Thanqol

[Namespace] of the Rose

"I hate it here, you know that?" said November. "Of course they can fucking teleport. And they'll be able to see the future, command the beasts of the ocean and have laser fingernails too no doubt. Wasn't even on my radar. I've actually used a Displacer Field in ZRK-333's dojo and the thing was as dumb as rocks. No moving parts, no buttons, you don't choose where you go, and the Magi was adamant that aiming it was impossible. Guess she was lying to me, huh?"

"As for power - fuck off, I've barely got enough to keep my own operation running," November grumbled, turning her backs and starting to walk for the doors. "Thanks for the assist, Sister."

[Negotiation] That walk is a little bit slow; that cuss a little bit light - and Marshal November has always been a facilitator of certain logistical assets falling off the back of a Dunerider. One soldier to another, she'll let you put it on your tab if you spend a point of Negotiation - otherwise it'll be a payment up front situation.

Breathless Dead

"Actia," said Cyanis in a trembling voice. "Why did none of them protect us?"
The two foxgirls slid another inch apart as the wreckage of the Plousios continued to collapse. Actia was still shaking, paws burnt blue with the aftershocks of her re-entry shield.
"Because that wasn't even a secret sword! Someone here had to be able to parry that!" said Cyanis, rapidly transmuting her terror into outrage.
"Maybe not," said Actia thoughtfully.
"What on Earth do you mean!?" said Cyanis, before hushing herself as though the aliens would demand a fare for them hitching a ride.
"Look at how many foxgirls there are," said Actia. "There must be a thousand. Outnumbered by the others of course, but that tracks - those aren't soldiers. This is a pleasure yacht, and everyone who isn't a foxgirl is part of a foxgirl harem."
"Oh," said Cyanis. "Well, that tracks, actually."
"Yeah. It's some sort of renfaire situation. They're even carrying Flux spikes," Actia said.
"What's a Fox Spike!??!?" said Cynais, no longer calming down.
"Flux. ELectromagnetic Flux. See those spikes they've all got? It's an old curse, before your time. Shoots lightning, blows up electronics, that kind of thing."
"Blows up - ACTIA WE JUST FOUGHT AN EVIL ROBOT IN SPACE DON'T YOU THINK WE COULD HAVE USED ONE OF THOSE."
"Believe me, it's not worth it. Unless you want your name on a Ministry of Curses list. Being sealed under a bridge is one thing, you do your time and get out. The Ministry won't be satisfied until you're tame."
"..."
"And not in a sexy way. I've checked."
"Then why didn't you get Fluffybiscuits to do it!?!?"
"Do you think you could get that girl to harbour a curse in her heart?"
"Unh! Why! Being that good a girl is just a list of things you're not doing and tails you're not getting! So why does that mean she's not helping me in my hour of need, and has more tails than she has any right to - knock it off with the pushups Actia, this is serious!"
"If I wasn't taking things seriously I would have stopped doing pushups long ago."
"Anyway, all those foxes are one-tails. How do they have human form if they don't have their second tails? Do they have illusions up?"
"Maybe they're humans cosplaying as foxes?"
"That is DEGENERATE."
"So maybe they're not the ruling class after all?"
"That is SLANDERING MY BRAND BY IMPLICATION."
"And several of them have decent sized chests, so -"
"That is UNACCEPTABLE. Everyone KNOWS that tail count and cup size is correlated, which is why my dysmorphia can only be cured by SUPREME FOXGIRL POWER. By having a range of body types along with fox tails, these people are CULTURALLY APPROPRIATING my tragic medical condition. For CLOUT, presumably. This is why nobody takes me seriously!"
"You are right," said Actia.
"Well, Yue looks like she'll be busy here for a while, let's sneak into her house and eat all of Fluffybiscuits' fox snacks," sniffed Cyanis. "That'll show her."
"That is a good plan," said Damn Fox. "Can I join you?"
"Of course," said Cyanis. "We'll split the treats 45-45-10. Actia and I are even partners, after all."
"Um," said Actia.
"Great!" said Damn Fox.
"Is that." said Actia. "Um."
"Oh, Fluffybiscuits might be there even if Yue isn't," Cyanis said. "Damn it. I forget that she's a badass sword fox meanie now. Can you distract her for us?"
"Sure!" said Damn Fox.
"Cyyyyyyyyyyyy-" Actia was saying.
"What?! Can't you see I'm trying to be a good sempai to our new frie -"
She glanced up. Only for a second. Cyanis might not have many marketable talents, but she could do this.
"- nd who we're lucky to be working alongside. There's so much we can learn from you, Mrs. Fox."
"What are you talking about?" said Damn Fox.
"Um. It's an, um, an honour -" said Actia.
"Honour!?" Damn Fox arched her back. An avalanche rumbled somewhere in the distance, the crack and slide of pine trees that grew alongside her back like fur. "Where!? Where?! Hss!"
"Oh no no I didn't mean -"
"No jokes," said Damn Fox. "This is serious. You've seen what happens if a fox catches Honour."
"See!?" said Cyanis. "Fox God agrees with me. She agrees with me that Fluffybiscuits sucks and didn't even have the honour to steal our tails dishonourably, like a true fox."
"Why is your friend doing pushups?" said Damn Fox.
"Sorry," said Actia. "Sorry, I just got so used to -"
"Don't care," Damn Fox adjusted. "What were we doing?"
"Stealing a Sunshard," said Cyanis, figuring she should upsell the mission a bit now they had divine assistance.
"Cy!" hissed Actia.
"What?" said Cyanis, fluttering her eyelashes innocently.
"That is a good plan," said Damn Fox. "I'm in!"

