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The Young Xian of the Celestial Realm: Space Cathay 4x Warhammer 40k Quest

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It's not as if they were incapable of laughter in canon either. Plus there's always the possibility that he was deliberately holding back laughter most of the way as an insult he could claim was unintended.
 
[/QUOTE] The gnoblar said before producing a tome titled "Da stepz uv winnin'!" which the Inquisitor responded to by holding out his own copy of the text
[/QUOTE]

Am I the only one who is reminded of that scene from spongebob where the park ranger pulls out his magic conch with that goofy look on his face?
 
The gnoblar said before producing a tome titled "Da stepz uv winnin'!" which the Inquisitor responded to by holding out his own copy of the text
[/QUOTE]

Am I the only one who is reminded of that scene from spongebob where the park ranger pulls out his magic conch with that goofy look on his face?
[/QUOTE]

Yep, Stormtrooper was definitely a Squidward.
 
ilbgar123 said:
The gnoblar said before producing a tome titled "Da stepz uv winnin'!" which the Inquisitor responded to by holding out his own copy of the text
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Am I the only one who is reminded of that scene from spongebob where the park ranger pulls out his magic conch with that goofy look on his face?
[/QUOTE]

Yep, Stormtrooper was definitely a Squidward.
[/QUOTE]

Glad that I'm not the only one who thinks so.
 
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Turn 4 Wars (Skaven Front Part 1: The trouble with rats)
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    • Rat war


    The Skaven fleets tore their way out of the Underway and fissures into the Warp in a density that made it seem as though new fields of stars had suddenly emerged over their target worlds, each ship a collection of strange contraptions arrayed around central thrusters, a like a rocket that grew extra bits all over, with oversized engines ready to burn and quickly take them out of sticky situations and prominent retro and ventral thrusters to turn quickly. And of course, plenty of weapons towards the rear and flank arcs. The children of the Horned Rat were cowards to the last after all, even in the void.

    The Crane wings of the celestial armada were arrayed in tight formation, overlapping with the fields of fire provided by star forts and orbital guns, and surface-to-space weapons in the face of the Vermintide. Torpedoes and strike craft launched from the lightly coloured fleets of the Asahikijin Crimson Navy had also been released in devastating volleys targeting ships whose signatures and extra defensive efforts indicated importance in the chain of command, while the Imperial Navy's ultra-long range cannonades ripple fired for effect to strike the first rows of Skaven ships and produce wreckage to obsruct other craft in the tightly packed vermin fleets.

    With their dense formations, there was little room for Skaven craft to twist out of the way of the incoming guided torpedoes, so they relied on counter-fire to try and simply push their way through, even as stricken ships plumed atmosphere and reactor ejecta upon catastrophic failure after repeated barrages over days.

    The night sky of thousands of worlds across a vast front blossomed with fire and flame, Skaven projectiles careening across the vastness of space in a tide of hate and spiteful, their gun craft looming from a distance while the fodder ships and grotesque Moulder abominations were ordered forwards by compulsion and pheromone control, moving to provide a living ablative CIWS screen for the actually important ships.

    Warpstone Gigamissiles erupted in green cataclysms, crippled Celestial ships sputtering to a halt from sunrise like impacts while Imperial fleets splintered under warplightning and warplance fire, high speed shells erupting with atomic violence upon impact to hammer at hulls with thickness oft measured in kilometres.

    Plasma Catapults ripped away dense armour plating exposed by Gatling Mag-Cannon barrages upon the hulls or haywire torpedo impacts, Wave-Force tachyon beams searing into impact points without mercy alongside devastating Macro-cannnon volleys. Cruisers, battleships, even dreadnoughts tore apart, vaguely ratlike star beasts bled their life's essence and silently screamed their deaths as even their unnatural regeneration could not keep them alive under such fire.

    The admiralty pushed, advancing in adamantine fortress formations to hammer at the holes opened by the long range bombardments and come to grips with the children of the horned rat in frenzied melees, Lunisolar craft burning tachyon thrusters and kinetic impulsion drive to get to grips while the Imperial fleets spread for optimal broadside coverage, leaving the frontage craft of Tianchao to take the beast head on and hold its jaws open.

    The Skaven wouldn't care if they had to shoot through their own ships to engage their foes, but trading long-range fire with a numerically superior foe seemed to be the peak of folly. And every shot that has to go through a Skaven vessel is one that is not hitting one of the coalition. A calculus elegantly brutal in its simplicity.

    If the long-distance trade was fierce, the frenzy of close combat was barbarism. Ships smashing into ships, new fields of stars born of staccato explosions, and vox communications passing along every curse, oath, and swear known in a dozen languages.

    The Skaven had numbers on their side, and the swiftness of the underway's travel systems, but they were facing some of the heaviest defences in this galaxy. Yet they seemed more than willing to pay the price in blood to advance, having so much blood to spare.

    ...

    A Ratzer IV^IV Main Rat-Tle Tank was often known as the "Ratbox" for its exceedingly square shape, designed with fairly minimal sloping outside of the glacis and mantlet to save on complexity and maximise space for one of the most mass produced marks of Battle Tank in existence. With squeaking, grinding tracks and a punchy if not inordinately impressive Rat-tle cannon, these vehicles came in formations large enough that the only reason they didn't come in the usual sort of skaven thicket was the issue of pushing aside the wreckage of their own kind. Something fixed by Skaven Engineers making the tanks more likely to explode in such a way as to shatter it into small pieces if catastrophically penetrated in the sort of solution that only Skaven would consider acceptable.

    The issue was not in any one Ratzer IV^IV, it was in the fact that they came in a belching, fuming horde to devour the horizon from one end to another, other vehicles such as metallic doomwheels and layers, Ratwagen Half-tracks, Mecharats, larger and smaller tanks joining in a rolling tsunami of metal joined by stampedes of moulder forged beasts that had sought to challenge the adamant walls of Tiachao fortifications a continent deep.

    Multi-penetration munitions hacked deep, ragged lines in the vehicular formation, each destroyed vehicle slaying not only its crew but the mob of Skaven riding atop in dessant, but they would just keep coming as the Skaven enjoyed a numerical advantage over all their enemies combined, packmasters swinging the lash at beastmen bearing the Horned God's symbol from atop their vehicles to urge them into the fray.

    Gatling Turrets would spin up, the roar of chugging electromagnetic guns and the dying shriek of beasts and machines ripped apart by the twinned rotor cannons as deafening as the cascades of atomic plasma vomited out of powerful fusion processes in Armillary turrets were hot. As armourcrusher troops bearing e-mag flak cannons levelled their weapons from within their bunkers and alchemobaric rockets decorated the ground with ash and flame, the Skaven were undeterred.

    Lascannons hummed, then screamed, ghost-light visible only through the clouds of dust being kicked into the air; shield stripped vehicles having their armour worn down until what amounted to a directional explosion of sudden heat pierced through. Imperial krak missiles struck true, filling interiors with white-hot ejecta to leave charnelhouses of roasted rodents.

    Ardent Warrior Class Battle Titans were brought up from elevators, each two-thirds of a kilometre tall, each built in the image of a great warrior's statue with an added mythic flare.



    Conversion beams poked forwards, matter erupting into energy in mushroom plumes that seared divisions at a time from existence. The rats paused at that, at the rain of artillery that followed as the Skaven were now drawn into the open. Storm eagle rockets were descending like locusts, course correcting at the last moment to dive directly into the largest possible masses of Skaven before casting off their shells in fire.

    The Skaven were still coming, but had brought up theatre shield projectors and subterranean tunneling machines to cover their advance now, adjusting their formations to reduce their target density. They had their own great beasts, thundering monstrosities of mutated flesh, twisted machinery, or both. Hellpit Mega-Abominations stood mountain tall, flesh too obscene to die knitting itself over and over from any injury able to pierce through building thick hides and crackling auras of corruption, crawling on too many limbs and roaring with too many heads.

    Cybernetic weapons attachments screamed to life, and jets of warpflame jumped from gaping maws and green beams of disintegration jumped from beady, tumeric eyes. One with its guts blown open by Asahikijin wave force cannons simply threw multiplying, spasming intestines forward with a spare hand as a rope, to drag the offending titan killer cannon towards teeth that melted free of regenerating flesh and chomped down, mutagenic tongues wriggling free of butchery red and radioactive green meat with a piercing squelch and a wet slopping sound to capture the machinery until the wound had sealed.

    But the Ginrai had arrived, towering Mecha that moved with darting grace by means of booster thrusters, stepping forwards with blades of skyscraper size that burned as suns did, sweeping flaming arcs through the flesh of the putrid monsters while their visors erupted with gouts of plasma and missiles exploded to release hungry nanites. Warhounds with inferno guns lathed beasts with scorching promethium, and atomic arrester beams shunted power being directed to mutated cells outwards into domes of heat around spheres of absolute cold.

    This was a war of god machines and devil monsters, and so many little ants scurrying around the clash of titans to avoid being crushed by their feet and their falling bodies. Ragnarok in a can, the apocalypse in an afternoon, the Titanomachy of the hour, Tezcatlipoca's horde of jaguars bade to devour the world of the first sun, and Amaterasu shooting Amatsu-Mikaboshi in the balls until the void of night parted for the burning dawn of firepower. And it was just one of many such battles.
    ...



    The Xuanwo Shihze, or the Maelstrom Bringer, Xinyi's custom flagship of first choice for the past few thousand years, emerged from the warp with its fleet. He was not the largest ship under Xinyi's command, though he was very much a mega-capital at nine hundred and ninety-nine li in length, his crew making usage of teleporters and hypersonic internal raillines to get around, but he was perhaps the most advanced. For he was the gift of Yin and Yang to a beloved daughter, one to serve as her home away from home, and one that she had deigned to start falling back upon as her go to option of choice once again.

    As Xinyi was actively involved in the craft's design, he reflected who she was in many ways. He was elegant, with hydrodynamic angles and curves to its structure that made it look like it could have gone through the water as well as the void. He shared her colour palette of preference, multiple tones of blue and white with a bit of black, and the craft's side pylons were deliberately styled after the wings of a manta, her favourite type of fish, mounting additional weapons and power systems as well as hangars.

    The prow was akin to the nose of a swordfish, a long, skewering appendage around the mouth of a great cannon that was his most deadly voice. A sailback on the top and bottom helped project additional shielding and energy at long range, anchoring the leet around his presence and his dorsal turrets were safely tucked away in elegant recesses until battle was upon them, emerging from their housing to make it clear he was here for war.

    He, because to Xinyi, the craft was like a son. She had specified that the shipmind should be a bit rambunctious, a bit feisty, and have the impetuousness of a young boy. And so his avatar came to generally be that of a younger dragonboy, one not yet pubescent, one short enough for her to threaten with headpats in virtual space, and one who had a face that would make her second guess herself if they disagreed. Plus, she missed interacting with her younger kin. She had gone as far as to give him the personal name of Zhu Zixin, "self-confident".

    He had arrived in the midst of a system with about a dozen inhabited worlds around two pale stars and a swarm of orbital habitats ranging in size from less than a kilometre to planetoids and floating tectonic plate-sized structures in their own right. An embattled and overwhelmed Tien fleet was huddling around defensive void fortresses and the lanes of fire of vast gun platforms and missile silos, outnumbered and outmassed by a vast margin even if it weren't for the planet-scaled space hulks and the trio of enslaved void whales twisted by Moulder science. With him was also the personal flag fleet of Tsukito.

    His own ship, the Yorukaze or Night Wind, was designed more like an owl with wings tucked into a dive. Not as long but wider and bulkier, with huge pylons attached by major struts and a pair of massive wave-motion emitters in the "eyes" to devastate anything in front. Dark-coloured and opening one hangar bayafter the other, the Yorukaze's strike craft and parasite fleet swarmed forth, many transforming from mecha into something more fighter-shaped or remaining in a more humanoid or animalistic form to join the shoals of void yokai able to ply the emptiness of space.

    The Imperials had gathered around the vastness of the Ferris Rex; a Mechanicus war-world that tore its way from the warp bearing a Mechanicum sigil the size of a continent that daemons shuddered to look upon. But fleet command generally fell upon Zarius aboard the Conqueror Class Leviathan, the Angel's Spirit, flagship of the Red Seraphs and their home away from home since Hive Armada Leviatha's victory over the Imperium. Tayber may have risen far for someone relatively young, but Zarius was a master of naval warfare, with more than a thousand victories to his name in his five hundred Terran years of service, only two hundred of which were spent as Chapter Master.

    The Conqueror class, like most Space Marine vessels, was built to a far higher standard of technology than the standard of the Imperial Navy, with superior metallurgy going into its plating, far better control systems, more sophisticated weapons and engines, and was easily worth multiple navy vessels of comparable weight in a fight. And the Angels Spirit was a veteran of the Great Crusade, customised and adjusted to the needs of the Legion throughout millennia of service.

    But as battle was joined, Xinyi had her eyes transfixed on the holographic representations of the battle, one of her handmaidens burning some incense to ward away any possibility for daemonic evil to find its way into her command chamber. To her side was Liu Mei, a Qilin and long-lasting confidant and partner, with distinctive Cyan hair and backwards facing antlers, though not part of her guard, she was one of her closest advisors.

    Mei and Xinyi had finished slipping on their body glove zero-suits, armour manifesting around themselves and encasing them in mystic steel as they finished their last moments of relaxation before war had come, Zhang Long following close behind.

    As if on cue, Zixin's avatar sparked into being.

    He manifested himself in her command chamber, black hair with blue streaks and tips and a shock of white kept in a slightly messy cut. "Xinyi, the Skaven fleet is moving into attack formation. We are also detecting marauder and chaos space marine ships in their presence, some Vershiviish, some Tzeentchian, some Daguthurist. If we strike quickly, we have a high chance of a successful operation." He said with a stiff salute and a boysih smile.

