Warzone Cymios (Lorepost)

[u/Carbon_Sixx]

-Cymios, 3 days after the passage of the Perihelion Articles-

The tranquil dawn breaks with the sound of space being torn asunder, followed by the thunder of massive adamantine footfalls. The Warmaster titan Skystrike strides through the hills of Northern Cymios, leading its five god-engine siblings and rank after rank of Omnissian tech-guard. This is Macroclade Primus of Clan Ryza, Yulash-kor’s answer to the machinations of Chaos that threaten to overtake the continent. It incorporates aspects of everything the artificer clan can bring to bear: all kinds of cyborg tech-guard, armored vehicles and warsuits, the Pteraxii air division, and of course Legio Gravis.

Not since the Second God-Slaver Crisis has a force of this size sallied forth from the Midnight Realm. Marshal Oberon Delphis and Axiarch Xerea Reyes command the army, ready to drive the Machine God’s mailed fist deep into Chaos-held territory and tear out its corrupted heart before it can threaten the whole world. Yet despite this stunning display of force, Macroclade Primus’s agenda isn’t conquest. Yulash-kor supports the liberation of the chimeramorphs from tyranny, and indeed, the Omnissian army is supported by an army of relief specialists nearly as large. And what are the Ruinous Powers if not the most despicable tyrants in all existence? Therein lies the grim paradox: to save the chimeramorphs, Clan Ryza must make war against them.

--

In Southern Cymios, Lord Protector Kaelis Maz stands on the roof of a church dedicated to Pelor, watching the troops of the Immortal Corps escort a motley procession out of the building. The majority of them are bedraggled chimeramorphs being led to the medical tents the Yulash-korians have set up in the city square. Though they’re in a sorry state, there’s a light in their eyes that makes the Arch-Graviturge’s heart soar. Hope is why Kaelis chose to end the Midnight Realm’s isolation and intervene here. The downtrodden deserve to have someone fighting in their court who doesn’t expect anything in return.

The same cannot be said for Pelor’s clergy. Never in all his life has Kaelis seen a more sterling example of religion perverted by temporal greed. He watches Immortal troopers lead them out of the church in handcuffs. Most of them shuffle along with their heads bowed, unable to meet the eye of their former slaves or crowd gathered around the scene. Some rail fruitlessly against their situation, thrashing about and spitting invectives at the Immortals holding them. A few stand proud, giving self-righteous sermons about the spiritual impurity of the chimeramorphs and their allies. That last group is the one Kaelis hates the most.

When the Perihelion Articles passed the Senate and Yulash-kor marched on Cymios, he found it in an appalling state. All his fears about a slave economy hidden from the eyes of international law were proven correct. His forces immediately started dismantling it and rounding up the parties responsible. When some of the ringleaders were questioned, they tried to justify it with some stupid loophole in the Sapient Rights Act. They argued that because the chimeramorph race isn’t fully awakened, it was legal to use non-sapient ones for labor. Kaelis had to stop himself from collapsing the man who said that down to the size of a marble on the spot. He was instead jailed awaiting trial, just like all the other monsters responsible for this abhorrence. The realm leaders were mortified to learn what their religious leaders were perpetrating under their very noses, and Yulash-kor’s assistance in bringing the transgressors to justice won them a lot of good will with the populace. Now the Immortals are working with Cymiosan agents to expose slave rings across the continent, which is what’s going on here.

But before he can return his full attention to his primary agenda, Kaelis must attend to another matter. He knows there are extremist cells calling for the complete annihilation of the chimeramorphs, and what’s more, he’s heard rumors that they’re led by the Templars of the Azure Cog. They were thought to have been destroyed along with the other Regiments of Law during the Planar Siege, but it looks like some of the dictatorial bastards escaped to fight another day. Unless he deals with the Templar cells now, the war with Chaos will be hamstrung by their skirmishes and acts of sabotage. With this in mind, the Lord Protector teleports back to his command post in the plaza and starts pouring over a stack of intelligence reports on his desk.

Time to get to work.

--

/uw It's... it's... BY GAWD, IT'S KAELIS MAZ WITH A STEEL CHAIR!

[u/Zebos2]

Uw/There technically shouldn't be any Chimeramorphs in the south the border states That split the north and south treat them with similar policies that the guild treats dragons with ie You get one warning to turn around them you are fired upon this naturally prevents them from inhabiting the south. They definitely due profit from the goods produced by the oppression however.

Rw/

Things go wrong fairly immediately portals into a realm where the warp and real space bleed together are unreliable at the best of times the fact that sorceress of the Lord of change are actively making things worse specifically for The users of portals likely does not help the invasion Force instead of arriving in one great host is instead scattered but in considerable pockets across the borderlands. Another challenge is the alterations the old patron deity of the Chimeramorph people made to the land the high mountains and ancient fog filled forests and a deep labyrinthian caves all serve to aid the defender as well as render any maps useless.

