Thanqol

Breathless Dead

NBX-462!

NBX-462 is a military servitor, and that means a certain tolerance for dealing with other military servitors. His conditioning prepared him for being placed in close proximity to predator species that could and would torment him into unmet performance targets. The Biomancers who had engineered him for the duty, though, had been less interested in addressing the root issues and more interested in producing the appearance of function.

Hence the silly little waistcoat. Hence the silly little mustache. Hence the silly little walking stick. Hence the silly little finger-wag and silly little puns he made when directly assaulted to hide the fact that he was turnt as hell.

"The Silver Kings descend from primogentor Laell IV," he said as his hands busily worked at transcribing the specifics of the contract. Not a tremble. "Core attributes: Urban-designated, courtly aesthetic, educational lineage. Specifically, Laell was a fencing instructor engineered to tutor wealthy aristocrats in the fundamentals of swordfighting. This was, of course -" he smiled absently, thinking very hard about the crossword puzzle he'd left back on his ship for just such an occasion, "- a seduction. Laell and her line used their positions adjacent to aristocracy to steal hearts, engineer vendettas, and induct key figures into the Ceronian species. This caused the collapse of dynasties and the Star Kings emerged from their vaunted origins with an arsenal of direct energy weapons and a taste for the finer things in life."

"As to the Portuguese," he went on, feeling on somewhat safer - though much more confusing - ground now. "Their -" he grappled for a word. 'Poor' and 'rich' were not relevant concepts in the Skies. "- citizen underclass... how to put this? They possess genetically engineered servitors, but for the most part these are animals shaped through selective breeding programs. These are of such low quality that they are outperformed by primitive chemical reactors. As a result, their civilization has conscripted enormous quantities of its administrator species into menial service and labour roles that they are massively overqualified and underspecialized for. This means these labourer-administrators," there was just no elegant way to put any of this, "have enormous surplus intellectual and creative energy, which they mostly turn to the purpose of displacing or joining the group of administrators who are living civilized lifestyles. For their part, the ruler-administrators have to turn their own creative and intellectual surplus, as well as that they can harness of their directly indebted inferiors, into maintaining their rule. This causes them enormous stress, degrading their quality of life, and requires the existence of a standing military for use against the underclass-administrators."

He signed the form with a flourish and handed it over. "It is no way to run a civilization, in my opinion. But as to what they want, well - they're too disorganized to even know that. Some of them, encouraged by the Generous Knight and her technology transfers, are forming a militarized and xenophobic wing dedicated - amusingly enough - to the destruction of the Endless Azure Skies. Some of them, based largely on Cash Money's medical interventions, have decided that we are gods, or we're the reincarnation of one of their local political leaders who died a while ago, or that we are here to take a side in their local political conflicts. One of these groups went so far as to land a chemical rocket on the hull of my ship with an ambassador - I returned her to the planet without comment, of course. Some other group is building a primitive generation ship in an attempt to escape what they imagine to be an immanent ground invasion - and when I say primitive I mean 'over a hundred years to reach a neighbouring system'."

He sat back, folding his hands in his lap. "But what do they want? I imagine all of this begins with their poverty. I am having to order in so many goods because their civilization produces nothing of note. Aphrodite rules here with an iron fist in a way that is only possible when she still has things like 'immortality' to tempt people with."

Dolce!

"Oh, that part?" said Contribution with a grin. "You just gotta be so good at your job that it'd be trouble to replace you. Bosses hate trouble."

The shuttle comes down under fire, and the diplomats arm up. There is a massive impact as the ship makes landfall, and then a huge crash as the back deployment ramp almost falls off, still burning with sticky chemfires. The Summerkind, formed up into a protective phalanx, give a warrior yell and advance into a moonscape of mud, wire, and toxic smoke. Immediately Debug is taken in the neck with an arrow and goes down. The rest flow into a wild evasion pattern, pulling you and 20022 along. The bright glare of an Esoteric ignites, evaporating Drill in a flash of blue light. There's yelling and panic, hunkering down, a whirl of mud and fire.

