Splitting this up so I can get stuff out sooner for the YEAR OF THE DRAGON.
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.
The Undead of the Republic flew the banner of many of the great lords of Death in a rather opportunistic manner. Many had offered homage to Nagash, others to the Four Dread Wyrms such as Falamaug. They chanted and made their rituals in the honour of their great academic forefathers, offering the dead and the damned in great numbers and consuming Amethyst windstone and Warpstone in great quantities to power their magic.
The alliance arrayed against the hordes of the rotting corpses vomiting out from the tainted spaces arrayed their own magicks in great rituals of exorcism, treatment of powerful spirits, and the consultations made with the powers of the winds of magic and the great compasses. As technological marvels hummed to life to prepare for the conventional battle, the sorceries of a mighty realm roared with vigor to counter the machinations of an old enemy.
With the aid of Taiyoko the Solar Dragon, the wrath of light itself was channeled into the powers of undeath, billowing outwards in cataclysmic radiance into the shattering hulks of planetcraft that found the sorceries used to keep them together undone by luminous radiance. Though even the contributions to it that Taiyoko made were enough to require her to take special precautions as she exercised her might as an exorcist, it had made a dent to allow the yawning jaws of undeath to be blunted.
The putrefaction of all that was worthy by the presence of undeath was punished for rearing its head, weakened and rolled farther and farther back to allow other, smaller actions to be taken such as the efforts by Haoyu to shift the winds to something more anathemic to the unliving and to lend divine eyes towards the cause of finding what lurked in the dark.
OOB said:
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
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)
Vermillion Dragon Guard (Spirit Dragon Guard)
Darwinian Legion (Barghesi hyperevolutionary elite)
Silent Band (Reman Pariahs)
Shenyang Wu Conclave (Fenghuan and Zhuque master mages)
Magnitude 3 Tier Extremis Asahikyo Fleethorde (Kido Butai)
Magnitude 3 Tier Extremis Florallante Fleethorde (Shintiki 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
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)
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)
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 Maximus Leagues of Votann Fleethorde
Four Batches of Category 0 megacapitals
Two Batches of Category 1 Planetcraft
1 batch of Category 2 Planetcraft
Ridiculous defences
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)
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)
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 planetcraft
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 (Slaugth Murdermind, Strategist, Technologist, Duelist)
Helkern (Jotun Mohrg, Assassin, Duelist)
Vortgaras the Destroyer (Night Lord Archstryg, Duelist, Assassin, Strategist)
More unknown
Unknown
The Dead were relentless and uncompromising. That was a simple fact, the dead do not grow and change as the living do. That was not their prerogative. They had already died, and their life's story ended.
They would come in their dread fleets, in numbers great enough to darken skies and cause a dread chill in the soul, a horrible numbing sensation that let one know that death was coming for them.
The T'au still felt it, in small parts, not quite understanding it, not quite sure how corpses could walk, not quite sure how fallen vehicles could restart with nothing but energy. They just knew that it was a feeling that gnawed at the heart in a very real way, one that made even stout fire warriors tense before the corpse hordes.
Fallen Imperial and Republican craft moved with a cruel precision, directed by the memories of the deceased, the will of necromancers, and the convocations of Liches, Phantoms, and Vampires. A morbid hive awareness shared across the network of the unliving, one that allowed them to start shifting their ships in response to the intensity of the Tien defences that confronted them.
They moved the Ironclads up front, ramships meant to do nothing but survive against whatever could be thrown their way while having just enough threat to be worth targeting. Undead haunted Roks and corpse strewn Space Hulks as well as unliving void beasts; all expendable, shifted forwards with them, walls of detritus and cannon fodder.
All the while the Citadels of the Dead; like enormous gothic castles and tainted earth and soil forever bound to them, radiating the nightmare energies of the Undead loomed ever closer, Pyramid and Ziggurat craft remaining close by and emanating their cruel energies that bade the fallen to rise again and again.
Strike Craft slipped and dueled amidst each other, Clay Hawks and Raijin types entangled with wave after wave of Carrion Bird vessels whose bat-winged constructions broke of from the massive flocks of corpse-planes allowed to tumble out of hangars like flies detaching from a corpse.
The maintenance of flak grids was vitally important; even the slightest slip would allow the tidal wave of torpedoes and strike crat into the ranks of the coalition forces. And like the terrorsquitos of the blood swamps of Ghundal, even battleships left exposed to such bombardment would be stripped clean in frightfully little time. A Shogun Class so beset struck by tens of thousands of bombers and attack craft until the vessel was nothing but a burning hulk after thirty minutes of continual attack.
