60 miles south (acording to the giant poster map) of Nesme the natural drain of the moors ( a small tributary) flows into the River Surbin, with far less work they could build a reservoir near this, with a aqueduct back to Noctis. Then widen the tributary to increase the natural drainage. Once that's done a short canal to the reservoir could be opened, a simple sluice gate control system and some wind pumps for the irrigation, should get Noctis all its needs.
Widening the tributary to make a reservoir may make it possible for Noctis to align themselves with aquatic races and strengthen their control over waterways and trade routes such as the Surbin River:
Aquatic elves, lizardfolk, locathah, merfolk, scrag, triton, water naga, kuo-toa (they enjoy worshipping Lovercraftian horrors), shalarin, selkie, Nereid, sirine, etc. A few faeries are water dwellers, but I forget which ones.
This is rapidly becoming a D&D game I ran last year, the party's neutral necromancer started a town around a fort they were awarded.
A neutral necromancer started his own town, huh? Sounds awesome. I can’t wait to see what like of freaks and misfits take refuge in Noctis once word gets out.
Depending on how the judicial system in Noctis works, the bodies of executed criminal could be given to a city-appointed necromancer to make animated skeletons to be used as cheap labor, albeit in the mines or sewer system away from where the public can see them. Out of sight, out of mind.
"In death, you shall labor to undo what you did in life."
“You cannot control a man with death, for excluding the undead, the dead are inherently incontrollable in the sense that there is nothing to control. No, you cannot control a man with death, but you can control him with the fear of death. Once you understand this distinction you will realize that it is fear that gives you a hand hold on the actions of a man. But not all men fear the same things, and in the same ways. Thus the first step in conquest is to understand the enemy and discover what he is afraid of. This is not an easy task as most people will try to conceal their fears to avoid just this sort of thing happening. But you can learn to discern fears by looking at actions and peeling back the layers of motivation to find the little terrors that rest beneath. The greatest practice you can achieve in this is to peel back your own motivations to find the core of fear that rests within your heart and learn to use it, to know when you are being manipulated. Thus we have unity of purpose. To achieve victory we must know who we are and who our enemies are. When these are known, one can defeat ten and a thousand can defeat ten thousand, for you will feel no fear and your enemies will experience their worst nightmares.”
There was a hushed silence over the small lecture theatre as Lars spoke, his students listening in with rapt awe. Everything was going so fast, but Lars refused to postpone this class even for the arrival of the delegation from Silverymoon. He and Skuld had agreed quite vehemently that they would not become overlords, that they would be teachers and not dictators.
Nesmé needed its next generation of generals and statesmen. Dozens of lifetimes of attending boring management meetings discussing Sun Tzu’s Art of War or other books had finally clicked together and made sense, and the actual wisdom behind the pithy little sayings often parroted uselessly without context rose to the surface.
Glancing out, Lars asked, “So class; what is it that we fear?”
There was a general whispering amongst the dozen students with minds young and malleable enough to suit his purposes. He had phrased the question with intentional ambiguity to see what would be said.
“The Uthgardt? Parliament has been discussing war with them for the past week,” a particularly cunning orc girl named Rusha suggested.
Lars nodded while he wore a neutral expression and he said, “That is one possible answer. But it is a surface answer. Why do we fear the Uthgardt? Why have so races stood in suspicion and fear of each other for thousands of years? Why are so many on all sides of the conflicts so eager to throw their lives away to get at their foes?”
There was a general rumbling from the class. There were two orcs, three hobgoblins, one drow, one moon elf, four humans, and one dwarf amongst their number, and while none of them had grown up in the sort of environment Lars hoped to create and only about half of them had actually been with them in the Underdark, they all had the sort of qualities that would ensure that they looked beneath the surface of things. Of course, due to accidents of birth such as their species, their gender, their social status or the fact that they were born too close to Menzoberranzan and became slaves ensured that none of them would have ever grown up to do great things. Lars knew this and they all knew this, which was one of the reasons why he had chosen them.
“Because those with power fear to lose it, and those without power fear the retribution of those with power. Uthgar has his portfolio and he commands his people to obey his edicts so as to maintain his power. The shamans and the chieftains and whatever else receive the blessings of their god and use that power to secure their positions. The common Uthgardt fears the retribution of their rulers in life and their god in death, not just to them but to their family,” Kirander, a male drow who ran away from his house during the retreat summarized.
“Good. So they all have their pride and their fears. The fear of death alone is insufficient to deter them. The Elk tribes have decreed the destruction of civilization to us. The Uthgardt in general find our forestry projects offensive. They have refused to come to an agreement on boarders with us. We are reaching the stage of the final ultimatum. What final fear can we attempt to manipulate to force them to back down?” Lars asked.
There was quiet as the students thought about this for a long time, the more brutal members of the class clearly thinking about declarations of ultimate destruction and rejecting them. Finally the quietest member of the class, a glassy eyed girl from Nesmé spoke up. Her voice was soft and somewhat trembling, but that made her words somehow more awful.