    "Define successful operation." Xinyi asked, cocking her head as her helmet apparated, ready for her to place it over her head.

    "They all die." The A.I responded with the bluntness of a thunderhammer.

    She then stared at him, face going from a smile to a small, unimpressed straight line followed by a quirked eyebrow.

    "...Zixin..." She said with a protracted exhalation as he now looked bashfully towards his feet.

    ...

    "Is it really reasonable to dispatch a bunch of misfits to relieve some Pagan hive, Lord High Inquisitor sir?" Charles Windsor asked, the stormtrooper Colonel taking a moment to off-handedly shoot at an oversized rodent with his Hellpistol as he communed with the Hololithic display of Woolworth.

    "They are already expecting the Chamber Militant Astartes and Peregrinas. The ratmen are as paranoid as they are fearful, but they also have immense opinions of themselves. You and the Acolytes can find their way into places that the rest of my forces cannot." He said calmly, even as he discharged an archaeotech plasma pistol at something in the distance, then double tapped with a charged shot while that psycho crusader he often kept near him smashed down with a thunderhammer held in a power fist several times.

    "Are you sure that holding meetings while engaged in heavy combat is wise milord?" Charles asked with clear concern.

    "Like a good inquisitor, I have subjected my brain to augmetic procedures to enhance my capacity for multitasking. It is quite useful." He said as he pocketed his pistol and pulled out a volkite weapon of some sort, firing upon a row of clanrats barely in shot while a Deathwatch Terminator swung her left, then right power fists to create streaks of gore.

    "Is that why you always win the bloody Blockfall vid matches?!" Windsor asked with outrage born of sudden realisation as to how the Inquisitor remained unbeaten by any normal human in tournaments of a game that an earlier age would have recognised as a Tetris clone.

    "Sector clear, Inquisitor." One of the space marines said.

    "I have the utmost faith in Pyrdain team. You should be able to handle some heretics and xenos. But it is imperative that the Skaven attack on Chenjing Hive's manufactorums be stopped dead in its tracks. And sparing some troops better suited to special forces operations lets our erstwhile allies focus more on the frontline." He responded, slinging his volkite weapon and looking dead on at the Servo-Skull's camcorder.

    "Sir there is a lot of heresy in this city." Windsor hissed through clenched teeth as his eyes were briefly drawn to an Eromanhua advertisement depicting most obscene relations between a human, a dragon, a sidhe, and an eldar, some of the acolytes murmuring to each other before the Commissar and the Ministorum Priest told them to stop looking at porn in the middle of a warzone.

    "And? You're not in the Imperium, you will have to get used to things not being done in a way you are familiar with. Just don't actively commit heresy yourself, and do your job Colonel." The Inquisitor retorted.

    One of the squad sent him a text message that caused the Colonel to groan. "Sir...one of the lasses wants to know if she can take samples...for research."

    "No, there's plenty of approved smut purchasable for scrip aboard my craft." He said faster than Charles could blink.

    "Will that be all?" He asked the Colonel, getting an affirmative nod in response.

    "Dismissed; keep me informed of any situational updates of significance. Ave Imperia."

    "Ave Imperia", he replied, making the Aquilla himself.

    ...

    "Alright, Second Chancers, intel from our allies says that before the Skaven invasion, this part of Chenjing was rife with Genestealer cult activity, something called the Falun Gong. So you're going to have to keep your eyes peeled for both Chaos and Tyranid freaks. Might be some Necromancer cults and Vampire nests operating here too. Shit's really bloody fucked." The Colonel said to Pyrdain Team over its public comm.

    "You're going to have to secure the metro line to get to the Industrial Plant the Tien are using to cut down on costs and manufacturing time for their MPVs and war factories. Based on comm reports, the Skaven and the Traitors are planning to use a real bloody big bomb and make a warp rift on top of the ruins. The Tien are already throwing their weight to the front, so you'll have to get in there like good commandos." He added as the War-Angel gunship dropped off the first elements of Pyrdain team. Aboard was forty-eight people in total, not counting the crew.

    The Pyrdain split into six teams of eight, with Team A comprising of a Commissar, a Psyker, an Ogryn Bulwark, a Cadian Veteran, a Skitarii Alpha, a Felinid Noocursor, an Ecclesiastic Zealot, a former Necromundan Bounty Hunter, a Commissar, Psyker, Ogryn, Veteran, Skitarii, Zealot, and Felinid into team A.

    "Remember, we are in foreign territory here. You will all be subject to heightened scrutiny. Maintain your faith to the Throne, to the Keep, and to the Ghost and you will inspire these pagans by your virtuous example." Commissar Beatrice Cavendish declared with a heavily vocoded voice through her significant augmetics as she clicked lightning claws into a deployed position, two power fists with wrist-mounted bolt pistols ready to fire. Or if needed, she had access to a Volkite Blaster courtesy of Woolwoth's connections.

    "In their name, we shall spread virtue to a place of heathenry beset by the foul taint of Chaos, the Alien, and the walking Dead! Let the foes of man tremble before us!" Margaret McClain declared with a loud voice through her helmet, the medium-length blonde-haired zealot having a face far too pretty for someone who liked to use eviscerators, meltaguns, and handflamers.

    "Whatever hat lady says, but can we have noodle soup?" Grog Bulgorn asked, giving a hopeful expression to the commissar, his carapace hardsuit containing a vast bulk of superdense muscle able to turn aside even heavy stubber fire, two grenadier gauntlets, a power maul and slab shield, and a ripper gun all festooning the great bulk of Grog.

    "...After the mission Grog, after the mission." The commissar said gently.

    The necromundan couldn't help but stare upwards towards the sky, clearly transfixed by the fact that well...it didn't feel claustrophobic. "A hive like this is just wrong, air smells too fresh, too much space to duck into, and the building all look too cosy, who needs that much room for menials?" Rebecca Steel mused, loading up her hellrepeater and swinging it into ready position. Hellpistols, a power buckler, and a power sword rounded out her gear.

    "The air is heavy with the stench of abominable intelligence, the tech-heresy here is rampant. May the Omnissiah shield me from these draconic profanities." Damien Auric said, making a cog gesture to assure himself that he was safe from heresy here, his arc gun humming with deadly intent, the Skitarii's white hair quickly sealed away by the attachment of his faceplate, a power axe and storm shield clipped to his side along with radium pistols.

    "Oi, shut it. Never know which one of these rat-karkers might be listening in." Junior Sergeant Castor Ferron said, the Cadian checking all the systems on his plasma gun before making a signal to follow him. Pale hair and purple eyes completed a freshly shaved face kept beneath his carapace helm, a broad-shouldered build seeming tiny next to the great bulk of the Ogryn. He kept an autopistol, a revolver, a bayonet, two combat knives, and a power hammer on him at all times, not including his small war's worth of grenades.

    "They wouldn't miss at least some things right?" Jade Grant asked, her eyes briefly scanning over the various baubles on the streets, cat ears flexing beneath her helmet with keen interest. She had a bolt-sniper, a sublasrepeater, a bolt pistol, and two lightning claws on her person, ready for just about anything really.

    "We are acolytes, not thieves." John Langton had a face that could have rivalled margaret's in catching the eyes of even the men, his snow white hair and blood red eyes occasionally making some mistake him for a vampire. He was lean, but ever since he learned biomancy not a single soul would hear a word against him that had known the touch of his healing hands, or ability to channel the iron arm and warp speed and throw a punch able to clean a chaos warrior's clock. In case his force staff was not what was needed though, he also had a shotgun and a bolt-pistol, just in case.

    The streets were well-ordered and carefully planned; everything was in walking distance from either a place people lived or at a public transport hub and there were clear lanes of evacuation, where evidently large numbers of both Tien defenders and far larger numbers of Skaven, Tzeentchian traitors, and Daguthric Beastmen fell trying to protect or access these evacuation points.

    Curiously though, even with the war rolling through, there were few civilian corpses, with the populace likely having already been evacuated to more defensible sectors of the Hive...if the Tien even called this a hive. It felt alien, like stepping in the rich quarters of a hive. Even for a warzone, it was too clean, and many felt bad having to bring weapons into what looked like a part of town too nice to see battle.

    Castor approached one of the corpses, a Blaze Lancer with a hole in their chest made by the telltale signs of a Witchmarine's inferno bolt, ash trailing out of the breach.

    "Don't see many civvie dead, thank the Emperor." Jade said.

    "Perhaps the Skaven ate them?" The Commissar said.

    "Nah, you'd see more of a mess. These troopers did their job, got the people out. Died in the line of duty against the archenemy. All a soldier can ask for if going home's not on the table." Castor replied, kneeling down to the corpse he had found.

    "The Empress shall watch over their souls when their pagan gods' hold over them wanes. For she watches and loves all of us, even those who have not seen her light!" Margaret boomed, her zeal carried loud over her vocoders as her power armour-clad form strode through the field, offering a final sermon to the dead while using her hand flamer to torch the bodies of the Skaven and their mercenaries.

    Castor checked the identity tag, Chun Rong. If he knew his Tien names, this was a woman. And based on the number of bodies she was surrounded by, she went down fighting. Dozens of dead traitor guardsmen, even more slain Beastmen and Skaven. The troopers here accounted for even more, their lives never sold cheaply except where Cyclone Vermin or Traitor Marines had made their presence known.

    "Bloody pity...you might not serve Throne and Keep, but you did well trooper." Castor said respectfully, offering a salute.

    "You would praise a pagan?" Auric asked, the Skitarii glaring at him through those impassive optics.

    "Far as I'm concerned, the Monarchs watch over everyone who kills the archenemy. Don't matter if they're imperial or not."

    Castor reached towards Chun Rong's gun. "Sorry to disrespect a fellow soldier but I need this more than you. I'll use it well." The Cadian said as he pried an electromagnetic gun free of the Lancer's stiff hands.

    "You would sully your hands with paganotech?" The Skitarii asked.

    "Kark off cogboy, the Magos gave us the patch to integrate Tien tech with our HUDs and I'm gonna karkin' use it. Throne knows you'll find more ammo for this stuff here than ours. And when we got Skaven we need every bloody round we can get." He said, waiting for his helmet's HUD to inform him that the integration had been completed before he nodded and collapsed the gun into a folded position to stick onto his back.

    "This some bourgie borough?" Jade asked, her accent, which would have likely sounded rather American next to the others, marking her as someone the Eagleton Hive of Yankar sector.

    "All the apartments look like they belong to rich folk." She said, the felinid briefly eyeing a smashed in storefront clearly rannsacked by the passing hordes of chaos.

    "Tien don't think that way. Work more like us in the Inquisition, you get everything you need straight away, you can get a bit extra if you work harder for it. Least as far as I heard. Don't really think much about that sorta thing, ain't me job." Ferron replied, pushing open an automatic door that was too damaged to slide to have a look through the grocer market, some Skaven already helping themselves to the produce.

    "Got eyes on rats...thirty...three of 'em. Got another mob...forty eight, down at the bakery. Then by the candy section we got...fifty two. Shelves and freezers look solid enough to stop small arms fire so they should work as cover. Markin' out the Ratling gunner." He said, signalling to Jane who levelled her bolt-sniper rifle and laid it atop the slab shield of the Ogryn.

    "Markswoman Jade, eliminate their specialists. Grog, do not let any of them through, control their movements and hit them hard when they try to get away, I will accompany you to hold the tide back. Steel will provide suppressive fire through the frozen food section while Auric covers the candies. Langton, use the shelves to divide them and then your biolightning to strike them down. Ferron, take out anything well armoured, and McClain...you...do you." The Commissar said as the zealot's eyes just about lit up with joy beneath her sallet helm.

    "JOYOUS DAY! LET THESE HALLS BE ANOINTED IN THE BLOOD OF THE TAINTED RAT!" She said over the comms while the Skaven were busy chattering amidst each other.

    Dragon Man-Thing food is full-thick with sauce...wish-wish they had more cheese." A Skaven soldier complained, lasgun slung as it cracked into a cup of instant noodles and poured some water heated by a lower power "stun" shot from his lasgun into a tub of water already drawn for the purpose into his cup.

    The cup was still hot, the Skaven backing off after a few sniffs from their beady nose. "You weak-soft, eat-eat your noodles hot-fresh." Another taunted.

    "No-no, would burn-scorch my tongue. Not do-do that!" The Skaven hissed back to its comrade while a third voraciously quaffed down box after box of moon cakes.

    "Bah, man-thing pup flesh is best, especially when cook-roasted while still alive, scream-squeal makes meat better yes-yes." A fourth said, holding the partially eaten roasted arm of a human far too small to be an adult.

    "No-no, man-thing pup too chewy-tough, old ones tender-soft, but dragon man-things have few old-wrinkle man-things, medicine-doctor too good-skilled." A fifth argued while a sixth stepped in.

    "Man-things are for slave-work! Not food-meal! Man-things grow-grow too slow-late for meat, better to use-use for labour. Nyahah, man-things also make more man-things on their own when penned together in good hold-chamber. Especially when clothe-fake-fur taken away from them, yes-yes. Best when they start mating cycle for optimal growth-increase." Another said, this one female, as if speaking about breeding puppies at a mill, utterly devoid of any lewdness or lust at the subject of breeding humans like animals for slave work, but no less vile for it.

    "Bah man-things too fragile-weak, they die-die from too little work-labour, and whine-complain when you make-make them do housework. You need-must make them suffer to understand their place, but give incentive-bonus for those who understand-learn the way Skavendom work-work. Make them hate-hate each other so that they stab-stab one another for scraps nyahahahhah." Yet another interjected as the first Skaven finally started on his cup noodles, another stuffing cheese-flavoured cornmeal puffs into her mouth in shovelfulls, the scent of cheese product making the others snap their heads towards her and hiss with desire.

