Thanqol

Breathless Dead

Redana!

You walk along a path of soft soil.

The Eater of Worlds cracked planets with its beak, drinking in the molten core and processing the ores within into the constantly expanding armour plating of its shell. The thin upper crust of dirt and soil was useless to the beast and so remained in its mouth, piling up around the massive structures of its mouth like plaque, contaminated with whatever seeds and improperly chewed organic life happened to survive within. The lands around the hill town are thus not only rich with grown food plants made from the ship's stores but with all manner of strange plant life. Alien flowers, wild grasses, exotic dandelions that blow their seeds out to follow the strange air currents of this interior space.

You follow the curve of that soft clay wall - less fragile than it appears due to the reinforcing strands of hypertensile materials harvested from the Lupincas and running crudely through its structure, but by no means durable. What it does seem to have been optimized for is slipperiness - you watch as a confused frog tries multiple times to jump onto the gentle angle of the wall's lower surface and slide smoothly down to the ground each time, suction caps useless against the frictionless surface.

You hear the voices before you see them - aged and weathered like sea biscuits. "I'm telling you, I saw it! There was a fire in the sky, Leon!"
"You old coot, you just probably just saw the sun in a crystal again."
"Whatever happened to, 'I love you, Leon! I'll trust you with my life, Leon'!"
"That was before you called me to arrest your own shadow -"

You round the last corner and before you are two of the legendary warriors of Ceron.

The Ceronians are a servitor breed, but of all the servitors they are the most prestigious - wolf-aspected, phalanx instinct woven into their genetics. There has never been a more uniform and cohesive fighting force in the galaxy, fearless soldiers with almost telepathic understanding of each others awareness. One of the contingency plans drilled into you by your tutors is the secret location of Ceron - in the event of you escaping a coup against your reign, you are to go to Ceron and muster an army there that might be capable of defending you against the Armada itself.

But these aren't the vital, ferocious wolf-warriors of legend and battle plans. These are two old soldiers sitting under hand-woven yellow-and-pink umbrellas by the gate, intensely staring with fading eyes at the game of marbles laid out between them.

Vasilia!

Ramming is a natural part of void warfare. Ramming directly into a warship's plasma engines...

It's not really the done thing.

There are better ways to do it, normally. It's rare for a slower ship to turn tail on a faster one. It's rare for an ambush to strike for the narrow engines rather than the large and vulnerable sides. It's rare that a captain wants to see what happens if they put the nose of their ship into a constant flow of stellar plasma for a prolonged period of time...

With a hundred thousand viewscreens angled in this direction, this is a learning experience for the entire Armada.

The crunching, cracking enormity of impact runs through the Plousios. The temperature starts to steadily rise as the point-blank plasma furnace of the Veterosk crashes over your prow like the storm itself. The forces are impossible to control, but Poseidon's hand is here and he guides you relentlessly towards your destination. As fires start to erupt around you and your viewport glows red-hot you can see the shapes of salvation pods, plovers, and shuttles burst from the Veterosk in all directions.

And then you order full stop.

With the added, wild, uncontrolled momentum the Veterosk slams into the Lupincas like a javelin.

The Engine Deck!

The Hermetician is the only one who is okay with this. There's a strange, serene calm about him as he goes through his work, tripod legs reflexively bracing against every tug and pull and shipquake. As the world falls into chaos, only those marked by Ares can keep their feet.

The rest of you? You are not right with the War God.

Laughter fills the room and smouldering coal-eyes gleam in the dark places. Ares emerges into the desaturated light of the engines, ruddy and bare chest illuminated by emergency lights, wooden war mask upon his grinning face. With a whoop and a howl he rips a pipe open, sending a spray of azure plasma fire in Dolce's direction. Then he snatches up a loose polywrench in either hand and rushes towards Alexa, blows cascading over each other in the brutal, uncaring rhythm of the mad.

Both of you, roll to Overcome.

Bella!

"Of course, you're right," said Princess Redana, as you pull her up so that she almost falls into your arms. "I don't understand anything about mistress Redana."

It's the voice that's always so weird. It is Redana's voice, but saying things that Redana would never say, in ways Redana would never say them. And then she's stepped away, hair changing with a flick from blonde to black-grey, face falling and sharpening and -

"I," said Admiral Odoacer with profound menace infusing every word, "will need you to do my hair."