“Tell them that if they will not consent to peace then it will become a war of annihilation. If they win, they will merely kill us, for we will fight to the bitter end to protect our homes. But if they lose, we will not kill them, not all of them. No, those who do not die in the fighting will live to see their world turn to ash. We will take proud young men and turn them into broken old men staring at a world already past in the reflection of their bitter ale. We will make beggars of their women and children, and in our charity we will take them. Their women will eagerly warm the beds of our soldiers for they will provide more than broken old men, and their children will be raised as our own. Because we are ‘good people’. Because we are ‘good people’ we will leave them howling impotently in the dark and the cold, broken and shattered, the name of the god forgotten to the sands of history and comment on how we were kind enough not to kill them all,” Tricia said gloomily.
Lars blinked a few times before he said, “Depressing outlook on life, but effective. Yes, if you take everything from a man, you transform him from a thinking, feeling being into a beast that only feels hatred and exists only to attempt to end you. If you make everything leave a man then you have destroyed him and his will to fight. There will be anger and hatred, but much of it will turn inward. Threaten a man’s home, his wife, his child, and he will dig in and fight to the end. Threaten a man’s future, the very things he fights for, and you will sow doubt.”
Ruminating for a few seconds, Lars then said, “This brings me to another point, the aspect of punishment. There is a parable where I come from, about a minister who decided that since people fear death then if execution is made the punishment for lesser crimes then imagine the compliance against greater crimes! Unfortunately this then leads to the following situation. A platoon of troops has been delayed due to unforeseen circumstance and their captain asks his men ‘What is the penalty for being late?’ to which they all reply, ‘Death’. He then asks ‘And what is the penalty for rebellion?’ to which they reply ‘Death’. The captain then says, ‘Gentlemen, we are late.’ Always, always graduate punishments, always give a way out. And as your classmate has pointed out, sometimes death is not the worst punishment you can give. Sometimes the worst punishment is kindness. For the proud, the worst death is a slow death, over many decades, watching everything they have built crumble before their eyes as you replace it with your kindness. Threaten them with this fate should they not comply, and you will get better results than if you threaten them with just death.”
Lars then grinned and said, “Now, since we have gone a little off track, we will be using today to explore your own fears, the parts of you that you must know and understand if you wish to defeat your enemies.”
There was a slight pause before he said, “I will help you discover these fears.”
Having left Siralee to fume elsewhere, Cydric allowed Thrakka to lead him on a tour of the new construction for Nesmé. Cydric had no love for the hobgoblin, but he was fascinated by the new creations. He knew he was also being manipulated and that he had not the skill of speech to overcome such manipulation, but he could still gather information for his superiors.
“And this here is Spider Grove, the source of the majority of our textile material at the moment. A tribe of particularly intelligent spiders have settled in the Plane of Shadow near here and they come here to exchange their silk for food. Somewhat strangely, they are particularly fond of freshly sheared sheep, so we get extra material for our clothing,” Thrakka explained, gesturing to an empty little clearing ringed by trees with a large stone and brick building next to it.
“What is that building for?” Cydric asked.
“That is our textile mill. It’s where we take the raw wool and silk we gather and turn it into finished cloth. It is also where some of our mages are establishing their order. They have a special connection with spiders and their magic allows them to summon forth additional spiders to milk for their silk, quite the profitable venture,” Thrakka replied proudly.
“Ah yes, I do believe I have read about the arachnomancers of the Underdark. They are a rather immoral breed of mage, are they not?” Cydric asked.
Thrakka was quiet for a moment before he replied, “I will admit to the fact that they have a certain ruthless, amoral streak, but they receive excellent pay for their services, research materials, and high social standing. If they are ‘evil’ then they are also not stupid. So long as they do not break any laws, we support them. They thus stand to lose significantly if they step outside the boundaries placed upon them.”
Frowning, Cydric replied, “If there is one thing I have learned about mages, it is that the only boundaries you can place upon them are the ones they personally place upon themselves.”
“Then it behoves us to ensure that they remain sufficiently fat and happy that they do not want to leave their boundaries,” Thrakka replied, clearly annoyed. He then gestured to a work crew nearby. “Now this is interesting. You see, we are intending to replace the entire infrastructure of the town, installing a whole new sewer and water supply system. You noticed the drainage efforts on your way into the town?”
Cydric nodded.
Smiling brightly, Thrakka said, “That is part of our effort to construct an aqueduct for the town as well as opening the moors up to agriculture. By draining certain sections of the hills we can construct stable platforms for our waterworks. Our current plans call for a system easily expandable to a minimum of a hundred thousand residents for Nesmé and the surrounding area.”
Cydric sputtered incredulously before he said, “A hundred thousand! That’s ten times greater than your current population!”
“Today,” Thrakka mused. “As a member of one of the short lived races, it is unlikely I will live to see such expansion but we wish to take the long view. Growth and change is inevitable, especially if you are prepared for it.”