"They knew we were coming!"
"The command bunker is just over there -"
"Escort the sheep, they're the only thing that matter -"

Shells come crashing down. Contribution is half-carrying you through the storm. Shrapnel embeds in your wool, smoking and radioactive. And then out of the shadows ahead comes a monstrosity - four meters tall and gangly, built like a shadow puppet, black limbs and gold armour, white powdered face and a curling wig. An Avatar - a hostile environment projection suit for Biomancers, not occupied directly but more like a highly personalized drone that acts as a direct ambassador. "Come on, you bastards," it roars above the chaos, "do you want to live forever?"
There is a rallying cry, and all around you thousands of Summerkind erupt from their trenches, bayonets fixed, and storm towards the enemy in an avalanche. You're escorted against the tide, through the jostle, towards the shining blue-yellow flag of the command post.

And then you're inside. It's silent. It's clean. It's spotless medical white. There are showers, changes of clothes and a wide variety of cosmetics and hygiene products standing by. Contribution is staring around with wild, shocked eyes, every member of his clutch gone - lost, dead, joining the charge. 20022 is immediately taking to the shower with a completely unfazed expression.

Huntresses of Hybrasil

She has never felt less in control.

This was what it was to fight someone strong. She was audience and centerpiece all at once. She made no decisions. She expressed nothing of herself. She had no chance to answer. She wouldn't have anything to say if she did. Every trick, every customization, every strength had been stripped from the Aeteline. It was powerless. She was powerless.

This was what it was to fight someone weak. She followed the pattern, exploited the cracks, exactly as Mirror had arranged it. She was guided, softly and inevitably, towards her victory. Every act of power created a shadow, every revealed gap in the armour determined where she would place her hands. She had taken no position and so she could be anywhere; she had no ability to take a position so she had to go where Mirror placed her. Her hands were bound by ribbons of light. Her feet moved to music she was not permitted to hear.

She knew the words Speak Not but here she realized there was a difference between being silent and being unable to speak. Her previous fights she had been enthroned in power. She had spoken - frustrated, exasperated, isolated battles, conflicts that did not last long enough for the rage in her to pass. She had never been held like this and been forced to listen before.

Mirror was strong. Mirror was weak. Solarel was nothing. Perfect nothing. She moved like water in between the gaps in Mirror's light and she'd have her nothing victory. It would prove nothing, express nothing, teach nothing. When people asked how to be successful in war the Ancestors would tell them: just fight like Solarel. Tactics were for villains. Beauty was for gimmick bosses. Strategy was a two-episode inconvenience at best. The path to victory was to be this: an empty cypher, a generic protagonist, a blank canvas upon which the opponent paints their illustration of perfection.

She is held. She is caressed. She is kissed. She cannot hold. She cannot caress. She cannot kiss. She is at the mercy of her victory, whatever Mirror decides that looks like. Inevitably she makes her way towards the centre, following the dance steps marked out for her, displaying herself in silence. She cannot even say that she understands now. It's too late for her to speak.

Sunshards: Chaos Sequence

Katherine Isabella Fluffybiscuits has received compliments before - but not like this! Most of her compliments were things like 'good girl!' and 'Oh! Big yawn!" and that kind of thing. And she *was* a good girl, and she did have big yawns while she was sleepy, but she'd never been complimented on her wisdom before. Saber had even called her wise twice - oh! Was she wise? She'd kind of thought she was flailing wildly, but maybe she'd been filled with Fox Wisdom all along, maybe like that big mountaintop fox shrine that Yue had to spend a whole day hiking to get up to. People probably didn't build shrines like that to silly foxes.

Kat visualized herself as having a shrine like that all of her own. Sitting comfortably with a mountain view while people hiked all the way up to bring her treats and ask to listen to her wisdom. Now that was a life for a fox! She puffed up her chest with pride and excitement.

"Of course it's a deal!" she said sagely, in a tone she thought a wise sage fox might use. A foxy instinct twitched - was she really? - no, Saber had explained that too. Where she came from the foxes were honoured - maybe they all had mountain shrines? So she was trading on their reputation, which was a meaningfully cunning fox move to begin with. "My name is Katherine Isabella Fluffy -" she caught herself just in time. She was impersonating a mountain sage fox! She liked Fluffybiscuits but it wasn't wise. "- mountains. Fluffymountains. That's my name. Fluffymountains the fifth. M.D."