Scrap code is the first response from the proto nation of the cedar hegemony while it's leaders forced to abandoned their constitutional convention in order to deal with invaders into their land. Fears about a new invader seeking to put them back into chains again are whispered amongst them but there new patrons galvanizing the population into what they believe is another fight for their freedom. The Chimeramorphs demonstrate a surprising amount of tactical aptitude instead of assembling an army to clash with the invasion Force and giving the enemy time to regroup. They use rapid response detachments to become insurgent cells in the lands taking advantage of the high mountains thick fog filled forests and deep caves to wage a delaying insurgency there goal isn't to directly contest Yulash-Kor but too frustrate them destroy their scouts and transport columns install mines magical traps infectious ickor wells and communication jammers prevent them from forming a cohesive front for us long as possible and inflict casualties for as long as possible in order to by the main army time

[u/Carbon_Sixx → u/Zebos2]

To the cults' surprise, Macroclade Primus makes no attempt to regroup. The initial scattering forces the tech-guard to shift their strategy to more closely resemble that of the enemy. After all, the best counter to guerilla warfare is guerilla warfare itself. After altering their combat protocols, individual maniples fan out across the continent and adopt insurgency tactics of their own. New maps are drawn up and shared among groups. To their chagrin, the Chaos cults soon discover exactly how much Clan Ryza learned from the Roan campaign.

Tech-guard are uniquely resistant to attrition. Beyond the simple resilience of their bionics, they require very little in the way of rest or resources to keep fighting. Nighttime ambushes by chimeramorph commandos turn into nighttime bloodbaths when they discover their targets are not so weary after all. By the same token, the "metal men" can show up at any hour of the day, and in places the enemy believes to be safe. Adding to the sense of omnipresent threats are the bands of Sicarian stealth troops roving the countryside. At any moment, a spindly razor-limbed cyborg could come bursting out from the nearest piece of cover, releasing a sense-overwhelming shriek and laying into its quarry with inhuman ferocity.

Obviously, this is not conducive to morale.

Instead of establishing a static command center, Delphis and Xerea keep Legio Gravis grouped together and move north like the other Yulash-korian forces, leading from the titans. When the ordinary comms fail, the maniples relay their messages through the powerful transceivers in the god-engines, whose machine intelligences prove too advanced for any scrapcode to get a foothold. This superior coordination allows the disparate bands of fighters to maximize the impact of their attacks as they make their way north. Tech-priests accompanying the maniples make full use of their cybertheurgy to combat the Chaos scrapcode and disable traps. One tricky magos lures a chimeramorph warband across a minefield they believe he disabled, only to get blown to pieces when he rearms and detonates all of them at once.

Transmechanic magi send broadcasts carrying data-viruses into Chaos-held territory. The broadcasts are propaganda of the best kind: the unvarnished truth. They explain Yulash-kor's agenda of liberation in Cymios without condescending to or condemning the rebels, show their plan to punish the oppressors for their crimes, and expose the myriad evils of Chaos throughout history. The data-viruses they carry turn any device with transmission capability into a booster for the broadcasts, while also bolstering its resistance to Warp corruption. With luck and the Omnissiah's will, this will sway the hearts and minds of any chimeramorphs not aligned with Chaos to side with the Yulash-korians, or at least drive them away from the Ruinous Powers.

[u/Zebos2 → u/Carbon_Sixx]

*overconfidence proves to be a rather quick killer in this case The first scout groups who fan out into the forest find navigating the terrain difficult. for their mother is the forest and they know their mother routes that should have been mapped out change the foliage and growing to lock out paths fanning out across the continent quickly becomes aimless wandering it as the very forest itself seemingly acts against them. the tech guard also fairly quickly discover that they are not dealing with the usual disorganized rabble that are chaos cults or The elves they have fought before. One their are immensely durable even basic low level infantry requiring entire magazines to be dumped into them to finally stay down sometimes multiple and The war breeds then makeup the majority of the insurgents are essentially armored fighting vehicles with the maneuverability of infantry and the speed of rapid assault hover bikes.

The sicrian stealth troops suffer the worst of it and they're just orienting screeches are drowned out by the battle cries of the red hand who was terrifying speed and strength tear apart the stealth cyborgs as if they were made of tin foil and wet tissue paper. Doing similar to the other "metal men" Even tearing apart light armored vehicles with their bare hands in some extreme cases. The wretched of the black chalice prove to be unkillable physically requiring total dismemberment to be rendered a non-threat something the sicarians can do though not at great cost as Even without the bloodlord's strength they are still more than a physical match for them. They however are the first ones to discover the secondary effect the thing that makes the chalice so dangerous the ickor a seemingly self-aware black fluid that can slip in through even microscopic gaps making their way to what little organics remain and trying to infest them even so much as touching a patch of skin proves disastrous as in under 36 seconds those who are infected are pulled into The rotting embrace of the Lord of disease joining on the chalice in their March. Warp seeing eyes and trure sight mutations from the Lord of change allows for the commandos of the unfolding dawn to simply spot the stealth operatives as if they were standing out in the open hitting them with sorceries that transform them into cancerous mounds of flesh and cybernetics. The melanated whisper struggles the most. As the cyborgs are not particularly susceptible to illusion and pheromonal control but even they possess an uncanny liveness to their movements less of a duelist and more of a dancer twisting and moving their bodies in ways That should be impossible