*

The Plousios!

A literal mountain - millions of tonnes of rock and stone and trees - has stood up and walked over to your spaceship as it sinks into the lake, ankle deep in the water. It has sniffed it and had a weirdly low volume conversation, and now it seems to be walking away. All of this is occurring in perfect silence and serenity and if you didn't turn your heads to look at it directly you wouldn't even know that it was happening.

Biomancy, for all of its power, is ultimately bound by things like the tensile strength of quadranix and air pressure vibrations and the laws of fucking physics. It is perhaps an unnecessary additional data point to consider given that your spaceship, rated for hiding out inside a literal star, was just cut in half by a slender girl, but things are different here.

[Namespace] of the Rose

November chuffed a little laugh; a motion that rippled through all of her duplicates, not quite in sync. "It is not ours to see beyond the Veil," she said. And such was her purity that you knew it to be true. She would not dare to look upon the Mysteries of the Omnissiah, even invited so. But she appreciated the trust, even if she was worthy of the trust.

"Alright, alright. Here's the specifics of the murder, as best as I understand them," she said, focusing in a bit as she transcribed a sequence onto the dataslate.

Location: Archmagos' Tower. Single point of entry/egress. Two tech guards on duty.
Attacker approaches directly through the corridor.
Attacker uses a plasma grenade to disable both tech guards.
Detonation is noticed, skitarii response team scrambled.
Attacker breaks the door and enters the Archmagos' sanctum.
Attacker fires at the Archmagos, triggering her displacer field.
Somehow the bolt penetrates the displacer field and strikes the Archmagos' brain, killing her instantly.
Attacker breaks a stained glass window and exits via grav-chute or other rappelling device into the refinery complex.
Skitarii response team arrives.
Full search of the area conducted. No sign of attacker identified.

[Forensic Pathology] This account does not add up. You have no doubt November has transcribed her theory accurately, but on a basic level something about this feels wrong. The machines have their own logic and the basic rhythm of plasma-alert-bolter-displacer-gravchute has not played out the way it should. There are machines here that have not been identified; machines breaking in ways that have not been considered.

"I know I've missed something here, but I can't figure out what," said November. "I haven't let the Magi in; they're all suspects and they could tamper with the site in ways I couldn't comprehend. You two are actually the only people in the complex with alibis or allegiances, which makes you the only people I can trust with this. I'll open the site for investigation, if that's all at use to you."

[Namespace] of the Rose

"Sister," said November, "do you mind if I vent to you for a minute? Because I'm kind of at the end of my extension cord here."