Torpedoes and boarding craft flew back and forth, fire blossoming here, spectral blasts detonating there. From the smallest skirmishes of small handfuls of ships fighting over minor systems deemed to have potentially valuable resources, objects, or even just warplanes of interest to colossal melees over well established systems and megastructures where the stars in the sky were outnumbered by the warships slaughtering each other inn the void, there was violence.
For many it was the swarms of ghosts that made the most impression. A billion, billion shrieking, howling lost souls and damned echoes of the dead swirling towards their foes with a sound that could be heard through the emptiness of space despite all reason, despite all physics, despite all possibility. The exorcists and plasma gunners would have to work overtime, in a furious, desperate effort to drive the incorporeal things back before they could creep into the hulls of ships and give cold, miserable deaths to the crew within.
But even this could not stop the clash of craft as nova cannons, lances, spinal guns, wave-motion weapons and more all sought to soften opponents for the inevitable frenzy. Ships crashing upon ships, cannonades roaring in silence, plumes of plasma and reactor blood washing against the warm hulls of the congealed labours of lathes and tools and hands.
Fortresses that had been at the centre of sprawling engagements of man and machine and corpse were shadowed by new forms dropping out of faster-than-light travel mode with these fresh craft taking up their positions in the fray of void battle. Kroot Sphere ships, Reman Star Galleons, Barghesi Carnage Craft, Votanni Kynships, Florallante Blossom-navies, Tau Protector and Merchant fleets, Asahikijin Prow-Craft, and the Dragonships of the Tien all gathered in formation over countless worlds, some in small, independent flotillas, some in vast sprawling fleetswarms.
Facing them were the Dreadfleet of the acolytes of the Cadaver Corsairs, the Silent Armadas of the Death Dragons, the Corpse Fleets of the Nagashites, tainted Imperial ships, Cyrreaper "Squid-ships", the Arkships of the Mortis Mechanicus, wave after wave of undead voidbeasts and spacehulks crawling with Ghouls and other feral mutates, Xenarch Crystal-vessels, haunted Devilships, and spectral Nighthaunt Ghostfleets. The dead had numbers, vast numbers, with fresh reinforcements pouring into their battlefronts or being raised from the detritus of war. But all obeyed the Deans of Death of the Academy, at least, for payment's sake if nothing else.
To the Tau, the Undead were a scarcely know, almost surreally impossible horror that defied sense and logic. They were nightmares, ghost stories come to life cackling and shrieking with a supernatural hate, creeping shadows of what was and what desired to forever strangle what could be. They did not truly understand why it defied so much rational sense, why it seemed to operate on semiotic rules and fairy tale structures rather than scientific logic and empirical reasoning, but they knew it scared them and that they had no wish to join the legions of the doomed.
They were young, so full of vitality and life and youth...and already their short lives filled them with a deep dread of dying, a mortal fear embodied in the cadaverous ones. But the Unliving and the Devils behind them saw in them only fresh corpses and weak, withered souls without much value. Flicker-lives lead by ember-souls that sizzled for a brief time only to fade under the weight of aeons. Nothing worth celebrating, nothing worth cherishing. Just fools who had rejected the offer of service in life, and thus must slave in death for the enlightened.
To the Tien, they were the Duili, Antithesis,
Nemesis. The scions of the machinations of the Four Calamities of Falamaug, Ancalamat, Ridorah, and Tyzhar and all their ilk to spread ruin and woe and steal the future of Life itself. A future of a cosmist paradise beyond death, beyond suffering, beyond want or need, all delayed because the Undead spread the poison that immortality would be a gift wasted on the mediocre. The idea that only through a crushing, iron vice could there be any meaning, any order to existence, and only through the surrender of mediocrity to the whims of greatness would the lives they saw as being wasted on the living ever have value.
The Undead hated the powers of Life, the offer of a collective escape from the churning of the cycle and the gradual victory of death over the living. There would always be more who were dead than those who lived, there would always be those who had done nothing of worth in their time and thus would pass unremembered and unmourned. Only the great who could impose their will upon the wheel of history deserved their wits about them, deserved to exist eternally without a fear of the end. To give this gift without sacrifice to all was to consign all of existence to a lack of excellence or meaning, simply an infinite parade of wastrels and losers and the few worthy holding them upon their backs.