“Some would call such overreaching planning arrogance, perhaps even hubris,” Cydric pointed out.
“There is a difference between arrogance and just being that damn good,” Thrakka replied, grinning broadly. He then looked around suspiciously.
“What are you doing?” Cydric asked.
Holding up a placating hand, Thrakka replied, “I’ve been informed that saying something like that inevitably means the statement will be tested within the next minute in some suitably ironic fashion. However not saying it when appropriate is grounds for actual arrogance.”
Cydric was about to comment on the stupidity of the statement rather bluntly when a breathless messenger ran up to Thrakka and said, “Governor General! The Uthgardt have massed against us.”
There was stunned silence for a moment before Thrakka replied, “I did not expect that to work!”
Lars crouched in a small stone overhang that served as a temporary command shelter. He had really hoped that they would be able to avoid this situation, that a diplomatic solution was reachable. Unfortunately, it appeared that the Uthgardt tribes had just been biding their time as they gathered up reinforcements.
“Current numbers stand at three to four hundred tribal warriors armed with mixed weapons and leather based armours complemented by one hundred fifty to two hundred skirmishers equipped with slings and composite short bows. They have brought about two dozen boats made of leather and shielded on top with scavenged pieces of mail and plate armour. It looks like they intend to make a mass crossing under cover of their projectile troops,” the scout reported to Lars and Thrakka.
“Marshal?” Thrakka asked while using Lars’ technical rank, even though he commanded fewer troops than a major would be expected to lead. Still, Lars and Skuld had agreed to establish excessive amounts of government now so that they could begin developing a new national character and new traditions; only they had yet to fall into the tin pot dictator trap of actually believing their own hype.
“We have to drive them away, plain and simple. Anything less and they can hit the civilian population. Anything more is a bonus,” Lars explained as he began organizing a force deployment chart.
“So far our encounters with the Uthgardt have been in what is nominally ‘their’ territory, if only they would deign to actually let us define boundaries of coexistence, and they have faced only single squads of the First Regiment mixed with troops they understand and at numerical inferiority. They fear our guns, but they don’t really understand their power yet,” Lars noted.
“Then we get one good surprise and then it is gone,” Thrakka replied. While it had been discovered that he was actually an amazing politician, he had at one point been a tribal leader in the Underdark and understood some of the broad strokes of warfare, even if so far only Lars and to a much lesser extent Skuld actual had any idea how to fight a battle with gunpowder weapons.
Lars nodded and said, “With the permission of the Governor General, the Marshal of the Armies of Noctis would like to allow the forces of our enemies to commit to battle.”
Thrakka thought for a moment before he said, “Declaration of war is impossible for the Governor General without a majority decision by parliament… unless sovereign territory is invaded in which case it is my solemn duty to command the marshal to lead our armies in defensive action. Since they have already all but declared war it could be said that it is no longer my decision but…”
“Half way across the river. Once they cross that point they are in our territory and will have crossed the point of no return in terms of actually engaging in conflict,” Lars said before he sighed theatrically. “This is going to be bad. The force out there must represent every adult male Uthgardt within a hundred klicks. We’re going to cripple their economy, a sustenance economy I might add, and leave them vulnerable to attacks from others.”
Thrakka grinned in a very hobgoblin sort of manner, even if he was rather dapper for a hobgoblin, and said, “Then their women and children shall come to us and become workers for our farms and mills.”
Lars was at least glad that Thrakka had ceased thinking of the conquered as slaves. He wasn’t so pleased that Thrakka had clued into how Imperialism worked far too quickly.
Passing along his battle plans, Lars exited the cave and took a look at how his ‘army’ was forming up. He had two ‘regiments’ at little better than company strength, and one of those regiments was the engineering corps so they were little better than grunt workers who knew how to swing their shovels like axes at the moment. For his actual battle regiment, he had one company of rifled troops and two companies of skirmishers. Against a force like this his skirmishers were actually useful, but they were also outnumbered and his skirmishers were lighter than what he guessed were about equivalent of medium infantry from the Uthgardt.
Lars looked out over his battle line and grimaced. His rifled company consisted of two regular platoons and one command platoon. Already they were forming up into a thin line oriented at the top of a bluff sloping down towards the water. The command platoon had the centre, flanked on each side by two regular platoons in a rough V-formation. Each platoon had two squads of ten and they would fire by squads in volleys. That meant for every volley he would get off approximately fifty shots.
And while he would have liked to have a couple of claymores or some mortars or howitzers, the Noctis Arsenal had managed to make a few bigger guns with the surprisingly small budget given to it. He had two six pound cannons and one highly experimental Gatling gun. The cannons he had positioned at the ‘wing-tips’ of his formation while the Gatling was at the centre. The Gatling would go through their limited supply of ammunition frightfully fast if used, but if it worked properly it would scythe through Uthgardt barbarians with equally alarming alacrity.
