||| [color=007236][color=00a651][color=598527]Your kind are not unknown to us. We know you are not the original inhabitants of this world and have an understanding of why. We are not here for you and our presence here is not militaristic in intent but scientific and historical. Your sovereignty is respected and we do not intend to cause problems where they are not needed. This extends to the others who dwell below; we have also been aware of them for some time. We are willing to negotiate - we understand that you are far removed from most conflicts in the cosmos. This extends to us as well. You are aware however it may only be a matter of time before said conflict finds both of us and it will not hurt to be prepared. Our fleet has supplies and we are willing to work out a variety of deals in matters of mutual interest. We have reasons to enter the depths but we do not plan to conquer them. Just as we are aware of your variuos observation points, we do not seek hostility. There are remnants of our own in there and would be willing to request your assistance with regards to finding them. We would prefer to speak directly about them over a secure channel or in a secure meeting space with your ambassadors. There doubtless questions you may have and vice versa. These are not matters we consider secure for conversation over a datapad. We hope you can understand and we look forward to future communications. Message us back and we can work out a location and time.[/color][/color][/color] ||| The mite-like entity scribbled over the tablet, its palps splitting into a variety of smaller manipuator limbs like a nightmarish tree-branch assembly of surgical equipment. Laser projectors, vibratory blade cutters, self-repairing metal-coated cutter tips - its impressive arsenal was put to the task of meticulously writing across the back of the tablet and slowly piling up small anthills of dust around itself. One could easily think it was more of a machine with its mechnical precision. They wouldn't be entirely wrong. Like the bulbous, jellyfish like constructs their features were clearer now that it was easier to watch them. They had the bumpy texture of something like a meatball crossed with a mixture of sewer gunk and a nightmarish mess of jagged, metallic spikes. These grotesque entities were simply drifting across the chasms below, almost looking like some sort of strange wildlife that had adapted to a world where remaining terrestrial or aquatic was entirely out of the question. Unlike jellyfish though, they were far from mindless. Complex sensory mechanisms and organs were scanning below but elsewhere, the beings they had been scouting for were making landfall. On one of the large landmasses by the chasms below, a vessel long and flattened like some prehistoric crustacean hovered down to settle onto the ground. It almost appeared at rest but within its biomechanical body, it was anything but relaxed. Hundreds of multi-jointed limbs moved in visually overwhelming, hurried patterns as the un-living ship began to activate a series of complex mechanisms and hidden systems. Huge figures that shambled and skittered with the speed of creatures much smaller moved in busied patterns, coming close to yet never really crashing into one another. Some crept up the curving and undulating walls, others through floor-holes obscured by shadows, and some walked bipedally in a near silent harmony. This landing spot hadn't been randomly chosen. The gunships flying overhead weren't doing simple air patrols. The mite-machines jumping from rock to rock weren't just exploring. No other nation knew it yet but this wouldn't be the first time some of these crewmen had landed here. As the belly of the ship opened, hidden from sight behind a complex composite of syncretic armour, the belly of the chitinour machine began to open. Normally this would be used for deploying space-rated combat craft but today, it was something drastically different. After all, it wasn't often the Rozkleřešení was manifested on the vessel - a gignatic swirling spherical mass of festering biomatter and constant self repair, its very surface a living tapestry of self-consuming and regenerative complexities laced through with eldritch machinery and guided by a consciousness far beyond what what anyone in the NIRC was capable of truly comprehending in terms of scope. Only fragments of it were ever taken for these missions but they were almost revered such as the swirling chaos-sphere that hovered in the hangar bay, a silent watcher of the enormous vrexul crew that toiled with the complex preparations of scourging the very stone and metal they lay on with precise energy tools and cutter beams. Their augmented bodies seemed nonsensical at first - grotesque and overdeveloped with complex interlocking metal and biomass plating, multiple limbs working independently of one another, fleshless heads and lidless eyes at once aware yet empty. They moved to vividly to be machines but there was an economy to their motion almost measured in execution that certainly wasn't typical of organic life. How they could keep so calm with the ominous sphere whose very being seemed a biomechanical catastrophe encased in a very loose shape was anyone's guess. There were smaller figures present, some digitigrade and tall, others roughly humanoid. Occaisonally, their armoured heads drifted to the mayhemic mass hovering above and the squishing, chittering, rustling sound - like a thousand pieces of paper shuddering and tearing in a dusty metal vent. Even as stone was scraped, metal scourged, and the ground slowly deepened, the piercing frequencies scratched at the consciousness as much as they did the ear. Gradually the shape of some sort of cryptic alien design became clearer framed within the ovular launch bay. Symbols hidden by stone and debris revealed - lines and depressions in the black steel beneath the stone, coiling and jutting at asymmetrical angular configurations crafted by hands more ancient than any life on this world. It seemed a metallic sigil lay there, somehow spotless in black-silver in spite of the ravages of time and the roughness of the excavation effort. Its purpose however, didn't seem clear. Not to the simple crewmen but to the Gnosis Eater fragment, it was clear why it was there. The vile sphere descended, joined by the mixed-species research crew, kneeling around it as blocky handheld computerized devices were