[b]Endless Azure Skies, Southern Horizon Fleets[/b] The Endless Azure Skies is both vast and decentralized, with huge regional variations in combat philosophy. The peripheral region known as Southern Horizon has long been regarded as a peaceful frontier and as such its military has been allowed to decay enormously. Conversely, the long period of peace has made the Southern Horizon stupendously rich, and the self-aggrandizement of the southern Azura leadership has lead to investment in a number of central 'prestige' pieces. The combined force of the Southern Horizon, then, is a two speed military: Hastily converted or even outright levied civilian ships alongside warships that are monuments to centuries of unspeakably bloated aristocratic military expenditure. [b]Weaponry[/b] [b]The ELectromagnetic Flux (ELF)[/b] The foundational weapon of the Endless Azure Skies, no species ever forgets first contact with the ELF. An ELF is the physical manifestation of the Curse of the Violet Stars and it is not an exaggeration to suggest that all of Azura design and doctrine is built around its limitations. In fact, so widely spread is the ELF and so deeply integrated are the countermeasures to its effects that the Azura place an almost inexplicably low value on it. Indeed, it is oftentimes treated as a sidearm rather than a primary weapon. The Southern Horizon in particular has gone so long without facing a peer non-Azura military that they have simply institutionally forgotten how devastating the ELF can be. Visually, an ELF manifests as a lightning bolt, though it is not electrically based. Instead, observed in slow motion, the effect is actually that power departs from the subject and is sucked into the node of the ELF. ELF weaponry is extremely accurate and rapid fire - the common Buzzsaw variant has strike intervals of 0.5 seconds - but is low damage and short range. ELF weapons also have the distinction of bypassing shields and armour entirely. The Curse is best channeled through a long, sharp spike. As a personal defense weapon it is often mounted on the shoulder, though with meditation an ELF can be expanded into anything that fits the geometric requirements. Range, impact and (generally negligible) power draw is directly linked to the size of the focusing spike, and as the weapon is manifesting an individual's personal Curse it can only be fired by that individual. In the cases of starship mounted ELF weaponry a strong preference is given to quantity of ELF spikes as opposed to single extreme sized spikes to prevent a single point of failure. When fired, the ELF has the following effects: - A massive electrical power surge. The mystical power of the Curse creates joins between even isolated and surge protected systems. Oftentimes this surge is powerful enough to cause violent explosions through connected systems - lightbulbs popping, consoles exploding, hard drives melting into slag, and so on. This effect is particularly and maliciously lethal to artificial intelligences, remotely piloted drones, or guided missiles with each strike seeming to inflict critical damage. - A massive explosion of distorting junk signals. The aura of electronic, radio and magical blindness created by an ELF firing is colossal, indiscriminate and overwhelmingly powerful. It can be punctured by certain high powered scanning devices or massive spellpower, but the power balance is ludicrously efficient in favour of the ELF weaponry. - A 'draining' effect. Similar to the experimental Drain Cannon on the Aotrs Midnight B Dreadnought, ELFs sap energy from their targets - batteries are emptied, mana crystals run dry, biological targets are sent into a state of deep lethargy and undead targets have their magical bonds disrupted. This effect is low damage, never lethal and recovery is measured in hours. As such it is often regarded as a stun/capture or disruption weapon. These functions together make the ELF the galaxy's premier point-defense weaponry. Azura ships are ludicrously well protected against most kinds of ordinance, including guided missiles, conventional fighter craft and torpedoes. An Azure spaceship at close range can choke the life out of an enemy vessel. ELF strikes on a capital ship or vehicle can be likened to strikes from ion weaponry - fire needs to be constant to prevent reactors from being rebooted, and the level of fire needs to be proportionate to the target's reactor capacity. A fighter wing raking a cruiser with ELF fire won't necessarily stall it out but will force the shutdown of nonessential systems to combat the power drain, for instance. As the number of fighters concentrating fire increases so will the power drain. The sensor distortion effect of ELF weapons is generally the biggest effect of ELF weaponry, though - a single cruiser firing its ELF weaponry can effectively render everything in an entire battlefield out to long range cloaked. This has massive implications for long range gunnery, especially combined with Azura maneuverability. Constant warfare under these conditions has profoundly shaped the Azura approach to warfare. [b]Solid Projectile (SP)[/b] The Azura use the phrase 'Solid Projectile' in a counterintuitive way; when they say it, they are referring to specialized types of acidic chemical weaponry. SP weaponry represents the bulk of Azura firepower, often tweaked by logisticians to meet the specialized demands of their opposition, planetary climate conditions, etc but working from the same basic principles. SP