She shrieked as a wave of Berserker's arm almost hurled her off the side of the castle.

Breathless Dead

The Plousios!

"The movements of rogue servitors and Publica agents aren't my department," said NBX-462 reassuringly. He's a fine little Synnefo with a curling mustache and a walking stick wrapped in a little crocheted cozy. He came in person with only a secretary when contacted. No bodyguards, no retinue - a little sign that he was so replaceable he had nothing to fear from stepping onto a pirate ship. "No, I have no legal requirement to report your movements, I assure you. My task is simply the removal of friction; at some point the Skies will turn their attention to this world and I need that to be as painless a process as possible. And the presence of a Ceron commando team - well, it's nothing but friction. Please, consider that a compliment - the existence of an industrialized alien civilization on the frontier does not even register against the ongoing insurgency of trying to remove Ceronians from a planet. These are the Star Kings, by the way, I believe they've got a specialty in energy esoterics."

He cleared his throat and his secretary set out a large wooden planetary map painting. "Now, the Ceronians are currently playing a rather silly game of cops and robbers with the locals," he said. "They're plundering freely, setting themselves up as local dictators, that kind of thing. Then they get into playful brawls with the locals uplifted by Cash Money - knocking over buildings and so on. It's all very destabilizing on its own right but before long they'll start recruiting locals to their pack and the next thing we know we'll have an entire Legion growing out here. If you convince them to leave my sector then I'll procure for you whatever you require and consider it a bargain at the price."

Which question do you each ask of NBX-462?

Dolce!

"Oh yeah, sure!" said Contribution cheerfully as a passing wing of fighter craft were blasted by ground-based ELF artillery, crashing down to the surface in flames. "You just gotta, like, say stuff for the benefit of the audience, or failing that yourself. Like, drop little veiled injokes, wisecracks and things that signal to people on your wavelength what your real feelings are. It's like a language trick, right? You say one thing to the boss and another thing to the people around you who realize what a fucking idiot the boss is being. The boss shows up to a meeting hung over, you just slow down the proceeding a little, be a little more formal than normal to drive in the nails. If you're confronted then hand off to a colleague nearby who will apologize for the inconvenience and then, because you're communicating with them and they agree with you, will start up some whole new inconvenience that's just as annoying."

He grinned, illuminated by illumination flare rockets. "Right? One sheep isn't much. Easy to push around. A herd is just a mass of wool and bad ideas and that can't really be negotiated with," he said. "But you could always try and find a competent boss instead who you don't have to be mad about. Like Liquid Bronze!" he sighed dreamily. "Now there's a man you can set your watch to."

Huntresses of Hybrasil

- slow!

The Aeteline releases its grip in a moment of panic. Solarel snaps forwards - knees immobile, elbows immobile, shoulders immobile, actualize ankles and neck. She lurches forwards into the anticipated strike, a headbutt - or a kiss - enough to turn a blow into a trade.

It doesn't come. She crashes to the ground and comes up into a roll as the lock dissipates. Her blades whirl into a guarding posture. She's lost visual contact. Now she is the hunted. The Aeteline hates that.

[>] I've seen enough to have a theory

She can typesign more freely now. There's less interference, her mind is clearer. She's not fighting from a position of advantage in this moment, and so Tactics are called for.

[>] Your trick is going to be a work of art
[>] And it's going to be the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.
[>] I'd guess some multi-spectrum energy weapon attack, focusing the power of the tails into your new spear
[>] You always did love the beam finishers.

The Aeteline sets an evasion protocol and begins moving in a spiral pattern. The cypher of speed and stillness, of dashes and pirouettes, expanding ever outwards as her sensors burn to re-establish contact. She wonders if she should have packed a directed air weapon - the weight wasn't significant and it would have been a huge advantage in a smoke environment like this - but her battleplan did not involve her losing the initiative like this. The combo had been broken and she was vulnerable until she re-established it.