If you had to study the Admiral then so did Mynx - if there was ever a role she'd have to play other than Redana's, it would have had to be the Admiral's. But Mynx's shapeshifting didn't come with free hairstyling, which was perhaps why the Admiral kept her hair in such an elaborate and severe bun.

"And we can play twenty poisons while you do it!" said the shapeshifter, bubbly normal voice incongruously coming from the Admiral's mouth as she seized your arm girlishly. "First question! Empress Nero - fuck, marry, kill?"

Masks: BABYLON MUST FALL

Canada Taliv does not have super strength. She has medium sized girl strength. It is extremely easy to dismiss heroes who make their name off of super strength until you're being hugged to unconsciousness by a salamander and can't break out of it no matter what you do.

She's not a warrior. She never was. In the world before, her battles were against unpowered people, strange mystical effects, traps, supervillains whose claim to fame was having a freeze ray. She's not ready for this.

[Powerful blow: 10. Canada is taken out]

Chuubo's GMD: Love and Shattered Alchemy

There has never been a more attentive student. In momentary conversational pauses you can see Jasper's lips moving as she subliminally repeats your words to aid in memory. Jasper learns at the intersection of wide-eyed, awed fascination and grim seriousness, and the only thing missing from her is -

"A notebook!" she squeaks suddenly. "Paper! And it's blank! Oh wow - that stuff only comes from the human world!" She leans all the way across the paper, holding her hair back from her eyes as she stares in amazement, hand hovering in mid air as she stops herself just barely from touching it.

Blank paper. Blank prayer strips. What kind of demon queen received blank prayers? And so much of it, too! How?! Her chair scrapes along the ground for half a second - she's almost about to leap to her feet and challenge Dulcinea on the spot for that treasure and damn the consequences. It is only with supreme willpower that she halts herself, demurely folds her hands in front of her, tears her eyes away from the paper and back directly to Dulcinea's eyes. Hm? Is she blushing? Shaking? Thoughts of the paper slip away and Jasper tilts her head to the side analytically. She frowns. This felt like she was messing up some hidden rule of etiquette, like there was a social custom she didn't quite understand here. Was she inadvertently flirting with Dulcinea?

Further research was required.

"Why, I'm down here because I'm a sinner, of course," said Jasper with an angelic smile, still operating on the assumption that she was in the Consuming Hells. "The realms of intellectual enlightenment did not satisfy me. Cruder passions arose. The dances of the devils were far from solar perfection, but like you said... there's temptation in infinity."

How did the subject change when she was deliberately flirting?

Masks: BABYLON MUST FALL

It’s six against two, and there’s no way you can lose.

You say that, but then, you've never fought Asterion.

Her feet half give out under her as she leans into the charge - shield forwards, a striking ram, throw and toss, at least so goes the theory. Instead she impacts quickly but uselessly into the incredible abs of a terrifyingly impressive reptilian janissary. She pushes with her exhausted strength but it's like shoving against a brick wall. Maybe it's something to do with leverage? If she lowered her centre of gravity... oh no, that wasn't helping at all. Oh, of course, put your hips into it... no, that wasn't it either. Perhaps...

She hated fighting tough girls. So distracting.

[Directly engage: 3]

Breathless Dead

Redana!

No one has ever boarded the Eater of Worlds and lived to tell the tale. As a result, artistic depictions of Odoacer's legendary victory have been fueled by guesswork. Portraits of black-armoured Ceronians standing in moist and dripping tunnels, veins and intestines, attacked by ferocious insectoid horrors are common. Shining hoplites wading through seas of bio-muck, all the more glorious for their contrast with the horror of Poseidon. So you clutch your Plover's sword closer as you enter through the atmospheric bubble, prepared for the worst nightmares of the void to be made manifest. Who knows what evil had survived in this rotting carcass?

You were not expecting blinding, brilliant, radiant sunlight.

The brain of the Eater of Worlds is vast and crystalline and aquatic - and it is shattered by the adamant prow of the Lupincas that runs right through its centre. But its broken wreckage still hangs suspended from the midst of the ceiling-sky, shining with a thousand dazzling lights. In the centre of this immense crystal chandelier is an incomparable light bracketed by lines of black metal. It takes a long moment before you recognize that prince of engines, the heart of the Lupincas removed from its original mount and carried down here into the dead brain of the leviathan and freed from its containment. The bare engine heart shines and fills this interior world with crystalline sunlight.

