Penny

The Namtar Cycle

The sky that was not a sky burned with hatred. The alien stars paled as great bolts of lightning ripped the firmament to a varicolored harlequin daylight. The plain surrounding the Black Ziggurat heaved with struggling men and monsters. To call it a battle implied an order that did not, could not, exist in this alien place. This plane existed beyond the veils which separated the mortal from the divine, a cursed and created place. Regiments tore at each other like animals, bright iron spear points clashing against bronze armor, chariots thundering across the red dust to slam into infantry, crushing them beneath iron shod wheels or wheeling away to shower brightly fletched arrows into the packed, screaming ranks. There were no lines, and no sides anymore. Men gathered where there seemed common cause and hacked and stabbed blindly at other such gathering, seeking to escape but with no clear idea how. Wizards and Sorcerer Captains lashed at their troops with whips of etheric power, driving them this way and that in hopeless attempts to create some kind of order. Nor were men alone on the field. Dark robed serpent folk hurled balls of sickly green fire into the black and gold tabarded guard of some mighty city state, stripping the flesh from the bones of the brightly caparisoned militiamen. They turned to run, only to be hacked down by a trio of hulking three eyed giants whose necks were all but crushed by sorcerous chains of commands. Innumerable goblins swarmed over a war cart, stabbing with fluted obsidian spears, or simply rending the crew with claw and teeth until blood dripped from the layered ox hide armor. A great beast the size of a small house, half lion and half bear, tore at the underside of a giant eagle that had been armored with knots of braided rope and bronze plate. It flashed its bladed wings as the pair tumbled and struggled, oblivious to the dozen warrior priests of Calect that were crushed to paste between them. A being of light so pure burned the eyes of those who looked directly on it, screamed like a dying mountain as a great serpent with eyes of emerald fires squeezed its verdigris coils around it like a strangler’s cable. The dead lay everywhere, burned, blasted, and bloody but even that ocean of blood could do nothing to moisten great dusty plain. Not even the sky offered piece, serpentine creatures with crimson feathers coiled and struck at scaled wyverns, opening great wounds which rained acid blood down onto the carnage below. Leather wings beat like distant thunder as malformed gargoyles weaved and dived, lifting men into the air and dropping them as living missiles.



Even this carnage seemed less terrible than the Black Ziggurat at the center of the plain. Its very size was blasphemous, an obsidian pile that rose almost a mile from the dusty plain. Each tier was thirty feet tall and was covered with bas-relief sculpture that twisted the minds of those who looked at it. In those carvings blasphemous things coiled and cavorted as esoteric sagas whose meanings could only be guessed out were played in sinister curves of obsidian. The dead lay piled against the bottom layer of the ziggurat, where they had fallen in desperate attempts to climb it or to prevent others from climbing it. No such order remained now, only the stink of blood and dust, and the eerie dread of terrible magics that corrupted the air.



The summit of the pyramid supported a vast stella of pure white stone which stretched up into the heavens, branching out into finer and finer tendrils which reached toward the alien stars like questing fimbriae. The surface of the stella had been carved with runes that glistened with a red wetness as though bleeding. Legend had it that Shihurnezar the Illuminated had carved the runes with the severed fingers of Ark-Andu, the Dead God of Creation, and that his blood still oozed over the primordial rock.

Calliope suspected that it was the stella itself that was bleeding, rent by that ancient heretic to allow magic to seep into the mundane muck of reality. Besides, everyone else was bleeding today, why not the universe? Calliope stood upon a stone seal, one of seven arranged in an irregular heptagon. Her seal was carved with runes and abstract representations of the sky and the heavens. The six remaining seals each boasted an occupant. They had many names, that fell company: The Seven Shards of Midnight, The Seven Curses, The Seven Servants of Night. Universally though these seven sorcerers were feared simply as ‘The Seven’. They had been raised up by the greatest and blackest wizard of the age, Iskandrin of the Twisted Soul, and had been the instruments of his decade long quest to raise himself to godhood.



The quest had laid waste to cities and kingdoms, as he had ransacked temples and archives for their ancient and jealously guarded secrets. Hundreds of thousands had perished in wars and famines, and at the hands of the creatures of nightmare that had slipped through the cracks in reality opened by Iskandrin’s black rituals and unearthly communions. The Seven were his lieutenants, indispensable to his plans but also potent threats to their master. They were bound to him with potent geases which compelled their obedience, if not their love, a fact which prevented them from scheming against him and each other not at all. Calliope suspected that Iskandrin liked it that way, the petty intrigues of his servants amused him. After tonight, when he ascended to godhead, he could afford to be amused but not quite yet. Calliope stood naked, every inch of her pale skin painted with sigils and wardings, her arms spread as a torrent of arcane energy poured through her body, raven black hair falling to her back like an ebon waterfall. She chanted constantly, the liquid sigils of Aklo spilling from her lips, the language of Creation burning in the air in pale blue flame. The other seven were doing the same, building a mystical ladder for Iskandrin to ascend to his blasphemous ambition. At the same time the fingers of her left hand, concealed from the others, moved in tiny but precise gestures. This was petty magic, among the first she had learned at the Temple after she had been tithed to Anu-Ishara. None of the haughty priestesses could have imagined using it for what Calliope intended but then, none of them were alive to imagine anything. Their world view had been narrow and petty, Iskandrin of the Twisted Soul had broadened Calliope’s horizons. With a tiny fraction of her power, so little as to escape notice, she reached down and began to bind herself to the seal. It was probable that most of the Seven were making their own attempts at escape of subversion. The misshapen albino Kimogen, whose naked form bulged with unnatural muscle and bristled with brush like hair, certainly did. He was too clever by half and far too ambitious to remain enthralled forever. The fiery haired Seylaya made no secret of her hatred for her master and could be relied upon to be scheming. All of the others probably were, save Leti, whose blind love of Iskandrin was matched only by her hatred and jealousy of his other disciples. Each of them in their hearts wondered if they might have left their scheming too late and that the moment of final dissolution was already upon them.