Finally his skirmishers were spread out along the flanks. Mostly those who had yet to start training with gunpowder weapons or who had yet to acknowledge the superiority of the weapons, they would protect the gunners and cannons from melee if it came to that. Lars hoped it wouldn’t as it would mean something had gone terribly wrong.
Raising an eyebrow, Lars then noted, “I was unaware that we had cavalry.”
Thrakka shrugged and said, “Knights in Silver. They wish to help in our defence and I decided that in the interests of furthering future alliances with Silverymoon I should allow them to observe. I made the point clear not to interfere with the battle unless aid was requested though. Their leader is a bitch, but I don’t think she wants Nesmé any more than we do.”
Lars shrugged. As they got settled in and the bards they had hired as signallers and inspiring presences settled down their martial music, Lars watched the Uthgardt get into their boats. As surprise attacks went, it was actually pretty good. The Uthgardt missile troops would just be able to reach the opposite bank so the main force could establish a beachhead without meeting a Nesmé troops right on the shores. Sure, they would be waiting, but their leaders probably saw that as inevitable.
Thrakka lowered his telescope- a product of Silverymoon bought years ago- and said, “I do believe their boats have crossed the half way point.”
Lars nodded and said, “They have.”
Thrakka grinned and said, “We are now officially at war. Please begin, marshal.”
Addressing his signallers, Lars said, “Snipers are to kill the proud idiot wearing the massive elk antler helmet. Tell the cannons to aim at the missile troops on the far bank. At my signal, the riflemen are to begin volley fire on the boats. Volley fire is to cease when all boats have sunk or on my order. The Gatling gun will hold in reserve until I say otherwise.”
There was a quick blowing trumpets and beating of drums until the riflemen on the front lines were all lined up and ready, each squad aiming at a different boat. The squads behind them were eager to move forward and take the place of their comrades once their guns had fired. The cannons took careful aim at the far bank, aligning with the centres of the enemy formations. It was all rather ragged, the soldiers having had perhaps two and a half weeks to actually train with their weapons, but it would be enough.
Then there came a trio of cracks. A week after consolidating their control over Nesmé a trio of young hedge wizards had come forward, interested in the guns and the extra power they gave. When they had demonstrated the spell true strike they had immediately been made the first three members of the military to wear the Sniper Cross on their uniforms.
Folsom the Bull Elk, a fifty year old veteran who had lived through countless battles and had united a dozen villages in arms against these new creatures that accepted the hated orcs into their ranks, angered their totem with the existence and growth of their city, blasphemed against their god Uthgar by cutting down so many trees, and had attacked and killed twenty warriors- died. Before he even set foot on the shore claimed by his enemies, he died. A rare and seasoned warrior who had stood against trolls and ogres and orcs and other creatures and had the scars to prove it, he died to two boys and girl who had yet to see their second decade. His axe, forged generations ago out of adamantine collected from a fallen star and set with a handle of bone taken from a black dragon, dropped into the river, its wielder slain by weapons less than a month old.
“Open fire,” Lars commanded. It took a few seconds to get to the troops and the volleys were not a single wall of sound and smoke, but he could not argue with the results. Three of the boats were hit, the result of miscommunication resulting in an over saturation of fire on two of the boats. The lead shot ripped through the leather boats, puncturing holes in the craft and the men within. Two of the boats veered off, the crude paddles thrown aside by twitching, dying bodies, while the third actually began to sink rather quickly.
The cannons made a one-two roar as they fired asynchronously, one of the shots going low and thudding harmlessly into the far river bank while the other crashed into the lines of bowmen at about knee level, ripping apart men as the vicious little iron ball bounced along the ground.
Lars watched and remembered just how much a daemon he truly was as he felt joy at the carnage he was orchestrating. He would not revel in it, but he could not deny the carnal satisfaction at killing his foes, the predator within him cackling in glee at being fed a sight of blood spilt and meat split.
Then the next line stepped forward and at a command from the major in the command platoon, they took their turn at firing, finishing off the two wallowing boats and wounding two more. Already confusion was taking hold as the Uthgardt tried to figure out what was going on. It wasn’t magic because their wards and protections had not been activated, but it killed like magic!
Twenty seconds later and the first squads were reloaded. There was another burst of fire, this time perhaps a touch more coordinated, and more men died. If it hadn’t been for their religious prohibition on cutting down trees, the Uthgardt might have made more wood with which to build sturdier boats, but their little leather affairs were horrifically fragile.
After the cannons fired again, reloading at the rate of about one shot every minute and a half, the missile troops, already on the verge of panicking, turned and ran into the woods. They had probably only been staying because they wondered if the cannons could repeat their deadly attack, and now that they had their answer they were not going to stick around.
“Cannons, cease fire. Have the Gatling rake the boats along the water line,” Lars ordered, causing another flurry of activity as the commands were passed along.