From the broken brain pours water - clear, but with an edge of cobalt blue. It cascades through the ruptures in the crystal mind, falling down from the sky in a vast and eternal rainstorm-waterfall. With the artificial sun so close to this storm, light already wild by its refraction through the crystal, you're looking at possibly greatest rainbow in the galaxy.

Seas of blue. Seas of teal. Seas of green. Your eyes adjust. Immense fields of mangroves spread in all directions, thick and tangled roots weaving together to form an almost-surface, broken here and there to reveal glimpses of deep cerulean blue. The air is tropical; hot and wet, unlike anything you've ever experienced in the air-conditioned perfection of Tellus. On and on you go, witness to this most unlikely of jungles, this alien paradise.

And there, ahead, almost at the centre - a hilltop island rising above the flat. Red tiled rooftops and gentle white houses and the unmistakable shape of a temple in white marble. Fields of rice, and wheat, and barley girt by elegant bronze stone walls. No experience other than fairy-tale depictions of castle towns could prepare you to identify what this is. A town. A town, here, in the belly of the beast.

Vasilia!

The engine has come to life.

You have power.

You have your target, blissfully unaware of the threat you pose.

Take us through space.

Dolce!

"Idiot!" snapped the Hermetician. "The engine is already running! Imprecise statements mutilate the mind! What you want is forward thrust, which the divine teachings of Hermes direct to be done through the calibration of the stellar compressor and release of sequential plasma valves. However I notice that the compressor is stuck in a maximum output forward position and some sort of emergency handbrake has been jury-rigged by a syphilitic caveman out of spare adamant plates in the valves. Simply repairing the damage caused by these 'repairs' should be enough to take us into all-ahead full."

Redana's repairs aren't that bad for someone with no formal training, he's just being mean. With the Hermetician irritably snapping at you whenever you do anything incorrect, operating them is within your grasp.

"There is a shipmind here but it's suffered worse than anything," snarled the Hermetician. That's a surprise - shipminds are artificial geniuses and sages and you couldn't wish for a better navigator. "If I could restore it finding the Raving Direction from here would be trivial. Parts! I've got less than half of what I need, I need another calculating machine. Where can one be found in this region? The Empress has had them stripped from all Imperial warships to limit their mobility. The old capitol, perhaps?"

The longer you spend watching the Hermetician rant and fume, the more you become aware that the greatest danger he presents is his temper. This is not, to put it mildly, someone who has any consideration for your request to speak quietly. Even when he's being helpful he's loud and aggressive and sometimes points terrifying guns at you when you're about to make a mistake.

This isn't a trait of Hermeticians generally - they're also rude, greedy, and deceitful, sure, but this reminds you more of Azura warbands you've met while with the Starsong Privateers. There's no faster way for negotiations to break down than to try and engage them calmly, rationally and collaboratively, and it's foolish to expect an agreement to hold unchanged. But...

He's not shipjacking you. He's helping you. He's just doing it in such an aggressive, prideful way that it can be mistaken easily for him being a menace. You think that Vasilia might have actually succeeded in negotiating a temporary alliance with him, and the biggest danger right now is misreading his compliance as hostility.

He will also inevitably rebel at some point. Challenging authority is, too, Ares' way. The only thing to do there is to be ready for it.

Alexa!

Someone is standing beside you and listening, but it is not Athena. The rustle of robes is too soft, too natural, and the feeling of feathers brush your neck like the hands of a musician. As Hera touches you in your most vulnerable place your voice falls gentler than you could have given it credit for, and the warrior's heart shifts.

Galnius touches her icon of Apollo reflexively, and that itself tells a story. She's a devotee of virtue and that is something to be deeply wary of. You're dealing with someone who believes virtue takes precedence over other considerations, even loyalty, even pride. She might not be enlightened herself but she expects that from her leaders, and she has demonstrated that she will betray even a king if she believes them unjust. Most dangerous of all, though, is that her ideal of virtue is closely aligned with the Empire's own - you do not see the imagination there to consider a better world.

"Zelok will live," Ganius said gruffly. "Faron... he was right with the gods. Not his own doing, greedy prick, didn't want to offer anything half the time. Had to keep an eye on him or he'd down his entire cup before making a libation. But I wouldn't have any of that in my unit, and even if he must have skipped some sacrifices, at the very least I made sure he was right with Hades. Seemed like the thing to do in this place, and it means he'll at least have a spot in Elysium. Anyway. No grudges," that last was half directed at his own squad. "Anything that happens in Athena's domain is Athena's to decide."