She took a deep breath. "So, first up, someone murdered my boss. And, honestly, props to them, wish I'd done it, the old lady was a pain in my fucking neck. Never took the time to listen to my reports, gather information or engage her senses, just did a cosmic fuckin' leap of assumptions in her head, and got it right just often enough that she never learned better. But for all of that, she was still rated as a combat asset capable of taking down a Rogal Dorn heavy battle tank in a duel, and some motherfucker walked in and took her out with a single bolt round to the brain. I still can't believe it. I've seen the old lady teleport through a spore mine field, warping out after detonation but before the acid singed her robe. Twenty times in sequence! If I wanted her dead I'd have put a dozen vehicle-mounted neutron lasers through her tower and considered it fifty-fifty, so the idea of someone doing it with a single fucking bolt round still doesn't sit fucking right with me."

"And naturally the followup is that instead of having to deal with one powerful wizard, now I have to deal with six powerful wizards. All of them immediately started blaming each other, calling each others hereteks and murderers and calling up their robot legions and armies of kung fu lightning wizards and whatever-the-fuck. I have to split my assets six ways to bodyguard them, but more importantly to stop them outright shooting at each other. I think I could, with the entire Cohort and the element of surprise, take down maybe three of them. So they're all trying to bribe, sweet talk, browbeat ecetera me into siding with them and I cannot play wizard kingmaker. What if I choose wrong and put some sort of evil wizard in charge? They're all fucking convinced that one of them is evil!"

"And on top of all of this there's what I am fucking praying is not an Astartes assassin at large inside my facility, one who has just added two more bodies to its fucking tally. And I've gotten reports of scary creepy things scurrying around. And there's this horrible wet rot in the walls that shouldn't be there, and it's freaking me the fuck out, and I want to burn it all to be safe but the flamethrower wizard isn't playing ball. And the lights are fucking out."

She was wearing mirrorshades. They weren't reflective enough to keep you from seeing the stress in her eyes.

"Which is all to say," she said, gesturing expansively - as one of her copies stuck Secunda in the neck with a needle. "The presence of an unsupervised Sister of Battle in the Isohedron cannot possibly make the situation worse. I'm microchipping this biotrash and promoting it to operational asset, registered to your armour's ident-code. It's yours for as long as you want it, but don't let it wander around unsupervised or I'll assume it is part of the problem."

[Reassurance] You do not think that she is the killer. You do think that she needs some combination of a hug, a recaf, and a long beach vacation.

Hm. Maybe hold it on the recaf, actually. She's wearing a chemregulator, and the line is riding orange. She must have been awake for days and for all her sleek cool professional entrance she's on the edge. She's starting to make mistakes and they're going to get bigger and bigger the harder she pushes. If you want to ask her any questions, or get her to do anything, you'll need to spend Reassurance points to help her get her shit together enough to focus.

[Namespace] of the Rose

"Deploy."

Times had changed in Houndclaw. Marshal November was the bleeding edge of that transition. The only thing old about her was that she arrived in less than two minutes from being signaled. She had always been fast.

She first appears as an ultraviolet reflection in mirrorshades. Then she enters simultaneously through every door and window and ventilation shaft - noospherically networked cyborg bodies in perfect synchronicity. She wears skintight synthskin bodygloves and sleek grox leather trenchcoats; showing everything and concealing everything. There is such potential violence in the dancelike coordination of her motion that it seems like she must be armed even though her hands are empty. Once she stood upon the battlefield in armoured plating and fired radium artillery into biotitans so large they blotted out the sky. That memory does not feel a tenth as lethal as she is now.

"Sister Kota," she said. "Good to see you again."

She offered all seven left hands for high fives.

You served alongside her during the Porphyrios Invasion. It was hard not to - she was the striking arm of the Skitarii legions. That meant jumping from dropships on grav-chutes to deliver crates of ammunition, repair components, and salvage teams whenever a unit had become bogged down in heavy fighting. Then she was off again, grinning and saluting as she left you to face the horrors alone. "Professionals do logistics," she'd say as she abandoned you for the third time to face the horrors. Hard not to love her. Hard not to hate her.

