical overhaul, you did permanently change her," you point out, "You're lucky she didn't get traumatised by it all."
"Getting a couple of years younger is considered a good thing by most people," mutters Jen, but you can tell her heart isn't in it, "A free rejuvenat treatment."
"Rejuvenat treatments don't start until one is an adult," you say and Jen sighs.
"Yeah, but it is old news and I've already made it up to her several times over now," grumbles Jen, "I-ugh!"
You feel the same thing as her, a skull-splitting screech, a thundering roar rolling over the local region of the warp. As her knees give out and she clutches her head in pain, you grab your girlfriend before she can fall to the ground, shrugging off the pain that you are personally feeling. You doubt any psyker on the planet missed it though few will have the strength to feel it as vividly as Jen and you have.
As Jen looks up and meets your eyes, you can see that she recognised this for what it is as much as you do. Unfortunately, it seems your date must be prematurely ended because there has been a daemonic incursion somewhere on the planet, most likely a major one.
***
"It is the warp rift," says Mum over vox as you take a shuttle to the FNS
Camelot, "Legions of the Violent are pouring out of it. Over twenty thousand Bloodletters, over a dozen Heralds and multiple Bloodthirsters, it is going to be a massacre."
"Do we know what they are doing?" you inquire.
"They are just forming up," answers Mum and she sounds frustrated, "They would be easy pickings except we aren't in a position to take advantage of that. I am getting the fleet into position to provide orbital fire support while Marshall Kassandra Maia is getting the Federal Army to the fortification lines."
The warp rift is a known factor and the Federation of Bladus isn't so foolish to just enough something that occasionally spits out daemons from a few stragglers to entire armies like we are facing now. Several lines of fortifications have been built around the warp rift to provide a staggered defence against any daemonic incursions. They should be manned, but this attack is rather sudden and while the defensive lines do have their regular garrisons, it will take time to get the ground forces fully into position.
Time that these daemons are apparently giving us for some reason. You doubt it is to your benefit, but you need to man those fortifications and you don't have the forces in place to preemptively attack the daemons so there is little else you can do.
As both sides get into position for the upcoming battle, you make it to the bridge of a
Camelot as she along with the rest of the Federal Navy position themselves to rain fire and death from above upon the daemon forces gathering on the planet. For your part, you have grabbed a side arm from the armoury to go along with your custom force weapon. A massive sword that would be far too bulky for a normal person to wield, but it fits your own massive frame perfectly, allowing you to wield it as easily as a regular person wields a regular blade.
You shouldn't be fighting the daemons personally, but given how you weren't supposed to be personally fighting the Orks or the Dominion, you aren't going to dismiss the possibility out of hand. Ideally you will remain aboard the
Camelot and rain death from above down upon the invaders, but no battle plan survives contact with the enemy.
It takes the better part of a day before the enemy makes their move. Seven of the Violent's Blood Legions, each one commanded by a Bloodthirster and made up of eight cohorts consisting of a Herald of the Violent leading eight hundred eighty eight Bloodletters. Thousands of Bloodletters throw themselves at each part of the defensive line and the battle begins.
To your disappointment and frustration, the defenders do not hold. Many begin to flee before the sword-wielding daemons even reach them and upon the melee commencing, the defensive line collapses completely. The fleet attempts to pin the enemy down and slaughter them from the heavens, but without the first defensive line putting up a fight, the daemons aren't slowed down enough for any serious damage to be done to their ranks.
Instead you make your move as you teleport down with a detachment of Federal Marines armed for heavy close combat. Those coming with you wear heavy power armour, normally disdain for its lack of mobility and agility, but for this battle, the superior protection is required as the daemonic blades wielded by the invaders are fully capable of tearing through regular power armour. All are armed with ballistic weapons that fire explosive shells, but their remaining armaments vary from similar yet heavier weapons, drills capable of grinding the enemy to shreds, flamethrowers and meltaguns.
You guide your teleportation down and you slaughter the enemy you find, cutting them down with superior firepower. You take point, engaging any Bloodletters that get too close and cut them down with your blade. It goes smoothly as things can be given the circumstances at hand. At least they do until the Bloodthirster shows up to deal with the only serious bit of resistance his forces are facing.
"A child of the Anathema," hisses the beast as it approaches you, flying down with its leathery wings, "Your skull shall make a worthy addition to the Skull Throne."
You don't bother replying with words, instead blowing a chunk of its face away with your plasma pistol. Rather than dying like it should, the daemon merely charges you with a roar of laughter. Your blades clash and it quickly becomes apparent that you are very much outclassed. Not so outclassed that you instantly die, but the only reason that you stand a chance at all is thanks to your superhuman body, your state of the art armour and your Force sword. The last of those means that you only need to land a single hit upon your foe to slay them as you channel your will into it.
After two minutes of a gruelling duel sees you on the defensive for the entirety of it, you get your lucky blow in. It isn't much of a wound, just a cut across the arm that sinks into the flesh enough to count as a wound. And yet it is all that you need to banish the Bloodthirster as the warp energies you are channelling sever the connection between its warp self and the physical form that it is currently inhabiting.
"NO!" howls the Bloodthirster as it attempts to swing its oversized axe into you, only for you to easily parry the blow as his swing goes limb as life exits its body.