“Attend me my children!” Iskandrin boomed, his voice so loud, even over the clamor of storm and battle, that it pained Calliope’s ears. Nor was it mere words, the command thundered in her mind and her marrow, forcing her to obedience. Calliope redoubled her chanting, pouring arcane energy towards her master who began to rise towards the stone Stella on a glimmering pillar of golden energy. Each syllable of Aklo felt like regurgitating broken glass and Calliope trembled with the effort of continuing, her fingers twitching desperately, magical tendrils reaching down to brush against the seal. Iskandrin continued to rise towards his destiny, his hands stretching out eagerly to the face of the stella. He had only to touch it a few moments, to pour himself into the pillar of creation and to ascend to Godhood. Calliope felt herself connect to the seal and began to pull at it like the tumblers of a lock, if she could unbind it before…



There was a tremendous crash as something immense smashed down onto the top of the ziggurat with a sound like ten thousand armories collapsing. Great metallic wings swept up a hurricane of dust and Calliope’s eyes widened in terror as she saw the hundred foot long clockwyrm skid across the stone, it’s star iron claws gouging foot deep furrows into the rock. It cast a bow wave of dust and great showers of sparks where metal tore at stone. It had been a magnificent beast, overlapping plates of brass and silver inlaid with a king’s ransom in gemstones. Lightning strikes had fused huge patches of it together and molten metal hung in glimmering icicles. In places the scales had been blown away to reveal the cogs and mechanisms beneath, skittering electric and etheric corposant. The great nets of electrum wire which made up its wings were torn to glittering shreds and the blue white balefires of its eyes flickered even as it belched thin streams of flame in irregular gouts. The beasts mighty jaws snapped spasmodically as lightning crackled over its burned and fused body, great teeth shattering a statue of a woman with a spiders body into gravel before it finally stilled. Only a mad man would try to fly the thing through the storm, much less over a battle in which every wizard and half of the archers in the world were locked in a blind death struggle. But a madman had. Eaon Cormac, King of Tothweven, High King Eaon as he now styled himself, leapt from the gem encrusted howdah on the back of the dying clockwyrm, if such things could be said to die. He was a handsome, if severe, looking man, muscular and wolfish. The king wore a gold circlet at his brow, but was naked to the waist, his body covered in spiraling glyphs of blue woad. He literally smoked, tendrils wreathing around him like vines, his famous red braids burned away by the lightning that had laid low his steed. The great spear, Annakon, was in his hand, its golden shaft wrapped with ivy and caphron flowers, it’s star metal point gleaming in the lightning light dark. His warband came with him, each man a hero in his own right. Black Tam, Lothar of Bel Mara, Naden of the Grove and half dozen others of whom the bards sang.



“Cease this blasphemy before the Gods destroy us all!” Eaon boomed, his voice clear and commanding. Clearly the ultimatum was rhetorical because Lothar, a great blond bear of a man, struck at Seleya with his terrible hooked axe. The weapon seemed to stick in empty air an inch from the woman’s nose, then shattered with a subsonic boom that pitched Lothar twenty feet to crash into the body of the clock wyrm, a jagged strut erupting from his chest in a shower of blood. Lothar looked down in surprise, then went slack as his lifeblood poured from the terrible wound.



“You have come too late fool,” Iskandrin sneered, his voice dripping with venomous contempt, “and the only God that shall destroy you is me.” Iskandrin took another step on the glowing pillar and stretched forth his hand. It pressed against an invisible barrier between him and the stella, a pale gold wall seemed to shiver and writhe around his hand, as though disgusted by his touch. It resisted, pushing back against the unnatural thing this mortal wizard was attempting. Iskandrin shouted some black command and Calliope felt the energy of entropic death that lay like a spring flood on the plain below, surge up the sides of the ziggurat. Screaming shadowy figures boiled up and onto the pinnacle, spectral weapons or clawed hands extending. Calliope felt their hatred and malice for the architects of their destruction as they surged past, parting like a river around the rock of her defenses. Aklo poured from her mouth in a shriek that would have been unintelligible if the terrible language of creation could ever be anything other than horribly precise. Her hand spasmed wildly as her secondary spell managed to hook something in the seal, unbinding and unpicking it. The company of heroes leaped to the High Kings’ defense, many of them bore magical weapons which destroyed the shades utterly or sent them alight with dark purple flame that burned them away. Danan-sha, the High Druidess, hurled farie fire at the host, cutting them down by the dozens. But it was not enough. Calliope watched as Pallas Felmartin, easily recognizable by his silver hand, was ripped to pieces by specters which set at once to feasting on the steaming gobbets of flesh in a vain effort to slake the eternal cold. Danan-sha was pulled down a moment later by the horde of hungry spirits, her screams lingering far longer than should have been possible. With a tremendous cry which shook the ziggurat, Iskandrin pushed his hand through the golden barrier, which suddenly solidified then shattered like glass. His fingers fell forward and smeared themselves in the blood leaking from the stella. The world seemed to slow as the mortal and the immortal, separated at the moment of creation, came into contact. The magical forces shook the very sky as Iskandrin began to try to remake creation to his will.