This hate manifested in dreadful fashion, in brutal clashes of bitter foes and ancient enemies. Even those who were not born of the Dragon-Break, that great sundering of the Dragons' aspirations, knew that this was a foe who would undo their glories, undo their raison d'ete, and as such had to be destroyed.
The forces of Life were outnumbered, hideously so, but they had the advantage of being the defenders, fighting next to endless fortifications and support structures designed to support their way of war in the face of a deathless tide. They would not join the ranks of the dead without a fight, and they would never sell their lives cheaply.
Short lived pinpricks of new starlight dotted the skies as dueling fleets slammed into each other, seeking to, without reservation, kill and destroy the other and buy the time needed for desperately required reinforcements to turn the tide. They knew full well that this was not the sort o war fought with quarter given or taken, merely a race to not be the first to all in a contest of bludgeoning each other in the face. But the Tien w ere not alone.
Votann Crush-Moons struck with gravitic cannons that crushed fleets, worlds, and ships into denser and heavier elements, many undying craft caught in their orbits drawn down into obliterating gravity wells, spiralling down the proverbial drain of centrifugal force and dilating time. The Kyn were masters of large vessels, they built them not merely as capstones, but as standard issue.
A Thunderworld, nearly twenty-five thousand kilometres in diameter, loomed with world-darkening bulk over one of the ongoing battles, the pinpricks of light from ongoing void engagements around it and its own weapons being overshadowed in might by the titanic Adrathic Ragnarok cannon. Craft caught in its iridescent brilliance had the bonds of matter and energy down to the subatomic level severed, brief afterimages being the sole trace of their presence. But still the dead came, emboldened by the loss of both life and unlife as they descended as the rains of the monsoon.
The relief fleets would often enter into already ongoing battles, adding their own frenzied violence to the already busy chorus of weapons traversing the voids of thousands of star systems in battles large and small. Colossal Leviathans and Megacapittals pummelled and barraged each other with everything they had while tiny sloops and strike craft in their shadows raced and grappled with one another.
Clever ploys by dedicated commanders, brave deeds and valiant heroism at the individual and army scale, determined pushes by little squads or vast hordes. All of these things and more contributed to the little victories that were the foundation of all great triumphs.
Many of these clashes were to bolster the crews of the defence flotillas fighting indoor wars against swarms of boarders as the slain fell only to rise again in more dreadful aspect. Kroot Breacher teams making use of heavier armour, with strong bodies and powerful Pulse Blasters to spray packets of charged particles down hallways crawling with horrors.
Gun Drones and turrets joined the fusillades upon the intruders swarming into the clean halls of the Tau fleets, bones, rotting flesh, and spectral horror coming apart in disciplined volleys as the bonds of brotherhood helped to push back against supernatural terror, but the dead were relentless. Dhar could flow into mangled bodies and ash and grow dreadful forms anew, investing power into more powerful and awful forms able to take greater punishment.
The Tau deployed their close combat drones, recognising that many foes were simply too durable and too fast and too numerous to prevent melee in its totality, but these machines could help delay it; designed in the style of the obsolete XV15 stealth suits, though somewhat enlarged, with subtly less Taunoid proportions, making use of hardened boarding shields patterned off of shield drones, shoulder-mounted pulse pistols, and impact clubs, electrospears, and vibro-blades.
They dropped their slab shields into interlocked positions to protect the cadres behind them, those with spears presenting them in porcupine formation to offer multiple forms of sharp death into anything that crossed into their reach while anti-grenade drones hovered to shoot down anything that would be lobbed at them.
With this shield, fire warriors and kroot could calmly fire their weapons in safety, without a fear of the foe tearing into them. At least, not at first. The Undead were not stupid, and they released the rapidly regenerating crypt horrors into the fray, vampire blood fed ghouls clad in armour plate and given simple emitters to absorb more fire while swinging around heavy mauls and implanted claws.
Some would have whole limbs blasted off by high charge plasma rifles and ion weapons only to regrow them in moments, others soaking up high yield missile pod fire like rain, staggering but never stopping while lesser ghouls and ghoulified beasts scrambled forwards around them; billowing clouds of magic invigorating them with greater regenerative power.
Other times it congealed into deadly spells, purple suns and winds of death clearing away whole lines of defenders whose kroot and nicassar auxiliaries were not up to the task of counterspelling such raw arcane might. Others were withered, enervated by powers they did not truly understand with their life's essence feeding into the ghoulish horde and the more elite undead that accompanied them.