"How you been? Last I saw you there was an incoming Ravener hive," she said, as one of her copies placed an ident-scanner against Toros' forehead and got a loud, negative beep. "Is this biotrash bothering you?"

Ah crap. Skitarii are simple. They live in a world of magic, machinery and mystery, and endure it with a studied ignorance. The Machine says that you are not the Archmagos, and so Toros Secunda is nothing more than an unsanctioned clone with no personnel record. Biotrash. Everything that makes her difficult to trick and difficult to bribe is now a problem.

[Namespace] of the Rose

A skull upon the wall began to chatter its teeth wildly. The gleaming blue eye lens almost rattled out of its socket, and a thick bundle of white cables spilled out of its mouth like a monster's tongue. "KEYWORD - ARCHMAGOS - TOROS - SECUNDA - ACTIVATED. Greetings, Archmagos. Congratulations upon cheating death. Congratulations. Noospheric uplink established. Noospheric processes prepared: Infocite bomb to delete all reporting of your death. Wide-spectrum broadcast announcing your resurrection. Noospheric uplink to Isohedron Skitarii Marshal. Congratulations. Congratulations. Deploy?"

[Data Recovery]
10> Load HymnOfRegretForWhatWasLost.mpg
20> This machine is damaged.
30> Be very careful in your phrasing.
40> Voice activated machines can be set off by casual or incautiously spoken keywords.

*

[Diagnosis] Whoever spilled this blood is extremely unwell and in need of urgent medical attention!

Um. Not just because they got shot by a bolter multiple times. Sorry. Let me explain.

So if you spill standard issue human blood then there are a whole set of things that happen, and a whole set of different things that happen if it lands in nutrient sludge. To start with - oh, well, I don't really need to get into it, do I? You've kind of got a lot of control groups all around. They're not doing whatever this stuff is. It looks like the subject's blood is forming this strange condensed clot pattern wherever it hits the nutrient sludge. It's doing something similar where it's hit the wall but way slower scale.

That's what I can tell you for free. I could - oh wait, we're in a medical facility! Oh - the power's out. Look, we're doing this by eye while being lit by a single flashlight; spend a point and I can narrow this down to human, xenos or warp.

Return to Thellamie

"I got your tincture of groundedness right here!" said Cair, though the way she pronounced it she somehow managed to include 'and I'll put it on your tab, the ingredients were very expensive' at the same time. When she lurches across with a mysterious molten gold-green vial in her hand it's anything but seductive. "Okay buddy, open wide, this'll get your head in the game and focus on what really matters - capitalism, and also saving the world."
"Is that the Avarice Potion?" said Rurik, pushing his glasses up along his nose.
"It is a potion sharing some of the characteristics of the original Avarice Potion, but less likely to plunge a city-state into gold-themed chaos when dumped into the water supply," clarified Cair. "But don't worry about that. Did you know that drinking it will give you golden fur? Very stylish and synergistic with your name and overall branding."
"I would like to clarify that this one is optional, Mr. Fletcher," said Rurik.
"It's an option," said Cair. "Another option is that you focus in on the mission instead of bwehing your way through the schemes and/or breasts of a girl with too much of both!"

Sunshards: Chaos Sequence

"She stole our tails!!"

Actia is playing a game. Every time Cyanis comes back to that she does one push up[1].

[1] A little fox magic and a high tensile elastic harness make that meaningful in zero G.

She expects to be able to fistfight Princess Qiu once her orbit sufficiently decays.