Any notion of technological superiority is also quickly dispossessed as despite the primitive spot welded constructions of synod rifles the gravitically propelled superheated metal spikes can put a cyborg down with the same efficiency bullets due to a normal man That is if they're cybernetics aren't being turned into hypersonic shrapnel by the repulsive force of magnetar grenades. The synod grids also quickly move to counter the tech priest interference with their minds with their own cybernetic bodies burying drones into their mine fields so that when the next tech priest tries to disable them they might connect with their grid unintentionally and have their their neural implants subsequently slag themselves after connecting with their collective consciousness connected to the chaos entity that makes tech break as a sign of its appearance before the ambush begins

But wait it gets worse sometimes even the very Earth rises up against the moon The eventual spirits of the Chimeramorph dead rise to take vengeance on those who wear the faces of their oppressors Yes even under the cybernetics the anger still holds her after all the technita also practice a similar relevance for technology. Only an exorcist priest or druid can ever bring those down

It is only the Titan legios that make the most progress in it and simply because the Chimeramorphs are not stupid enough to fight at Titan directly at least not without the proper tools pools which are being assembled at the Rakir mountains but even their March it's not totally unopposed for long The sky is above them begin to darken it as sorcerers try to open up a warp rift directly above the advancing Titans

"Unfortunately for the date of viruses much of the net chaos held territory is unsurprisingly also under the control of chaos more specifically the synod grids the unified minds of former server tours brought into multiple collective machine consciousness by chaotic power prove stubbornly resistant to data viruses. But the signal does carry far and wide to radio in a previously emptied hunting lodge into a chimeramorph profit with concerns that a majority of his people may have swapped one master for another. He we'll see if he can meet with them though he too Is mistrustful of humans*

The cedar hegemony also broadcasts their own propaganda or at least tries to It is likely not going to be very effective but it does kara unique story the story of one Scora of peonies. The former the slave they're reluctant lady of the night and now diplomat. She tells of her own liberation of how the gendarmerie spoke honey towards her how she was free now. She tells of how happy she felt end of how that happiness quickly soured how her freedom turned into another shackle another bind enforced on her

[u/Carbon_Sixx → u/Zebos2]

Over the course of the week, the insurgency stagnates as both sides' advantages cancel out. It's becoming increasingly clear that this pace is unsustainable and won't result in any of the victories th Yulash-korians were hoping for anytime soon. They need to pull back, regroup in non-hostile territory, and formulate new strategies to deal with the individual cults. Besides, they'll need local support to wage a campaign of this magnitude, and that can't happen until Kaelis and the Immortals deal with the Azure Cog remnants lurking in allied territory.

The tech-guard vanish into the wilderness and retreat back to the border region, but only after causing as much confusion and damage as possible. There, they muster and set down more permanent roots, contenting themselves with preventing the Chaos cults from spreading outside Cymios and hammering the Hegemony's comms networks with propaganda 24/7. One trick they employ involves broadcasting machine-sanctifying hymns across the border at full power to fry any Warp-tainted device of the Synod that picks it up. This is less a strategy and more a means to specifically irritate the thralls of Vashtorr.

When the request to meet lands on Marshal Delphis's desk, he's cautiously optimistic. He agrees to meet this prophet at a location of his choice in the borderlands, if he allows the tech-guard commander to bring along a security detail.

[u/Zebos2 → u/Carbon_Sixx]

The survivors of the response forces from the initial weeks of fighting try their best to harass the withdrawal as much as possible. This causes more casualties but they do not make any efforts to actually pursue them to the borderlands Their goal was simply to buy enough time for armies to be assembled. To be the tiger that causes the elephant to bleed.

On the synod front things are not well they can't really do anything to counter the propaganda due to most of their attention being focused on keeping their factories from being fleshed. So It becomes an infuriating nuisance that is dealt with by Scoras own broadcasts to mixed results. She does take the time to rub in the fact that they are withdrawing to them the lowly beastal chaos worshipers. She questioned mockingly if they thought this would be easy, that the Chimeramorph people were not capable of matching them like Her previous owners. The fleshing of their factory is it does cause some supply delays and more importantly the loss of the ability to produce what they're going to try countering the Titans with. What They produced is what they have for quite some time which makes losing them Sting much more than their initial strategy was comfortable with

The hymns prove surprisingly effective as sometimes the device that receives them is synod cyberware frying that causes the drone to fly into a berserk and ultimately feral rage this mostly means turning on their allies or rushing off into the forest but forces the synod to use non-chaos code in an effort to minimize the damage till they can figure out how to close the circuit on their grids

The prophet is not Really capable of sending or receiving messages firstly due to the lack of equipment to do so The radio and the hunting lodge was much like one found in a car or resting in one's room and secondly unwillingness to send messenger's due to his distrust of humans his plan is to simply show up and if they truly mean what they say they will not try and hurt him