Of course, the solution was simple. XK-9 battlesuits fitted with samples of a strange blackstone found to be able to repel the warp after a treatment process gained from examinations of the battlefields of Kronus and Kaurava and squads of Blank Kroots would move into the fray, the undead recoiling from their presence as if wounded by it, those whose reserves of dark magic were not enough to sustain them when cut off from the ether crumbling away.
It was not an elegant solution, and the undead knew how to deal with such methods, but it was better than nothing, and it saved more than a few Tau and Kroot craft swarming with corpses.
Whereas the Tau did not wholly trust the Collective, the relation between the two was not as historically acerbic as the Collective's was with the Imperium, there was more effort to share intelligence, to communicate with each other and deal with the onslaught of corpses, moving in such a way as to maximise their coverage and the effect of their fortifications.
Far less hang-ups about letting troops from one navy or the other counter-board beleaguered ships, stations, and planetcraft to reinforce those in trouble, such as those targeted by the Night Lords or the Mortificers or any of the other space marines bearing bat wings and bone like structures upon their armour and helmet to announce their allegiance to the powers of undeath.
The Tau had lagged behind on the improvement of the body, but raw firepower would often help in trying to push back the elite of the living dead. Terminators with boarding shields were extremely difficult to shift, with even plasma rifles glancing off their various defences. The undead legions made the heaviest usage of the old gear and the old ways, fighting the most like the great crusade legions of the past, cataphractii pattern suits wading into the thicket with combibolters raging.
The Tau did not have many good ways to deal with such things in boarding combat where they were designed to excel, where space marines in general dominated over most foes for their concentration of force and ability to simply shrug off anything that most counterboarders would think to carry. They did not need to have good answers, as the Asahikijin would provide; with their Kami-Bushin soulbound to their spirit beings and backed by their summoned Yosei could step into the ray, ready for the frenzied melee with their wave-force blades and accelerator kanbos or with the weapons fire of arm cannons and chest emitters.
The Barghesi's Carnage-Ships, brute things built for toughness and speed to come to brutal grips with their foes, slammed into the hulls of many of their enemies with titanic impacts that left glowing radiation ghosts of heat in the void.
Six metre tall and eight-limbed warrior beasts neither metal nor mineral nor fleshy roared through beaked and fanged jaws and mandibles, the central four grasper limbs clutching ranged weapons that demanded more precision while huge, scythe clawed hands that knuckle-galloped into the ray swung either gauntleted blows or deadly weapons.
In their battle-haze they felt no fear, no pain, no hesitation to exert themselves and put their adaptation and regeneration and raw, unrelenting strength to the test, finding themselves pitted against the endless tide of the corpse-creatures thrown their way and the most blood hungry and vicious vampires and martial-liche like Strygs that the dead host has to offer. Depth Guard wielding enchanted power axes or halberds darted with speed to rival Eldar, seeking to drink from the piping hot blood of the carnage legion and its smaller Puck and Grindylow auxiliaries.
Rampaging Vargheists whose wounds stitched as fast as they could be made, faster still when exposed to blood, ripped and clawed, and tore with blows augmented by evil magics, undead bodies cold and unbreathing while their teeth sank into yielding tissue. But the deployment of the Remans' blanks made even these creatures scramble, pained by the very presence of these negative auras within the warp.
The Kyn of the Leagues of Votann under T'au employ, already dim of spirit, hardly noticed, RAM shields and sturdy terminator tough Exosuits wielded by the elite guards of their society, whether Clone or Fleshkyn, and absorbed walls of fire without noticing. Their shorter height allowed for the Blank Legionaries, enhanced to the practical limits of what Reman Science could allow for and garbed in expensive, heavy power suits; to lay their Baretta longarms above the kyn, firing with drilled precision.
The Remans, fond of the elegant simplicity of laser weapons, honed theirs to a fine edge, with powerful x-ray beams searing into armoured targets after Kyn Volkanite weapons wore down shields. While these Remans and Kyn were not of the same mercenary bands, it is not uncommon in this dark future for an army to hire many of differing traditions, and thus also not uncommon for them to run into each other. This sort of cooperative combat was an old hat, and many of the Remans spoke not just Tileaca but also Kynmael, allowing for quick, effective communications.
