[b]Bella and Redana![/b]

Once upon a time, steel was stronger than sinew. In dark and medieval ages, war was not fought between spear-armed kings and queens, but between mechanized titans of steel and electricity. Plovers still see the field in the modern day and age, of course, but they are to true war what the plover was to the bayonet before it. 

They stand in their hangar bays, idols to false pantheons. They speak of times when war was the clash of champions standing atop mighty pyramids of scientists and engineers, rather than the butchery of armies and oceans of blood. In ancient days these giants were all that stood before the Tides of Poseidon, swords of laser light carving through the ocean storms that threatened to drown humanity in its cradle. Once they were glorious. The space that would become Empire was built upon their strength. And the Empire remembers.

The wars of the Mecha, before they would evolve into the stunted Plovers of the modern age, was a time of glory and legend. Tales were told of their strength and conviction, their heroism and sacrifice, their passions and betrayals. Those legends wrap through the fabric of Imperial popular culture. Films and games and glorious what-if alternate histories surround these machines that seemed for a time to be able to seize the stars themselves.

Fewer stories are told of their fall.

The discipline of biomancy grew inside the system of knights like a cancer. In the beginning it was a thing of enhancements at the edge, helping pilots find more perfect union with their machines. It advanced into entire mecha design, creating bio-mechanical synthetic machines, terrible and uncontrollable. The new realm of humanity was rocked by frontier knights whose constant battles against the Tides of Poseidon had resulted in them learning too many of the Earthshaker's secrets. They returned changed, enhanced and twisted. A new age of apocalyptic wars broke out between these twisted knights and the kingdom that had sent them into the chromatic void. For a time it seemed like civilization itself was on the brink.

In the end, it was the biomancers of the core that solved the problem of the Knights. This era of history is unsung. It is most commonly dealt with in documentaries, tragedies and stageplays. The simple fact of the matter was that the new form of war that the biomancers had developed was horrifying, but it had been something Poseidon had been trying to teach for a long time and the nascent Empire was finally ready to listen. The giants could be drowned with numbers and so conquest was simply a logistics game. And so civilization invited the darkness of the void into itself and became a mirror of the enemy it had spent so long fighting.

The age of the glorious champion drew to a close. In its place came the first swarms of combat drones - barely sentient biological machines, decanted in prodigious numbers and triggered into superhuman frenzy by pheromantic cocktails. These were followed in turn by the first servitor legions, early refinements of the drones at first intended for special forces operations in support of the blood-crazed swarms. In time the drones lost in popularity and the legends of the first legions began to grow, but by that point it was too late. The glory of the earlier age had been consumed in an avalanche of teeth and claw and lifespans measured in weeks. The knights were dead and so were the things that had killed them. The galaxy was swept clean for what would become the Atlas Cultural Sphere.

It is an uncomfortable question to ask, 'what happened to the Knights?' Better to remember them in the eternal summer of their golden age, where even the villains were heroes. But here, in the House of Hades, that summer still shines.

You watch as they clash. These are late stage designs, glorious in white and gold, smooth curves and radiant blades and the size of buildings. These are not the early designs, weighed down with cannons and missiles, but the designs from the pinnacle that move and fight with a fluidity almost like a living person. They whirl and strike and blades of light send waterfalls of stars whenever they clash. 

And beyond, the hangars. The gallery, the ranks of them standing tall in an archaic demonstration of military power. All of them surround the central ziggurat of the Tunguska, what is called the Bank. A beautiful tree-lined bridge runs amidst the hangars, shoulder height to the giants, and over the open training fields where the eternal champions fight. It is something out of a fairy tale.

And there, under pavilion in the middle of the bridge, were a cast of legends. Sir Aeon, the fair-haired champion whose forbidden love had doomed her kingdom. Princess Ortji, who had lost three kingdoms without losing a battle. King Anjia, the unmoving icon of righteousness whose genius was in convincing the immoral to destroy themselves. Ikari, who had never wanted to take up the blade but found a way to master it despite everything. Odysseus, who was here from the wars of an earlier age and had never felt the need to move on. They toast you and cheer as you approach as in the background giants wage war.

You'd think they'd be taller, these legends of bygone ages. In truth they are short and fragile, and even the ones with defined muscles have the unhealthy aroma of heavy metal deficiencies. All the weight that they carry is in the fact that you've seen multiple actors wear their faces and tell their stories. Some wear armour, some the skintight jumpsuits of the ancient piloting order, and some wear flowing dresses and gowns that catch the light and make them shine like flowers. And they are flowers, these girls and boys, the shining decorations of the Underworld.

"Of two hundred and fifty voyages to the rift, fewer than twenty five have reached the Tunguska," said Sir Aeon with a smile that made the destruction of her realm worth the price. "And of those, fewer than ten passed into the Rift in anything resembling working order. You have accomplished a task worthy of celebration."
"Gods and assassins defeated by your hands!" grinned Princess Ortji, the warrior of such skill it had almost - [i]almost [/i]- overcome her equally legendary lack of diplomacy, tact or strategic understanding. "Come, sit, feast with us! Anything less would be an insult!"

[b]Alexa![/b]

"Cerberus is a [i]dog[/i], Alexa," said Zagreus flatly. "I once watched her follow a mechanical chariot for thirty two city blocks, barking all the while. She'd follow anyone with a sack of unidentifiable rat meat. That does [i]not [/i]mean it's a good idea for her to head out into a galaxy where getting into the same city as an active bar fight could result in her destruction."

And as far as he seemed to be concerned, the debate was over. The rail comes around in an arc and Hestia claps her hands and smiles as it does. You can see the flash of ancient violet magic and the detonation like a star -

The force of the impact is shocking, enough to knock you from your feet. Immediately after comes a pummelling sequence of heavy body blows, lighter than that first shock but forcing you back even further. These were not piercing impacts, each one was a shove physically hurling you back further and further towards the distant wall. The closer you get to it the more you can see swirling chromatic hands reaching up out of it, infused with twisted energy, looking to grab you and pull you into their depths.

He needs to pause to reload. An opportunity to regain feet and regain your ground - but it hardly seemed like enough. In moments he was firing again. A simple but brutally effective strategy: fire at you with a ranged weapon whose impact was so great it prevented you from closing the distance.

[b]Dolce![/b]

"Yes, you see?" said Mars. "This realm of the dead falls into entropy, as you said. Sooner or later Hades won't be able to hold it in check and it will destroy itself the same as it did when it was on the surface. He's trying to preserve a moment of time, unwilling to admit it is lost."

"The surface, though!" he grinned and raised a finger. "Peace! Prosperity! The Ceronians rule, yes, but as one of many. A council formed of great servitor legion representatives discusses matters of galactic administration and trade. Enormous slipway gates allow rapid and safe travel across the void. Macroengineering projects are run to restore devastated planets and shattered biomes! Technology advances through alliance with crystal dragon supercomputers! Everywhere is prosperity and abundance and an eternal, smiling summer!" He laughs heartily. "What's not to like? What's not to love? Even your kind, little sheep, have found their place as administrators and functionaries, overseeing entire star sectors! I can not imagine a more perfect world than the world above! That should be reason enough to hope you survive the Rift, I think!"