    "You give-give cheese puff! I want-crave cheese puffs!" One said, brandishing a dagger while the one with the bag backed off, grabbing the whole tray of cheese puff bags and throwing it at the other's face, prompting the whole squad, save for the one eating noodles and the one eating moon cakes, to descend upon it with savage furor, tearing, clawing and squeaking.

    "Wh-what if we share-share so that every-rat gets fair portion-amount?" The smallest of the Skaven proposed, looking like he was cringing at his own words while the other Skaven briefly stopped what they were doing and looked at him with disgust.

    "You speak-speak blasphemy! UNMARKED FALSE-BIRTH FAKE-FUR!" One shouted, immediately drawing her pistol and blasting the head off of the offending Skaven in an act of sudden, unannounced violence, as the other Skaven threw cheese product dust upon the now dead Skaven's corpse and started tearing into it like sharks smelling blood.

    "Throne they eat like barbarians..." Ferron said, seeing one lather the child's arm he was carrying around like a chicken drumstick in cheese produce dust before gnawing with deranged fervour as he finished setting up mines biometrically set to trigger at any signs of Skaven in blast range alongside Jade, giving her a thumbs up before he pulled to his position.

    "Ratling gunner ammo lugger's the cheese-karker with the noodle cup." He said to the Abhuman who nodded as she zoomed in through her helmet.

    "Yeah I see the little shit." She said, the redheaded felinid waiting until her HUD pinged green for a viable target and launched a soda can sized rocket propelled projectile.

    The projectile slammed home, the Skaven currently having their defense fields off to conserve power and avoid having to pay for "unnecessary recharge", puncturing through the reinforced container for the warpstone bullet cartridges within their refrigerator-like backpack after making an initial HEAT incision with the first micro-warhead launched away from the bolt round, producing a weak point for the heavy diamantine tip to exploit before its primary warhead erupted once it had broken inside.

    The Ogryn followed up with a heavy grenade, pitched like a softball fast enough to obliterate the head of an unhelmed skaven before the beach ball-sized explosive erupted in a storm of shards, fire, and noise.

    "Rat mob is dead!" Grog shouted.

    "Atta boy big man, clear out, plasma on the way!" Castor shouted.

    One of the Heavy Rats reeling from the blast, tried to bring her hands onto a warp-plasm gun before the Veteran fried her entire upper body clean off with a plasma pulse, lower body exploding away in disintegrating sections while nearby Skaven slaves burned to plasma, vapour, ash, charred meat, or sizzling impact mashed burger depending on their distance from the impact and the eruption of high-speed plasma once the containment bottle was breached.

    Other Skaven, including some mercilessly butchering a, up until five seconds ago, still living young man before he finally passed out from shock as they cooked his limbs feet first to hack off annd eat, were themselves cooked to a far more well done degree by the Commissar's Volkite weapon, the deflagration of the orange beam reducing a whole batch to ash as the commissar swept through, the Veteran following up with another Plasma shot to take down a Stormvermin minder immediately after Jade deep sixed the alchemist rat with the group, letting deathwind gas billow outwards in sinister purple clouds.

    "Plasma gun is nice gun no?" The Ogyrn laughed while the Sniper started taking further shots, dropping a Skaven Rat-Sergeant before he could get his helmet on, shooting down one reaching for one of many "potato masher" stick grenades on their bandolier, and then dropping a fourth before she could grab at her own warpstone bullet jezzail, the whine of a Hellrepeater, the whine of a Volkite weapon, the electric shriek of an arc gunn, and the screech of shelves dragging ont he floor telling her that the Necromundan, Skitarii, Commissar, and the psyker was laying down the pain.

    Jade purred with satisfaction. Rather literally, given that she was a rather literal catgirl. "Nothing like taking down mice in Terra's name." She said with joy, the Zealot's meltagun caught in a screaming contest with the woman herself while the ratmen turned hundreds of beady eyes from what they were doing and heeded a shrieking command from the mobmaster, climbing, bounding, and sprinting down towards their designated targets.

    "We appear to have drawn the attentions of an inordinate number of vermin." Auric toned, "Electrical weapons charged, clear a path lest the Omnissiah's magnetic grace bless thine nerves." He said as his arc rifle screamed with a flash of lightning and the clap of thunder, reducing the Skaven it chained through to ash with the overcooked stinnk of instantly charred flesh and disintegrated bone.

    "Save a few rats for the rest of us, some of us need to look better on our reports!" Rebecca shouted, her hellrepeater strobing red pulses of laser light through the particulates kicked into the air, forcing many of the Skaven to duck to what concealment they could find, others throwing down some sort of glob that rapidly ballooned in a manner akin to rising bread before hardening.

    "Gunner shoot-kill quick-fast!" One shouted as an MG-4242's bipod clicked into place and let a shredding hellstorm of warpstone rounds down range, two lasrepeater teams following suit with covering fire of their own as breacher Skaven wearing heavier armour rounded corners, scatterblasters pumping sprays of laser fire down range, forcing Castor out of his position.

    "Grenade incoming!" Jade shouted, eyes widening at a series of stick bombs hurtled her way to flush her out of her nest.

    Telekinetic power seized the bombs, then launched them back to their senders, shouts of alarm being heard before the sharp crack of detonating rounds was accompanied by sprays of blood.

    "No need to thank me, I foresaw it." John boasted, stepping into the melee with his force staff charged and smashing open the head of a trenchrat before their shotgun could fire into Beatrice's side, a boot throwing the body aside and a duck letting Margaret's eviscerator connect into the body of a chainaxe wielding rodent.

    "Good swing! Though I must note that there is a rather stark lack of tanks for your equipment dear McClain." He said, the iron arm coursing through his body and making his fists akin to sledgehammers as he smashed in the goggles of another Skaven, feeling bone and brain beneath metallic fingers while Margaret shouted praise for the Throne.

    "IN THE EMPEROR'S NAME I SLAY THEE! IN THE EMPRESS' HONOUR I DEFY THEE! IN THE HUMAN SPIRIT'S SIGHT I OVERCOME THEE!" She shouted. "A TRUE SERVANT OF THE IMPERIUM SLAYS SUCH FOUL FOES WITH ANY TOOLS AT HAND! LET NONE FIND US WANTING!" She said, ramming her eviscerator into the guts of a snarling wolfrat while her gauntleted hand grabbed at the neck of a Skaven slave and snapped it with a squeeze of her fingers.

    A Rat Ogryn slammed into a Grog sending dozens of Skaven flying into the air with each swing, forced into his field of control by the mines and traps set up but diving out of the way for more than a tonne of galloping mutate, chainclaws and impact knuckles swiping at the Ogryn's power assisted slab shield while warpstone tainted muscle strained to drive the abhuman back.

    "Ah! Get off me you stinky rat! Hat lady says you are bad child eater! And I don't like no rats who eat children!" He said, headbutting the roaring, snarling beast to throw it off its momentum long enough for his elbow to be swung into its throat, making the creature buckle briefly before it grabbed a multi-tonne freezer unit and slammed it against the Ogryn hard enough to cave in the lasgun resistant alloys.

    Grog grunted in pain, but steadied his footing and flexed to crumple up more of the unit until he could throw it off, already sensing that the Rat Ogryn was going to leap onto him.

    "Gonna whack 'em! Finish 'em for me eh?" He said as his power mace smashed into the head of the Rat Ogryn with shockwave-producing force, shattering the teeth and pulping the organs of nearby skaven and launching the Rat Ogryn backwards, directly into Jade's bolt-sniper shot, loaded with mutagenic acid to punch into the ruin of its face and fill its regenerating body with corrosive agents.

    It screamed as it melted, a double tap from Castor's plasma gun sizzling out huge chunks of flesh and Beatrice's power fist uppercut tearing out its heart, letting one last shot from Damien and a grenade from Rebecca finish it off.

    The Skaven were perturbed but not yet ready to back off, even as yet another of their machine gun teams was hacked down by the advancing imperials, even when one of their packmasters' heads plumed with a death blast from the psyker, even when the Ogryn's charge sent a whole mob of them flying in all directions, easy pickings for quick firing weapons to bring them down.

    "The foe is breaking! Do not relent!" Beatrice commanded, urging her misfits forwards deeper into the supermarket, sharp cracks of her wristmounted bolters followed by the muffled sound of explosions inside of guts.

    Many, which had been busy divvying up the carcasses of unfortunate workers who had been a bit too slow with the evacuation, still had meat dribbling from their mouths, but more importantly, exposed mouths that some flammable nerve agents would teach them the folly of quickly enough, Castor shouting out the warning and rolling a bundle of three down the path of Skaven rounding a corner to release an invisible death accompanied by very visible golden coloured flames that crawled into the fur and faces of the rodents.

    The Skaven, with good order, brought up heavy gunshields to provide quick cover down the killing fields, Chemrats tossing neutralising agents in clear globes back onto the burning field of death where they counted the bodies of dozens of their kin.

    "Repugnant...to waste the Omnissiah's gift of merciful demise." Damien murmured, his power axe finding repeated usage as the Skaven kept on closing the distance using the cover presented, the "excellent eight" already packed into a loose advance by fire formation to support each other but not leave themselves exposed to area of effect weapons.

    Sister Margaret's twin hand flamers swept up swarms of the rodents in heat great enough to reduce the unprotected to scorched shadows on walls in an instant, her laughter ever so slightly concerning as she rejoiced in the feeling of biomantic endurance channeled through John and amplified by her proclamations of faith to give life to a faint golden aura.

    "Then do not give these vile things a swift death! Break their spirits and rend their wretched pride! For the Emperor! For the Empress! For the Human Spirit!" She shouted.

    "Preacher's on a killing spree hahah!" Grog shouted, stomping his foot down on a clanrat to crush it into paste, a swing of a grenadier gauntlet mashing a row of Skavenslaves before the back hand cleared space for him to lob a cluster round downrange, giving the Skaven enough pause to start to rethink their strategy.

    They were good soldiers, skittish, always looking for avenues to retreat from the second things didn't go their way, spiteful, meanspirited, and...looking at the bodies they had defiled and snacked on, abhorrent and cruel. But they were not untrained fodder made to stupidly rush into their doom. They were now focusing on bringing out their heavier guns, while fanatical plague priests and armoured stormvermin infiltrated into the line, scampering gutter runners looking for opportunities and swarms of giant rats and wolf rats pouring in through the sides.

    "Kill-slay Throne-Man-Things! Horned Rat watch-watches you! Man-thing death-deaths make horned one pleased! Kill-slay their soldier-mans and we will feast-feast on the bones of their sweet-tasty cry-pups!" One of the Skaven priests shouted, holding the freshly bloodied skull of a recently dead and butchered child as an offering to their dreadful god, the Skaven fanatics exulting with chants of "HAIL-HAIL!" and "We must take-conquer future-destiny for Skavendom and kill-flay the no-furs!"

    "We are the master-race! All non-skaven no-furs will be slave-things or dead-dead! Hail-Hail! Hail-Hail the Horned One! Kill-Kill for him! Die-die for him! Hate-loathe the man-thing no-furs! Gas the man-thing no-furs! Whip the man-thing no-furs! We will make-make glorious civilisation on their corpse-bodies! For the Under-Imperium! For the Council! For the Hor-" the preacher managed before Jade shot him in the head, which briefly started to implode from the hypervelocity impact before the burster charge went off and left only bloody stumps behind.

    "Throne just shut up..." The Felinid grumbled.

    The Stormvermin were significantly harder nuts to crack, bold enough to push through Hellrepeater fire and much more able to survive brushes with a ripper gun's buckshot, volkite beams, or the arc rifle, and the Plague Priests were utterly numbed to pain, rusted chainblades swinging away to hack into hardsuit barriers and promising an agonising death from one of a thousand poxes.

    A gutter runner had even managed to jump onto Grog's back, trying to flense into it with a short blade through a chunk of armour. "Stupid fat-man-thing." The Assassin hissed, nimbly darting around the Ogryn's movements and hissing through its comm systems to coordinate with machine gunners to suppress those trying to save their friend.

    "Sneakrat get off!" He growled before he slammed his chin downwards to catch its tail, a brief yelp of surprise before he smashed his back into the wall, feeling it slacken before he spun around to smash his grenadier gauntlet into its face and let off a frag round. "PILE BUNKER!" He boomed, only to slump forwards, staggering from a Jezzail shot.

    "Ahh...that hurt! Snipe-rat!" He grunted, Jade swivelling her rifle around to find where that shot had come from before she was forced to the ground by a centre of mass shot, groaning.

    "Not in the building! They're not in the building!" She said, pushing herself to some cover before another shot threw the commissar onto her ass, her shielding sputtering as rodents mobbed her.

    "Through the window to your left, Castor, can you make the shot?" John shouted, sending biomantic power into the three injured members to try and get them back in the fight.

    Unfolding the Electromagnetic Rifle, Castor nodded. "Gimme some cover and I'll send that rat bastard packing." He shouted, Damien stepping in and bringing out his storm shield for the other to hide behind, another jezzail shot catching on the invisible portions of its power field and skimming away with a thundercrack.

    "Aye that'll do cogboy."

    "Just kill the damn rodent." Auric hissed, Margaret and Rebecca falling back to gain some space in the face of a squad of stormvermin bracketing their position with StG-4444 warpstone assault rifle fire and underslung HE munitions.

    "Our glorious service in Their name requires our backs to be without threat Sergeant, do you have the rodent's position?" Margaret shouted, her meltagun releasing a loud CHOOM as thermonuclear heat raced out and engulfed three of the Plague Priests vaulting over the shelves.

    The Snipe-rat's scope briefly glinted, and Castor took the shot, a pulse of relativistic particles leapfrogging directly into the slight opening through the window. The barrel of the jezzail flew upwards, a shape falling backwards before the gun was pulled away by other parties.

    "We're clear!" Castor boomed.

    "Good work...we just need to get through this infernal market." Beatrice hissed, letting bolt rounds through her wrist guns.