And of course, the Asahikijin Florallantes were beings of life, regenerating rapidly with stem and petal, seed bullets and lightning joined by thermobaric pollen, corrosive acid, bioplasma, and chlorophyllic light beams to scourge through the undead and their dregs. Primarily relying on their plantcraft, these hive-minded creatures hardened themselves to the dread produced by the undead, while radiating the power of Ghyran and potent biomancy to heal and take care of those they fought alongside.
The undead had the sheer weight of numbers on their side, but the promise of reinforcements was enough to maintain the spirits of the northern coalition's fleets while the unliving descended upon them in greater and greater numbers. Some even accelerating to a hair's breadth under light speed to try and push through the escorts around the Flame Cyclone that the Dead knew in their warrior's hearts was the flagship of the Tien Armadas.
At once point nine of them, Dominion class Imperial Dreadnoughts repurposed from the Imperial Navy, broke through the aegis screens of the Vermillion Guard's escort fleet, but it was found that they were largely allowed to because it hardly mattered.
Impacts at a fraction under light speed were registered by the shielding monitors of the Flame Cyclone and then promptly ignored as the impacted shields were cycled down and fresh layers brought up even as impacts bright enough to outshine the star they were fighting near plumed against its hide.
Warp cores collapsed, but the gellar field of the vessel shone brighter and dispersed the attempted suicide bombs.
Such durability was well beyond the capabilities of most of the navy's megacapitals, even those of the dragonkin banners; but this was a carefully constructed, near irreplaceable gift repurposed from the distant past given to a favoured son. A relic from a time when the dragon soul was omnipresent, not a prize to attain, before Falamaug and Ancalamat and their ilk tore what the drakes had built asundner.
It was also beyond what the Tau, Barghesi, Remans, or Kroot could expect, to the point that many of them flocked within its outer layers of long-range shielding like remoras around a larger fish to seek additional protection. And at its tremendous size, comparable to small craftworlds at a length comparable to the distance between the old Portuguese Shore to the rural mountains, it, or rather she, could let a great many conventional capital and line ships shelter in her shadow.
By remaining in its gravity, they could get a free ride as the monstrous craft sailed through the emptiness, ready to engage with a massive Necrocollegia, nothing less than a tectonic plate so infested with dark magic by the insidious machines, warpstone, and blasphemous constructs on it that it could simply be lifted off of the dead world they had been created upon as an insidious sort of megacapital.
The wings of the Flame Cyclone moved, shifted so that her membranes could be used to intercept incoming shots while augmenting the firepower of the blasts that would go through them from the correct side, Volkite batteries tearing through the emptiness of space to stab into the ominous void fields of the Necrocollegia. The cuttlefish like Cyreaper craft hanging in its orbit gleaming with the afterglow of intense weapons fire before EMP Pulsar cannons rocked into the undead vessel's shielding.
They would grapple like this, bulls locking horns, but the Flame Cyclone was the stronger ship, the more advanced and sophisticated, the better made and more carefully designed and fitted with a higher grade of materiel. Holes in the enemy's shielding would eventually open after hours of back and forth bombardment, a million brighter stars filling the emptiness between them as they dueled until there were openings at last.
As if they had sensed this eventuality presciently, pop up anti-armour turrets took aim at the regions where the shielding was weakened, letting the heat lance batteries and plasma-turrets open fire, Tachyon Ballistae picking their targets and striking with might to run a world through. A riot of colours to make a billion, billion paintings when their paint mingled with the spite of her foe.
Her own barriers shook and shuddered, rocked by Gigacannons firing shells the size of cities, missile racks releasing thermonuclear hate with a voice to scour worlds to the mantle, death lances with purple energy tainted by corrupt death winds to invoke the idea of the end upon those it struck. A planet put between the two's broadside would have been reduced to vapour and ash, a star would have plumed its radioactive blood into the void from the violence of the two giants.
But Zhu Fang was stronger than this College of Dark Arts. She was a fighter, a champion, though her mind was relatively young, shaped as she was to bond with her code-father, she was in an ancient body that had seen wars to put this to shame, and the wrath of dragon magic was already weakening the undead colossus' sorceries binding it together.
With her shields still up, she struck fatal wounds, tearing the guts out of reactors and ammo supplies, her teeth sinking into a hated foe with a memory of the Lichedragons' ruination from a prior age burning in her computerised heart. This college of evil deeds and foul spells and its countless bound souls came apart under the bombardments over the course of days and the escort fleet taking every step needed to minimise the boarding parties of the dead.