"I literally cannot believe it!" said Cyanis. "After everything we did! We saved the world! We literally saved it! Through the power of teamwork and friendship we defeated the giant enemy crab and she just ditched us up here!"
"Are you proud of her?" asked Actia.
"WHAT!?"
"She finally did a fox move," said Actia. "Surely that reflects on your training."
"I never trained her to do anything of the sort!" said Cyanis. "This came out of nowhere!"
"Didn't you say -"
"A corruption inherent to her soul!!"
"- never get more tails if she didn't -"
"And to victimize an innocent little angel like me!"
"- seminar on tax evasion -"
"She is literally worse than Emiya Shirou!"
"- that's going too far."
"No it is not!" said Cyanis. "And she abandoned us up here! We can't even get down! We're stuck up here for -"
"Three years based on current rates of orbital decay."
"LITERALLY FOREVER! You can't speed that up!?!"
"I could," said Actia. "But then I won't have the mana for the re-entry shield."
"NO FOX HAS EVER SUFFERED THIS BADLY," wailed Cyanis.
"I spent a thousand years sealed under a bridge," said Actia.
"Why do you have to make everything about you?" Cyanis accused.
"..."
"Why doesn't anyone ever think about me!?" said Cyanis. "It isn't fair! Why aren't there space shuttles coming up to rescue me? Why aren't crowds of cheering civilians chanting my name and sending me their spirit energy? Why do I never get a lucky break!? When is it going to be the Cyanis Route!?!?"
"Shh!" said Actia suddenly. Cyanis squeaked indignantly and blushed without dignity. "Do you feel that?"
"All I feel is the cold void of space," said Cyanis, even more annoyed at the brief duration of her silence.
"Look..." said Actia. "Over there. A ship?"
"Oh no!" said Cyanis. "The crabitalists are coming back! They're sending an invasion fleet! I'm sorry Katherine! I'm sorry I called you a Shirou! You are a good girl fox who will come up to rescue me, aren't you?!" she peaked the mike. "AREN'T YOU!?"
"It looks like it wants to land. I think I can boost us onto it," said Actia. "We can ride it down."
"Why is it always Mission Impossible shit with you Actie?" sighed Cyanis, slipping her tail around inside her spacesuit to wipe the spittle off the inside of her visor. "It's never, 'let us flag down the spaceship with our feminine wiles and hitch a lift', it's always 'let's do it in such a way that nobody sees us, hears us or begs to touch our fluffy tails'. Don't you know compliments are part of a growing fox's diet!?!?"
"And you have a lot of growing to do, two-tails~" said Actia on autopilot - she was concentrating on Cutie Math to figure out the proper trajectory to launch to intercept the coming starship.
"AND ANOTHER THING," said Cyanis. Actia did a push-up. "It is UNFAIR that losing a tail reduced my cup size! I have a signed affidavit from a psychologist that is very clear that I get dysmorphia when I don't have giant honking bazonkas! Fluffybiscuits stole my tits and I'll have her ass!"
"Hang on," said Actia. "If your cup size reduced when you lost mana, that means your breasts were illusionary."
"Of course they were," said Cyanis primly. "I am a delicate princess and am above the menial labour of carrying around actual breasts. I am a fox, not a cow."
"..."
"But people should still look at me and see enormous badonkadonks! That's who I am on the inside!"
"... So should I leave you up here, or -"
"Are you sure you cannot find a better spaceship?" said Cyanis. "This one is so... blue. It doesn't go with my fur at all."
"I could," said Actia. "Once again, at the expense of being able to generate the heat shield."
"Once again Fluffybiscuits stabs me in the back!" howls Cyanis.
"*Foxy pushup noises*," said Actia.
"Well, we have no choice," sighed Cyanis. "I've tried radioing them asking them nicely to pick us up but they're not answering. I will simply add this indignity to the heap of indignities that I bear, like Emiya Shirou bore the crucifix."
"... I thought they hanged him."
"The way he goes on about it it might as well have been a crucifixion," said Cyanis, making a jerkoff gesture.
"You met him?" said Actia.
"Of course," said Cyanis. "He was my first Servant - because I'm such a martyr and everything - but he annoyed me to the point where I Fox Wished for a different one."
"... You are having me on."
"It is Fluffybiscuits who had me on!" cried Cyanis to the sounds of pushing up. "Fine. I don't care. I will accept this latest indignity with grace and poise. Take us down, Actia, I will simply have to compensate for the unglamourous ride with my own vast charisma."

And with a puff of blue magic, the two foxes soared away to intercept the oncoming starship.