“Now my children, I have one final sacrifice to ask of you,” Iskandrin’s voice sounded in Calliope’s head, it was strained as though the great wizard were trying to hold up an incredible weight by main strength. She felt his fingers sink into her soul and begin to rip it away, drawing her strength to him. Iskandrin had no need of servitors now his dark design was complete, and no desire to share power, the last service of his Seven would be to be absorbed into the black well of their master’s soul. The screams of the other Seven were like bells over the tumult as each of them was drawn towards their master. Calliope made a desperate grab for her mystical hold on the seal and the ancient magic opened like a loosed knot. The Powers of the Sky poured up the link into Calliope. She felt like a woman trying to swallow a river and the arcane sigils painted on her body began to smoke and burn away even as she rose into the air on a pillar of congealing starlight. Triumph surged in her as strength swelled within her pouring from her body till she glowed with starlight. With this power she could cast Iskandrin down, she could be the one to claim the secrets of the stella and ascend to god hood. She opened her mouth to laugh but it transformed to a scream as a tremendous physic weight clamped down around her.

“Calliope… you always were the cleverest of them,” Iskandrin’s voice chuckled in her head, “a child’s cantrip to open one of the Wells of Eternity, who else would even have conceived of it? Of course, it would have driven you mad long before you could have mastered it but no matter. I wish you could see it Calliope, see the world through my eyes, the eyes of a God!” She struck out at him with her newfound strength, the Aklo still perversely spilling from her lips to empower him. The mystical strike would have obliterated an ordinary mortal where he stood, but Iskandrin only laughed, drawing her soul towards his waiting jaws.

“Goodbye Cal…” Iskandrin cut off abruptly as a flash of gold leaped from the swarm of spirits in a rising arc. It struck the wizard in the back and punched him forward against the stella, pinning him to the stone. Eaon had used the half heartbeat of distraction to cast the mystical spear Annakon at his adversary. It was an incredible throw, one that beggared belief even among so many impossible things, but it struck true. Iskandrin was proof against almost all weapons, his body and mind layered with defensive magics, but Annakon was older and more potent than any weapon known. Legend had it, that it had been plucked from the depths of the blue ocean by the hero Mesha-ku who, with the aid of the Goddess Tara, hunted for the pearl of eternal life. Calliope didn’t know if that was true but she did know that in Aklo, Annakon was the only world that had a single meaning: Annihilation. The blade pierced the wizard and the stella with equal ease, opening a gushing wound in the stone and pinioning Iskandrin like a butterfly to a collectors board.

“No!” Iskandrin screamed, his hands scrabbling at the stella. Calliope could hear the victorious howl of the High King even as he was dragged to perdition by the surging horde of spirits. The whole ziggurat began to shake as though gripped by the most violent of earthquakes. Iskandrin was beginning to lose control of the spells that had created this place and it was being shaken apart by the contradictions of its own existence. Great fissures tore open in the plain below, swallowing whole regiments at a time. Cracks began to run through the ziggurat and, with a deafen roar, the northern stairway began to collapsed down the side of the structure in an avalanche of jagged obsidian. The air crackle and rip, sucking both the living and the spectral dead into some unknowable place.

“I…will…not…be…denied!” Iskandarin raged. Even now his strength was incredible. Calliope wasn’t sure if it was his alone, or the merging of his blood with the stella that impowered him but his grip on her grew ever tighter. She scrambled at the geas in her head but they were like hooks of star iron and would not be moved.

“You shall be the instrument of my return Calliope, even if it should take an age!” The mental command rammed itself deep into her mind like spikes of agony, the stubborn geas burning like fire. She felt it in her legs first, a slithering creeping cold sliding up her body. Her nude legs were encased in black veined marble which was spreading up her body at the speed of a pitcher of spilled wine. She screamed and tried to tear herself free but it was no use. With a roar like the end of the world the ziggurat shook itself to pieces as the sacred reality continued to rip itself to pieces. It was doubtful anyone on either side was alive on the plane below, but the lights of monsters and spirits were snuffed out by the avalanche of stone, or tumbled into the unimaginable abysses which opened beneath their feet. The destruction of the ziggurat left only the stella stretching to eternity in both directions, liberated from both land and sky. The marble flowed up over Calliope’s neck and chin and the last thing she saw before it closed over her eyes was her master and tormentor, pinned to the record of all creation by a golden spear.

@POOHEAD189

Silver & Gold: A Warhammer Roleplay

"Later?" Emmaline asked before producing a tin flask and unscrewing the cap. She took a drink and passed it to Malcador who sniffed at it's contents.

"Smells like fruit juice," he complained.

"Vodka and lime juice, kind of a tonic," she explained. Malcador put the flask to his lips and took a sip, his lips tightened out the sour bite of it but he didn't comment beyond passing it back to her. Emmaline screwed the cap back on and tucked the flask back into her satchel.

"I'm uhhh sorry about my friends, they are a little irritated at being stood up," Malcador told her. Emmaline made a beckoning guesture to the other apprentice to follow as she continued across the interconnecting courtyards.

"Well if they through out every apprentice who is unpleasant I would have the place to myself," she quipped.

"One hopes not quite to yourself..." Malcador grinned and Emmaline blushed, her pale cheeks turning rosy.

"Mmmm," she rejoined wittily as they passed into the Jade College and through a series of rather overgrown gardens. It might have been the imagination but it seemed like the gnarled trees paid rather too much attention, their leaves rustling where no breeze blew. Squirels and other small wildlife scuttled about with no fear of humans. Every now and again some student decided to zap one with a spell, it never ended well for them.