There was no such thing as a quick void battle, barring cases of incredible mismatch in capabilities, and even with these relic flagships it was no quick matter. Especially against such a monster, such a profane thing polluting Zhu Fang's optics with its presence and the howling of so many damned souls around it. But she was winning, country sized masses of the other craft blasted off as it withered beneath her voice.
But she did not stop just when it ceased to move, she did not stop when it stopped shooting back, she kept on firing until at last, the undead craft came apart into small pieces. Nothing was to be left to reanimate later, not to harm the rest of her fleet and her little siblings, not to bother anyone else. She would destroy this thing in a titandeath of apocalyptic impacts and a volley of worldbreaker torpedoes that erupted with the fury of new suns and cast the remains of the vessel into the scattered stellar winds.
All that was left was a finely distributed debris belt whose remains were to be exorcised and condemned to the matter furnaces of the harvester ships lest they be reanimated; the behemothic flagship humming in satisfaction at the sight of the ruination of her foe. She was satisfied with this, especially after an approving word from Xiang, though she looked at the reports of the Solar Bow's victory and a sigh rattled through her bones. She could not let him outpace her or her siblings in kills. Not against the unliving.
Not when they were, currently, more than holding their own, scoring the little wins of groups that compounded and cascaded into collective triumphs of the whole. The Undead were losing territory here and there. Worlds were being saved, campaigns were being won, every little hill taken would be one step closer to cleansing this place.
...
The beleaguered battlefields saw waves of reinforcements descending from the heavens to try and counter the onslaught of the Dead pouring upon their fortifications like rain and smashing into them like the tides. Whether they were Republican or were Necro-Imperium, Devils called forth from the Ether to haunt the materium, Mechanicus-Mortis, Dhar Machines, and/or Undead Xenos mercenaries they would all have to be held back.
Battlesuits descended into the fire and into the fray, where they were met with roiling seas of anything that could be considered to have once ceased living or could be animated by the energies that great Nagash showed the way to unlock.
The "anomalous locomotion" of the undead still baffled the Tau, but they did understand to shoot the cadaverous waves and that the longer the undead lingered upon a battlefield, the more they would taint it with their presence.
The Tau were methodical, precise, fighting airland battles according to principles of full spectrum dominance. Of course, communications were not so easy to stop when their experiments with defences against the Empyrean and other such realms were still so new, and the dead defied many notions of supply and lines of reinforcement. These things were true, but they could still seek to win air superiority and put pressure on what they understood to be crucial servers of the network.
The Tien dropped their themonuclear warheads in blistering, wide-area barrages best described as atomic carpet bombing with precision weapons, unconcerned with the radiation output when they could simply clean it up later.
The bombardment would have to die down of course, the unliving were already countering it, but it was needed to lear the road for the landers, all clad in heavy, shielded suits while radiotrophic warheads were used to establish safer long term base areas.
The Asahikijin brought the sun's wrath with them, burning, scalding Hysh voicing disapproval of the Undead's existence with the light of dawn that revealed the truth of the falseness of their existence to set them free.
Their transforming craft shifted from aerial to land combat modes or from one form of combatant to another while their teleporters and nanites flooded plains, cities, forests, seas, mountains and more with soldiers ready to fight and die.
The Asahikijin also remembered the Dragon-Break, when the followers of the Lichedragons returned from a past defeat and exile to spread their poison into the hearts of reactionaries and cast their plans for moulding the universe of the Age of Strife into calamity.
They and their Yokai and Yosei and Machines fought with daemon-strength to carve out paths through the shambling masses, always seeking to keep up the momentum. To slow down was death, to strike was to win, that was their mantra and the command of the councils of generals.
The Kroot moved their kindred with predatory grace and skill, their bioshaping, guided evolution, and careful usage of technology where they deemed it needed to augment their natural vitality and vigour. From the Ogors they had consumed an ability to allow them to eat even tainted things and resist that taint, from the Trogs they had gained powers of regeneration and healing, and such were vital gifts, allowing the Kroot to predate on those who thought themselves predators of all life.
Often vampires looking for blood to feast on would find themselves stalked, hunted, and slain by the Kroot and themselves; eaten to pass on that talent for magic and other strengths unto the kindred and their warbeasts. Though they were careful to only consume in moderation, for the poison of Gmork was strong in the undead even if the Ogors gifted them with resistance.
