Post by EmperorMyric on Dec 16, 2017 19:29:14 GMT
“Sweat saves blood.”
--Erwin Rommel
--oOo--
While they would hate to admit it (and furthermore would have been aghast at the notion of someone recognizing them with enough detail to point the matter out) the Ascendancy was, in its own way, a creature of habit. This is of course taking a few liberties to say so, for the Ascendancy, if it was a creature, was a strange one at that. They were habits of necessity, logical habits, the same way a fox habitually avoids the dogs and the farmer’s gun and skulks about in the shadows en route to the henhouse. Without such habits, the fox is little more than target practice and dog fodder; with them, it is an unwelcome marauder.
So the fox moves carefully.
Following the commencement of the Dark City Imperium’s offensive into the Immortal Empire, Prime Admiral Dorin had done two things of note. First and foremost, she had at long last mobilized the 1300 ships under her immediate command and sent them out from the safety of their hidden emplacements along the Immortal Empire’s borders, away from the immediate area of conflict. Conveniently, this kept the fleet free from the detrimental effects being propagated by the SSC, but the very fact that they were attempting to interfere in the Ascendancy’s machinations was an unsettling point in Dorin’s mind. A response was clearly merited; a line had been crossed, and something must be done.
This lead to the second decision of note, being the attempting of non-violent contact with the SSC. This was accomplished quite carefully, for Dorin was working with an unusual preconception: anything could happen. Under most circumstances, the Ascendancy was quite confident of outcomes, and reasonably so; with their advanced readings of the timeline, they were well advised and inscrutable in their perceptions; their wisdom might be debatable, but their vision was precise, and unerring.
However unerring it was, there was one caveat though: a temporally active agent cannot so easily read the timeline of another temporally active agent. At this juncture, given the temporal technologies apparently wielded by the SSC, she ran on the side of caution in presuming that the SSC’s technological capabilities were not to be underestimated. Yet equally in this was the quiet understanding that either way, Dorin won; if the SSC could be negotiated with, Dorin would prove herself an apt leader capable of dealing with risks; and if the SSC proved unwavering in their opposition to an enemy whose name eluded them, Dorin could reaffirm the wisdom of the Ascendancy’s policy of remaining unknown to the universe at large, and thus begin with more confidence prosecuting manuevers with the ultimate end of turning the soil.
Even if the contact went bad complications would be minimal, in part due to the SSC’s own temporally detrimental emissions: no timeline alterations could be made from within the region effected by the field. This gave an additional layer of security not just to the SSC, but to the Ascendancy; this meant that just as much as the Ascendancy was forced to “play it simple” with the SSC, it also meant that what happed beyond the effects of the field would hold dominance. In short, it was thus: if the diplomats succeeded, the SSC would be absolved of its participation in the Altman Incident, and would not become a target of the Ascendancy’s manipulations in its ongoing quiet war with the Temporians. If it failed, the entire diplomatic mission would be temporally rescinded from outside the area of effect, so that the Ascendancy would now potentially have an understanding of the motivations of their counterparts in the SSC, and the SSC would still be none the wiser to the Ascendancy‘s nature or existence. Even if they were a fully temporally active power, they could not transmit a signal out from beyond that field that would not be subject to the dominating influences of the greater timeline beyond them.
Either way, Dorin would win back the credibility that had been lost with the Altman Incident.
--oOo--
So thirteen hundred ships moved silently out from the Immortal Empire. They were granted no second looks by the numerous Dark City vessels which passed them on their way to worlds controlled by the Immortal Empire; indeed, they didn’t grant them a first look either. They were utterly unseen, and they were exceedingly mobile.
Of these thirteen hundred ships, one was assigned the formality of making contact with the Sciastenos Centum: an Ehm’Beh class enforcer called the Patron of Sorrows. She was dispatched silently, traveled unseen and without undue communications of any sort, reached her ultimate destination without any noteworthy complications.
The doctors (or, as the Ascendancy called them, preservers) had come up with what was to them an ingenious countermeasure for the omnipresent effects of the SSC’s emissions: medication. Medicine of any sort was a truly backwards notion to the Ascendancy; they had engineered themselves to such a degree that they incorporated the very diseases themselves at a limited genetic level into their own immune system, giving things like the common cold or ebola or whatever viral or bacterial ailment you care to propose very little traction with their earthly forms. As such, medicine was antiquated to them, and hardly resorted to.
Yet the SSC’s technique was hardly medicinal; indeed, it was toying with the very nature of time itself. But with strange efficiency, the preservers had gone back in their books, back to the ancient days of timelines which had been overwritten so many times since then, and realized that, ultimately, this was more akin to a matter of seasickness or space sickness than anything else. What really needed to be done here was to suppress the gut, as it were; the crew of the Patron of Sorrows were a bit less pleasant on this account, and perhaps a bit paler, but they could function significantly better with the drug than without it.