A few seconds later a rhythmic chattering noise began, spouts of water bursting into the air around the boats until the gunners found their range and the confused, milling boats started to get hit. Several had turned in the confusion, exposing their unarmoured flanks such that the bullets now hit one side and if not stopped by human flesh they passed out the other side of the boat. All at water level.
The Gatling worked gloriously for about half a minute before it jammed. Unitary bullets were still a bitch to make and the brass cartridges were being reserved for other uses at the moment. They didn’t have a proper paper industry established yet, so they were using light wool cartridges. They sucked and caused all sorts of jams, but the riflemen were trained to clear their guns. The Gatling had no such proper clearing of the debris.
Still, the roar of the cannons and the death rattle of the Gatling had completely broken the morale of the Uthgardt. They were leaderless and they had lost a huge percentage of their forces before they had even made landing, half their boats having already sunk and the river stained red. They were in full retreat now.
“Harass them until they cross the halfway point then cease fire. I suspect we have crippled or killed two thirds of their forces today while taking no losses. For all intents and purposes the Elk tribes in this region have ceased to exist. Perhaps now we can get them to negotiate,” Lars ordered, hoping it would be the last one of the day.
A few seconds and considerable confusion later one of the cannons fired, obviously having considered the new order to harass to apply to them and supersede their orders to cease firing. Lars would have pitched an eldritch fit if not for the fact that the crew made a beautiful shot that hit one of the larger, still intact boats dead centre and tore it to scrap and bloody body parts, the whole thing collapsing and sinking so quickly it dragged a good thirty Uthgardt to the bottom of the river in seconds.
Lars blinked and then said, “Cease fire! Everyone cease fire! Damn it, we still need to work on communication. Reprimand the cannon crew for firing without orders, but commend them for excellent shooting.”
Thrakka shrugged and said, “Well at least we weren’t fighting a determined, disciplined enemy with sufficient numbers to force the issue.”
Lars turned his head ever so slowly to glare at Thrakka before he hissed, “You did not just say that!”
Thrakka grimaced and said, “Sorry.”
“We have got possible lead, sir. Our spies tell us there is some sort of disturbance in Silverymoon related to the town of Nesmé,” one of his scouts informed Akrak.
Nodding, the devil scoutmaster said, “Does anyone have the exact coordinates of Nesmé? No? I did not think so. We will gather and jump to the nearest known point and then approach on the ground with stealth to avoid potentially startling the target into fleeing before we can confirm. I want us there in two days!”
Graz’zt sat in his court looking out over the information his spies had been gathering on the movement of the devils and from within Lolth’s ranks. There was apparently a surge of activity. Someone had noticed something.
Musing for a moment, he said, “Get me a myriad of troops, the Blood War seems to have slowed in tempo for the moment so we should be able to take them from there. Get them to the Material Realm and have them stand-by for a teleport assault. I want to drop a ‘surprise’ on the first target of opportunity we get.”
Gruumsh sat plotting within a mountain stronghold along the Spine of the World. Thousands of orcs had flocked to his avatar, and while there had been some raiding and conquest it was not enough. There were no great targets for the god and his followers to attack that were within their reach.
Until word had filtered to him from his scouts that the most hated king of the god of the elves had stepped out of hiding on Evermeet and was on the main continent. Now there was a target worth attacking!
Gruumsh had given simple orders. Find where the elf bastard was going and then he and his hordes would march out and kill him and anything else that got in their way.
Siralee watched in mute horror as the massacre took place. Admittedly, the Uthgardt had been attacking at the Noctis politicians had yelled at them repeatedly across the river to just turn back, that they could discuss things. The Elk tribe had always been problematic as they wished the destruction of all civilization, but they weren’t outright butchers.
The magic weapons they had on the other hand…
She had to get back to Silverymoon to warn them!
Marella sat at upon a throne she had dragged in from elsewhere, the bodies of her rivals piled around her. Power had come quick and easy since her discovery of such a deeper understanding of the Weave. She could listen to the harmonious vibrations of magic and add discord and destructive resonance into the pattern, amplifying her own arcane skills while robbing her enemies of theirs.
So what if her hair was falling out? So what if her eyes had been reduced to glowing points of light? So what that no matter how much she ate she was withering away, her skin hanging grotesquely off her bones. She had power!
Yes, power, and now she knew why the remnants wanted the Chosen dead and the Shadow Weave destroyed. With them out of the way, it would be all hers! Hers! The conflux of the Weave around the mythal would make for an interesting plaything.
She had to get to Silverymoon!
Malar sniffed the air. He and his followers could just smell the scent of their prey. But… there was something else now. The winds carried not just physical smells to the bestial god, but also the tides of things to come. He could smell… conflict. He could smell blood that had yet to be shed. A great and savage battle was coming.
Such things were still hard to track due to the strange quality of the source of the scent they tracked, but Malar felt that they were perhaps still a half tenday out from their prey and the inevitable trap that lay there for them. The only question was if they could arrive before the coming storm of blood or not.