Elsewhere the Kroot, always focused on a greater, intergenerational picture, would gather shamans in rituals to reclaim some of the tainted ground from the touch of undeath.
From the actions of the smallest fireteams seeking to secure critical objectives in the alleyways of dead cities in little kill team actions fought between mere handfuls of people to the swirling tides of armies that stretch from horizon to horizon across ring worlds with numbers that old Earth would only have ever had to think about in the context of questions such as "how many grains of sand are in the world's great deserts and beaches?" every act had some significance.
Many would pour into the desperate defences of fortress and cities being showered by the never-ending artillery of the living dead in a million different formats.
Republic original creations such as the Death-Shriek missile erected and fired from heavy-bodied trucks or the Harrier Launcher that carried upon it; remotely controlled aircraft that would bomb their foes with hateful persistence and deadly effect joined in song with the works of others in the lines of the living dead.
Basilisk type Earthshaker cannons brought by Apostate Imperials fired in ceaseless, untiring volleys as autoloaders and undead crew worked in tandem to bring a rain of steel, Scylla pattern MRLS tracks made the "Republican orchestra" of howling, infernal shrieks in bombardments of apocalyptic scale,
Some of the most feared forces of the enemy were the Undead-aligned Space marines. The Undead were creatures of stasis and cold, unchanging essence backed by the industry of countless unliving hands and unforgetting minds. Those who bore the colours of their legions fought much in the way they did in the crusade, the heresy, and the apostasy.
Morbus pattern heavy bombards and Scorpus pattern Whirlwinds brought the sky raining upon their foes faced with the crush of Mastadons and Typhon Pattern siege tanks brought forward to break the infamously sturdy fortifications of the Tien, Leviathan Dreadnoughts and Knights joining in the initial scrum of the breach with gleeful malice.
Breacher Siege Squads and Terminators bearing the colours of the Mortificers, Black, Purple, and bone white; stepped out of their transports once Melta Siege arrays had bored their way through the walls.
At the same moment, Necromancers reanimating swarms of the lesser dead to keep bastions occupied and to let the marines do their work, while astartes bearing other colours made their own attacks.
They were legion and their names were reviled across history, the Night Lords, the Midnight, Crimson, and Olive Poisoned Claws, and the eerily white, pale turquoise, ghostly jade War Wraiths to name the worst of the worst.
Many with bat-winged helmets much in the same way that the chaos space marines most often wore horns upon theirs, and each a terror to face for the defenders brought out to stop them.
Those who hoped they would be few in number were met with their dark surprises, for each of their transports carried bones and mortal gear in compartments that could reanimate and assemble into into ranks of skeleton soldiers with a simple casting of Dhar; providing them with readymade auxiliaries.
Flayed skin became horrid creatures such as skin kites or animate husks, and shrieking ghosts kept inside the hulls of their craft poured out at the first sign of release. A tide of horrible things reflective of countless agonised means of passing from the mortal coil with business unfinished and honour unremembered.
All, paired with the storm of melta, volkite, plasma, flamer, rad, graviton, and explosive fire used to help clear the way, allowed them to make their initial breaches with cold, practiced efficiency while their transports slowly backed off to allow the undying horde to pour inside the breaches like water through cracks in a dam.
Many went as far as to use Phosphex, knowing full well that even in the grim darkness of the far future there were certain boundaries nobody crossed, with this sentient radioactive self-perpetuating corrosive hellfire being quite close to the top of that list
Even more, the undead were not the sole forces of death, nor were their living and mutate servants. Devils, often called the Iyrin, the Psychopomps, the Reapers, or often just "Dybbuk" in reference to a long faded belief system's spirits of the unborn, as some called them, had crawled into the materium en masse. Each was a twisted thing of contorted and wicked narrative woven into a shape that reflected ways to die.
Some of the most feared were Astradybbuks reflective of death by the reservation of the soul wormed their way into the materium, loathsome features vaguely reminiscent of some hideous deep sea predator that learned to walk.
Lanky things with tails that seemed to stretch forever and serpentine necks, walking and clawing with multijointed limbs twice space marine height ark colours with occasional pulses of brighter powers beneath transluscent skin and rows of teeth all like viper fangs.
Creatures whose very touch and bite or the black radiance of their devilfire breathed from open maws drained one's soul, weakening one's character and being until they dropped as empty husks damned to rise again as hollows.
Others took from other aspects, forms catered to specific roles, shapes derived off of sins or tyrannies or other concepts, all bound together in the concept of afterlives and the fate that awaited the petitioners consigned to them.