[>] The intention is to shock. Paralyze. Blind with awe.
[>] But I don't think it will work
[>] Not because I won't appreciate it
[>] But because you have already struck me blind
[>] And that's priced in to my battleplan

Sunshards: Chaos Sequence

"Let me confer with my associate," said Fluffybiscuits. She did a crunch, pulling herself up forehead to forehead with Berserker, legs still locked behind Berserker's neck - she was very flexible. Then she started hurriedly muttering in what might have been a negotiation or might have been her buying a few seconds to think by making panicky fox noises at a wall of metal and anger.

"If it were up to me, I'd take your deal," said Katherine Isabella Fluffybiscuits. "But Berserker here has a condition. She's worried about her ability to beat you in a fair fight -"

Berserker snarled and tried to shake Kat off. The foxgirl shrieked and clung to her arm with all four limbs. She did her best to continue with her super cool negotiation speech despite the position. "- s-so! She says that it has to be okay if her favour is to make you lose a fight! And also that I can use her favour -" she is shaken even more heavily. "eeeee! On her behalf! Because she doesn't really talk muuuuuuuuch!"

Katherine is doing her best. She's in deeply over her head but she knows enough to know that she'll get Yelled At if she lets Mrs. Saber walk away. Being able to argue that she's worked things out so that they could deal with the problem whenever they needed to - no foxgirl could argue with that, not even Actia. She might be new to girling but she had enough fox experience to know how to stack a deck, at least a little.

Breathless Dead

Bella, Ember, Dyssia!

For the Argumentative Portuguese - no one in the Endless Azure Skies has written down what they called themselves - it was an apocalyptic alien invasion. Their civilization had splintered into factions - appeasers, escapists, warriors, xenophobes, more and stranger things based on their history, culture, politics and religion. There are wars and shadow wars, the electronic communication link that bound their civilization together in a social media web thrashing in panic. Their arsenals of apocalypse were unsheathed. Their greatest weapons were unveiled. Orbital shipyards were built to mass manufacture battleships for the coming conflict.

For them, the fate of their civilization hung in the balance.

For the Endless Azure Skies it was an idle competition for exactly three citizens.

Here's the setting and situation.

Solar system with fifteen stellar objects of note. One inhabited world with about nine billion Portuguese, a little chilly. One partially terraformed neighbouring planet and multiple deep space installations and experimental colonies on other planets or moons. About five hundred warships that together add up to about a quarter of the mass of the Plousios. Auguries in the newly restored Shrine of Mars indicates that they could all be wiped out with just the Plousios' Plover wing.

There is one small Slipgate and three Sphereships in system. These aren't military ships - one is a civilian yacht, one is a repurposed patrol vessel and one is a Biomantic Field Office. All three ships have active Crystal Dragons who are engaged in idle banter with each other in between sending the argumentative messages of their captains to each other. Brightberry immediately joins this network, spoiling the advantage of surprise but giving you further context as to what exactly's going on here.

The first citizen is Biomancer Cash Money. She is here on humanitarian grounds. Millions of Portuguese die every day from preventable illnesses, minor injuries or even simple old age, something that she regards as an ongoing holocaust that has to be stopped at the earliest possible opportunity. She has launched a covert ground invasion using discount off-brand Toxicrene assassins, abducting and replacing political leaders to prepare the way for a massive emergency uplifting process. She has already established secret medical facilities that perform emergency uplift surgeries - an unpleasant and invasive process - before releasing their subjects back into the wild. These newly uplifted abductees return to society in possession of what are by local standards superpowers and this is Causing Problems.

The second citizen is the Generous Knight. She's a big name, a contemporary of the Furnace Knight who has made a habit of destroying alien civilizations. She's really slumming it with this one, but that's not entirely inexplicable - the Portuguese currently aren't worth the fight and she wants to change that so that it'll be worthwhile when she conquers them. She wants to arm them and uplift them technologically, teach them the basics of the game of stellar war so that they'll be worthy opponents later. She's incredibly mad at Cash Money because she thinks the biological uplifting process will collapse their society and delay the time when they become worthy opponents by centuries. Her forces are in open conflict with the Biomancer's, resulting in a dance of assassins that is causing pandemonium in the alien's politics.