weaponry is reverse-engineered from the Tides, a bio-technological aquatic alien species that the Azura are in constant conflict with, and new strains and variations constantly flow through to the Endless Azure Skies based on evolution by the Tides. The most common strains of SP weaponry in use are the [b]Sensate [/b]weapons. These are specifically targeted at overwhelming individuals with heightened senses, such as the Warriors of Ceron or other genetically engineered super-soldiers. [b]Burner [/b]strains are compositions that are optimized for sheer acid damage, and [b]Eater [/b]strains are those set up to emphasize metallic corrosion. In space, Eater strains are the weapon of choice - an Eater impact on an enemy hull will chew away at the enemy ship unless large sections of hull are outright amputated and so Eater torpedoes are designed to penetrate as deeply as possible to attempt to render core functions compromised. Generally, most forms of SP are of limited usefulness against shields. Specialized shield burners exist but are not widely spread due to the Azura's own limited use of conventional shields. [b]Gravitational Weaponry[/b] Grav-Weaponry is the crown jewel of the Azura arsenal. It is a long-ranged, flexible, powerful and always-useful weaponry type that is only limited in its deployment by availability of Knights and its extreme power requirements. This generally means that the demands on an Azura force's grav-weaponry far outstrips the grav-weaponry available; while a grav-emitter can crush a tank or a starship into a microsingularity it is generally preferable to instead shove that tank off a cliff or lock an enemy starship in place while a regular missile hits it. Grav-weaponry often doubles as a vehicle's shielding system. Again, the pilot is under pressure to minimize power usage - while a direct death ray strike *can* be consumed entirely by a microsingularity, it is generally far preferable to shove oneself aside instead if at all possible so the power can be used instead for an offensive maneuver. Large Azura ships generally act as shield emitters for their surrounding ships. While most Azura weaponry is short ranged, grav-weaponry presents an unusual extreme range threat. It can fire at full effectiveness beyond ordinary engagement bands; with the rest of the fleet unengaged there are no competing demands on its power output. [b]Plasma Vents[/b] Plasma Vents are rare in Southern Horizon fleets, generally mounted only on the oldest starships or carried by Goltir mystics. A plasma vent is, at its most basic, taking advantage of the massive power output of a Violet Star Reactor by pumping it directly onto a target. The potential damage inflicted by one of these is ludicrous, melting through shields and armour in moments, coring vehicles like apples and leaving molten slag in their place. Recharge times are generally slow, however, making the preferred use case as an execution weapon. More common are plasma torpedoes; concentrated balls of high impact plasma stored in special containment fields and delivered to the target by direct fire launchers or guided in by grav-weaponry. Plasma torpedoes are easy for the Azura to restock on location with access to a plasma reactor, but they are extremely temperamental and represent a massive explosion hazard. Stock is generally kept light, and if a ship is targeted it will attempt to either launch or seal off its torpedo stocks to prevent an unfortunate cook off. [b]Direct Impact[/b] From hammers to ramming, Azura doctrine places a virtue on putting their faces into an opponent's faces. The threat here is primarily presented by Azura materials technology and impact resistance which allows them to come out the better of virtually any direct collision, the equivalent of having a powered ramming spike on most of their vessels. Azura vessels also have an unsettling tendency to 'eat' enemy vessels they have rammed, absorbing the raw metal structure of their opponents in order to repair any damage the Azura ship took during the collision. Direct impact weapons are generally at their most dangerous in conjunction with grav-weaponry, where enemy ships can be pulled into the line of fire, or an enemy's head pulled into the arc of a massive meteor hammer swing. Sometimes these collisions are attempted at FTL speeds but just as often FTL will cut out moments beforehand to allow an Azura pilot to make last-second corrections to its course to catch an enemy ship that has attempted evasive maneuvers. * "Cutlasses and field cannons"; the Southern Horizon concentrates its capitol ship effectiveness at the short and extreme range bands, with a notable lack of capability in medium and long range direct fire weaponry. This is primarily a reaction to the sensor-jamming and point defense effects of ELF weaponry making long range guided missiles unreliable and medium range energy weaponry inaccurate. Rather than struggle to make energy weapons work, the Southern Horizon has largely abandoned the big gun school of naval warfare to focus on carrier operations. At the decisive medium and long range bands the Southern Horizon turns primarily to its fighter craft. Their task is not only to engage and paralyze enemy ships so that the distance can be closed, but they also use grav-weaponry and fighter escorts to guide in inaccurate short-range ordinance through the sensor baffle. Indeed, in Azura civil conflicts the majority of battles are decided when one side wins the fighter battle.