This leaves one thousand, two hundred and ninety nine ships un-accounted for, which leads back to the story of the fox: the Ascendancy crept forward carefully, and relied on old habits.
The Dark City Imperium was a decent distance away from the Immortal Empire, and with any prolonged military action there came a requirement for provisions. Foodstuffs and fuels were not predominant, but there was a constant stream of to and fro traffic; ammunition and military provisions coming in, and returning came the wounded and the crippled and those in no position to resist. Here the Ascendancy began to act on habit, for it was much like what they had done at Ambrosius, but with two key differences.
At Ambrosius (and immediately afterwards), the Ascendancy had been engaging the stragglers; lone vessels limping home and hardly fit to engage in combat. They had eschewed engaging targets that could potentially escape and give news of unseen adversaries, but the situation had changed. It was time, in Dorin’s eyes, that they began doing what the Ascendancy do best: intervening.
In deep space, the FSEMCEs would be able to, if and when the opportunity presented themselves, annihilate entire convoys so fast that souls would be stripped of their passions mid blink. Their adversaries would be engaged differently as well; while Irrus had opted to creep up to nearly point blank range on the Altman, the Ascendancy saw no need for discretion now. They would engage from long range, and they would be attacking the healthy with just as much fervour as they would the ill. This was the first difference.
The second difference was organization. At Ambrosius, the attacks had been more akin to targets of opportunity than coordinated operations; pairs of Ehm’Behs were scouring the retreating courses of the much abused attackers. In fairness, the Ascendancy could have done much more there, but for the time being Dorin was content to nip at the heels as opposed to make proper stabs and slices.
These attitudes had changed with the offensive into the Immortal Empire. Thus Dorin came to deploy two hundred ships specifically for the purposes of hit and run operations on the supply lines leading to and from the front lines; well distant from the area effected by the SSC, they would begin starving the attackers out, and thus put the Immortal Empire in a better position to drive them back into the cold black void they had so eagerly charged from.
They would be traveling in packs of four, as this had become the customary arrangement for small scale operations by the Ascendancy; three Ehm’Behs would escort a single Chaw’Sah’Voh, and like wolfpacks they began to roam the void. Thus it came to pass that a fifty tiny fleets, undetected and undeterred by the ever-present consideration of the possibility of at last encountering the Temporians, began to make their presence felt. Sometimes they worked in collaboration with other fleets; other times they would strike alone, and then retreat unseen into the dark, leaving death behind them.
This left one thousand and ninety nine ships unaccounted for.
--Erwin Rommel
--oOo--
While they would hate to admit it (and furthermore would have been aghast at the notion of someone recognizing them with enough detail to point the matter out) the Ascendancy was, in its own way, a creature of habit. This is of course taking a few liberties to say so, for the Ascendancy, if it was a creature, was a strange one at that. They were habits of necessity, logical habits, the same way a fox habitually avoids the dogs and the farmer’s gun and skulks about in the shadows en route to the henhouse. Without such habits, the fox is little more than target practice and dog fodder; with them, it is an unwelcome marauder.
So the fox moves carefully.
Following the commencement of the Dark City Imperium’s offensive into the Immortal Empire, Prime Admiral Dorin had done two things of note. First and foremost, she had at long last mobilized the 1300 ships under her immediate command and sent them out from the safety of their hidden emplacements along the Immortal Empire’s borders, away from the immediate area of conflict. Conveniently, this kept the fleet free from the detrimental effects being propagated by the SSC, but the very fact that they were attempting to interfere in the Ascendancy’s machinations was an unsettling point in Dorin’s mind. A response was clearly merited; a line had been crossed, and something must be done.
This lead to the second decision of note, being the attempting of non-violent contact with the SSC. This was accomplished quite carefully, for Dorin was working with an unusual preconception: anything could happen. Under most circumstances, the Ascendancy was quite confident of outcomes, and reasonably so; with their advanced readings of the timeline, they were well advised and inscrutable in their perceptions; their wisdom might be debatable, but their vision was precise, and unerring.
However unerring it was, there was one caveat though: a temporally active agent cannot so easily read the timeline of another temporally active agent. At this juncture, given the temporal technologies apparently wielded by the SSC, she ran on the side of caution in presuming that the SSC’s technological capabilities were not to be underestimated. Yet equally in this was the quiet understanding that either way, Dorin won; if the SSC could be negotiated with, Dorin would prove herself an apt leader capable of dealing with risks; and if the SSC proved unwavering in their opposition to an enemy whose name eluded them, Dorin could reaffirm the wisdom of the Ascendancy’s policy of remaining unknown to the universe at large, and thus begin with more confidence prosecuting manuevers with the ultimate end of turning the soil.
