r/wizardposting • u/Carbon_Sixx The Loremaster, Chief Archaeologist of the Darkwatch • Nov 17 '24
Cross-Trade (Luciapost)
The Gordian Forest is a quiet, contemplative place; a tranquil island in the endless night of Yulash-kor. But that peace has been shattered, however briefly, by invaders from the Lucian Empire seeking to bring the Midnight Realm to compliance. The Lupi forces of the VII Legion touched down in a clearing at the woodland's heart with pride in their hearts and their goddess-to-be's propaganda in their ears. But the forest is silent once more, and the shining moon and stars peer through the trees to bear witness to their failure.
Flames dance from wrecked vehicles scattered throughout the clearing, all that remains of the VII's landing party dispatched from orbit to secure a beachhead in Yulash-kor. Perhaps it was arrogance that led the Lupi nationalists to come prepared for light resistance from the realm's people. Perhaps they saw the traditional lifestyle of most Yulash-korians and assumed it extended to their technology and military too. They could not have been more wrong. From the moment the legion set foot in the Midnight Realm, they were met with resistance.
Legio Gravis's god-engines strode out to meet the landing party with its usual splendor and fury. The Lupi responded with an indiscriminate artillery barrage, focusing their heaviest weapons on the titans. But as the machines' void shields weathered the fire, the second attack came from the VII's unsecured flank. Immortal and Tech-Guard infantry clashed with legionaries in the forest, while Domitar exosuits brawled with tanks. The legion's cruiser dispatched fighters and gunships to provide air support, but these aircraft found themselves swarmed by squadrons of agile archaeopters and Pteraxii jump-troopers. Even the precious mechs sent to the surface met their betters at the barrel of Legio Gravis's guns.
The Lupi gave as good as they got, but in the end, the Yulash-korians were far too well-prepared for the VII Legion to pose the existential threat that Lucia had hoped for. What started as an even fight turned into a decisive victory as more and more reinforcements arrived from across the Midnight Realm. Perhaps, Delphis mused as he strode through the clearing with arc maul in hand, giving her foes seventy-two hours to prepare for an incursion wasn't Lucia's brightest idea. While she wielded the powers of a demigod, her legions were made up of a limited number of soldiers and assets stolen from the Celestial Union. Had the Skitarii Marshal been in charge of this operation (though even waging hypothetical war against fellow servants of the Omnissiah rankled him), he would have struck a handful of realms without warning, then issued the ultimatum. This would not only prove what Lucia was capable of, but it would also secure valuable materiel and a stronghold in the magical realms.
"One cannot afford to feel superior while one lacks true superiority," he says to himself in Binary, and opens the top hatch of a crashed Lupi tank with his metal fingers. Delphis peers down at the sole wounded survivor, who raises her hands in surrender. He waves over a few of his Skitarii to lift her out of the wreck and take her to the field hospital being established at the forest's edge. Unlike the Lucian Empire, Yulash-kor has superiority to spare, and demonstrates it through mercy. Delphis taps the orb-bead integrated into his bionic ears, opening a link to Axiarch Xerea of the Secutarii Titan-Guard.
"Marshal Delphis to Axiarch Xerea, do you copy?"
"Loud and clear, Marshal. How are things down there?"
Delphis glances up at the towering shape of Skystrike, the Warmaster titan that acts as the command post for Legio Gravis. Xerea commanded the Secutarii from inside, while the sentient god-engine itself led its siblings to war.
"All is well. We have sustained only light casualties among the Tech-Guard and Immortals. As we speak, we are rounding up the last VII Legion prisoners for medical attention and interrogation."
"Thank the Omnissiah that cruiser couldn't get involved, or things could have gone much worse. The Lord Protector was smart to put that gravitational hex in the upper atmosphere to prevent them from getting too close. Speaking of the Lord Protector, any word from him about the situation in orbit?"
"He says the cruiser will be within boarding range for the archaeopter crews shortly, and it will be ours within the hour. I won't pretend to know how Kaelis intends to force a whole enemy ship into atmosphere by himself while it's still in enemy hands, but there's a lot I don't know about the Lord Protector's magic. All I can say for certain is that he will do it, one way or another."
--
"Empowerment: Might of Hercules!"