The third citizen is NBX-462. This is a military-grade Synnefo, a well mannered battlesheep who doesn't really have an opinion on when exactly the Portuguese should be fought and incorporated into the Endless Azure Skies but it's his duty to make sure that when that decision is made it goes as smoothly as possible. He's the logistical co-ordinator, bringing in massive quantities of materiel and dumping it on what is going to become the system's Clearing House Subsidiary, one of the outermost planetoids. His other interest is the extermination of a rogue pack of Ceronians who have made planetfall and are alternately hiding among, reigning over, or robbing blind the aliens. Sometimes he will openly intervene militarily on the planet in an attempt to bring them to justice.

What you actually need out of this situation is some liquid Hyperium. There might be some on the Subsidiary now but probably not enough for your purposes - it's not exactly a key military good. Any of the three Citizens could order it in for you if they owed you a favour, or if they were to die, leave or otherwise cancel their own standing orders then your request would be the only thing left in the logistics chain. The Plousios is strong enough to go toe to toe with any of them but probably not two of them.

How do you unpick this knot?

Dolce!

Contribution - he chooses his name based on the birthmark-letter on his wrist - becomes the lead diplomat. Having a personal message from Liquid Bronze engraved on his flesh seems to be accepted by the Summerkind as Really Cool and they regard him as having something like divine right on account of it. After investigation some of the others are excited to discover that they have birthmarks too, though theirs are more vague and cryptic. "Formation instinct has nothing on drill. One must have a spirit before it can be crushed." and "Apologies to anyone who has to debug this code, I was really drunk when I wrote this."

But Contribution is a fun guy and he takes a liking to you. He's got a colourful intensity to him, a rapier wit and a scintillating imagination. "You have massive spy vibes," he said as flak rattles against the exterior of the shuttle, pitching his voice so it's out of hearing of 20022. "And I get it if you don't want to talk about it - but do you want some tips? Service sheep like you aren't meant to just be quiet watchers, that's sus as hell. They're meant to have opinions. You've got to be opinionated to do this work. They front like they don't have opinions but there's always some fucking agenda that they're driving towards. Because they've got to, right? The Azura, the Ceronians - they wouldn't eat their vegetables if you made airplane noises while bringing the spoon to their mouth, but they also don't want to die early of heart disease -" he shook his head. "- right, that's not a thing. There's some really old programming in here," he grinned and tapped his forehead. "Anyway, point is they built the Synnefo to make them do the things that need to be done. They don't want to do it themselves, they don't even want to know about it, but they do want it to be done and so your whole existence is to try and get them to do the needful without them noticing. That is to say, it's cool to be lowkey mad. It's even expected! 20022 radiates Not Mad like the Chernobyl meltdown, whatever that is. He bites it down to do the job. But just being quiet and competent puts people on edge. Spy vibes. Capiche?"

Sunshards: Chaos Sequence

The English Knight was not tall. One hundred and fifty, sixty centimeters perhaps - that was a strange modern unit of measurement to adapt to. Thinking about it, calendars and clocks are also weird here - and built like a waif. Her battledress is made of sleek, expensive steel, blended with blue fabric stained to a desolate grey that resembles her castle's stone. She wears a grim, face-concealing helm, eyes lost in the shadows of its depths.

"I am so sorry Mrs. Saber!" gasps an exhausted foxgirl who has just dragged herself up to the top of a flight of stairs. Katherine Isabella Fluffybiscuits is a house fox, and while (in her estimation) her scamper is second to none, she did spend most of her Big Adventure riding around on Yue's shoulders. And napping. And eating treats - look the point is that she's not cut out for this, okay? She's doing her best. She drops into a formal bow as a sign of contrition, not seeing the cordon of heavy sandbags that conjure into being around her as her Servant takes a defensive posture. "I'm really sorry! Mrs. Berserker here is having a really bad day and I'm doing my best to show her around but -"

Berserker conjures a longbow, a huge and vicious thing of yew. The arrow she loads into it resembles a ballista bolt. It's a slow, deliberate and hateful motion, but it feels like she's moving as fast as she can while still being able to do this all night.