The Exorcists were not merely helpful, but a necessity. To purge this empyreal evil that looked into the eyes of mortal and drank in their belief, their stories, their perception, they had to be uprooted root and beach, and with the power of Hysh they could be.
...
It is common Tau Propaganda to show Tigersharks as being able to take down Titans and that anyone who builds large ground combatants is simply mentally deficient and primitive.
In truth, a twenty-metre bomber is simply incapable of mounting weapons to even bother six hundred metre slabs of adamantium and ceramite such as an Undead tainted Warlord Titan with or without its shields. Rather, the AX-10 is used for anti-tank duties, taking on smaller foes that weapons such as heavy railguns are actually capable of damaging. The Manta, similarly, is simply too small and too undergunnned to threaten true battle titans and megatanks, these are things left to monsters of the Tau's own making.
The boast that they were too intelligent to engage in silly antics such as building colossi was at first born of assuaging citizens concerned that the Tau did not have any of their own, before quietly building their own once the technology for it was available. The Eldar and Necrons of course, both built such monstrosities long before the Imperium crawled out of the primordial ooze, as hard to believe as it may be, there were tremendous practicalities to such machines.
The warp cherished such monuments to a culture's form in giant form, and blessed it with the flow of narrative and contrivance, and Adamantium grew exponentially stronger in larger and larger amounts. Large combatants made of Adamantium, freed from the heavy burden of superluminal transportation, were largely impervious to anything besides their own kin and could smite whole armies from the field in moments. If one did not have a war engine of their own, they were facing long odds at best, certain doom at worst.
So they had their own monsters, The Supremacy Battlesuit,
the Mako,
the Intruder, and the
shadow stalker to name but a few. And they would need them all against the tide of horror that crawled upon a million worlds and a billion battlefields. Not merely the Necro-Mechannicus' titans, but original designs of the legions of the dead and the creations of powers aligned with Death, such as Xenarch Apocalypse Thunderheads whose massive size defied sense itself, radiant Behemoths more than thirty kilometres tall that clambered forward on eight legs while eight arms bore weapons that brought what the name entailed.
Things that were towed into battle by the dead fleets and simply landed upon the battlefield by using the manipulations of mass and gravity that allowed them to walk planetary surfaces without immediately cracking tectonic plates so that their escorts could fight in their shadow. Things that simply watching them move at all could produce an uncanny sense of dissonance as the mind rebelled at the idea of things larger than mountains walking being real when in the frame of reference of the horizon ahead.
Beneath their legs and in the shadow of enormous tracks and wheels and crawling spidery limbs, the engines of war battled with one another in a vicious melee of armour and monstrosity. Qilin Tanks with double barrels barked into the masses of undead machines, Zhu Rongs crushed forwards, the Plasma Cutters of Jishins illuminating the dusty battlefields while the scream of Tau Railguns was met with the thunder of battle cannons and spectral blasters.
Battlesuits and Warwalkers in the shadow of colossi ripped and tore at one another, animate Dreadnought Chassis punching their way through vehicles and men alike, engaged with Celestial Autogiants while the streaks of colour of weapons fire from differing sides cut through the billowing dust storms.
Undead foot soldiers and Death Cultists advanced from one position of cover to the next, firing autoguns less affected by the dust than their laser based counterparts. At the same time, mass-driver rifles and pulse weapons retaliated in kind, Xenarch electrical attacks malevolently curling out and striking into foes at whim. At the same time, EMP warheads erupted to bring lesser undead machines to a halt. This was quite simply put, a vulgar brawl won by who could accrue the most little triumphs whether through raw power or cleverness.
The commitment of the Vermillion Dragon Guard and Zhu Xiang to the frontlines was hoped to push the balance with his weight upon the skeins of fate and the power of his auras and quick thinking and the sledgehammer of his personal guard and the dragonkin banner sworn to him. Especially with the word that an Undead Great Dragon was in the ranks of the commandership of the unliving, and with how top heavy undead leadership is, Zhu Xiang had half a mind to simply storm his way to his foe and kill them.
The Living also had another race up their sleeve a being whose very nature was a bane to the unliving, whose presence supercharged the hysh being used to scour their presence ad reduce the unliving to simply inanimate corpses. Yamamoto Taiyoko, Solar Dragon Princess, Onmyoui Grandmistress, champion of Hysh, bane to the impure.
(To be continued)