I love learning. Teach me. I will listen. You know, if Christian dogma included a ten-foot tall Jesus walking around in battle armor and smashing retarded cultists with a gaint mace, I might just convert - Noble Ire on Jesus smashing Scientologists
Academia Nut wrote:
Thrakka shrugged and said, “Well at least we weren’t fighting a determined, disciplined enemy with sufficient numbers to force the issue.”
Lars turned his head ever so slowly to glare at Thrakka before he hissed, “You did not just say that!”
Thrakka grimaced and said, “Sorry.”
<snip>
This is where Lars & Skuld will hope everyone is to busy fighting each other to smash them. Sure, it could be worse even a lot worse. But by that stage it is the DM's equivelent of 'rocks falls, everyone dies'.
Does the Shrike exist in the OpenDoor setting?
"Okay, I'll have the truth with a side order of clarity." ~ Dr. Daniel Jackson.
"Reality has a well-known liberal bias." ~ Stephen Colbert
"One Drive, One Partition, the One True Path" ~ ars technica forums - warrens - on hhd partitioning schemes.
Xon wrote:This is where Lars & Skuld will hope everyone is to busy fighting each other to smash them. Sure, it could be worse even a lot worse. But by that stage it is the DM's equivelent of 'rocks falls, everyone dies'.
I always prefered the ACME method of PC removal.
DM: Roll for initiative.
PC: Wha?
DM: Roll for initiative.
PC: Umm... okay.
DM: You notice the shadow on the ground just before the anvil kills you.
PC: We're in a cave!
DM: You die.
Academia Nut wrote:Chapter Fifty-nine: Whiskey and Tango
“Tell them that if they will not consent to peace then it will become a war of annihilation. If they win, they will merely kill us, for we will fight to the bitter end to protect our homes. But if they lose, we will not kill them, not all of them. No, those who do not die in the fighting will live to see their world turn to ash. We will take proud young men and turn them into broken old men staring at a world already past in the reflection of their bitter ale. We will make beggars of their women and children, and in our charity we will take them. Their women will eagerly warm the beds of our soldiers for they will provide more than broken old men, and their children will be raised as our own. Because we are ‘good people’. Because we are ‘good people’ we will leave them howling impotently in the dark and the cold, broken and shattered, the name of the god forgotten to the sands of history and comment on how we were kind enough not to kill them all,” Tricia said gloomily.
Academia Nut wrote:Chapter Fifty-nine: Whiskey and Tango
“Tell them that if they will not consent to peace then it will become a war of annihilation. If they win, they will merely kill us, for we will fight to the bitter end to protect our homes. But if they lose, we will not kill them, not all of them. No, those who do not die in the fighting will live to see their world turn to ash. We will take proud young men and turn them into broken old men staring at a world already past in the reflection of their bitter ale. We will make beggars of their women and children, and in our charity we will take them. Their women will eagerly warm the beds of our soldiers for they will provide more than broken old men, and their children will be raised as our own. Because we are ‘good people’. Because we are ‘good people’ we will leave them howling impotently in the dark and the cold, broken and shattered, the name of the god forgotten to the sands of history and comment on how we were kind enough not to kill them all,” Tricia said gloomily.
Isn't this what they're doing to Nesme?
Not really. The threat is there, but it hasn't been put into play yet.
Hopefully, most of the 12-way car pile up will happen closer to Silverymoon, or atleast outside the city limits of Nesme/Noctus, with Siralee and Marella colliding half way to their intended destination. I don't remember the other communities that are part of the Silver Marches aside from Mithril Hall where Drizzt dwells.
If they're really lucky, seeing her followers hurt would provoke Skuld's "mama bear" instincts and allow her to transform into an Eldritch form. Personally, I imagine Eldritch!Skuld as a tyrannosaurus-rex/scorpion made out of metal and circuitry. Lars has two Eldritch forms, a giant crab and a bat.
Don't forget that Lars can sprout bat wings and fly like he did moments before Gunnhild was born, so he can carry bombs into the air and drop them on enemies down below. Being pierced by arrows doesn't bother Lars too much, so he's ideal for a "sortie." (Is that the correct military term?)
Copper is pretty easy to refine and very common in the D&D setting, and they already have plenty of raw iron and steel to work with. When you break it down to that, that's all you need for basic electricity.
Now, if you want to make things even more interesting, one of Tesla's more far-out ideas was to harness the Earth's own atmosphere for power. On average, there is about 700MW of electrostatic potential in Earth's atmosphere, enough to power a small city on Earth today. However, given the amount of lightning and the like they're able to utilize through magic, I wouldn't be surprised in the amount available here was higher.
What makes this even more interesting is that a properly tuned Tesla coil will actually act as an electrostatic receiver, basically pulling power from thin air. Of course, you can get even more power if you have a conventional alternator powering a Tesla coil, which the other coils are then tuned to as receivers.