She doesn't say it, but you can tell from the way the soldiers are maintaining absolutely perfect parade-ground decorum in this situation that the reason they're putting up with all this is because they've wordlessly understood what the prize here is. If they are involved in the rescue of Princess Redana they stand to gain honour and promotion from the Empress, perhaps even assignment as the princess' personal honour guard. That's a huge incentive for all of them, but without the princess it's meaningless. What they want you to do more than anything is for you to introduce them to Redana and make sure that their names won't be forgotten when rewards are being handed out.

Bella!

Mynx stares up at you, incomprehensible mind turning over and over as you lie on that spotless floor together. Her eyes flicker left and right, observing one eye and then the other, and they go still when an unasked for spot of wetness touches her cheek. The squirrel shape melts away to reveal her sleek crimson scales, her slender frame, her hands rough and burned from the painful process of learning all of chemistry's ways to hurt.

Then she leans up directly into that snarl and there's a pinprick pain in your ear as a single fang punctures your skin. Antivenom exchanges for blood, and as the shapeshifter pulls back there's just a tiny spot of red on her teeth for a moment.

"Yikes, Bella, I don't think even I could brew a chill pill strong enough for you right now," she said. "Obviously I wasn't planning on leaving you behind," she lies(?), "I just wanted to hear you squirm a bit. No need to be such a drama queen about everything."

Breathless Dead

Redana!

The Imperial Plovers are the same machines as yours. The same speed, the same acceleration, the same limits - but they are more. It should just be a matter of math.

But you're testing your limits and they aren't.

You see the mines glitter ahead, ruby tri-points blinking. They're timed to wait for thirty seconds before they arm to give their users time to get to a minimum safe distance. Thirty seconds of safety before the jaws of the trap snap shut. You only need twenty. You scorch between the deadly balls of explosives before they arm, between the clumsy grabs of two minelayer plovers, and on, and on, and on, the mere fact of your escape no reason at all to slow your ascent.

And then you're besides the Eater of Worlds.

The husks of the Imperial ships before were vast; this is incomprehensible. It fills your view like a planet, plated in bone and rock; mountains and peaks and valleys carved into its stone hide. Prismatic veins of gemstones erupt on the surface, crystal forests of Poseidon's multitude of colours, storming and reacting to the gathering storm. Oceans of sapphire blood-ice hang depressurized like rainstorms in stop motion. Ahead that distant beak could break a continent with a bite. It is so vast it feels like you are hardly moving in relation to it, though you have not cut your speed at all.

[Temporary solution: The debris field is now being mined. This will make future small craft operations in this area hazardous.]

Vasilia and Alexa!

"Uh, yes ma'am," said Ganius to the order, giving a brief salute and leading his squad away. Alexa, as you walk alongside him you can hear him muttering about "Not being an engine dog, she's just the same as the others". That's going to be a problem - this is a hoplite, and even the humble ones are proud enough to consider manual labour beneath them. It's what caused him to defect in the first place and you can sense the morale in this unit is very close to zero - and managing the hearts of soldiers is as vital an aspect of war as any.

You've got some time to survey and assess, Vasilia. You see that the Veterosk is heading directly for the Eater of Worlds. You're completely in its stern, and have to darken the central viewport to shield your eyes from the brightness of its engine aftershock that faces directly towards you. You absolutely have the element of surprise.

What's the plan?

Dolce!

{EXPLAIN}

The blasting, blaring static-fulled artificial voice of Iskarot from immediately behind you knocks you off your feet.

A monster in robes the colour of hazard stripes towers over you. Its eyes glow a malevolent red and glittering lights fill it like a tiny galaxy. It brandishes a fistful of brightly coloured severed cables, still sparking, limp like a severed limb.

"The status of this warship is DEPLORABLE," shouted the Hermetician, throwing the bundle into your arms. It steps right over your prone body and begins applying maniacal limbs to the console you were looking at. In a much softer, more gentle voice, he intoned "Blessed be the holy engine, for your mighty wings will bear us to the Golden Lord - HOW DO YOU EXPLAIN THIS CORROSION? Has this ship been UNDERWATER? Nothing here is sterile, there are teeth marks on the multiphase interchange, the balistrades are rusted shut - WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS?!?!"

He shifts right past you again, not even looking at you, ripping a huge console off the wall and unscrewing multiple burned-out and damp bulbs and tossing them irritably on the floor where they shatter one after another.

Bella!

This place isn't clean.