    "+Alpha Team, looks like you're in a spot of trouble, we found some help for you. Got some of their bots reactivated after the Techpriest fixed the sabotage.+" A voice over the comms said, this one clearly Vostroyan accented.

    "Rescued by abominable intelligence?" Damien groaned.

    "Any port in a storm." Rebecca grunted, jamming the charger for her pack into an outlet and hissing at her gun. "Come on charge faster you piece of..." She grumbled, the Commissar's wrist bolters clicking dry shortly after.

    "I hope those munitions fabricators are what they're cracked up to be." She breathed.

    A neutron grenade began beeping after being thrown into the building, prompting Grog to level his slab shield and to demand everyone to get behind him.

    Four more followed inside, rolling into designated points of entry before they went off in eerie blue-white detonations that vapourised many of the rats and seemed to cut the strings of others, falling to the ground like discarded puppets; foaming at the mouth when their flesh wasn't melting away, following by bubbling broth of bone.

    Then the Automata Patrollers breached into the market, gatling guns revving up and cutting into the swarms of rodents, pulp, dust, and viscerae spraying across the storespace, the machines' eight digitigrade legs splaying out clawed feet for stability while scythe limbs swung like those of a striking Mantis, the upright, inverted triangle like upper body swivelling to bring weapons to bear, arm cannons revving up and cutting down yet more rats, grabber arms spraying irradiated death with gamma cannons held in eight fingered hands, and shield limbs rotating to be brought for crushing bashes.

    "How barbaric." The Skitarii mumbled.


    Situation​


    The Skaven are besieging the southern rim with a massive force deployed with deep reserves in place making a creeping advance. Skaven fleets are making use of schwerpunkt advances where they concentrate against detected weaknesses for even more overwhelming numerical advantage then fanning outwards to achieve encirclement and disruption of lines of supply and communication followed by the reduction and annihilation of pocketed forces before making later advances.

    The Skaven, making use of "leadership from behind" are obfuscating their committed characters and specific assets (LoL, Planetcraft) from your observations, as well as the nature of their reserves.

    The Skaven have achieved some degree of penetration through heavy usage of very large assets and are threatening to achieve a breakthrough into the operational depth of both the Celestials and the Imperium, anchored by extensive usage of special forces and commandos.

    The skaven are bringing Tzeentchiann Traitor Imperial, and Daguthuric Beastmen forces with them.

    Opposing them are the Imperium of Man, the Lunisolar Domain of Asahikyo, and the Celestial Realm of Tianchao.

    Your extremely heavy defences are allowing for the enemy's massive numerical advantage to be largely blunted, but that numerical advantage largely lets the Skaven, in tandem with the underway, decide the pace of the battle by making it risky to try and defeat them in detail, especially as the Underway lets them redeploy quickly.

    The Eldar will launch an intervention to assist in a currently unknown future phase of Combat Action, helping to clamp down on the Skaven in the webway with four magnitude 2 tier Maximus fleethordes, lead by a Greater Avatar of Khaine, Grand Farseer Vrailius Ardanesh, Great Autarch Cerisia, Wraithseer Taldeer Ulthran, Grand Archmage Endraena Shendelesh, and Pathfinder Master Idaliryn Kintario.

    The forces of Chaos will attempt to summon daemonic reinforcements, concentrated around sorcerer conclaves in territory that they can safely control, however as Chaos is Chaos, they do not make great effort to collaborate in this regard.

    Detachments of Undead forces will arrive within an unknown but near future of combat phases, linking this combat zone with the combat zone against the Undead and consolidating this into a singular, grand combat zone.

    Tzeentchian Forces count both fallen chapters, monogod cultists from non-aligned legions, as well as the Dustborn Legion.

    Most Daguthuric forces are Beastmen, who are primarily oriented towards close assault, high speed raiding and hit and run attacks with high impact but low endurance, and attempting to infiltrate.

    Genestealer Cults will periodically rise up throughout the combat, hostile to all sides and inflicting damage on everyone's fleethordes. If the combat drags on long enough, Hive Armada Baphomet assets will arrive, called by the Genestealers.

    Most Tzeentchian forces are traitor imperials, with relatively lower numbers of marauder tribes and few tzeentchian xenos.

    Anti-Skaven Aktion


    Ridiculous defences (Imperial)

    People's Celestial Realm of Tian'Chao


    Assets:


    Ridiculous Defences (Celestial)
    Magnitude 3 Tier Extremis Fleethorde (Huise Jandui)
    Magnitude 3 Tier Extremis Fleethorde (Caihong Jandui)
    2 Sets of category 0 Megacapitals
    1 Set of Category 1 planetcraft

    Characters Present:

    Zhu Xinyi
    Xamno the Incredible Hulking Thing
    Haggis Sneakalotz da Smartymost

    Lunisolar Domain of Asahikyo


    Assets:

    [h4][/h4]Magnitude 3 Tier Extremis fleethorde (Tsukitaigunn)
    Magnitude 3 Tier Extremis Fleethorde (Tsukiguntai)
    2 Sets of Category 0 Megacapitals
    1 Set of Category 1 Planetcraft

    Characters Present:

    Yamamoto Tsukito
    Ashklarna (Zoat Life-Champion)
    Lafanpan (Fairy Priestess)

    Imperium of Man

    Assets

    Magnitude 4 Tier Primus Fleethorde (Battlegroup Caesarian)
    Magnitude 4 Tier Primus Fleethorde (Battlegroup Invictus)
    Magnitude 4 Tier Primus Fleethorde (Battlegroup Round Table)
    Magnitude 3 Tier Extremis Mechanicus fleethorde (Void-Conclave Tagharis)
    4 Sets of Category 0 megacapitals
    2 Set of Category 1 Planetcraft
    Ridiculous defences

    Characters Present

    Chapter Master Zarius Elberonn (Chapter Master of the Red Seraphs)
    Lord High Inquisitor Woolworth (Ordo Xenos Senior Inquisitor)
    Archmagos Domina Felicia Tayber
    Abbess Minoris Jenna Baldwin
    Lord Marshal Castor Creed (Dawn of War 2 Cadian Commander)
    Grey Knight Sister of Hosts Artura Pendragon

    Forces of Chaos

    Skaven Clan Killawatt

    Assets

    Magnitude 6 Tier Primus Fleethorde
    Magnitude 7 Tier Primus Fleethode

    The Nine of Nines

    Assets

    Magnitude 3 Tier Primus Fleethorde (Tzeentchian)
    Magnitude 3 Tier Primus Fleethorde (Tzeentchian)
    Magnitude 3 Tier Primus Fleethorde (Tzeentchian)

    The Envious Host

    Assets

    Unknown, at least Magnitude 5 (Daguthuric)

    Actions

    []: Write in battleplans

    You have five high magic actions.
     
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  • Threadmarks
    • i don't trust myself to make a good plan, but here's my suggestions

    we should keep an eye out for genestealers and destroy them asap. we shouldnt let the hive fleets enter the fray unless we have no other choice, like in the gimel group. Espically considering that the undead battlefront has the carnage legion and the battlefronts are gonna merge.

    since the Underway is giving the Skaven the ability to decide where the battle is, lets rid them of that advantage. The underway is very easy to damage, so lets keep our eyes out for those gates and smash them.

    in addition, lets keep our eyes peeled for any sneaky Skaven tricks like planted bombs.

    We should also get our harmonic generators working to make sure they can't get daemonic reinforcements. in addition, we could target them and get some warp backlash unleashed on chaos.

    for high magic, i think we should use some Ulgu. Namely we should have the wind of shadows decive the Skaven into thinking certain detected places are weaknesses when they are traps.

    We should also have Ulgu exacerbate the natural madnesses of Chaos and turn it agaisnt them. Make the hates the various factions have for each other bloom and be enacted now. Make ambitious subordinates think now s the time to betray superiors, and make slave rebellions happen frequintly.

    and my last idea for a magic action is to use Chamon or whatever wind most fits to cause Skaven technology to break. Skaven tech is rather rickity in general, and unlike the orks they don't have a Waagh! field to keep it working. As such, we just give nature a push and let it fall apart in usage.
     
    Maybe construct additional yin and yang projectors through the skaven and other forces. Counter their psychic effects and cause disruption amongst them with the power of harmony.
     
    I don't know about maneuvering, but for our high magic casting, this is what I have:

    1. Misfortune Builds Upon Disharmony: Use concentrated Yin-Yang to amplify the disunited and traitorous actions and unstable technology of the rat men. Lowers the reliability of ratmen armies and navies.

    2. Divining Truth from the Stars: A combined use of Azyr, Divination, and Astrology focusing on revealing the leadership and planetoids of the Vermintide.

    3. Shrouding the Strike: Use Ulgu to conceal the strike force and penetrating navies/armies from enemy sight, allowing them to strike leadership and vulnerable assets with impunity.

    4. Harmony Upon Disharmony: Use whatever magic is most appropriate to pull on the vermin web way. Dumping whatever forces are inside into prepared kill zones.

    5. Waves in the Void: Use whatever magic is most appropriate to push and pull fleets of beastmen, ratmen, and chaos. Limiting their ability to raid, hit and run, or push forward en masse.

    Most of these actions are targeted at the Vermintide which is hands down the biggest threat to us right now with a massive tier 6/7 fleethorde.
     
    [X] Plan: Vermindun
    --[X] Orders
    ---[X] In the areas of significant penetration, use elastic defense to drain their momentum, coupled with targeted counterattacks to eliminate the VLAs, special forces, and commandos.
    ---[X] In more secure sections of the battlefield, maintain defenses and prevent the enemy from breaking through.
    ---[X] Dedicate some reserve forces for eliminating Genestealer Cultists whenever they appear.
    --[X] High Magic
    ---[X] Misfortune Builds Upon Disharmony: Use concentrated Yin-Yang to amplify the disunited and traitorous actions and unstable technology of the ratmen. Lowers the reliability of Skaven armies and navies.
    ---[X] Divining Truth from the Stars: A combined use of Azyr, Divination, and Astrology focusing on revealing the leadership and planetoids of the Vermintide.
    ---[X] Shrouding the Strike: Use Ulgu to conceal strike forces from enemy sight, allowing them to strike leadership and vulnerable assets with impunity.
    ---[X] Harmony Upon Disharmony: Use whatever magic is most appropriate to pull on the Underway, dumping whatever forces are inside into prepared kill zones.
    ---[X] Waves in the Void: Use whatever magic is most appropriate to push and pull fleets of beastmen, Skaven, and other Chaos forces, limiting their ability to raid, hit and run, or push forward en masse.

    So, this is rather crude, I suppose, but the point is keeping the Skaven and Chaos at bay long enough to reveal the state of their reserves, leadership, and trump cards, so we can do something about those.
     
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    [X] Plan: Vermindun

    We can't do much until we've got their Characters and planetoids figured out. They might not break if their leaders are dead, but if their planetoids, macro-capitals, and current crop of leaders are dead, that should make them break. I forget, do we have to specifically assign Xinyi to use her shiny new Ulgu on our Ulgu High Magic action?

    Would having Haggis incite rebellions amongst the slaves of Chaos, as he has a specific character trait for, work? Could he direct the strike teams to cause maximum infighting to build on Misfortune?

    @MrRageQuit
     
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    Turn 4 Wars (Undead Front: Part 1)
  • Threadmarks
    • Getting this out so that it'll be ready for tacticising


    A Dark Omen​



    The stars were falling, across Shyalarad, across the Zhardan and Zhardan minoris Dwarf galaxies near the Asur territory of Zhardan, and beyond, the stars were trembling and dimming in fear of the fell power radiating from the Jaws of Death that made the improperly rested dead begin to claw their way from the ground.

    Ghost fleets started to emerge from the void, corpse ships, dark constructs, and reanimated void fauna bursting from tainted warp exit points in their unending hosts of the unliving. The dead were dancing the danse macabre, and all living things rightly knew to fear this, feeling the chill in their souls that something that should not, could not, be was now among them.

    Life feared the Undead because Undeath seeks to devour Life even though Undeath cannot exist without it. Undeath is cancerous, it can not produce itself anew without taking from the living, and if it were to solely dominate over life, it would only exist in stasis. Even the dark magic life forms were in a way, contributors to this stasis, actively pressing beyond any equilibrium and never quite metastatising.

    Undeath was in essence, the truest manifestation of the heat death of all things, leeching the energy of life until there was nothing left to give, and all would be still. That is why even a simple skeleton sparked a deep-seated aversion in the living, a sense of great danger, and why even mindless undead sought to snuff out life when left to their own devices.

    But more than that, Undeath was also a cold peace. It was miserable to be undead, filled with a gnawing emptiness that needed death to salve, to feel one's better qualities ebb away, corroded by dark magic until only a monster remained. To feel that horrible, dreadful hunger that needed murder and domination to satiate, the craving to kill those who would resist, and rule over that which submitted.

    These were things that rebelled against the instinct of social animals to work together and live by each other's benefit and happiness rather than for selfish power. To be undead was to exist without living, and to never know true contentment or peace as your best qualities erode. That was why defeated undead are put to rest, not slain.

    The earlier prelude was now almost quaint before a hell march of the unliving, Devilish things crawling from the warp to dance with the undead, the dark magic animated machines, and the dhar mutated creatures of a dark mockery of the notions of animus and life. A res publicae of death and the dead, to squeeze the vitality out of all things living and to make a state that existed for the commonwealth of the learned necrocrats who would conquer the very notion that to be alive was to live. No, they would take that from the living, to make them serve their purpose for the only real people; food, nothing more.

    Fortresses and picket fleets opened up in an attempt to stop the tide. The Kor'vattra and the Celestial People's Liberation Navy joined by the Lunisolarian Crimson Armada to hold the line, with swarms of Great White Starfighters and Dive-Falcon Interceptors joined by Type Zero "Tornado" type Strikers to rush the masses of Fury Interceptors, bat-winged Vokker fighters, triplane Albatross Strikers, and shoals of Zombie Void Sharks.