"So where are we going?" Malcador asked as Emmaline stepped into one of the large towers and began to climb the curving stairs. Malcador followed behind at a distance to put his eyeline level with her rump, which she found she didn't mind. She might have even swished her hips a little more than was strictly necessary. They climbed several more flights of stairs and passed along some mostly dissused corridors. The Jade College was large but its members frequently prefered the wilds and Taal Bower to dwellings of stone. This area seemed largely to have been give over to storage, with forgotten crates an ancient chests all but bursting from the unused chambers.

"Scrolls to deliver," Emmaline replied guesturing to her satchel as a pair of jade acolytes hurried past, heading down and out towards day two of the Pie Week festivities.

"Think anyone would notice if you were a little late?" Malcador asked and caught her around the waist sweeping her through a door into an ancient and, from the dust, unused chamber. He pressed her up against the wall and kissed her thoroughly.

"You brute!" she giggled before kissing him back, her arms going around his neck.

"I really am," Malcador admitted, his kisses begining to trail down her neck when the sudden sound of voices caused them both to freeze in place. The voices appeared to be coming from an adjoining room, probably another dusty and half abandoned store room like this one.

"...ambassador Clodfot wont be in town very long, it isn't a big window to snatch the gold," a voice was saying.

"I don't care about the gold, I just need him to vanish, the tension will give my cousin the excuse he needs to snatch those lands!"

"Well I do care about the gold Scmidt, I've spent too long and risked too much to abandon it now, if the little half pint gets knifed in the bargin fine but I expect to be buying myself an estate with enough docile women to ruin me!"

Malcador's eyes cut up towards Emmaline's, rather a comical aspect from his position and they both turned towards the door. Horatious Clodfot was the ambassador from the Moot, in town for the festival and Emmaline had no desire to be close to anyone plotting to do harm to such a towering (metaphorically) figure.

"If we just slip out no one will be the..." Malcador began. Emmaline's foot caught on a loose paver and she tumbled forward to strike a suit of armor. The ancient visor snapped down with a clang and the suit toppled over. Malcador made a grab for it but clolided with Emmaline and the armor crashed down and shatterd a crate, that spilled a half dozen pots from its broken timbers with an almightly clatter. One of the pots rolled to a stairwell and tottered on the edge before going over, banging noisitly and making Emmaline wince with every step.

The voices in the next room were dead silent.

Emmaline and Malcador stared at each other in shock, then leaped to their feet, coliding again as they did so. Malcador grabbed Emmaline and half dragged, half carried her out of the room, running back down the stairs they had just ascended as fast as their legs could carry them.

The Shattered Vow - A Chanson de geste

Theophanna sat in the chair she had been provided beside the stricken cleric. Albrecht’s battered body twisted in the linen sheets. The rustle of prayer wraps, long lengths of parchment inscribed with prayers to Il and wound around the body of a sick man, was a constant soft accompaniment to his ragged breathing and occasional groans. Theophanna contained her fear, the old mental exercises of the Convent coming to her aid. She imagined a great pool of water silent and still as glass, then imagined herself falling into it from a height, striking and passing through the surface without creating so much as a ripple. The warm water surrounded her body, the pressure building as she sank until buoyancy asserted itself and lifted her back into a calmer, more controlled, reality.



“You don’t seem very upset,” Cleson said, his tone as bland and polite as ever.

“Il-who-smote-the-Earth has heard my prayers, I have asked for solace for his servant,” she replied, her voice calm and almost serene. NAME regarded her for a long moment, his gaze curious and penetrating, then a call came from outside the tent.

“My Lord, you are needed at the lists,” a livered guard called. Cleson hesitated, clearly reluctant to depart, but with nothing obvious to hold his attention he scooped up his sword belt, offered Theophanna a formal bow, and stepped out of the tent. Suddenly, Theophanna found herself alone with the stricken cleric a man who, if he regained consciousness, might be able to testify that she had Spoken the words of creation. Such a revelation might send her to the stake, or start a war which would consume the Five Sisters. Theophanna was not a killer and while it would be a sin to kill Albrecht to save her own life, what about those of the soldiers and peasants who would surely die when a greedy king used her sin as an excuse to invade her husband’s lands? Surely she would be serving the greater good and not merely saving herself in such a case. Unless of course this was all a test, and Cleson was watching for her to do exactly that? She relaxed deeper into her meditation and reached out with her senses as she had been taught. There were no watchers. She could do it, all she had to do was… Theophanna’s hand reached out, seemingly of its own volition. All she had to do was cover Albrecht’s mouth and nose for a minute or two and… The cleric started upright in bed, several prayer papers tearing. Sweat started out of his pores like hail stones and his eyes were wide and sightless. He grabbed her outstretched hand like a drowning man seizing a branch, though his grip was weak and hot with fever.

“Attend! Before the Dragon rises in the east the Glass Prince will return to his Palace. Woe unto all who dwell under the shade of the Rose. A great shadow from the east shall blot out the sun. Seek not the hound but the wolf, else the south fall, and the north fall, and the west fall after them!” Albrecht shrieked the words in a eerie falsetto as though they were being driven though his vocal cords like a great wind. As soon as the last word escaped his lips he blanched almost grey and collapsed to the bed, twitching feebly. Theophanna snatched her hand back as though it had been burned, a moment before two panicked looking nuns bustled into the tent, one still hastily securing her wimple.

“My Lady, what goes on here?” the first one asked, her eyes flicking between Theophanna and Albrecht.

“I… I don’t know he just started screaming and then…” she made a gesture to Albrecht lying on the disheveled bedding, “just swooned I suppose.”

“What did he say?” one of the nuns demanded, dipping a cloth in a bowl of tepid water and gently wiping the monk’s brow.