The smells of the cleaning chemicals, too fine for human senses, are obvious to you, as sharp and unpleasant as orange on ulcers. It's overpoweringly thick, like an open bottle of the stuff has been spilled, but there's no sign of it. As unpleasant as it is, the smell of cleanliness should at least should be comforting - but it's not. Something is wrong. There's something it's not entirely covering, and the thought of having missed a spot raises a horrible tension.

The wine is the same. It's so full, so rich, it passes beyond your ability to comprehend - but it too doesn't quite cover something. This is royal wine - the bar servitor gave you royal wine, not the lower class stuff that would fit a servitor's station. The kind of stuff that sent your eyelashes fluttering when the Empress poured herself a glass from across the room, the kind of stuff that parallels the molten sunlight honey-cheese flavour of divine ambrosia. It's so smooth and crisp even the roughness of your tongue feels smooth and golden, glowing, drifting light saturates your body. It's divine. You almost can't move.

That smell. It's not dirt. It's something else, something familiar, something...

It's not almost. You actually can't move.

The bartender leans across the table on her elbows, blinking sideways to reveal her slitted reptilian eyes, incongruous against the soft and squirrelly face.

"Hey, Bella!" said Mynx, waving cheerfully, bubbly smile filling every part of her face. "How are you doing?"

Mynx. The shapeshifter. Princess Redana's body double and your ally and rival in the Imperial Household, you've known her almost as long as you've known the Princess. She's spent so long imitating Princess Redana that she's almost her mirror in personality - bright and courageous and heroic - but there's always a little edge of mischievous darkness and cruelty that comes with knowing how the world actually is underneath it all. That's the smell you couldn't quite place - she isn't able to perfectly conceal her scent from you without burying it under other things.

And she's sedated you. You can still move, but you're tired and weak, and you're not sure you could stand successfully. Just like Redana - you presume the ropes and the closet are going to be next...

"Hey, don't worry!" said Mynx, and you can't tell if she's being genuine or condescending. You can never tell with her. "I've got this. Redana is safe with me, you'll see!"

Just like Redana to go off ahead. Just like Mynx to try to steal her from you. Aphrodite, behind your back, gives a satisfied little smile.

Mynx

Mynx
Your worst best friend in the whole wide galaxy!
Shapeshifting Bodyguard: When someone is successfully Finished, Mynx can reveal that she was secretly that person all along and negate all effects of that Finish.
Toxicrine Temple: If you eat or drink anything Mynx could conceivably have touched, it's possible she has poisoned you.

Fellowship: The Heart

Ailee contemplates for a moment. Carefully turns Jackdaw on her side into the recovery position, opens her mouth and jams her fingers inside to induce vomiting. Then she lays her on her back and starts a percussive and remorseless regimen of violent compresses and mouth to mouth rescue breaths. She does not mess around or hold back or pay attention to anything else that's going on - it's a textbook cardiopulmonary resuscitation.

It is quite impossible to rest while this is happening.

Masks: BABYLON MUST FALL

"That's rough, Jason," said Canada. "But I think the worst part of that is that it's not even dying on your feet. It's dying in a pit. Their rules, their game, their system right to the end. They don't even have to lift a finger."

Again, the shield is a pillar. The only support she has. She lifts herself up on it, aching joint after aching joint pulling her up, all that weight resting on the top of that mighty shield. Without it she'll fall, so fast and so far and so deep.

"The least you can do is make the bastards work for it. Right?"

Masks: BABYLON MUST FALL

"Yeah," she said. They both know the truth. "So, what are you in for, Jason?"

It's an extremely obvious question but she's confident he'll bite. After all, if there's anyone in the world he hates more than her right now, it's whoever put him in the arena in the first place.

Chuubo's GMD: Love and Shattered Alchemy

Jasper soaked in the knowledge like a sponge. Her eyes were shining beacons of curiosity and she kept moving around Dulcinea to try to keep eye contact. Her eyes shifted left and right, focusing on one eye then the other, hanging off every word. It was like a vision of another world and she could feel the weight and importance placed on every part of it. This felt like a quest, an adventure, something to aspire to. A devil queen searching through infinity for...

"How close are you to the perfect bowl of ramen?" asked Jasper - because of course there was a perfect bowl of ramen out there. The idea of subjectivity simply didn't occur to her at all. By the same token, it was impossible that she had already found perfection or else she would not have such detailed thoughts. "What are the rules of composition as you have discovered them? What must be included, and what paths of study are inherently wrong?"