    The Undead were far more willing pilots than the Skaven, many of their craft essentially robots wrought by the Necroteks of the Necro-Mechanicus, others with servitors wired into them with far more of their old awareness enslaved to the diktaat of the necromancers than the mechanicus was ever comfortable attempting, and others with haunting ghosts or devils possessing them, and many with cadaverous pilots and the occasional living crew.

    The Strike Craft battles strobed back and forth, tsunamis meeting divine floods, pushing and shoving in attempts to creep closer to the combat boxes of each other's fleets. Flak barriers pulsed, each lance of energy, each pulse of plasma, each eruption of flak, each plume of missile fire, all representing the deaths and rests of pilots.

    Necrotic might oozed into the fallen, pulling the ruined back into working order, pilot corpses twitching back into function, and allegiances being changed as the waves of power-infused man and machine alike. Some were amalgamated or frankensteined together, mashing disparate remains into abominations that would hungrily leap into the fray.

    But these were like ants fighting amidst the giants of the void fleets closing. Former Imperial ships, Republican Navy vessels, Spacehulks, Xenarch crystalcraft, Void Beasts, and more adorned the Unliving Armada, while the Tau, Tien, and Asahikijin moved in a loose coalition formation. The new tachyon ballistae weapons of the Tien fleet launched the spears of heaven into the ranks of the dead, focused on those craft with weakened void shields or had many viable targets in a row.

    Each was a blue-white thunderbolt of raw power with ghostly afterimages of Cherenkov radiation, many ships detonating when their reactors and ammunition stores were ripped open and set ablaze by the arrows of gods. Tau mega-magnetic acceleration cannons followed, launching extinction event level projectiles at planet cracking speeds at anything the Ion Cannons had already weakened the shielding of, Asahikyo smart missiles wheeling around flak batteries to land home and explode with psionic decimation blasts to rock the dead with faint purple eruptions of power.

    Nanites repaired hulls scored by lance weapons flowed into place, sealing rents and tears as shielding flickered back to life in cycles, attempting to maintain the defensive line in the light of shield projectors and magic emitters, trying to counter the wave of evil being radiated from the corpse fleet and allow the outnumbered defenders to hold. But eve numerically superior fleets struggled to keep combats from eventually closing to point blank broadsides, it was simply too hard to kill another spaceship to prevent a clash.

    And soon enough, the walls of battle mingled, fingers locked together in a wrestler's lock to struggle for dominance and superiority.
    Ships trading volleys and brackets of fire after the initial trades of range cannonade, torpedoes, and batteries gave way to the slugfest of bare-knuckle brawls with broadsides, secondaries, and just about anything that could be shot at these ranges. And of course, boarding, often a far faster way to take out large vessels than trying to chew through their endless layers of redundant survivability.

    ...

    Caestus Assault Rams were designed to thwart just about every means of preventing them from boarding, with continual fire magnameltas able to quickly carve their way to any access points for their cargo to exit from, while Death Raptors frequently got out to space walk and then launched themselves with jump-thrusters onto enemy craft, the space marines twisting around attempts to intercept them with ease before latching on with magnetic boots. Taking out anti-personnel turrets and covering for heavy boring equipment being landed on the surface of their targets, these silent warriors would tear their way inside of their quarry sooner than later.

    They were the Night Lords Undead Space Marines, children of Konrad Kurze, one of the great Unliving Primarchs, the twice traitor; first to Horus, then to Atraya. Not all of them were undead, as there was always a need for new recruits. The kiss of undeath would be reserved for those who had fallen, or those who had earned a reward such as Vampirism or Strygdom after having their progenoid glands extracted. But a space marine was a space marine.

    A death terminator in cataphractii armour stepped out of one of the assault rams, predator sensors scanning across for life signatures. A Combi-melta attached to her right power claw opened fire upon a Blaze Lancer whom she had shield stripped with haywire warhead bolter round, the Meltagun frying half the body off the Blaze Lancer as she stepped aboard the hallways, lanterns swaying in the controlled atmosphere.

    "+Squad Horriblus is aboard the Pagan craft.+" She said, swatting her powerclaw through a sentinel automata that pried itself from its charging station and crushing the head of another between taloned fingers; her grenade harness dumping a barrage of radiation munitions into the counter-boarding teams already mobilising to meet her.

    "+Your presence aboard the Tien craft is confirmed, Captain Tyrdra. Rendezvous with your immediate superior and converge on objective tertius. Ave Dominus Nox.+" A voice replied over the vox.

    "+Understood, Ave Dominus Nox.+" She responded as her first squad of her company of space marines filed out in close order, Brother Viktor slamming his chainfist into a bulkhead alongside Sister Carmilla, tearing their way through the obstacle presented in their way.

    She looked with scorn at the good luck totems and talismans spread everywhere, her fangs baring beneath her helmet with hate as they made something feel unpleasant in her heart that beat no longer. The heavy flamer attached to her left powerclaw opened up, torching the hateful things to the ground with black promethium that burned hot enough to reduce an aerocar to a smouldering whisp of vapour in a moment.

    "Dragon fondling filth." She snarled as the Dreadnought brought underslung by the assault ram stomped forwards, throwing a power claw with magnetically accelerated force into the somewhat loose stretch of wall to knock it down, ironclad hull sparking with weapons fire directed its way.

    The Tien babbled in their language, so full of short syllables and tonal shifts, electromagnetic accelerator guns opening up on Sister Zarkyna with a valiant effort, but insufficient to stop the venerable ironclad as she opened up her grenade tabs and sprayed the area with thermo-fusion warheads reserved for the occasion, her heavy, boxy body stomping forwards with purpose and slamming a fist down on a Monkeyman that had tried to slip in and attach a meltabomb.

    "I despise monkeys." The Dreadnought snarled, stomping on the corpse for good measure as mini-turet mounted reaper autocannons began to burst to life, four shortened autocannon barrels affixed to the top of her boxy coffin lobbing shell after shell down range, joined by longer ranged special weapons fire by squad horriblus to scythe their way through the holding teams and turrets.

    The Astartes moved with relatively little concern for cover, Cataphractii pattern Tactical Dreadnought armour being so tough that even when their shielding failed they often could shrug off anti-tank weapons that struck home at the most reinforced parts of the suit, and the boarders being deceptively nimble even with such heavy armour as to neutralise any overly serious threats in short order.

    The arrival of Squad Terriblus from a flank was enough to chase away the gathering of Tanglengren Reaver troops called in as close combat specialists, the Mantid like xenos trying to withdraw in good order behind the curtain of fire from their thermal shotguns but being forced to expedite their retreat when the second dreadnought arrived, this one carrying missile launchers on his shoulder to rain explosive death on the insectoids.

    "Have we already run out of things to kill?" Brother Argus snarled, his soldiers of Cull squad stomping into the ranks of the gathered death marines.

    "There will be many more deeper inside. Cease your whining, Brother." Tyrdra.

    "Of course, sister, but some of us are seeking to add to their battle honours." Argus responded

    "We need to continue the advance, do not tarry." Eradia's voice hissed, the Necromancer throwing out webs of power into the corpses left behind, feeling them twitch back to life with their wills clouded and dominated them to her own. They would retain independent action, but they could not act against her will, her desires, her ideas.

    They would have their old knowledge, imprisoned in their corpses, even as she stitched many of them together into horrible amalgamations with her magic, but they would know nothing but loyalty to her. Even the bodies too destroyed or reanimation, such as those completely incinerated, could offer something as she bound souls seeking to escape into the hereafter, pained wraiths and shrieking spectres maifesting at her beck and call.

    This was the dreadful might of an Astartes level Necromancer, to make any number of battlefield casualties into reinforcements, to wrought a dreadful perversion of animus out of what had once lived or could be made to move, and to bid them to be their slaves. All with so little effort, like turning pages in a book as she uttered the incantations of the creation of Undeath.

    Even a normal full company of terminators was a terrifying thing to encounter in a boarding engagement, and the Night Lords could easily go from the deranged sadistic fearmongers they were known to be to coldly professional and surgical when they saw it as a more effective way to sow fear. With necromancy? The initial boarding force could multiply, their every advance corrupting and subverting more of the ship to their will, until it was theirs.

    Even the Tien knew better than to try and directly stop such a sledgehammer, and in the confines of a spaceship, gathering enough force in one place to stop them without hideous losses was extremely difficult. They could force the tien to come at them in drips and drabs that they could dismantle, while standard armoured astartes and their thralls and corpse-slaves would secure flanks and push secondary objectives.

    To deal with space marines, one needed their own supersoldiers, masses of standard troops would be masses of standard corpses, especially as the night lord gene-seed intensified the transhuman dread that the space marines radiated and then undeath turned that into something so powerful it could quite literally kill.

    Some soldiers who were met with the night lords' aura of terror felt such an intense spike of adrenaline as to overwhelm physiologies and cause hearts to stop, armoursuits needing to restart cardiovascular systems when possible, but othertimes the shock let too much damage to quickly treat before the Night lords double tapped to make sure everyone who fell was genuinely dead, only to reanimate and join their numbers, other living ones ensnared by sinister mind control as one could expect of a vampire.

    "These ships are obnoxiously lit." One of Tydra's battle brothers grumbled, Henry swatting at some of the ceiling lights with a large power sword to silence the offending lantern and provide some blessed darkness.

    Another looked at a scuttling cleaner robot, the crablike machine armed with power wipers and laser-strippers warbling in alarm at the sight of the Death marines, wide feet scampering backwards with more of its kind.

    "Even their robots know to fear us." Daina laughed with simple amusement, even as a techmarine scooped one of the machines up to examine them.

    "We are being paid to bring victory, not every last bit of scrap. I do not think the Academy will mind us taking some trophies." Deathsmith Aincrad chuckled as he quickly disabled the cleaning machine to put it away for storage to find what mysteries of the Omnissiah may lay inside.

    "Restrain your looting until we have won." Tyrdra hissed, her auspexes detecting nearby movement that was pinged to the rest of the company, then to the standard armoured astartes who were stepping aboard to join with the terminators and dreadnoughts, each one doing quick, effortless sweeps without wasted movement.

    Gatling guns opened up with the distinctive ripping round of rotating barrels firing in sequence, ripping down the halls and cutting down many of the auxiliaries, Grave Guard and Undead Naval Infantry reduced to pulp in the face of super dense hypersonic spikes spat out at such speed that the human eye could not distinguish between individual tracers.

    "Heavy weapons squad Talonius, neutralise that position!" She shouted, grenade harness firing off sensor blocking smoke grenades to befuddle the automated defence systems, thralls taking the time to set up shielded cover screens to provide safe avenues of advance while anything that could be used as cover in the passage was retracted into the vessel.

    Her orders were met by a squad carrying missile launchers over their shoulders, pausing only briefly to fire at where they had last seen the incoming shots. While lascannons would have hit harder, the smoke used would have ablated most of the strength of light based weapons, and space marines hardly ever needed to lock onto non-moving targets.

    "Krak missiles ready! Clear!" The sergeant shouted before ten krak missiles screamed out to impact the pop up turrets with violent force, exploding power cells filling the room with noise while lion-dog constructs tore their way free of statuary and pounced through the smoke, met with the stomping advance of the dreadnoughts to grab and toss the bus sized felinids to the side and giving her a clear path to shoot.

    Bolter rounds slammed home, Blaze Lancers being tough, but not able to take astartes grade bolter rounds to the chest and remain standing when their shielding failed, and the burst fire the space marines habitually used ensured that they'd get more than one shot to the chest.

    "Assault terminator squad Varro, you have positions, teleport now." She commanded, relishing in the sight of multiple assault terminators thunderclapping into existence with lightning flashes of colour, one handing eviscerators with ease while power scutums thrummed to life, blocking incoming hits from the large, gorilla like Orghanon Xenos who tried to smash into them with gravity hammers. The xenos were strong, the marines were stronger, with the eviscerators slamming home into torsos, helmets smashing the half tonne xenos in the head with enough force to crack faceplates before boots came down to crush ribs.

    Death Raptors fired their jump jets, heavy duty two-handed powermauls in hand and swinging down in devastating arcs to disrupt a formation of Jade Banner soldiers of the crystalline Diamanche species who had been making mincemeat of a wave of undead naval infantry as their armour and hides turned aside chainsword and trench mace alike. Swinging with enough force to cave in the side of a tank and faster than the human brain could process information, the Death Raptors howled curses in the Tien language, exalting in death while suppression squads took aim and let rip with heavy bolters.

    Grave Guard teams were now in position to start opening up with hellguns and special munitions of their own, and while outmatched by the Jade Banner troops, could go through the expendable Guard Constructs with ease and even manage to bully Blaze Lancers, the wights proving unnaturally resilient to most standard weapons and well armoured enough to require a bit of extra doing to down.

    The night lords revelled in this, the feeling of growing uncertainty, the sensation of doubt, the creeping in of fear, fear enough to make many of their foes simply fall without having to do anything but be there. This was what it meant to be part of Konrad's legion, to be a servant of the Night Haunter. Let the other fallen legions have their specialities. The hearts of men belonged to the Night Lords.

    ...

    T'au Fire Warriors did not stand at eye level with Tien Blaze Lancers, being significantly shorter and having less imposing armoured hardsuits. Despite that, the Fire Warriors did not feel any need to puff out their chests or otherwise attempt to make themselves look bigger next to their erstwhile allies.

    While Fire Warriors were most famous for the pulse rifle, like most modern armies, squads would carry a wide range of weapons. The burst-repeater squad automatic weapon for example, for suppressive fire was crucial to most infantry operations. Underslung grenade or scattershot launchers for when the situation demanded for another, and of course more specialised weapons, often derived from smaller versions of what were mounted on crisis suits. Fusion Carbines for close range anti-tank work, Flamers to flush entrenched foes, railrifles for marksmen purposes, missile launchers for longer range anti-tank and air defence capacity, plasma carbines to deal with high hardness targets, ion rifles as a general purpose "high firepower weapon for the indecisive" as the higher commanders would often say. The list went on.