“Nothing…just raving,” Theophanna told her but in her heart she wasn’t so sure. There were stories of sick and dying men being granted a glimpse into the mind of Il as they approached the jaws of death beyond which Il-who-rent-the-veil dwelled. Had Albrecht spoken a prophecy, and if so what did it mean? The Glass Prince, The Wolf, A Dragon? What could any of it mean.

Theophanna stepped out of the tent and hurried back to her own pavilion. She wished she had travelled with her library, or that she had time to speak with Aristophanna about what she had heard but she needed to get changed. The days combat would begin in earnest after lunch was served, and she had no doubt her husband would want her by his side and looking as decorative as possible.

Bodacious Bounties: Bounty Hunter AU

Jocasta smiled, surprised in spite of herself at the commotion her rhetorical question had incited. She lifted her hand as though to run it through her hair, then remembered it was filled with a tacky mass of seasonings. She turned to the bartender, a thick set man with a bald head that had been polished until it gleamed, offset by a neatly trimmed gray black beard. He looked skeptically at Neil, clearly doubting his ability to pay, but then arched a questioning eyebrow at Jocasta.

“Do you have Tindiri Starfire?” she asked. The Bartender snorted and produced a cloth with which he began polishing a glass.

“We have anything you want darling, providing it is shine,” he replied, then reached below the bar to produce a plastic jug of clear liquor. He poured four shots and slid three across the table to Jocasta, pushing the fourth to Neil. The liquor had a slightly oily sheen to it, indicative of a home brew. You could find whatever you wanted in a city like this, but the combination of the blockade and the influence of the more radical mosques, meant liquor was harder to find than most other narcotics. That in turn meant there was huge money to be made in unofficial stills, some of which were more professionally managed than others.

“Well, it doesn’t take a genius to figure this out,” Jocasta observed, and picked up a shot in each hand. She dumped them into a glass of water that was standing on the bar, then emptied the glass over her head. Cold water ran down Jocasta’s body as she pulled the towel from around her waist and began to scrub the spices out of her hand, staining the towel yellow and orange. She tugged her braid free and shook it out into a messy mane, the took the final shot and knocked it back, a slight watering of her eyes suggesting that it might have better followed the first two into a career as solvent. That project at least was going well as she continued to clean the spicy stains from her hair and scalp.



“Well I suppose that will have to do until I can find some shampoo, or a hair stylist, or a decent sanitation unit,” she observed, tossing the stolen and now brightly stained towel over the bar into an overflowing trash can.

“Or a pair of pants?” the Bartender asked, a smirk on his face.

“One, impossible challenge at a time,” Jocasta muttered, shifting the green silk to preserve her modesty as best it could before turning to look at the new comer.

“I haven’t seen you here before,” she said, shaking her head to disperse a spray of droplets and doing further violence to her already disheveled hair before extending a hand.

“I’m Jocasta Ap’Gwyn… Jill of All Trade and Unfortunately Grounded Captain.”

Bodacious Bounties: Bounty Hunter AU

There was no way off this fucking planet. Everyone said so. The sentiment had become a by word for accepting things which could not be changed, or a reference to all fates being in the hands of God. This did not stop people from trying, any more than Allah’s prohibitions prevented Sin. The data net was swamped with vid imagery of ships attempting to break the blockade only to be met with meson cannon fire from the Terran Flotilla followed by, if there were any survivors, boarding teams eager to fill the quotas for asteroid mining crews, gladiatorial combat, and a half dozen other fates which didn’t really bear thinking about.

Of course for most of the inhabitants of Allur Sahar this made little difference. To a dealer in nuts and sweetmeats who had never ventured beyond his own dome the stars were only a distraction, to the bandit out on the sands, merely a way to navigate the endless dunes, completely unknown to the narco-burnout or the aged beggar in his alley mouth hovel. Sure, prices were higher as the Terrans squeezed merchant shipping but prices were always climbing, and the poor and desperate would always find a way to pay.



In the meantime there was fun to be had.

The Palm Tree Club had been more or less taken over by the score of Terran Spacers. It was a quasi-respectable place, what the locals called ‘aspiring’ for being half way between the upper and lower spires. It was the kind of place where the lower classes could blow a week’s pay to pretend to be up and coming, and the upspires could slum and imagine themselves to be in more danger than they were. It was on the east side of the dome, which meant natural light was available through the constant efforts of the Polishing Guild who labored in their charm draped environment suits to keep the exterior armor glass clear. Real estate with real light was valuable, which meant that things got dingier, and cheaper as you moved towards the center of the domes.



The Club was a freestanding construction of artfully painted concrete, floored in light wood, meant to evoke the warmth of the desert, and walled in pale sandstone that had been polished to the rippling suggestion of dunes. Glass roofing let the light filter down, bolstered by several expensive sun lamps which burned night and day. Numerous fountains, each with a statue of a well-endowed desert maiden, produced a continual susurrus of falling water that was faintly audible beneath the wail of electric citars. Indoor plants, palms, and dates for the most part, clustered around the fountains, though most were more polyester than chlorophyll. In any case the main attraction was not botanical. The Palm Tree was renowned for its dancing girls, three specimens of which were currently performing on the main stage. Two of them were dusky examples of the local stock, with dark hair and almond shaped eyes. They were young and sported impressive hips which they ornamented with discs of polished brass and semi translucent silks of red and metallic silver. Their hair was piled high in an elaborate style that relied on combs that looked jade but probably weren’t, an affection which drew the gaze down their bodies rather than to their faces. Those faces were distorted only slightly by the veils they wore, less substantial than a glimmer of sweat. The third dancer was something different. She was pale and her hair was a light blonde which seemed to catch the omnipresent sun. Her eyes were an almost luminous green and her figure was both fuller and more balanced than the local girls, stinting on neither bust nor hip. This exoticism marked her out as much as her outfit did. It wasn’t that local dancing girls were homogenous, just that most off worlders tended to find different trades in which to flourish. The blonde wore the same style as the locals but her silks were green with metallic gold and stretched provocatively in a vain attempt to cover her considerable assets. Though she wore the veil, her hair was gathered back into a single thick braid which hung to her hips and swayed like a snake as she gyrated to the music, her movements daring and suggestive, setting her whole body into a conflicting series of slow rolls which made her shift distractingly beneath the thin sheen of silk.



