Post by EmperorMyric on Dec 16, 2017 18:25:18 GMT
EXCEION
Major Yvon-Rubicon Rourke looked in the mirror with a hesitant twinge of disgust growing within him. He was beginning to putrify, and quite frankly as much as he enjoyed the discomfort it seemed to cause those with working noses around him, it was an unsettling experience to watch his own body decay.
Normally, following death it was traditional for a newly reborn calvera to retreat from society; death was a marvelously thoughtful experience, Rourke thought as he turned away from the truck’s mirror, and it was a poignant time to reflect. Thus, as the months slowly ate away at the most immediately decaying parts of the body, calveras took pilgramages of sorts to set aside time to reflect on mortality-or rather, the lack thereof.
The Major did not have that luxury, and quite privately he found the rejection of that tradition rather amusing. Those immediately under his command certainly acted a bit oddly in his presence on that account; but as he sat down in the field tent-his own office had been destroyed by the Immortal Empire’s bombardment-he again perused the summary report of that devastating event.
Quite simply, it didn’t add up. The Immortal Empire had not grown to its present size through inept leadership; the rapid collapse of the Cerebian Empire at their hands attested to their ferocity in that regard. Yet since their devastating surprise attack on Exceion, there had not been a single noteworthy battle-or, as he corrected himself as battle hardly described what had happened at Exceion-a single noteworthy *attack* since then! There were panics though, reports of fleets approaching systems which lead to preparations for evacuation and rapid mobilization of divisions from the formidable fleet that the Dark City was now assembling in the Exceion system…but no attacks. No follow up actions. Just a stab and then a remarkably effective vanishing act…
Rourke leaned back in his chair and ran his fingers through his hair; an awkwardly large clump of it came out, and with a smirk he stopped and returned to the papers on his desk. The vanishing act was frustrating; they had no confirmed contacts with the fleet that had razed this system since the day the horror had taken place. But why vanish? Why fall back into that massive inky blackness after delivering such an act? It was utterly illogical; and surely would be an act regretted by them in time. Exceion would be avenged.
Outside his tent, it seemed to be snowing; this was actually dust coming down; and it coated everything with its fine granules of suit and rock and soil. Those who still breathed wore inhalers and masks, as it caused some irritation to their lungs; and those that didn’t walked in defiance through the storm; dancing in and out of flurries. In the distance, massive scaffolding towered as the factories were built.
--oOo—
IN THE DISTANT PAST…
Del’s fate was an odd one; he was rare amongst the Heraldic in that his madness, in the end, fully consumed him. Most Heraldics kept their madness at the edges of their minds, like a frame to capture the beautiful sanity that, for most, guided their actions and domains. Yet there was a logic to how madness came upon him. He was a prophet to the people of death. His life-and ultimate demise-paralleled those who had once lived on a far away world and called themselves conquistadors; but with a twist that would not become evident for several thousand years.
At the beginning of his end, as Del in his armour stood amongst the half clothed natives, he felt a strange sense of pity. These people would never know peace; never would they flourish as the other races the Ascendancy toyed with would. They would know greatness and failures, yes, and of greater highs and lows than most. But they would only be known for their brutality…and he was going to guide that to its ultimate culmination.
They stood around him with spears drawn and swords raised, and he looked up at the man with the skull on his head.
“Again I tell you that I was sent by the Divinae as a prophet to you!” Del’s voice was amplified now by his suit, and the shaman showed the slightest tainting of awe in his angered response.
“The Divinae are gods, and you are not of them!” The bones dangling from his headdress rattled in the wind, and for a moment Del was grinning inside his suit. Bones…there would be so many, then and now…
“You must prove yourself, you so-called prophet of the Divinae!” The shaman cried, and the crowd jeered after him. “I challenge you to this; take fifty of the Divanae’s followers as sacrifice, and survive without wound, and I shall hear your words; or your blasphemy shall be silenced before it begins!”
Del saw the future coming; he knew that the moment he agreed, the tribe would immediately attack him. His armour would, of course, defend his life quite effectively; and without another word, he prepared himself. The energy emitters on his arms buzzed to life, and two bladed rifles began materializing upon his arms.
“Accepted.” He answered, as the tribe began to howl. He saw the spears coming before they left their hands, and he thus dodged most of them; as he did so, the rifles in his hands began to fire. The primitive forefathers of what would eventually become the Zellic Empire had no concept of fire arms as yet, but here and now they became intimately familiar with the concept, as bolts seared flesh and dismembered and as Del’s blades disemboweled and slashed and the screams began to rise…
The carnage was unprecedented, even amongst the Zellic. And as spears danced off the Heraldic’s armour, and as the Heraldic danced amongst the men in their bones and as intestines spread out like garland and lace, Del began to remake history, as it had been, as it would be…
--oOo—
ON VASTRA…
Diveth’s team reached the pressure dome above the ruins and slowed to a stop. The structure was breached; metal had been torn out and thrown away like confetti as the dome had depressurized, and as they stood amidst the scrap and litter of personal artifacts, she rapidly recalculated the situation.