Even if the contact went bad complications would be minimal, in part due to the SSC’s own temporally detrimental emissions: no timeline alterations could be made from within the region effected by the field. This gave an additional layer of security not just to the SSC, but to the Ascendancy; this meant that just as much as the Ascendancy was forced to “play it simple” with the SSC, it also meant that what happed beyond the effects of the field would hold dominance. In short, it was thus: if the diplomats succeeded, the SSC would be absolved of its participation in the Altman Incident, and would not become a target of the Ascendancy’s manipulations in its ongoing quiet war with the Temporians. If it failed, the entire diplomatic mission would be temporally rescinded from outside the area of effect, so that the Ascendancy would now potentially have an understanding of the motivations of their counterparts in the SSC, and the SSC would still be none the wiser to the Ascendancy‘s nature or existence. Even if they were a fully temporally active power, they could not transmit a signal out from beyond that field that would not be subject to the dominating influences of the greater timeline beyond them.
Either way, Dorin would win back the credibility that had been lost with the Altman Incident.
--oOo--
So thirteen hundred ships moved silently out from the Immortal Empire. They were granted no second looks by the numerous Dark City vessels which passed them on their way to worlds controlled by the Immortal Empire; indeed, they didn’t grant them a first look either. They were utterly unseen, and they were exceedingly mobile.
Of these thirteen hundred ships, one was assigned the formality of making contact with the Sciastenos Centum: an Ehm’Beh class enforcer called the Patron of Sorrows. She was dispatched silently, traveled unseen and without undue communications of any sort, reached her ultimate destination without any noteworthy complications.
The doctors (or, as the Ascendancy called them, preservers) had come up with what was to them an ingenious countermeasure for the omnipresent effects of the SSC’s emissions: medication. Medicine of any sort was a truly backwards notion to the Ascendancy; they had engineered themselves to such a degree that they incorporated the very diseases themselves at a limited genetic level into their own immune system, giving things like the common cold or ebola or whatever viral or bacterial ailment you care to propose very little traction with their earthly forms. As such, medicine was antiquated to them, and hardly resorted to.
Yet the SSC’s technique was hardly medicinal; indeed, it was toying with the very nature of time itself. But with strange efficiency, the preservers had gone back in their books, back to the ancient days of timelines which had been overwritten so many times since then, and realized that, ultimately, this was more akin to a matter of seasickness or space sickness than anything else. What really needed to be done here was to suppress the gut, as it were; the crew of the Patron of Sorrows were a bit less pleasant on this account, and perhaps a bit paler, but they could function significantly better with the drug than without it.
This leaves one thousand, two hundred and ninety nine ships un-accounted for, which leads back to the story of the fox: the Ascendancy crept forward carefully, and relied on old habits.
The Dark City Imperium was a decent distance away from the Immortal Empire, and with any prolonged military action there came a requirement for provisions. Foodstuffs and fuels were not predominant, but there was a constant stream of to and fro traffic; ammunition and military provisions coming in, and returning came the wounded and the crippled and those in no position to resist. Here the Ascendancy began to act on habit, for it was much like what they had done at Ambrosius, but with two key differences.
At Ambrosius (and immediately afterwards), the Ascendancy had been engaging the stragglers; lone vessels limping home and hardly fit to engage in combat. They had eschewed engaging targets that could potentially escape and give news of unseen adversaries, but the situation had changed. It was time, in Dorin’s eyes, that they began doing what the Ascendancy do best: intervening.
In deep space, the FSEMCEs would be able to, if and when the opportunity presented themselves, annihilate entire convoys so fast that souls would be stripped of their passions mid blink. Their adversaries would be engaged differently as well; while Irrus had opted to creep up to nearly point blank range on the Altman, the Ascendancy saw no need for discretion now. They would engage from long range, and they would be attacking the healthy with just as much fervour as they would the ill. This was the first difference.
The second difference was organization. At Ambrosius, the attacks had been more akin to targets of opportunity than coordinated operations; pairs of Ehm’Behs were scouring the retreating courses of the much abused attackers. In fairness, the Ascendancy could have done much more there, but for the time being Dorin was content to nip at the heels as opposed to make proper stabs and slices.
These attitudes had changed with the offensive into the Immortal Empire. Thus Dorin came to deploy two hundred ships specifically for the purposes of hit and run operations on the supply lines leading to and from the front lines; well distant from the area effected by the SSC, they would begin starving the attackers out, and thus put the Immortal Empire in a better position to drive them back into the cold black void they had so eagerly charged from.
They would be traveling in packs of four, as this had become the customary arrangement for small scale operations by the Ascendancy; three Ehm’Behs would escort a single Chaw’Sah’Voh, and like wolfpacks they began to roam the void. Thus it came to pass that a fifty tiny fleets, undetected and undeterred by the ever-present consideration of the possibility of at last encountering the Temporians, began to make their presence felt. Sometimes they worked in collaboration with other fleets; other times they would strike alone, and then retreat unseen into the dark, leaving death behind them.
This left one thousand and ninety nine ships unaccounted for.