Terran sailors hooted and tossed credit sticks, local coins, and currency from a half dozen worlds onto the stage in a desultory shower of gold and inlaid circuits. The few local patrons muttered at this breach of decorum but it had only taken a couple of busted lips and a black eye to remove any lingering doubts as to whose cultural norms would be observed tonight. The Terran’s weren’t huge brutes, but they were fit and in uniform, and they had the swagger of a group of men who knew there wasn’t much the locals could do but cringe. It probably didn’t help that strong drink had been flowing for several hours either. A wise manager might not have sent the girls out at all, but Habib had worried that they might tear the place apart in a riot if deprived of other entertainments.

“Take it off!” a drunken petty officer shouted, his face flushed with drink an arousal. In truth there was little enough for any of the girls to take off but such minor details weren’t to be bothered with. The blonde twisted sensually, sliding closer to the edge of the stage, bringing her perilously close to an array of grasping hands willing to enforce the petty officers direction. Her eyes met those of a lieutenant, recognizable by the peaked cap he wore at a jaunty angle and the fact that he wasn’t QUITE as drunk as the rest of his men. That officer licked his lips and reached up for the dancer, only to be interrupted by a thundering crash. Everyone spun to the large glass doors at the front of the club, all four of which had been half smashed from their hinges. In the doorways stood four huge mutants, each one over eight feet tall and close to four hundred pounds of vat grown muscle and biomolecular enhancement. They wore armor of a sort, quilted leather dyed various shades of red and black and their brutish faces and massive forearms were covered with calligraphic script which has already beginning to run with their slightly acidic sweat, giving them a dirty oily look. Breakers from the Red Mosque. The Red Mosque might have once been a religious center but had, like many such institutions, found ways to parley it’s spiritual power into the temporal. They were puritanical fanatics, but not so puritanical that they were above drugs, protection, and other less than hallowed ways of extending their influence.

“Zis zen of enquarty iz closed,” the largest of the Breakers declared, struggling to push the words out of a mouth disfigured by a pair of protruding lower teeth that definitely counted as tusks.



“The fuck it is!” the petty officer declared, lurching drunkenly to his feet and brandishing a bottle as though it were a cavalry saber. A roar of drunken agreement went up from the sailors while the few remaining locals scurried for whatever exits they could find. The Breakers charged forward, cocking fists the size of hams, knuckles popping like gunshots. The Terran’s armed themselves however they could, producing vibro-knives or grabbing chairs to use as improvised cudgels.

“They will kill me!” the green clad dancer gasped, leaping down from the stage to land beside the Terran officer with surprising grace. Graceful or not, the landing was nice to watch, the officer decided as the woman bounced to her feet in more ways than one. His hand strayed to a holstered pistol at his hip, though he hadn’t quite escalated to drawing it.

“Surely they…” further speculation was interrupted as the charging Breaker’s hit the Terrans. The battle roars of both groups melded with the sound of shattering wood, breaking glass, and heavy impact of flesh on flesh. The scent of blood, sweat and hormones seemed to surge up all around them as though borne in by a great wave.

“Please, you have to get me out of here, I will do anything!” the blonde wailed. The officer hesitated a moment, vestigial honor and priapic desire going to war with his higher intellect. For a second he hesitated but then he grabbed her wrist and half lead, half dragged her through a door into a kitchen space. The staff had already abandoned it, unknown cuts of meat still turning on spits and dates scattered everywhere. Several pots of what might be soup were beginning to boil over out of neglect.

“Go out the back and…” The officer’s eyes glazed as the blonde drove a small shock rod into the side of his neck and triggered it. The rod snapped electric blue and the officer’s muscles contracted so hard he leaped into the side of a stainless-steel refrigerator purely on the strength of his own misfiring nerves. His head struck the unit with a musical pong and he collapsed to the floor, the fine hairs on the side of his neck smoldering. Jocasta patted them out as she rolled him onto his back. Taking his left hand she turned it palm up and stared at it intently for several second. The wetware in her eyes located the chip implanted in his palm, a standard Terran practice for carrying idents and clearance codes. A moment later a small metallic dragonfly zipped down from the ceiling, holding an expensive and illegal card cloning unit in its rearmost set of legs. It hovered for a moment until the unit made an approving beep, indicating the clone was complete. Jocasta let the officer’s arm drop and peeled back his eyelids, staring intently into his eyes to allow her wetware to copy his retinal patterns.

“Ok time to…” The kitchen door burst open as a Terran sailor rag dolled through the air, struck a falafel and ricocheted into a pile of pita breads. A Breaker followed him in, half crouching to fit. One of the brute’s eyes was gone and blood leaked down over its left cheek. The ink was really running now, and the words of the sutras were completely illegible. It blinked it’s one good eye furiously as inky sweat tricked into it. The smell of male hormones and chemical performance enhancers prickled in the air.



“The whores of the unbelievers shall suffer the same chastisement!” the gene-altered brute roared, exposing a mouthful of broken shovel-like teeth.