Now imagine the possibilities this makes available. You can have horseless carriages with no batteries, engines or solar cells needed and almost unlimited range -- just a large coil mounted on the roof and metal rimmed wheels so you have ground contact. Hell, you could probably even move a tank this way -- although having the coil exposed on top of the turret would make it somewhat vulnerable. But something like a self propelled gun... now that's an interesting possibility.
Crayz9000 wrote:Copper is pretty easy to refine and very common in the D&D setting, and they already have plenty of raw iron and steel to work with. When you break it down to that, that's all you need for basic electricity.
At this point the tougher part is the insulator. You're pretty much stuck with organic resins and ceramics. Neither of which are flexible. Not so much a big deal for transmission; but a big deal for things like efficient motors.
Firethorn wrote:At this point the tougher part is the insulator. You're pretty much stuck with organic resins and ceramics. Neither of which are flexible. Not so much a big deal for transmission; but a big deal for things like efficient motors.
Well, efficiency can wait. After all, they had electric cars in the 1900s through 1920s and they were setting land speed records with them.
Naturally, plastics will have to be advanced relatively quickly, but this can be accomplished much more easily once there is widespread electric power for such things as heating elements so you can produce consistent, even heat for the process.
By the way, up through the 1950s they were just fine with using cloth and rubber as insulators. You just have to take greater care with it than plastic covered wire; however, plastic also has the nasty tendency to melt and / or crack, causing shorts anyway.
I'm not sure if I'll be able to finish the next chapter by the end of the night, but holy fuck is it looking awesome right now. I'm kind of feeling bad for the artistically inclined because there are too many cool pictures that could be created here. Let's see here, some of the highlights:
1) New Lars costume
2) New Erinyes appearance
3) Marella- holy fuck
4) Destruction of a form not yet seen in this story, which is saying something
I guess what I'm trying to say is holy fuck. That's pretty much my level of excitement at this moment, and I hope I present it to you properly with the next chapter.
I love learning. Teach me. I will listen. You know, if Christian dogma included a ten-foot tall Jesus walking around in battle armor and smashing retarded cultists with a gaint mace, I might just convert - Noble Ire on Jesus smashing Scientologists
It's rapidly growing bigger with each second and I have to get up early for work tomorrow. The... yeah. It's earned its title of Foxtrot Uniforms, Bravo Alpha Romeo! The initial, rather bizarre meaning is somewhat evident in the first half, then the other meaning becomes apparent in the second half.
I love learning. Teach me. I will listen. You know, if Christian dogma included a ten-foot tall Jesus walking around in battle armor and smashing retarded cultists with a gaint mace, I might just convert - Noble Ire on Jesus smashing Scientologists
Chapter Sixty: Foxtrot Uniforms, Bravo Alpha Romeo!
They were simple things really, just little ribbons composed of coloured thread sown into the dress uniforms of the soldiers, but they were the first military award to be given out. All members of the First Regiment were now permitted the honour of wearing the service ribbon for the First Battle of the River Surbin. The design was of two green bars flanking two wider blue bars flanking a single thin red stripe down the middle.
Lars sat in the home he and Skuld had built… well, mostly Skuld… looking over reports. They didn’t have a proper paper industry established yet and already there were stacks and stacks of reports. Lars had insisted upon it, even if they annoyed him. Of course, with over a hundred souls to work with and the capacity to grow additional eyes and limbs, he could multitask in ways that ate through paperwork.
He had always suspected bureaucrats were otherworldly abominations when he was alive and now that he knew how his afterlife worked and how good he was at the stuff now that he was an otherworldly abomination, it seemed to confirm his previous suspicions.
Then he hit a bit of paperwork that caused him to pause and merge down to a human form such that he could look at it with his full attention. Turning his head slightly, he asked, “Skuld, you figured out a way to fix the Gatling?”
From the bathroom where she was bathing in a hot, steaming bath, Skuld said through the partially open door, “I was wondering when you were going to reach that file. And I sort of figured out a work around, in that I can fix the problem for a few weapons but not for many of them. However, by the time we have more than a few weapons the ammunition problem shouldn’t be a big deal, and we’ll probably move towards something like an M2 Browning anyway.”
Lars was quiet for a long moment as he read over the report in more careful detail before he replied, “The juvenile male in me, of which no man ever truly loses, is unabashedly giggling like a school girl. The military man in me is drooling at the tactical implications. And the daemon part is cackling inside, in a way that would drive most mortals insane with fear.”
Padding on wet feet across the rough black granite floors, Skuld leaned down on Lars, her face peering down at his, long black hair hanging wetly around both their faces, and she asked, “So you’re turned on right now?”
“If I was physically capable of it, I dare say I would be rather aroused right now,” Lars said with a shrug.
Grinning, Skuld said, “Come to bed then. Come on, you do the work of ten men.”
“That’s because I don’t need to sleep and I can do twelve things at once,” Lars replied. He then sighed, “And we need a hundred of me.”
Skuld frowned and said, “Yes, well I only need one of you right now, so come on. We’re cuddling mister.”