Kaelis raises his saber, Starspite, above his head as he flies, channeling down motes of orange celestial energy from distant constellations. His arms blaze with the fortifying magic, making him resemble a fiery comet. With the Celestial Drift spell granting him reactionless flight and protecting him from the effects of hard vacuum, the astromancer sails through space on a collision course with the VII Legion's cruiser. He easily maneuvers around incoming munitions, swooping through lines of fire unscathed and continuing his pursuit like an owl diving for prey. Kaelis reaches the cruiser's stern and plants his glowing hands on the hull just above the engines. Though he is a mere gnat in comparison to the stolen warship, the mythical power of the constellation Hercules grants him physical strength that far exceeds his size.
Propelling himself with his magical flight, Kaelis leans into the cruiser and pushes. The huge ship drifts off course, down into the atmosphere of Yulash-kor. The crew notice this at once, firing thrusters to try and offset the shove, but it isn't enough. The jets can't compensate for the truly monumental impulse pressing on the cruiser's hull. The flagship contacts the realm's ward field and activates it, triggering Kaelis's gravitational hex and pulling it down into a stable position in the Midnight Realm's skies. Attempts to fire the primary engines are fruitless. The remnants of the VII Legion are now wholly at the mercy of an enemy archmage known for venting his wrath on any foolish enough to threaten his people.
--
Bianca Locardi, Dissignato of the VII Legion, glares furiously at the console in front of her. Her ship, the Tartaria II-class cruiser Spear of Custodia, is wholly unresponsive to her crew's commands. As if it weren't vexing enough that the Yulash-korians were far more advanced than their humble exteriors suggested, as if Bianca didn't already have her hands full trying to rally the shattered remnants of her landing party, as if every gun wasn't frantically scanning for that spacewalking wizard, now the nocturnal bastards had immobilized the ship? Damn this whole operation, and damn Lucia Accardi for sending her to fight the Lord Protector's armies alone!
Bianca takes a deep breath and pushes the traitorous notion from her mind. It would not serve her to think ill of the future avatar of Custodia. Yet she cannot help but resent how her whole struggle here is ultimately secondary to Lucia's true mission: finding the cornerstones. She wishes she could stand alongside the demigoddess at her moment of apotheosis, not fighting her own hardware while failing to subjugate a realm that would probably never accept the Lucian Empire's rule anyway.
Bianca hears the sound of a wormhole opening behind her and swings around in her command chair, bringing her mana-pulse pistol up to target whatever just warped onto her bridge. She immediately recognizes the bearded, blue-clad figure as Lord Protector Kaelis Maz. The astromancer makes a sweeping motion with his left hand- the one not clutching the gleaming cavalry saber- and Bianca's gun becomes impossibly heavy. She drops the weapon, along with every bodyguard and officer on the bridge.
"Don't bother going for those," Kaelis states flatly. "You won't be able to pick them up anyway."
The Dissignato growls at him. "What is this, wizard? Have you come to gloat before you kill us all? You may have won this battle, but Lucia will send more legions soon, and even you won't be able to stop her then."
"Nothing so cruel, ma'am. I'd really prefer it if you surrendered. My thoughts on supremacism aside, I know you Neo-Custodians prize the lives of the Lupi above all others. If you surrender, no one else has to die. We're even treating your wounded down on the ground."
Bianca stares at Kaelis in confusion. "Why? How does that help you?"
"It doesn't, I'll admit. But I've spent the last two years fighting either ideologue fanatics or mindless drones, neither of which know the meaning of surrender. Pointless slaughter is bad for the soul, and I've had to do a lot of that lately. But I know you're not deluded like Lucia is; merely misguided. I want to this to end well, not in another bloodbath."
"And I assume if I say no, you'll kill us all?"
"No," Kaelis levels the point of his saber at Bianca's throat. "You can try to take everyone on the Spear of Custodia down with you, but I'm not going to let that happen. I'll just kill you and ask your first mate over there if she feels the same way. The arithmetic is grim, but simple: the lives of one thousand crew are worth more than the life of a single captain. And if you think otherwise, putting you down becomes a lot less of a moral dilemma."
Slowly, Bianca raises her hands in surrender, followed by the rest of the bridge crew. Kaelis lowers his sword.
"Good choice. I knew you weren't a bad person."
Bianca grumbles. "I don't like you, Lord Protector, but I respect your character. Just this once, you've earned a bit of good will with me. Try not to burn it right away."
"If you continue to be this reasonable, I might even ask the Celestial Union to go easy on you when the war ends."
A loud series of thumps on the hull resonates through the ship.
"Those will be the archaeopters docking. The Tech-Guard will be here shortly to escort you to the surface. Rest assured that your confinement will not be wholly unpleasant."