“You couldn’t have waited ten more seconds?” Jocasta complained, then pulled the officer’s side arm from its holster, tumbling the safety off and chambering a round with a flick of her thumb. The Breaker smiled a horrible bloody smile and charged. Jocasta fired two shots into its body before she realized that it wasn’t going to be enough to stop the charging brute. Her aim shifted and she fired once more, shattering a vast ceramic amphora to her left. A wave of olive oil engulfed both combatants in a shimmering golden tide. The Breaker, fully committed to his charge, lost his footing on the oil slicked floor, his rush turning into a floundering slide. Jocasta tried to leap clear but found she had been too clever for her own good. She scrambled against the slick floor but could find no purchase thanks to the oil. The Breaker hit her like a billiard ball, sending her tumbling into the corner to crash against a counter, the impact rocked the shelf hard enough that it knocked over several jars, dousing her in a rain of cumin, coriander, and cardamon that stuck to her oil slicked flesh and scalp. She sneezed violently. The Breaker was already clambering to its feet and to her dismay Jocasta found that she had lost the pistol somewhere in the confusion. Desperately she scrambled for a weapon but could find nothing more convincing than a paring knife. Seeing her distress, a wicked smile spread across the Breaker’s face as he stepped towards her. With a zipping whir the little Dragonfly drone flew into the mutant’s face. There was a series of audible pops as the drone danced away and the Breaker’s head was snapping up and down violently, as though trying to nod itself to death. Jocasta could see parts of its skull as arcing electrical discharge pulled from its face and realized that the drone had shoved the shock rod up the things nose. She watched in mute fascination for several seconds as the creature’s entire face from crown to chin flexed violently. There was an extra loud pop and the brute stood like a statue, smoke drifting from its nostrils and ears, then like a falling tree, it slowly toppled to one side and struck the corner of the prep table. The impact flipped the table like a tiddlywink, hurling knives, crockery and other Bricker Brack at the door at the very moment the drunken Terran Petty officer opened it. He squealed and toppled back out of the door porcupined with cutlery. The door swung morosely on its hinges for a few seconds before coming to rest closed.



“Unbelievable,” Jocasta muttered and limped towards the door.

The woman who entered the Smuggler’s Blues an hour later bore a superficial resemblance to the exotic dancer at the Palm Tree. Her sheer ensemble was partially covered with a gray leather jacket and the towel wrapped around her hips, fighting a losing battle to preserve her modesty. The stylish heels she had been wearing were broken and dirty and she kicked them off in disgust. Her body glistened with oil, save for the red and yellow patches around her scalp and face where fragrant spices had adhered. She stomped across the room and flopped into a chair before glaring belligerently at the bar tender.



“What does a girl have to do to get a drink around here?” she demanded.

Discovery: A Broken Galaxy

“Cover starboard, shoulder to bulkheads,” Kashvi ordered. The command was almost unnecessary; everyone had it drilled into their muscles from years of training. The Marine Corps loved training. It was a great thing, but no amount of it could prepare anyone for floating through an ancient, derelict, alien ship.

“This is fucking weird…” one of the marines muttered. Kashvi didn’t respond. It was impossible to completely control comms in a high-stress situation. When the bullets started flying, men babbled, laughed, whimpered, even prayed. With computer assistance, commanders could shut down transmissions if needed, but there was no point in trying to silence everything.

Besides, it was fucking weird.

The bulkheads, once dark and inert, were slowly beginning to glow. It wasn’t dramatic. It was as though the metal was veined like marble, light seeping into it at an agonizingly slow pace. The change was subtle, just a few shades lighter than it had been, but enough to give the alien structure a disconcerting sense of motion. It was almost organic, like flesh stretched over a vascular system.

“Anyone reading biologics?” Kashvi asked, steadying herself with a hand against the wall as she countered a slight spin from her last jump. Her HUD blinked with negative reports from her marines. The tech wasn’t picking anything up. Not that she trusted it, what were the odds that marine-grade hardware, designed on a budget, could detect alien pathogens? Of course, the theory was that alien pathogens wouldn’t affect humans. Or so she vaguely remembered from her three mandatory credits in exobiology. Maybe the boffins back on the ship would have better insight.

“We are at the door,” Carmichael reported. The pointman had advanced down the tapering corridor toward the source of the energy reading, only to find his way blocked by a smooth metal plate a little larger than an armored marine. The internal illumination had brightened, casting a sickly light on Carmichael’s armor.

“You want us to breach here, Ma’am?” Carmichael asked, reaching for his breacher. The M21 breacher resembled a small caulking gun, except instead of caulk, it contained a paste of metalized thermite and unoxidized aluminum in an explosive matrix. When ignited, the mixture could burn hot enough to cut through even tempered steel.

“Negative,” Kashvi snapped. “We’re not cutting into the first alien ship we find, made of who knows what.”

Carmichael's hand jerked away from the breacher as if slapped, then paused.

“Please advise, Lead,” he requested, unsure how to procced.

Kashvi kicked off and fired a short burst of gas to twist herself into a dive, carrying her down the tube until she landed beside Carmichael. Her magnetic boots clanked against the hull as she stabilized. Carmichael reflexively shifted sideways to clear her sight line.
The dull light was brighter now enough to reflect off his visor like distant starlight.

“It looks almost like…” Kashvi trailed off, then, on a hunch, extended her hand. As her fingers neared the plate, the light grew even brighter, and the veins in the metal seemed to glow like fiber optics. They formed a complex geometric pattern almost like circuit diagrams. There was a dull spot at the center of the panel, a roughly octagonal shape, though the sides weren’t uniform.

“What the hell?” Kashvi murmured. She extended her fingers, spread wide, and touched the spot. The panel melted as though struck by a blowtorch, the fluid metal disappearing into the hull as if absorbed by porous sand. Unhealthy, jaundiced light oozed from the aperture, half-obscuring the space beyond.