    But it was hard to deny that the Blaze Lancers were just taller, and more diverse at that. Whereas only T'au could be firewarriors, and other species would be filed off into auxiliary cadres, the Tien based their organisation on general bodytype and capabilities, everything that was deemed "close enough" to a human could be part of a blaze lancer squad, and only radically divergent troops would be moved to other formations.

    They were both collective societies, but this difference in approach to the other was educative in how they approached the ideal of the collective. Of the distinction of a Federative and a Unitary vision.

    "Tian'Ryung'Va, the anomalous cadaver forces are approaching our base lines primarily through the valley pass here. The intensity of our air defence operations is fortunately preventing them from attempting an aerial bypass, but stealth teams have detected major armoured advances. Yours is the superior force at static defence, so we will seek a more elastic approach." A stealthsuit fitted Commander reported to the Dragon Commander currently in their true Dragon form, the serpentine creature examining the hololith carefully.

    "We are ourselves ready to counterattack at a moment's notice." A Tengu Commander said, the Yokai's wings currently folded as they stuck their beak closer towards the images of the undead horde advancing towards them.

    "Such would be a difficult proposition, a counterattack that does not inflict permanent loss upon the unliving is a waste of munitions and manpower." The Dragon responded, Shen Zhou snorting curls of lightning from his nostrils while he gave it some thought.

    "If we do not make the effort to take away their underpinnings of warpcraft no amount of defensive success will matter. They will come again and again until we are exhausted. We must take ground." The Tengu disagreed, tapping her cane onto the ground, Yoshimitsu Kyoko letting out a caw of affirmation afterwards.

    "We cannot be certain of when reinforcement will arrive. The Eldar have promised their aid, but we are facing vastly superior numbers of Cadaverous forces. We also are at a disadvantage when it comes to Mind Sciences, though the Kroot Shamans tell me that what General Yoshimitsu says is true, their leadership is everything." Shas'Uash'O'Va Mont'La said, leaning in towards the command grid.

    "A Phantom Lord is not so easily dealt with as an artillery strike. Only certain weapons can harm the incorporeal at all, and they can easily hide in the ground in the face of any amount of bombardment. We will need direct assassination attacks." Zhou responded, claws drawing lines of possible attack and counter attack.

    "Plasma seems to work against them." Mont'La responded.

    "Because it is akin to the sun, which is bane to the undead; corporeal or not. It does not have the full effect on the heliophobic unliving, as it is only like sunlight, but it is better than nothing." Zhou explained.

    "Our forces have with us many skilled Onmyodo, we can deal with the Ghosts and the Warpspawn within their ranks, but we must clear out the chaff, especially before they can deploy their Night Lord mercenaries." Kyoko said, trilling a bit as she looked at the predictive algorithm's expectations of where the traitor space marines were most likely to drop.

    "Then I suppose we must make our move then, lest we be buried in the night of the living dead." The dragon huffed.

    ...

    Ground War with the unliving was in every sense, a brutal slog. The Undead feared nothing, and could push through losses in a nonstop forward churn like few others. Their grand statuary that anchored their titans radiated corrupt magic in all directions, war horns from the necrotic legions blaring while the rattling and groaning of the unliving was a racket louder than jet engines. A racket drowned out by bombs, shells, beams, engines, footfalls, and the whizz, crack, and bang of projectiles going back and forth.

    The most important thing was ensuring that the dead did not take more ground, every inch of land taken allowed the undead to amplify their power, raise more corpses, more profanities, and more obscenities. The more their corruption spread, the more their magic suffused the land, the more the dead rise, the more the world bent to their will, twisting the land and corrupting nature itself into ghoulish things that craved death.

    And so long as the dead continued to advance, they did not take true casualties, with the fallen rising again, reknitted, reanimated, and returned to the field. So the onus was on trying to drive them back, to prevent them from taking new ground and raising new altars and scholas devoted to the ideals of death.

    Tank and mech battles swirled across grassy plains and dusty badlands, amidst muddy ruin and in the shadow of towering buildings, beneath the shadow of aircraft and the thunder of artillery. God Machines and God Beasts dueled with extinction event level force and violence, ground cracking and the magma blood of worlds spilling forth from every haggard wound carved from the soil down to the mantle.

    Smaller battles for objectives, for territories, for the simple attempt to kill the other faster than they could be killed raged all around the vast front on worlds both heavily populated and viciously contested to small skirmishes for dusty moons. This was not an honourable fight with exchanges of prisoners, with negotiations, or with agreements to avoid civilians. No, the Dead went out of their way to hunt for and root out all the places where people could hide or live. To recruit, of course.

    Denying the foe access to civilians was thus of paramount importance, for such a great mass of vulnerable people would allow the unliving to bloat their ranks massively, even with the order for full militia activation and the mobilisation of the red guard, able bodied civilians fitted with hardsuits and with lighter versions of blaze lancer weapons. With their brigandine hard suits and their rapid-fire proton assault rifles, they would buy time against the undead as the shuffling hordes pushed forwards.

    Unlike Nurglite Plague Zombies, destroying the head does little to genuinely bring down a necromantic zombie, even less to a skeleton or a poltergeist. But every bit of damage that needed more magic to heal did slow them down. Every shredded body needed energy to recombine and heal, to grow mass from nothing as they moved through smart-mines, suppressive fire, artillery barrage, and anti-personnel fire arrayed in bursts.

    T'au teams brought to assist their temporary allies poked their pulse rifles out of windows that converted into fireports, charging up their pulse rifles with outlets and releasing one fusillade after another, ripping apart the undead in relatively few shots from great distances while the burst cannons of crisis suit teams screamed to life.

    Asahikyo warriors popped up, kinetic, charged particle, neural, driver, and nanite weapons shredding through corpses and bodies, Buster Warriors emerging from the ground with plasma-cutting beams brilliantly searing through the sides of tanks and IFVs that were able to brave the Heavy Mag-Cannon wielding Armour Crushers of the Tien or High Impact Anti-Tank missiles.

    The sheer press of armour couldn't be stopped completely, even with the deployment of Jishin Buster Tanks and the mighty twin cannoned Overlords and Tau Carcharodon Heavy Gunships. But it was at least, being slowed across countless battlefields, at least where the god machines weren't driving the assault to pierce into arcology walls and bring the tides of death into the masses of the living.

    Flocks of fellbats, swarms of rot-crows, ghoulish crypt-flayers, spectral ghosts, and all manner of dreadful winged or jetpack wielding things powered through bursts of flak and streaks of missiles and endless streaking beams and tracers. Aircraft had to work overtime to try and keep the skies at least somewhat clear from the endless wingbeats in the air, swarming like locusts around spires and skyscrapers, shrieking and howling and looking for those who had yet to flee.

    The sky blackened with storm clouds and the wings of evil things. Anti-aircraft weapons pushed themselves to the limit, and all manner of air combat capable drones were released in the densest possible counter-flocks until the skies were full of corpses falling to the ground in a cadaverous rain strewn across thousands of worlds. But the dead would not relent, not for any amount of loss, not for any amount of casualties. Because that which is already dead cannot die again, only be laid to rest or utterly destroyed.

    ...



    Wang Ming was proud to serve in the Jade Banner elite, a clear-cut above the Blaze Lancers, with her Star Plasma rifle in hand, cool to the touch despite her usage of it as she went through the fields of an island in the tropics of a temperate world, with her squad. The overslung atomic arrestor weapon vibrated briefly before releasing a strange black and white beam that shoved heat out of the impact site in a flash of escaping energy while trapping those inside in a dome of rapidly freezing air.

    In a moment, the mob of Zombies stumbling into her line of sight were little more than frozen meat that crumbled apart with a shot from a squadmate's accelerator gun whose shockwaves from passing by were more than enough to break the lot.

    The zombies bore flak hardsuit uniforms, fitted onto their bodies and offering them some greater coordination by compensating for the motor control issues of these rotting barbarians, the lasguns in their hands making loud cracks with each shot before they were cut down en masse. She shrugged off the lasgun impacts, letting it glance off her shielding while she signalled to Jiang Li.

    Gesturing to a line of skeletons that was manning autocannons while their bony hands laid down supporting fire with lasguns and bipod-autoguns, she then tapped Long Mei on the shoulder and then gestured to indicate to the anti-tank specialist that there was a Jolly Roger tank that needed her attentions, sending her a squadnet signal just to make sure that she got the message.

    When the heavy accelerator manage to punch through the side of the Jolly Roger, tracks coming apart and turret lifting up into the air from detonating shells, Jiang Li's rotor cannon swept through the suddenly exposed skeletons, lingering only briefly to confirm kills while shoulder mounted missiles sprayed alchemobaric dust that exploded with enough force to leave nothing but scorched shadows.

    At last, a corpse locus, an amalgamation of bodies in a horrid hexapod shape with warpstone laced into a frame with grafted armour plate made itself visible. The Ogryn-sized thing's petal arrangements of heads opened in a stinking roar, hands splitting from trunk-like limbs firing away with a pair of heavy autoguns and a missile launcher.

    Intensive squad fire broke its defences, tearing out chunks of armour plating and necromancy toughened flesh into the greenery of Jeng IV's tropical underbrush, but the thing was healing, its energies latching into other corpses that started to rise up; pulling back together even when reduced to dust. So be it, her Star Plasma Gun pinged to indicate to her that it was fully charge, and a violet miniature sun erupted from her weapon right down its mouth as it sought to vomit acid onto blaze lancers on the advance.

    The containment sphere of the plasma ruptured, and that little star went nova, setting off warpstone nodes in its body and blowing the thing apart into tiny pieces, leaving the less intelligent, less charged undead to briefly come still as their necrotic network was disrupted, some more damaged or still reforming undead collapsing back to the ground.

    A living necromancer, a member of a xenos species that walked on four legs and used two of its own in a sort of slightly upright beetle configuration, albeit no beetle had osteoderms or scales mixed with carapace, nor gelatinous, non-compound eyes; revealed itself. Not for long, as every gun in a Jade Banner Company and two Blaze Lancer companies as well as no less than fourteen tanks and fifty IFVs all trained on the unfortunate initiate.

    There was once a healthy Iskrakt there, there was now a mass of free floating atoms. And at last the spell of silence the sorcerer had cast was undone and Ming felt like she could breathe at last.

    "Finally!" She said, holding back the urge to let out a string of profanity as at last the world's sounds came back and the dizziness of complete silence disappeared.

    "We should keep moving, comrade major. The bombing divisions are going to level this grid sector ow that we've eliminated their air defences from this vector." Lieutenant Chen Zhang said, looking over at the battlefield and taking a quick shot with his electromagnetic heavy blaster to put a ghoul trying to reach the rest of its pack into the dirt in as many pieces as possible.

    Thundering Peacock Blade type Knights pulled themselves free from the waters near the beaches, cascades of brine dripping off their hulls as the humanoid mechs started to open fire upon another section of front, being met with missiles and cannons in heavy quantities to force the superheavy walkers to bring out scale shields and absorb their fire.

    She nodded at the lead of the Knights as she grabbed onto the sides of a Waverider IFV, vaulting herself onto the roof while Blaze Lancers and other infantry crammed into the doors of vehicles like this and the Troop Crawler or got on top of the tanks and walkers of the mechanised forces.

    The autocannon of the waverider barked with hypersonic slugs as the vehicle wheeled into motion, pushing through dense terrain and letting clearing blades whirl to life to push through the tree cover.

    "Why are you so comfortable riding on top of your transports?" A kroot warrior asked over the comms while she swivelled her head to a target identified by her HUD.

    "Armour like this makes remaining inside the transport somewhat optional." She replied casually, letting out a burst of plasma shots to strike the towed gun that was busy being trained onto the column, fire and forget frag-missiles from the IFV following suit to pulp the corpse crews while the vehicle slammed into masses of zombies and skeletons without slowing down.

    Chen Zhang's power Jian crackled to life, sweeping away the hands of a zombie Guardsman that tried to clutch onto the sides of the IFV, rushing in after the auto-frag launchers had emptied their clips destroying other would be boarders. She locked her gun into her right hand and joined in with a bolt pistol shot into the head of an armoured skeleton, a boot slamming down on a ghoul's neck as the monstrous mutate was swatted out of the air by the side of Jiang's rotor gun used as a club.

    Construct Lion-Dogs were rushing at the sides, sweeping through the mobs of undead at the flanks with extended power claws to cut through as many bodies as possible, exhaling plasma flame to reduce bodies to dust and give her enough room to pop a plasma shot into the chest of a skeleton mage channeling dhar through a wand held in the ursine aliens' right hand until there wasn't enough of the skeleton left for even the most skilled paleontologist to identify the species.

    Cannon impacts on the shielding of the Waverider told her that they were approaching more serious heat annd that they couldn't stay up here for long. Auto-frag casters shredded through the rotting wave to give fresh space, and with a frantic shout she ordered a dismount, even as much as she hated the idea of giving up the high ground in the face of the living dead.

    Close Combat automata, teleported in at the signal offered by IFV mounted beacons thunderclapped into existence, giving her a sense of extra security while the machines seamlessly moved into place, twirling polearms to dice apart bodies or bringing up shield walls to allow the infantry to set up killing zones.

    Behind her the sensation of the ground trembling was her only presage to the fact that the aerocorps was pounding the area she had vacated flat with alchemobaric munitions. Many of the weaker undead spontaneously crumbled, important nodes and locuses disrupted, others briefly coming to a stop that would prove to be their last, and others falling on more primal instinct until the network reasserted itself.

    Enough time for her to fully charge and release another plasma shot, this one aimed at a gun emplacement currently ripping into the sides of the Qilin tank advance, the lascannon going silent after a sunbright impact while undead caught in its path simply burst into flames and turned back to the dust from whence they came.