The Heraldic are logical creatures, and Diveth was no exception. Thus, her thoughts went like so:
We did not attack Vastra, she reminded herself as she looked into the gloomy hole in the dome. Yet here was signs of damage…an accident perhaps? She discarded the notion immediately. No, not an accident. There was nothing in this part of the dome that would have been capable of detonating at this size; the Ascendancy had procured schematics of the dome prior to now via dealings with unscrupulous traders and other mercenarial figures. Thus, logically, if it wasn’t an accident, it was deliberate, and if it was deliberate and they had not done it…
“Someone seems to have beaten us to the prize.” Diveth murmured as she raised her weapon and gestured towards the opened internal doors beyond it. “Notify the Unnatural Domain that we have potential intruders in the complex, and that there is a high probability that they are temporally active.” The odds of an attack occurring at the same instant as the Ascendancy’s massive action in Exceion were staggeringly close to impossible; and as the Ascendancy had not even disclosed to the Immortal Empire their intents at Vastra, the only logical way that anyone could have found out would have been if they discovered it at a later date…
…and looped back. Diveth’s eyes narrowed at the thought. Perhaps they would bag a timecaster today. She thought of it much as a big game hunter contemplated a tiger; anticipation melded with fear, glory and terror rose as one in her mind, and with a nod to half the team she gestured to the hole again.
“Secure the perimeter. We wouldn’t want it getting out.”
--oOo—
3.5 BILLION YEARS AGO
The system was hardly recognizable now, the ship’s captain thought, as he looked at the cloud of asteroids and gases swirling around those two young stars. The ship’s shielding was enough to hold off the smaller chunks of primordial materials, but they still had to avoid the larger ones; thus his ship-and the others on their silent mission-wove through the belts and clouds like fish through reeds.
They had taken considerable efforts to remain hidden here now; the Nakai at this time were still a strong and mighty empire, and were likely in either a cold war with the Ascendancy or in out and out conflict. This far back, history itself was hard to understand; it doubled and weaved and fact seemed to become fiction in the blink of an eye. They were here to bury things, and as they vanished again into that haze of rubble and gas, they too set upon their task of making history happen as they intended it to.
For this system would eventually be colonized, and it would become a seat of power for a mighty empire and terrifying enemy; it would be glassed, and then it would be rebuilt so much taller and mightier than before as a monument to their defiance of fate…
…and then it would become a tomb.
Major Yvon-Rubicon Rourke looked in the mirror with a hesitant twinge of disgust growing within him. He was beginning to putrify, and quite frankly as much as he enjoyed the discomfort it seemed to cause those with working noses around him, it was an unsettling experience to watch his own body decay.
Normally, following death it was traditional for a newly reborn calvera to retreat from society; death was a marvelously thoughtful experience, Rourke thought as he turned away from the truck’s mirror, and it was a poignant time to reflect. Thus, as the months slowly ate away at the most immediately decaying parts of the body, calveras took pilgramages of sorts to set aside time to reflect on mortality-or rather, the lack thereof.
The Major did not have that luxury, and quite privately he found the rejection of that tradition rather amusing. Those immediately under his command certainly acted a bit oddly in his presence on that account; but as he sat down in the field tent-his own office had been destroyed by the Immortal Empire’s bombardment-he again perused the summary report of that devastating event.
Quite simply, it didn’t add up. The Immortal Empire had not grown to its present size through inept leadership; the rapid collapse of the Cerebian Empire at their hands attested to their ferocity in that regard. Yet since their devastating surprise attack on Exceion, there had not been a single noteworthy battle-or, as he corrected himself as battle hardly described what had happened at Exceion-a single noteworthy *attack* since then! There were panics though, reports of fleets approaching systems which lead to preparations for evacuation and rapid mobilization of divisions from the formidable fleet that the Dark City was now assembling in the Exceion system…but no attacks. No follow up actions. Just a stab and then a remarkably effective vanishing act…
Rourke leaned back in his chair and ran his fingers through his hair; an awkwardly large clump of it came out, and with a smirk he stopped and returned to the papers on his desk. The vanishing act was frustrating; they had no confirmed contacts with the fleet that had razed this system since the day the horror had taken place. But why vanish? Why fall back into that massive inky blackness after delivering such an act? It was utterly illogical; and surely would be an act regretted by them in time. Exceion would be avenged.
Outside his tent, it seemed to be snowing; this was actually dust coming down; and it coated everything with its fine granules of suit and rock and soil. Those who still breathed wore inhalers and masks, as it caused some irritation to their lungs; and those that didn’t walked in defiance through the storm; dancing in and out of flurries. In the distance, massive scaffolding towered as the factories were built.