“Moving! Check left!” Carmichael called, diving into the room beyond the portal.

“Tight, tight, tight to the right,” Kashvi replied, kicking off to cover the other side as the rest of the team followed, escorting the civilians into the unknown.

Black Serpents: Warhammer RP

Calliope chuckled, an unusually animated sound for the normally cold sorceress.

“I don’t believe our contract extends quite so far as that,” she observed archly.

“I would caution you that the Baroness Hollerman is a Jade Wizard of some skill,” this last fact was drawn from her lips almost unwillingly.

“I do not know if she would use her arts on you but I cannot rule it out. What I need from you is to gain access to her chambers after the rest of us have left for the night. Esme Hollerman’s appetites are well known and I have no doubt she would relish deploying her charms against someone so close to me.” It was true that Baron Hollerman’s cuckholdrey was an open secret in Nuln. In a world where the Countess Emanuelle didn’t exist that might have been a problem, but the Countess cast a long shadow in which all manner of what otherwise might be improper could flourish.

Further discussion was interrupted as the carriage rolled through the gates and a score of footmen filled out to flank it on either side. Mesmer leaned down from his position as ostler and passed the gilded invitation to a major domo in striped livery and roughed collar. A blast of trumpets preceded opening of a pair of great wooden doors replete with carvings of martial glory. A beautiful woman with honey brown hair piled high in an elaborate beehive emerged on the arm of a vacant looking older man with silvering hair. The woman wore a shimmering emerald green gown and dripped with gold and emeralds and seemed to shine with vitality, an aspect which made her husband seem all the more wan and washed out.

“Calliope Blackwood? How long has it been?” the woman asked in a rich throaty voice.

“Persica,” Calliope responded, her tone every bit as chill as her interlocutors was vibrant. “Since I left Altdorf I shouldn’t wonder.”

“Under something of a cloud as I remember, what was it? A noble intrigue? A Temple investigation? Problems with the law?” Persica Hollerman bubbled, too earnest to be anything other than sincere.

“Something of all three,” Calliope admitted. Persica’s eyes sparkled with mischief while her husband stared distractedly into the middle distance.

“An honor to meet you Baron Hollerman,” Calliope said, her attention shifting to the nobleman. The air seemed to chill and stir as though beaten by the wings of uncounted ravens. Baron Hollerman blinked and started as though awakened from a deep sleep.

“And …uh… you, Lady Blackwood is it?” he asked. Calliope performed a small slightly ironic curtsey. Persica’s lips pressed together in the smallest sign of irritation. The hand resting on her husband’s arm tightened and his face slowly glazed over.

“And who are these healthy looking people?” Persica asked, her eyes flicking to the mercenaries.

“They are my retinue,” Calliope said, waving a vague hand. Persica’s eyes fell on Mesmer and blazed with anger for an unguarded moment before returning to its more pleasant aspect. Mesmer returned her gaze with his customary stony indifference.

“And who is this?” Persica demanded her eyes sparkling as they fell on Kayden.

“This is Captain Caradwalden the leader of my Master at Arms,” Calliope replied.

“Well this is much more interesting than I imagined!” Persica simpered, flashing a smile at Kayden.

“Shall we retire for dinner?”

Discovery: A Broken Galaxy

Maybe just one more post.. LOL

Discovery: A Broken Galaxy

Major Kashvi Sikander Sadek
September 24, 2190 – 1:18 PM
Central European Standard Time
Location: Derelict Ship

Kashvi floated in an electronic reverie. In her mind's eye here marines appeared as pulsing blue dots and the civilians in blue. In the event of hostilities she calculated she could extract all the civies with the loss of two marines. Three if Prince was slow on the draw though that didn't seem likely.

"23 percent casualties officer candidate Sadek. Do you think losing a quarter of your command is acceptable rate of loss?" The voice was the dry dispassionate tone of a grading officer back at OCS, the emotionless delivery all the more damning for it's sterility. She swam in information, watching the feeds from every suit of armor at once all she had to do was stretch out with her mind and move her people to the right places. Then the grading officer would be satisfied.

"Squad," Kashvi said, triggering the unit push for her six marines, "We are moving out. Carmicheal take point, Bashisville secure the LZ." Carmicheal consistently scored well on breach drills, so did Bashisville but the slight hesitation in her jump relegated her to ass end charlie on this one. The HUD suggested Bashisville was trying to lodge an objection but Kashvi squashed it with a flick of her eye.

"So Candidate Sadek, you have decided to divide your forces, taking inspiration from General Custer?" Kashvi ignored the grading officers carping, knowing that any decision she made would be demonstrated to be wrong. Her eye twitched spasmodically as she accepted a standard flying triangle, then adjusted it to push the wings forward to better cover the asymmetrical bay. She lamented that she hadn't bought a support weapon, but this was technically an exploration, not an assault. Well, not with that attitude. Everyone acknowledged the movement plan including, to Kashvi's surprise, Schrier.

"Heads on a swivel, even if no one shoots at us the egg heads will be interested. Break. Castle, we are advancing," she commed, the last words informing Charming and his element of their movement. Kashvi kicked off beginning a two stage progress to her first target point.

"Doctor Schrier, lead on," she encouraged, allowing the scientist to set the pace. The marines were using him as a central point for their formation, providing protection from as many angles as they could cover.

@Cyrania

Discovery: A Broken Galaxy

I will be out of contact for the next twenty days in that time please feel free to RP my characters in anyway that is necessary to progressing the story. Honestly I don't mind. Go nuts!