    "Do not grow overconfident comrades. The great masses of the rotting dead are merely a piece of the whole of their perverse harmony. They will have fouler things coming for us." She shouted over the comm nets as rotor cannon fire chugged to life. Firing for suppression was pointless against the living dead, every shot had to be to destroy, and even then, many would twitch back to animus as the evil energies around them throbbed and pulsed like a cold heartbeat, witchlight returning to mending eyesockets and disintegrated hands reaching to grab at soldiers.

    Skeletons pulled down a blaze lancer with sheer numbers, combat knives jabbed into whatever parts of armour they could pry or shoot open once they overcame shielding until the poor recruit briefly stopped moving...before rising again in a stiffer, more abhorrent gait.

    She didn't hesitate, she immediately shot what had once been an eighteen year old with her plasma weapon before his shields could regenerate, double tapping to ensure bodily destruction and flash disintegrating the wave of bonemen around him.

    A strike-fighter plummeted into the ground, fountains of dirt plumbing into the air as the monsters that had pulled it down had their way with the crew, the flight-capable crypt flayer ghouls not stopping until they could taste flesh beneath the pilot powersuit, the flock pulped by rotor cannon barrages from Jiang Li as he let out a shout.

    "YOU WILL NOT DEFILE THEM! GET OFF OF THEM YOU WRETCHED BEASTS!" He roared, letting his gun chug through wave after wave of rotters, quickly adjusting to hit the dire wolves that stampeded out of the treeline, dead flesh moving with unnatural speed while zombie bats threw themselves through the walls of flak to descend upon the living.

    "Flak warheads, now!" She shouted, prompting the battalion's shoulder mounts to release a storm of contrails and a brief eclipse of black clouds of shredding death, rotting and burnt offal raining overhead only for another wave of undead fliers to follow suit.

    Alchemobaric launchers tore great ragged holes in the formation, but the fallen were already picking themselves back up as Nehek's invocation made its drumbeat known. They were already getting surrounded, with Grave Guard Wights opening fire from behind with hellguns and specialist weapons after cleanly dismounting from Xylvarian IFVs bearing republic sigils, plasma guns erupting from their ranks to cut down shield stripped Tien soldiers where they stood while they laid down disciplined volleys of suppressive fire.

    The primary chaingun of the Xylvarian IFVs pumped 90mm rounds into their midst without remorse, secondary missile launchers belching smoke and death into the rear of weakened Qilins whose nanite repair systems were already overwhelmed. It took more than a few missiles to bring down the superior qilins, but fall they did, engines sputtering one last time and turrets slumping forward, crews extracting themselves into the horde of Crypt Horrors pouring out from the tree lines, regenerating monsters seemingly unconcerned with any amount of injury and able to pry open blaze lancer armour in a hurry.

    Those with the new marks of reinforced armour with superior materials could withstand their punishment better, but they were defensive reservists, called into action when a proper banner fleet could not be there. They had fought off Drukhari Raids, Ork skirmishes, Genestealer cult activity, minor Daemonic incursions, and even undead uprisings from the appearance of space hulks or undead pirate fleets. This was an invasion intended to conquer, and they had the resources for it.

    She found herself backing into a corner, the chill in her spine ceasing to be ignorable as wraiths pried themselves free from the ground, letting out death shrieks and simply ignoring the attacks that could not harm them while harvestman's scythes were swung through the hearts of the living, with those lacking in properly protected armour or active shielding simply falling over dead in an instant; puppets without strings.

    Die.

    To lose focus was to die, to give into panic was to die, to cease to believe that survival was possible was to die.

    Jiang fell, a trio of grave guard with plasma guns bringing him down in trained bursts, his breached armour filled with nothing but ash. His rotor gun was silent, until his body began to move again, stirring as a groan filled the comm channels, the threads of power reaching into him.

    He is dead. You will be dead. Everything dies.

    Mei fired upon a Necro-jack, a hunchbacked bipedal machine with power shears and bolt guns, exhaling warpstoe tainted exhaust from a grille on its head, the ten meter tall machines stomping down upon the waverider they had entered the battlefield. It rocked from the impact, but did not fall, its heavy bolters pumping rounds in her direction while missile tubes propped up from its shoulders. There was a stream of krak missiles, and Mei was no more.

    She is dead, you will die.

    Chen Zhang's power jian clashed with a Vampiric Guard's power axes, swung with precision, speed, and violence as the predatory thing danced between the blades of both Zhang and Ming, turning aside a strike from a construct while blood flowed from the dead into its armour, a sinister laugh heard from the four armed vampiric alien's fanged helm, cleanly moving to allow a human vampire to blitz at Zhang, pushing aside a fallen shield construct felled by its plasma pistol while the one handed power halberd was used pick side first to slam into Zhang's shielding, ripping it free from a fallen Blaze Lancer with a spray of blood and stepping into the next swing.

    Death conquers all.

    A huoren managed to smash the vampire's head with a pole-claw, shredding at their helmet and pulping their face, hooting as the simian tried to bring the claw around for another swing, letting Zhang jab his jian through its face while Ming shoved the four armed alien into the path of a Lion-Dog which chomped down on the vampire, worrying it before throwing it to the side. But the roots were dead, and they heeded the will of the grave, pulling free from the ground and wrapping the machine, unnaturally strengthened by necromancy to try and restrain the beast. Long enough for the Necrojack to smash it with its shears.

    Death is coming, you cannot run, I see you.

    There was a moment of hope for retaliation, for counterattack as the Wu Jins channelled their banishing magics to drive back at the grave's touch. But death came on great black wings and Ming screamed to see a sight of unparalleled horror to one who loved dragons as she did.

    I am here, you will die, do not resist.

    A Liche Dragon, an infernal Liche dragon, with vast wings reinforced with cybernetics that protected membranes of energy between metal encased fingers, blood red energy, to contrast the witchfire green bale light of emptied eye sockets and a blazing non-heart of evil energies. The dead radiated terror, dragons had an aura of majesty and dread, high undead such as liches had immense auras, and a liche dragon was enough to make so many who simply beheld them fall over, dead, unable to withstand either the fear or the malign aura.

    You are strong, you will die, you will rise.

    Zhang and the Huoren fell, lifeless. Indeed most of her battalion simply looked upon the dragon and died, without ceremony, without prompting, they were alive one moment, they beheld the end, and they simply ceased. They could not look upon its cybernetic frame, they could not see its skull like face, they could not witness its lashing, scythed tail or its jagged, sickle-like claws, made crueller by undeath.

    You have our blood, you are distant kin, you will rise again, I will rule you.

    She stood alone amidst the dead, her armour damaged, her body partly exposed, but she was alive still. Even as every wingbeat of the Lichedragon let forth the winds of necromancy forth, corpses rising, fusing, mutating, souls unable to pass on in the presence of this partially skeletal monster, turning on the machines that could resist its presence, attacking them as the dead tore at her helmet until it came apart to force her to look, to stare into the dragon's sockets.

    I serve Falamaug as one of his heralds, you will serve Falamaug as one of his knights, you will sleep but not forevermore, you will be my knight Wang Ming, now Die.

    As wards were peeled from her, she felt everything getting so very cold, everything so very stiff. Her heart raced so hard it tore, and she could feel nothing in her chest as her lungs seized and resisted breath. She couldn't think, she just wanted...she just had to...she would just...die.

    Join my armies, conquer the stars, you have no choice.

    She went still, her breath ceased, her perspective widened with death, but her soul could not depart, bound to her frame, her shifting, changing frame as her garb was tainted, her talismans burning out from the presence of an evil so potent until the dragon's will made them into sigils of death, plates blackening and warping, moulding back together as the trees wilted, the animals fell, and even the bacteria breathed their last.

    This is not the end for you, you will never know the end, you will know only my service, and you will know the wisdom your teachers are too cowardly to teach you, the easy immortality they tell you is the way of the weak is in truth far more real than the great lie of cultivation. I will give you all the enlightenment you need, I am Agrazamar, and you are mine.

    Only to rise again, as she opened her eyes, her heart silent, her will bending, it was only reasonable to serve Agrazamar. There was no alternative. A weapon of hers became a phylactery, and her soul was bound as a stryg, a martial liche of pallid, flesh that would one day wither and decay from a lack of blood flow around bones of military iron. This soul binding thing, a sentimental sidearm, drew itself into the claws of the dragon, and she offered a salute as a new faceplate was snapped in place over her face.
    ...

    Xiang flicked through the reports he was given while he soaked in the hot baths, accompanied by Yamato Taiyoko, her guard captain Oda Izumi, the present captain of his guard Shen Ying, one of his primary confidants, Xing Yun, his sorcerous aides, Chen Haoyu and Kexin, her sorcerous aides Kamisato Seimei and Himeko, one of her primary confidants Ayasaki Sakura, and mercenary commanders Luigi Garibaldi and Alessandra Gramsci. Four Dragons, Four Zhuques, two Qilin/Kirin, and two Androids sharing the artificial pond, coming down from an enjoyable high of social and "social" gathering and activity within the vapour-ladened chamber.

    The ten Shenren were in particular, quite interested in the dark age remnant robots, finding their...difference to be pleasing both in terms of metaphysical aesthetics and in trying to see how they ticked. And certainly, they were comfortable enough in this place to not be alarmed that their efforts to guise themselves were futile before these beings.

    The night of delight was already winding down, with the warp transit already being so near as it was. Dragons were passionate and free-wheeling lovers; old Cathay having so many descended from dragons as to be able to base entire social stratums on it was proof enough of that. The existence of Qilins, Dragon Turtles, Long Wa, and other hybrids born of pairings between dragons and other mystic creatures was also proof of that...really they were...flexible as a people, and more than a touch prolific.

    But even in the afterglow Xiang felt, briefly ruffling Yun and Taiyoko's heads with a free hand, part of him was very focused on business, chewing a bit on his stylus while he mulled over the information.

    "The Busi Zu" he said, using the Tianwen term for the Undead "are a top heavy military. Destroy enough of the top, the rest should follow suit as the network of domination comes undone and their flow of magic falls apart." He said, though this information was hardly novel for anyone gathered.

    "The T'au will take more time trying to deploy across the battlefront with their horizon and skipper drives, while the Eldar are still engaged in a muster. But our forces are quite...diverse. If we use our wide array of strengths to our advantage, we might be able to stress weaknesses of their line," Taiyoko said, already in a more serious mindset.

    "I would like a little more time before we have to get fully into the mindset of war. Even when we arrive, it does take time for combat to start." Haoyu said, stretching and lazily resting a head on Xiang's shoulder to look over at the information.

    "We do have ships to return to." Himeko exhaled, shifting her legs and picking some knits out of Taiyoko's hair, brushing it every now and then once she had gotten everything she deemed to not belong out.

    Himeko's head bore green feathered bird wings near her temples, while the larger, angel-like ones near her back gently sloshed water over the larger and more physically imposing dragonness, wriggling out of the way of Taiyoko's tail as it sought to grab at something for her to drink. Her hair was short, kept in a rather mousey sort of cut to go with her overall rather slight figure.

    "It will take days before the first of the undead retaliatory fire can even reach us. We have plenty of time." Yun responded, letting Seimei clean out his horns until they were properly gleaming. Yun had his hair out long and his rather small frame made more than a few mistake the gender of his preferred demi-human guise, especially given his hips had more than a bit of a flare to them.

    "Best not to be caught flatfooted, however." Seimei interjected, the Suzaku/Zhuque's own brilliant cyans going well with hair long enough to normally be tied up into a ponytail, his own frame having the sort of wiry and quick strength one would expect of someone who was a skilled swordsman and had a rather agility focused fighting style.

    "We will have plenty of opportunities for moments like this. These wars are affairs of years, not days. You don't need to savour every moment. But do enjoy it while it lasts." Kexin said, going through a tablet at a relaxed pace, other hand sipping at something fizzy, cold, and sweet.

    "Why not live for the party when we're going to war though? You never know which day might be your last." Sakura said, flipping through pages of a comic while she was laying on her stomach, legs dangled in the air over her back. Her own figure was petite, almost tiny next to Taiyoko, but definitely still that of a woman, simply short and relatively lacking in curves.

    "As fun as this was, we are being paid for war, not as escorts." Luigi stretched, metallic joints popping beneath nanite synth flesh while Alessandra stood herself out of the bathing pond and ran a charge through her skin to dry herself off.

    The ship pinged to indicate that it was translating out of the warp, the empyrean's strangeness receding away as normal, material reality reasserted itself gradually, gradually, then the remainder all at once.

    "I should attend to my troops...but do call me again if you ever feel like doing this again." Gramsci replied. She had a hard, muscular frame, like a professional hand to hand combat fighter, not too bulky, but definitely lacking in softness to her edges.

    As Xiang continued to flick through his tablet, he noted the appearance of the holographic avatar of his ship; the Huoyan Xuanfeng; the Flame Cyclone; or as he called her, Zhu Fang. Her own appearance also based on a hypothetical daughter of his the way her cousin through Xinyi was based on a hypothetical son. She had hair inverted from his, white with black shocks and red tips, kept in a pair of braids while her armoured frame kneeled down, averting eyes from the others currently leaving the hotsprings.

    "Comrade Xiang, we are detecting massive undead fleet assets on our auspexes, the crew is awaiting your orders." She asked, calm and professional while Xiang got up and steamed the lingering water off his body, tail fetching a towel and affixing it around him.

    "We will have to engage, it would take too much time to evacuate and find another point of entry, and hit and run hardly works on the armies of necromancers unless you can punch deep enough to decapitate." He said, almost beatifically calm while he slipped his bodyglove zero-suit onto his body, letting it seal against his skin and power on before armour plating manifested.