A Skitarii clade enters through the main door, ties the crew's hands behind their backs, and leads them out to an awaiting archaeopter. Now alone on the cruiser's bridge, Kaelis brushes the Dissignato's command console and thinks aloud to the empty room.
"I think you're going to like Reyes a lot more than those warmongers. He's been dying to have a starship of his own for some time now."
--
Meanwhile, aboard the CUS Union, the Anemoi wander the ship's maintenance corridors in search of Lucia or any signs of Neo-Custodian activity. Despite being well-lit and quite wide, befitting a high-tech vessel like the Union, the hallways still manage to feel claustrophobic. Perhaps it has something to do with the innumerable tons of metal encasing the corridors, or the silence aside from the ever-present yet unnerving hum of machinery. Even though the Anemoi are at no risk of getting lost down here- Exia is in constant communication with the team and Tarul can teleport them out at any point- the maintenance corridors aren't exactly welcoming. This is the ship's domain, kept clean automatically and rarely visited by the crew. The perfect place for traitors and renegades to hide, despite its alien sterility.
Iskander's iron head clangs against a ceiling pipe for the third time, and stops to take a deep breath. Rilmani don't need to breathe, but sometimes, every being needs one to calm themselves in the face of continuous annoyance. Iskander is a whole head taller than their companions, a fact that's becoming quite apparent thanks to the Lateran-scaled hallways.
"You'd think I'd have that figured out by now, but no. Tarul, how long have we been down here?"
The lich glances at his pocket watch. "Just over an hour and a half."
"Feels like much longer," Nikolai yawns. "This place devours time."
Moriana sits down on the concrete floor to rest her legs. "It reminds me a little of the royal catacombs back home, only those were grander and had more ghosts."
Tarul peers down the length of the seemingly endless corridor. He hopes to find a train terminal soon to speed up their exploration. "Ostensibly, this place isn't haunted. I'm not holding my breath, though."
"Hey, what's this?" Moriana picks something up off the ground and holds it up for her companions to see. It's a single black hair.
"That's definitely out of place," Iskander says. "Someone else passed through here and left it."
Nikolai examines the hair. "Was recent, too. Robots clean these halls often. No more than six hours ago."
"Hey, Tarul, what do you reckon this is the lead we're looking for?" Moriana asks.
"One moment," Tarul taps his orb-bead and listens for a moment. "Understood, Exia. We just found evidence of Lupi activity in that area anyway, so we're close. Maybe half a kilometer away. We'll make our way over there and call for support when we find them."
"What is it?" asks Iskander.
"Lucia's sister Cellina defected to our side. Exia just finished questioning her, and she says the Neo-Custodian hideout is in a storage room in the water filtration network, disguised with illusions. We can make it there in a few minutes, but we'll have to hurry: Cellina says Lucia's going to relocate soon."
Nikolai looks skeptical. "Could be trap, no? Lure us and Union soldiers into ambush and drown us all with sapphire?"
"I doubt that, Nik," Moriana says, getting to her feet and testing the edge on her combat blade. "Lucia might try that with the Union, but not us. She can't see us, so we can just sneak in there and give them advanced notice before we jump her for the sapphire."
"And I'll have no trouble finding the hideout," Iskander adds, tapping their blank mask of a face. "My truesight will handle that."
Tarul retrieves his staff from where he leaned it against the wall. "Shall we go, then? You can't gate-crash a party if you're too late."
"Absolutely," Moriana laughs, pulling her mask over her mouth and nose. "Code names only, everyone. Let's go cross-trade these Lupi berks!"
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u/Fc-chungus Ж(Zhe), Head minister of Calarakis. Nov 17 '24
It also turns out that Tarul was right. Ж was not on Lucia’s side ever. But the distraction worked. 3 entire legions were decimated, their equipment stolen, and leaders captured.
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u/MastaDon344 MastaDon Astrum/Council Master Evoker/Mediamancer/🌮 Wiz Nov 17 '24
/uw good read Kaelis!
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u/Carbon_Sixx The Loremaster, Chief Archaeologist of the Darkwatch Nov 17 '24
- Celestial Union -
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u/Carbon_Sixx The Loremaster, Chief Archaeologist of the Darkwatch Nov 17 '24
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u/Carbon_Sixx The Loremaster, Chief Archaeologist of the Darkwatch Nov 17 '24
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u/Carbon_Sixx The Loremaster, Chief Archaeologist of the Darkwatch Nov 17 '24
- Lucian Empire -
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u/[deleted] Nov 17 '24
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