- TO BE CONTINUED -

Breathless Dead

Earth.

For thousands of years humanity has been desperate to give it a better name. Terra. Sol. Gaia. Tellus. Scrambling through ancient languages and mistranslations in the hopes that there will be something more cooler, more dignified to be than an Earthling. None of those have ever truly stuck. They're all just pretend names, nicknames tried on by an indecisive teenager trying to show how they've outgrown the word that they came up with when they were still awestruck by the dirt's ability to become green and delicious. They do not come from a place of sincerity, and so while they might bloom for a time, they fall away like dried moss to reveal the eternal earth underneath.

Earth is surrounded by the wreckage of a battle between minnows. A graveyard of dead satellites swarms overhead, a microscopic echo of the destruction that surrounded the Eater of Worlds in a dream so long ago. Many of them squint down at the ground through glass eyes. Many of them are armed, bellies swollen with the devoured wealth of nations; the flags of the countries they consumed glitter brightly on their pristine white surfaces. In addition to the paranoid, ground-facing machinery is the infrastructure to leave. Massive sets of jaws yawn open like steel crocodiles, waiting to be fed mineral-rich asteroids. Orbital factories wait silently, endless lines of identical robotic arms waiting to be fed the components they need to build new starships. Empty space stations dot the sky, memories of the Tunguska - vast cathedrals of labour and commerce ready to be filled again with vast workforces to build ships to cross the cosmic sea. Orbital elevators rise from the ground below to hurl the bones of that ancient planet into the stars. Long ago, this was where those ancient explorers set their feet before launching into the air.

All silent now, as silent as Pluto. All of that machinery served its purpose. Everyone who wanted to leave has left.

Lights still glitter down below.

Some people stayed behind. All the galaxy before them, all the skies above them, all the promise of the black, all the heavens within reach. All of that infrastructure still there, waiting patiently to be used again. The people down there on those green continents could step out the door at any time.

The Gods are, for once, silent. Their squabbles, their opinions, their rivalries are all quiet here. Everything is quiet here. Everything is -

A golden fire burns on the horizon of the planet. A plume of spectacular light briefly outshines the sun. A whirling return crash of crimson shatters against it. A streak of blue burns through the sky like a toxic comet; drawn as if by a magnet to the glittering detonations. It joins the other lights with a crash of unspeakable violence that parts the clouds and transforms the weather patterns. A battle. Even here. Not serene after all.

With that grim thought in your heads, the Plousios begins to fall. It falls through the halo of debris, impacting chitin, metal, glass and - soft fur? It falls through the atmosphere, dragging a wake of fire behind it. It falls through the clouds, ripping them to ribbons. It falls across an endless ocean, across an island chain, across a long peninsula, across a rolling and endless continent. It falls across a lake, and then a waterfall, and then another, and then another, and then another. In the depths of the pit surrounded by mountains on all sides, the great doors of the Plousios open wide ten of thousand warriors, labourers, servitors and monsters make their way to the doors. They feel the light of a single golden sun wash across their faces and look out at a green and pleasant land that their ancestors hated so much they couldn't wait to leave.

No army comes to meet them. No Gods. Only...

Beyari: a Tale of Colossi

Every time the Angel of the Harvest witnesses the natural world's inherent violence a flower of possibilities opens inside it's heart.

It wishes to intervene, to stop the fighting.
It wishes to intervene, to save the lizard.
It wishes to intervene, to help the cat.
It wishes to cheer and whoop in excitement to see such an incredibly violent display.
It wishes to hide until these terrible beasts have passed it by.
It wishes to close its eyes to spare itself the blood and the memory of blood.

But it does not. This is what is meant by the natural world and its abundance. The cat needs no help from it, and it is not such a marksman that it could effectively land a killing shot amidst this whirl of muscle and violence. There is nothing to offer those with strength enough to take, no pack-friendship to give to an ambush predator, no understanding of the dangers and motions of these creatures. There is nothing to offer, and so it witnesses.

But if the cat is injured all of that will change. Then it will offer health, and to draw forth the thorn from the lion's paw.