pulled out and the sinewy centipede-like organism limbs that crawled out like freshly born worms of the sphere descended onto the the strange formation. Slowly, a light began to travel along the grooves of the symbol. [Center]++++++++++[/Center] In the easternmost reaches of space, between the NIRC and the Imperivm, a series of pod-like objects drifted near the edges of Surnian aerospace. They were inert, seemingly lifeless objects but a casual scan revealed they were satellites of some sort. Primitive machines from perhaps a generation or so ago of what was once Ascendency technology but something was different. They were sending out communications to the Surnians - a simple loop with a simple message. || [color=00a651]To the high command of the SSCDL, the Nexus would like to formally open diplomatic channels in the wake of a change in leadership. We are aware of the state of your nation in these precarious times. We are offering an alliance and the exchange of our technologies. Retain these satellites in their current position for ease of communication. [/color]|| [Center]++++++++++[/Center] Southwards, on abandoned Foundry worlds, once inert factories were seeing new visitors. Amidst the shattered bodies of defective vessels and the blast-marked ground, a new force walked upon these hostile worlds. Like the gigantic lungs of heaving beasts, the great industrial centres of the machine empire were starting to breathe again. It was slow at first with the grand shuddering of mechanism and gears but with each passing day, the exhales become growls and the growls became roars. On these lifeless worlds, the organs of dominion were awakening once more but it was not the CORE who was in charge. On one such world, the pretender's to the throne were learning that the NIRC was far, far from the same threat as their own. The defector-Foundry's machines had the same ruthless efficiency but they were not used to fighting liberated SeCI's following the directives not of rival computerized overlords but a cunning, experienced enemy not bound by their strategic directives. Heavy tanks were baited into assaulting what at first seemed to be random uprisings of service class infantry, pelted by laser beams and missile launchers. Their shells cut first into the stone and steel of what at first seemed like makeshift fortresses, gounging them out and sending smoke and flames into the air. The enemy would go silent... if only for them to reveal the reason for such. They hadn't silenced the SeCI's - only hidden them from scans as the electrointerference of their discharging weaponry impacting hidden mines, flooding the air with static interference. Early warning systems were left unaware and blind as globs of green-white plasma flew out of distnat, concealed positions. Heavy armour shifted and turned, caught between an enemy strongpoint and unidentified rays of metal-devouring hyper-heated wrath, shells cooking off and armour deforming them crushing under the horrific globules of flame. Stones crumbled and walls fell apart as the fortified position they were once besieging erupted open and from behind it, a monstrous away of titanic constructs foreign to their data logs. Tens of legs carried forth large ovular, crablike bodies effortlessly crawling over or smashing through the debris they had created. Fields of misty green and yellow flared as ion and rail shells slammed against them in close quarters, shielding what could be both warmachine or warbeast. A few machines tried to break formation and carry out a flank but long beams of blue shot out from distant hillsides, tearing through wheels and navigation computers, sending the defector heavy armour to a stalling halt. All the better for the monstrous constructs to raise their massive, car sized claws and drive them into the unprepared armour of the now trapped armour battallions. Reinforced and hardened to resist railguns, they fared little better as the absurd brute strength and ethereal fields of wrath-amplifyng power simply ripped them apart, exposing delicate wiring and electronics to the rest of the world. Like some vicious arthropod predators, their multiple limbs sliced, stabbed, jabbed, and swung at sometimes up to four more machines. Close-in weapons and cannons fired at point blank against the conquering horde, gouging deep wounds but only seeming to further enrage the enormous machines. As if having discovered fresh carrion, they gutted the iron battalion, viciously ripping through multiple layers of internal mechanisms and gears, scourging open weaker side armour, and sometimes nearly bisecting them with their near-supernaturally enhanced claws. While armour divisions were being all but devoured by an enemy they had never previously faced, infantry attempting to retake rocier territories themselves suffering no worse a fate. Rigid movements of robotic forces were spotted from thousands of yards away as bioelectro-thermal weaponry fired in criss-crossing patterns, sending living rounds slamming into troops disnegaging from armoured transports. Storms of energy bolts were fired in retaliation as the advance continued, sweeping over hillsides only to be pounced upon by long-legged, savage bipeds. Gealtirocht soldiers, hidden by jamming and active camo, kicked off of the ledges they were hanging on as energy sheaths over their blades effortlessly sliced through skulls, torsos, and legs. High intensity plasma PDW's opened up, overwhelming and overloading disrupted groups of infantry while point-blank solidified energy rounds tore off limbs and staggered back even heavier troop types. Even when forcing them back, it only meant having to deal with storms of overwhelming bio-propulsed seed-like bullets. Weaker than the autocannon fire from earlier, the increasingly bogged down troops pushed through only to find landmines hidden at enfilade positions, shattering them into pieces before gatling guns audibly revved up. Cover was shredded and the countless impacts per second slamming into even their most armoured soldiers nearly knocking them off their feet. All throughout the valleys and outcroppings, bestial roars howling over shattered, crumbling, sparking metal were a stressful constant. The pretenders to the throne had found themselves now the targets a force like few others, one that could creep beneath their fleet, obscure itself in plain sight, and that so far, treated them as little more than inedible prey.