--oOo—
IN THE DISTANT PAST…
Del’s fate was an odd one; he was rare amongst the Heraldic in that his madness, in the end, fully consumed him. Most Heraldics kept their madness at the edges of their minds, like a frame to capture the beautiful sanity that, for most, guided their actions and domains. Yet there was a logic to how madness came upon him. He was a prophet to the people of death. His life-and ultimate demise-paralleled those who had once lived on a far away world and called themselves conquistadors; but with a twist that would not become evident for several thousand years.
At the beginning of his end, as Del in his armour stood amongst the half clothed natives, he felt a strange sense of pity. These people would never know peace; never would they flourish as the other races the Ascendancy toyed with would. They would know greatness and failures, yes, and of greater highs and lows than most. But they would only be known for their brutality…and he was going to guide that to its ultimate culmination.
They stood around him with spears drawn and swords raised, and he looked up at the man with the skull on his head.
“Again I tell you that I was sent by the Divinae as a prophet to you!” Del’s voice was amplified now by his suit, and the shaman showed the slightest tainting of awe in his angered response.
“The Divinae are gods, and you are not of them!” The bones dangling from his headdress rattled in the wind, and for a moment Del was grinning inside his suit. Bones…there would be so many, then and now…
“You must prove yourself, you so-called prophet of the Divinae!” The shaman cried, and the crowd jeered after him. “I challenge you to this; take fifty of the Divanae’s followers as sacrifice, and survive without wound, and I shall hear your words; or your blasphemy shall be silenced before it begins!”
Del saw the future coming; he knew that the moment he agreed, the tribe would immediately attack him. His armour would, of course, defend his life quite effectively; and without another word, he prepared himself. The energy emitters on his arms buzzed to life, and two bladed rifles began materializing upon his arms.
“Accepted.” He answered, as the tribe began to howl. He saw the spears coming before they left their hands, and he thus dodged most of them; as he did so, the rifles in his hands began to fire. The primitive forefathers of what would eventually become the Zellic Empire had no concept of fire arms as yet, but here and now they became intimately familiar with the concept, as bolts seared flesh and dismembered and as Del’s blades disemboweled and slashed and the screams began to rise…
The carnage was unprecedented, even amongst the Zellic. And as spears danced off the Heraldic’s armour, and as the Heraldic danced amongst the men in their bones and as intestines spread out like garland and lace, Del began to remake history, as it had been, as it would be…
--oOo—
ON VASTRA…
Diveth’s team reached the pressure dome above the ruins and slowed to a stop. The structure was breached; metal had been torn out and thrown away like confetti as the dome had depressurized, and as they stood amidst the scrap and litter of personal artifacts, she rapidly recalculated the situation.
The Heraldic are logical creatures, and Diveth was no exception. Thus, her thoughts went like so:
We did not attack Vastra, she reminded herself as she looked into the gloomy hole in the dome. Yet here was signs of damage…an accident perhaps? She discarded the notion immediately. No, not an accident. There was nothing in this part of the dome that would have been capable of detonating at this size; the Ascendancy had procured schematics of the dome prior to now via dealings with unscrupulous traders and other mercenarial figures. Thus, logically, if it wasn’t an accident, it was deliberate, and if it was deliberate and they had not done it…
“Someone seems to have beaten us to the prize.” Diveth murmured as she raised her weapon and gestured towards the opened internal doors beyond it. “Notify the Unnatural Domain that we have potential intruders in the complex, and that there is a high probability that they are temporally active.” The odds of an attack occurring at the same instant as the Ascendancy’s massive action in Exceion were staggeringly close to impossible; and as the Ascendancy had not even disclosed to the Immortal Empire their intents at Vastra, the only logical way that anyone could have found out would have been if they discovered it at a later date…
…and looped back. Diveth’s eyes narrowed at the thought. Perhaps they would bag a timecaster today. She thought of it much as a big game hunter contemplated a tiger; anticipation melded with fear, glory and terror rose as one in her mind, and with a nod to half the team she gestured to the hole again.
“Secure the perimeter. We wouldn’t want it getting out.”
--oOo—
3.5 BILLION YEARS AGO
The system was hardly recognizable now, the ship’s captain thought, as he looked at the cloud of asteroids and gases swirling around those two young stars. The ship’s shielding was enough to hold off the smaller chunks of primordial materials, but they still had to avoid the larger ones; thus his ship-and the others on their silent mission-wove through the belts and clouds like fish through reeds.
They had taken considerable efforts to remain hidden here now; the Nakai at this time were still a strong and mighty empire, and were likely in either a cold war with the Ascendancy or in out and out conflict. This far back, history itself was hard to understand; it doubled and weaved and fact seemed to become fiction in the blink of an eye. They were here to bury things, and as they vanished again into that haze of rubble and gas, they too set upon their task of making history happen as they intended it to.
For this system would eventually be colonized, and it would become a seat of power for a mighty empire and terrifying enemy; it would be glassed, and then it would be rebuilt so much taller and mightier than before as a monument to their defiance of fate…
…and then it would become a tomb.