"Oh no! Mrs. Berserker! She wants to talk! We discussed this!" said Kat, vaulting the sandbag and spoiling the shot. Berserker growls and lurches to the side to get around her. Kat gets dragged along, holding onto her bow arm. "O-okay, buster!" said Katherine, turning around to face Saber. She puts on her Negotiation Face - a foxgirl was always prepared to strike a deal, and none of the other foxgirls would respect her if she didn't. Berserker lurches again and Katherine acrobatically flips up to wrap both of her legs and tails around the black metal faceplate, dangling upside down from the blindfolded warrior. With her most serious voice she asks "Okay! You know, I'm a busy woman, but I think I can spare a few minutes - but you'd better make it worth my time."

Huntresses of Hybrasil

The ultimate strategy was just being better than your opponent.

It sounded oxymoronic but it was true. When your raw stats were superior new options became available. There were entire tactical sequences that hinged off relentless exploitation of a single advantage. If you move fast enough you can cut corners that others would find necessary, which lets you move faster still, compounding a tactical advantage into a strategic rhythm with the continuous buildup of combat momentum. Be inside the guard while it is being raised. Be past the smokescreen before it breaks contact. Kill your opponent before they kill you. This was the ultimate lesson of Anime. The strongest warrior was not the most creative or clever, they were gimmick bosses who would soon leave the story. The strongest warrior was the samurai who won even as their opponent's blade descended.

She makes contact and the blow comes like a hurricane. Gold into silver into gold into both, katana and wakizashi. One layer of defense. A fight ends in a single blow. Every other strike is just the sequence that leads inevitably to the severing strike where the lovers at last embrace, bound at the hilt, whispering their intimate goodbyes into each others' ears.

Was that what Mirror meant? Was that what she wanted? To speak freely in that moment when her blade was inside her rival and she was no longer an outsider? Was that the only way? Her focus was absolute. She could not question.

This was how to win. This was how to win. Nothing but the fight. Nothing but the win. Every time she'd come close to defeat was because her opponents had fought like this. No room for thought. No room for anything but skill. No room for anything but her best, absolute, maximal expression, everything she was in the tip of the blade. This was who she was. This was how she wanted to fight. This was her heart. Each blow was her love, screamed into the air and carved into the bones of the earth. Just like she'd promised.

She's slow.

The Aeteline filters the Pilot's intentions, maintaining its own situational awareness at the cost of the total onslaught. It does not trust the pilot, her total collapse into the flow of violence, the blindness of her passion. Mirror had caused this state in the Pilot, this mad joy - she must have counted on it, courted it, built her trap around it. But the Aeteline was wiser than that. It would accept the loss of speed if that meant seeing the hidden blade when it came. It only needed to see the trick to stop it, and once beaten then the fight would be an execution.

There was no place for individual expression. Perfection meant making no mistakes. A strength was also a weakness. The Aeteline had neither.

Sunshards: Chaos Sequence

Stone falls from the sky. Stone rises from the earth.

There is a wall in Ivar's path, vast and grim granite, slick with rain and misery. It is the bone of the earth, and with its grim presence all the solidity has been sucked from the soil, reducing it into a swampy morass. Each step closer to the wall sucks at feet, trying to consume boots, horses, chivalry itself. Murderous murder-slits are carved into the wall like crucifixes, the wicked manifestation of the Lamb God's warfare. And atop the wall of stone, a wall of steel - a Knight.

Only the English could build such a joyless castle.

Three servants. One to mark your location, one to target you with artillery, one to build the castle wall to pen you in. Last to arrive, with an incapable master, in the face of an alliance dedicated to your destruction.

Daofei stirs against you. Despite the wreckage of her mind, body and soul you can feel real muscles against yours. She was strong once. When she fails to support you it is not because the tap has been turned off but because the river has run dry. "Hey..." she slurs, still drunk. "I know another way to transfer mana... if you know what I mean."

Unfortunately the continued rain of artillery is unlikely to give you time for that. Any other ideas?