    The Flame Cyclone was designed in a way that evoked flame the way his sister's Maelstrom Bringer evoked the water, with fire like figureheads attached to the wing pylons and a prow akin to a mythical tusked salamander, built around the primary pyronic annihilation cannon that went more than a little bit beyond conventional definitions of "hot". Turrets emerged from recessed caches, doors opening up to allow them to click into place and batteries of every sort powered to full straight away, because Xiang's girl would never be remiss without enough firepower to cut through entire fleets on her own.

    Red, orange, gold, black, and white, the craft was a moving focal point of the energies of aqshy and the ideals of Yin, heat, energy, and fire crackling in the void around her to push back the artificial dark shroud of dhar around the combat zone while her escorts and compatriots maintained their formation near her, with planetcraft crawling out of the void behind her and a wide array of ships dogpiled into the fray.

    Tien, Asahikijin, Reman, Barghest, Hanallante, T'au, Kroot, and Kyn vessels gathered in a grand armada centred around the Flame Cyclone and the Solar Bow; a gold, white, black, and red ship built in a manner somewhat more evocative of a turtle, rounded, tall, somewhat squat, as hard to miss as the sun rising in the morning even if it weren't for the enormous quantities of purest Hysh it radiated. This great coalition gathered in a display perhaps atypical of an age of "every power bloc for themselves", but no less impressive for the sheer diversity of craft it represented.

    And they would need every last bit of it, for they were facing the forces of the Academic Republic and its cohorts whether they were Xenarch benefactors, Nephiric Devilcraft, Ghoulish Abominations, or Fallen Imperial Mercenaries. A vast legion whose very presence was a corrupting influence on reality, a weight upon creation that bade it to allow all manner of monsters through, writhing forwards to meet the gathered armada in a shoal of horrors.

    Situation


    The Undead are making significant progress on penetrating into T'au and Tien operational depth through sheer aggressive churning relentlessness. The Undead do not take casualties the same way most armies do as long as they advance, and can achieve over 100% fleethorde strength as they add casualties they inflict to their own ranks and regenerate their own losses.

    The Undead are anchoring their fleet with powerful high magic of their own as well as major undead locuses such as planetcraft. This allows them to keep on pushing into other phases of combat regardless of how prior ones go and to achieve overall operational superiority even if they lose positional and categorical advantages.

    The Undead do suffer in artillery exchanges and bombardment phases when engaged with your troops or the Tau, while theirs is ample, Tianchao excels at this distance.

    The Undead are primarily of the Academic Republic (Nagashite template) and Undead imperials with contingents of other forces at a detachment level. This gives them a balanced overall force, albeit one that thrives the best in high casualty situations where their grind is at its most powerful.

    While the undead have powerful characters such as Lords, Heroes and Agents, they are top heavy and their forces lose momentum if they suffer character sniping. They also rely on their heaviest assets to provide a lynchpin for their grind, and do have notable exploitable vulnerabilities.

    The Undead are particularly fond of air superiority due to the sheer number of things they can throw into the sky or in strike craft conflicts, anti-strike craft defences are paramount, as are titankilling and assassination efforts.

    Undead are great at special forces operations by using their higher grade forces and as such defences against such commando operations should always be readied. However the Undead are as a rule, somewhat mediocre in massed armoured conflict because of the limited degree of initiative that their forces have as a rule and vehicles taking more time to reanimate than living beings.

    The Undead take more time to reanimate machines into their service than the living, and machines are much easier to ward against reanimation than the living.

    The Undead while terrifying to take territory from due to the way that Necrotic Corruption works giving them a homefield advantage and inflicting attrition on attackers, are best attacked rather than defended against because the more territory they gain the more dangerous their hax gets and the more and more undead you will have to deal with constantly.

    Genestealer cults will attack all sides, inflicting continual attrition losses and putting a timer until Hive Armada Baphomet's forces arrive, due to the proximity of this territory to existing Baphomet tendrils, stopping Baphomet from arriving altogether will be difficult.

    The Eldar will dispatch four magnitude 2 fleethordes from several craftworld kiiths and a pair of magnitude 3 Asur Fleethordes from the Phoenix Kingdom by the next combat phase as the Undead threaten to spill into their territories. Further reinforcements from other nearby polities are not out of the question.

    Haoyu, Xiang, and Taiyoko are especially effective against the undead and bolster your effectiveness on the undead.

    The undead are automatically spreading corruption to the territories they are attacking. Corruption is currently at serious (inflicts attrition and increases undead regeneration).

    Graveyard Restuffers

    Tianchao

    Assets

    Magnitude 3 Tier Extremis Tianchao Fleethorde (Huise Jandui)
    Magnitude 3 Tier Primus Reman Fleethorde (Maria's Magnificents)
    Magnitude 3 Tier Primus Barghesi Fleethorde (Carnage Legion)
    Ridiculous Defences
    Two batches of Tier Extremis Category 0 Megacapitals
    One Batch of Tier Extremis Category 1 Planetcraft

    Characters

    Zhu Xiang (Great Fire dragon, Caster, Duelist, Strategist, Yin)
    Chen Haoyu (Great Storm Zhuque, Caster, Strategist, Yang)
    Chen Kexin (Great Beast Zhuque, Caster, Strategist, Yin)
    Luigi Garibaldi (Dark Age of Technology Android, Assassin, Duelist)
    Maria Romano (Reman Mercenary master, Strategist, Pariah)
    Warmaster Gyrdash (Barghesi Warmaster, Strategist, Duelist)
    Witchmasker Zhurlok (Barghesi Warlock, Caster, Duelist)

    Legions of Legend

    Vermillion Dragon Guard (Spirit Dragon Guard)
    Darwinian Legion (Barghesi hyperevolutionary elite)
    Silent Band (Reman Pariahs)
    Shenyang Wu Conclave (Fenghuan and Zhuque master mages)

    Asahikyo

    Assets

    Magnitude 3 Tier Extremis Asahikyo Fleethorde (Kido Butai)
    Magnitude 3 Tier Extremis Fra'al Fleethorde (Parthian Host)
    Magnitude 3 Tier Primus Reman Fleethorde (Tony's Terrors)
    Two batches of Tier Extremis Category 0 Megacapitals
    One Batch of Tier Extremis Category 1 Planetcraft

    Characters

    Yamamoto Taiyoko (Great Solar Dragon, Caster, Duelist, Strategist)
    Kamisato Seimei (Great Frost Suzaku, Caster, Duelist)
    Kamisato Himeko (Great Life Suzaku, Caster, Duelist)
    Alessandra Gramsci (Dark Age of Technology Android, Assassin, Duelist)
    Antonio Soprano (Reman Mercenary Master, Strategist)
    Bloommother Ekelliandra (Hanallante Starmaster, Caster, Duelist, Strategist)
    Seedmaker Tellend (Hanallante Voidsafe, Caster, Deulist, Assassin)

    Legions of Legend

    Solar Dragon Guard (Spirit Dragon Guard)
    Gabriel's Gatekeepers (Reman Siege Experts)
    The Unending Bloom (Hanallante psyker elite)
    Crimson Onmyodo Galaxy Conclave (Fenghuan and Zhuque Exorcists)

    Tau

    Assets

    Magnitude 4 Tier Primus Tau Fleethorde
    Magnitude 4 Tier Primus Tau Fleethorde
    Magnitude 4 Tier Primus Kroot Fleethorde
    Magnitude 4 Tier Primus Kroot fleethorde
    Magnitude 3 Tier Extremis Leagues of Votann Fleethorde
    Four Batches of Category 0 megacapitals
    Two Batches of Category 1 Planetcraft
    1 batch of Category 2 Planetcraft
    Ridiculous defences

    Characters

    Shas'Shan'Uash'O'Va Kais (Tau Supreme Fire Caste Commander, Strategist, Assassin)
    Kor'Shan'Uash'O'Va B'kak (Tau Supreme Air Caste Commander, Strategist)
    Aun'Uash'O'Va Mont'Yr'Thun (Tau Great Ethereal, Strategist, Morale)
    Zhrak (Kroot Great Shaman, Caster, Duelist)
    Kramork (Kroot Great Shaper, Duelist, Strategist)
    Karl Urist (League of Votann High Kahl, Duelist, Strategist)
    Nikula Urist (League of Votann High Grimnyr, Caster, Duelist)

    Legions of Legend

    99th Experimental Warfare Grand Cadre (The guys allowed to try all the weird toys)
    Shah'Uash'O'Va Honour Guard (Legendary Tau bodyguards)
    The Witch Pack (Kroot Psyker Legion)
    The Fellowship of Iron (Iron Kin Elite)

    Night of the Living Dead

    Academic Republic of Conspiracies

    Magnitude 6 Tier Primus Republican (Nagashite) Fleethorde
    Magnitude 6 Tier Primus Republican (Nagashite) Fleethorde
    Magnitude 6 Tier Primus Republican (Nagashite) Fleethorde
    Magnitude 6 Tier Primus Republican (Nagashite) Fleethorde
    Magnitude 6 Tier Primus Undead Imperial Fleethorde
    Magnitude 6 Tier Primus Undead Imperial Fleethorde
    Ten batches of Category 0 Megacapitals
    Five Batches of Category 1 Planetcraft
    Two Batches of Category 2 planetcrat

    Characters

    Zachary van Buren (Vampire King, Caster, Duelist, Strategist)
    Lydia van Helsong (Archliche, Caster, Duelist, Strategist)
    Yradagara (Xenos Undead of Unknown Type, Unknown Specialties)
    Vengera the Terrible (Night Lord Vampire Lord, Caster, Duelist, Strategist, Assassin)
    Zazimax (Xenarch Overlord, Caster, Duelist, Strategist)
    Agrazamar (Liche Dragon, Envoy of Falamaug, Caster, Duelist, Strategist)
    Atoshkar (Worm that Walks Mastermind, Strategist, Technologist, Duelist)
    Helkern (Jotun Mohrg, Assassin, Duelist)
    Vortgaras the Destroyer (Night Lord Archstryg, Duelist, Assassin, Strategist)
    More unknown

    Legions of Legend

    Unknown
     
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  • Threadmarks
    • Okay, looks like our primary focuses are assassination of enemy Characters and leadership and bodyguards for our Characters and leadership. Secondary focus is fighting Undeath Corruption, both directly and by targeting the Necrotic network. Tertiary focus is anti-Tyranid efforts.
     
    Hm, the lore is always interesting.

    What role did Curze play in the Atrayan Apostasy, that he is named twice-traitor? One cannot imagine that the other Primarch-Mortarchs look especially kindly upon him for it, even the ones who left Chaos before joining Atraya.

    Well, no matter. Like all the others, one way or another, Curze is a disciple of great Nagash alongside the other Primarch-Mortarchs, and what the master claims, he keeps unto eternity.

    By their very nature, none of the Legions that gave themselves unto the master can be lackluster in necromancy, though considering their divergent specialties, some excel at it better than the others.

    One would surmise that the Mortificers would be amongst the best at necromancy. Another one would probably be the Malefic Portents, as one of the magic-focused Legions.
     
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    hmm, lets try and get some magic going. we have aqsy and hysh, ie the winds of fire and light, so lets use em. Fire and light are pretty universal weaknesses of the undead. Exorcisms are also gonna be good to have going on.

    lets also focus on using machinery, cause even with the undead corruption it will take longer for the dead to turn them, and every second counts.

    overall, our goals should be destroying the loci and leaders of the undead, with additonal focus on purging the corruption and making sure the tyranids don't get attracted to the battle. cause Tyranids + Barghesi = Major Bad Times.
     
    @MrRageQuit

    A prototype for the plan:

    Maneuvers:

    Advance-breakthrough. Defeating the undead in detail is nigh-impossible, instead, attempt to dispatch elites to destroy key infrastructure and leadership, as they will be attempting on us. Then take advantage of disruptions to the Necrotic network.

    Attempt to arrange Duels between enemy Characters and Xiang, Taiyoko, Himeko, Gyrdash, and other characters in roughly that order of priority. Special effort should be made to ensure that if Agrazamar is Dueling one of our Characters, it will be one of the above Dragons, who will be resistant to his aura of dread.

    High Magic:

    Use Chamon to enhance our machines, including our android assassins, to lean into their advantages here.

    Use Hysh to push back and purify the corruption, disrupting their network, and slowing the resurrection of the undead.

    Have our resident assassins lead the charge in destroying enemy leadership.

    Use Ulgu to mask our Characters and their movements as much as possible, to avoid the same being done to us.

    Use Azyr to detect Genestealer concentrations and root them out.
     
    So Sparta said on Discord we got eight High Magic actions on this front. *rubs hands together*

    [X] Plan: Your Thesis is Dead Wrong
    -[X] Orders
    --[X] Primary: Dispatch Luigi and elite strike groups to eliminate hostile infrastructure and leadership. Seek to arrange duels between hostile Characters and Xiang, Taiyoko, Seimei, Himeko, Gyrdash in that order, whenever feasible.
    --[X] Secondary: Launch counteroffensives wherever disruptions to the Undead and their network present themselves.
    --[X] Tertiary: Detect and seek to preemptively eliminate Genestealer Cults as possible.
    -[X] High Magic
    --[X] Note: Haoyu uses his Compass Keeper ability to alter the Winds of Magic +Hysh, -Shyish.
    --[X] Aid identification of Genestealer Cults with Azyr divinations.
    --[X] (x2) Aggressively purify the Undead Corruption with Hysh.
    --[X] Counteract and oppose any Undead high magic actions.
    --[X] Mask the movements of our Characters and strike groups with Ulgu.
    --[X] Empower our line forces with Hysh.
    --[X] Enhance our machines with Chamon.
    --[X] Obliterate enemy planetcraft with solar-grade Hysh.
     
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    [X] Plan: Your Thesis is Dead Wrong

    I have no objections.

    Here's hoping Enlightenment is big enough buff to make a difference to our magic actions, seeing as our cannon fodder doesn't seem to have made much of a difference so far.
     
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