One down, six to go.
***
The battle continues to go poorly for the Federation of Bladus on the third day of the Incursion. While one Blood Legion is broken, Federal defences continue to fail. More of a fight is put up at the second defensive line, but like the first, it breaks. Orbital support is limited due to fears of friendly fire and killing more defenders than invaders. You take to the field once again, holding off a second Bloodthirster, who proves to be enough of a challenge that you are forced to withdraw from the field.
The fourth day continues to go poorly. The third defensive line is overrun like the previous two, and while orbital support increases the daemonic losses, it barely counts as a silver lining. The only true victory for the Federation on that day is your own actions as you struck down another of the Bloodthirsters, also slaying it with a single stroke once you finally landed a hit with your Force sword.
The fifth day sees the trend of a new defensive line breaking each day continue. The fourth defensive line is swarmed and before orbital fire support can do its job, the Violent hordes are already assaulting the fifth defensive line and leaving the warships in orbital off-target. You continue your own trend of slaying Bloodthirsters, slaying not one, but two that day. Not both at once as even you would have died before that onslaught, but one is slain by your blade in the morning and the other meets its end at your end in the early evening.
The fifth defensive line is lost on the sixth day and the daemons throw up some kind of interference to keep the warships engaging targets on the ground, preventing them from doing anything that day. You continue to be a beacon of hope for the Federal Army as you kill yet another Bloodthirster, leaving only one left.
Despite being exhausted by this point, the Blood Legions or rather Blood Legion continues their assault. They are spilling enough blood to sustain themselves and keep up a steady flow of reinforcements, but it isn't enough compared to the damage that you are dealing to them. And you mean you personally as you have become quite adept at slaying the daemons of Chaos over the last few days.
Normally that would be enough to ensure a victory via attrition, but some forsaken fools in the Federal Army lost their nerve and decided to throw their lot in with the Violent. The seventh day since the Incursion began sees the sixth defensive line fall to a newly summoned Blood Legion, summoned by traitors within the ranks of the defenders. Caught between the remnants of the previous seventh Blood Legions and the newly summoned eighth, the defenders would have been overrun and slaughtered if it wasn't for your intervention. Once again, two Bloodthirsters die to your blade as you slay the last of the old before dealing the newest one.
And yet the Violent has one final trick to play. The leader of the traitors gained enough favour with the Violent to ascend to Daemon Princedom and survived long to cash said favour in. Rallying the surviving Bloodletters, this new Daemon Prince drags out the Incursion for an eighth day before you kill in a duel, striking him down in single combat. Unfortunately, you merely banished the traitor to the Warp and you know that they will still be out there, even if they never return to the Federation.
By the dawn of the ninth day, the last of the Violent's servants are gone, either dead at the hands of the Federal Army or lacking the power to sustain their physical forms. After that, it is a matter of counting the losses and assessing the damage dealt by the Blood Legions.
The results are far from pretty. The land around the rift has become tainted and while the corruption will fade with time, you are looking at decades at the minimum, possibly taking as long as centuries before the taint of this Incursion fades away. Meanwhile the Federal Army and Federal Militia have both been butchered. The latter has suffered over ninety percent losses to the fighting while over half of the former have either died or suffered grievous injuries. Those injuries aren't beyond the Federation's ability to fix, but it is unlikely many of the injured will stay in the army and many of the rest are also considering retirement.
The majority of the defences around the Warp Rift had been destroyed, the Federal Militia has been gutted and between those who died and those who are retiring, the Federal Army is looking at being a shadow of its former self unless something is done about that.
Not to mention that dealing with this incursion and its aftermath means that any plans to strike at the Chronus Dominion have been tabled for now. The Federation of Bladus is in no position to be going on the offensive for the next few years.
No plan voting.
Choose one bonus for Drake Artorius to gain:
[] Upgrade Personal Combat from Level 2 to Level 3.
[] Gain the Trait Daemonslayer.
[] Gain the Trait Little Anathema.
What does the Federation of Bladus do with its military? Pick two.
[] Focus on rebuilding the Federal Army.
[] Focus on repairing the shipyards.
[] Focus on upgrading the equipment of the Federal Army.
[] Focus on rebuilding the defences around the Warp Rift.
***
Sorry about the long delay. There was the Queen's death (I'm British in case you didn't already know) then I went on holiday to visit family and didn't have time to write before catching the cold (regular common cold not covid), which left me too unwell to write and then this weekend was really busy. Also I've been choosing to watch the ceremonies and such instead of writing. Anyway, we are back.
For the battle, I hoped to make it more impressive, but after all of the delays, I just wanted to get this update out in a timely manner. For those wondering, I did the rolls in Poptart's discord with
@BOTcommander rolling for Chaos while I rolled for the Federation. Those rolls had a consistent trend of the daemons overrunning the Federal Army, the Federal Navy having limited effectiveness and then Drake coming in and kicking butt so yeah.
Anyway, Drake kicked a lot of butt so he has levelled up his Personal Combat skill from Level 0 to Level 2 if you hadn't already figured that out from the vote. Also I'll be making a character sheet soon to make it easier to keep track of things.
Please point out any spelling or grammar mistakes that you spot. Please quote them in the thread and explain what you think is wrong so I know what you are referring to.