Neatly stacking away the papers, Lars got up and was not at all surprised to see that Skuld was currently doing a fair impression of the Lady Godiva.
Grinning broadly, Skuld said, “Look, no little girl body here!” She then hopped underneath the covers of the bed, an eager look on her face.
Dissolving his casual dress uniform into some light pyjamas, Lars slipped under the covers on the opposite side of the bed.
“Technically those clothes are part of your skin… thus we’re both naked,” Skuld pointed out cheerfully as she moved closer to Lars, pressing up against him, only a thin sheet of silk between them.
Turning to face her in the darkness, although both of them could see perfectly even in the absolute absence of all light, Lars actually grinned back and said, “Do you know how much sex the people of Nesmé have been having?”
“A lot?” Skuld ventured.
“That's an understatement. Everyone is busy, but since the factories run on eight hour shifts and we pay unskilled workers two silver pieces a day as a starting wage and a five day work week, the average worker actually has more free time than before while producing more. The people of Nesmé are starting to see prosperity, and along with the jubilation of the Menzoberranzan slaves at being free and all of the new marriages, it’s been pretty interesting for a psychophage,” Lars explained.
“So you’re incredibly horny?” Skuld asked.
“Like you wouldn’t believe, especially since I’ve been siphoning such emotions off Gunnhild to prevent her from doing anything inappropriate,” Lars replied.
Skuld then squeaked in surprise as a prehensile tentacle wrapped around her thigh scandalously high.
“Ooh… you’re a naughty one,” Skuld cooed.
With an unholy flare of light hidden by the trees, Marella arrived, along with a contingent of her followers and some expendable foot soldiers given to her by the High Captains in admittance of her supremacy over the Host Tower. In reality she knew they had been sent along with her in the hopes of acquiring some pillage, but the pirates would make good distractions for the minions of Silverymoon.
For her part, Marella had dove deeper and deeper into the strange mysteries of the Weave offered by the remnants. Silver-white fire burned within her empty eye sockets and her heart was visible beating within her chest, the incredible glow illuminating her bones from the inside out, her flesh and organs translucent and tinting the light blood red. The remnants however had already taught her how to overcome this limitation of the flesh by tattooing long chains of complex symbols on her flesh, creating wards that grew stronger the more power flowed through her, preventing her corporeal form from incinerating itself under the strain of channelling the rawest magic on Toril. Already new wards were spontaneously forming, creating glowing gold bands of symbols that floated about her body, constraining and controlling the chaotic flow.
Already some of her acolytes were starting to add their own warding tattoos as their eyes began to burn out from delving into the new field of magic she had shown them. None were as favoured by the remnants as Marella though. None were as favoured by the Weave itself.
The Weave around the city was relatively quiet in these troubled times, kept in control by the mythal at its heart and the presence of one of the Seven Sisters. Marella began to carefully pluck at the strands of energy with her mind, listening to the discordant resonances she was creating. As a tiny shockwave would travel along and bounce off the stability of the mythal, she would reinforce it on its way back, turning tiny plucking into increasingly powerful waves of wild magic that steadily assaulted the mythal.
Marella could feel the mind of the Chosen start to react to her interference. But it was too late.
With one final mental shove, it was much too late.
As a daemon, Lars didn’t particularly need to sleep, but he could enter a sort of low consumption state where he mostly focused his energies inward to decrease external losses. In the current high ambient energy environment and with all the attention focused on him by the people of Nesmé, he didn’t particularly need it, but as he lay snuggled up next to Skuld it was the next best thing to actual sleep.
His rest however was rudely interrupted by a sudden surge in the Weave, a big one that temporarily knocked out all enchantments based on that form of magic. It was more than enough to ping his senses. And once he turned his senses outward again he saw something coming in the near future that did not bode well.
Leaping out of bed so fast he forgot to sort out the tangle of limbs with Skuld first, the two of them hit the ground hard before Lars morphed back into a more human form and he ran to the windows, a human part of him wanting to see what his other senses were already telling him.
Visible across intervening hills and the horizon, the light of dawn could be seen. There were two problems though. The first was that the light was coming from the north-east, impossible at this latitude. The second was that it was midnight.
Gasping as she saw the terrible light, Skuld said, “Lars…”
“Silverymoon just blew up,” Lars replied, his voice devoid of horror. Thousands of minds around him were starting to put off huge amounts of terror, but fear never made a daemon afraid. He had no physiology to spike him with fear. The only thing Lars feared was the loss of his new family, and panic would not help them now.
“What happened?” Skuld asked.
Focusing on the distant action for a moment, Lars winced and said, “All the energy built up in its mythal was released in a single instant. Casualties are probably catastrophic right now.”
“What do we do?” Skuld asked as her eyes remained glued on the distant, if now fading, light.
“It’s too far for us to do anything tonight… officially,” Lars replied. “However, what I can’t do as Marshall of the Armies of Noctis I can do as Lars. If Thrakka asks, I’m out gathering intelligence for later campaigning with my own personal household guard.”
Lars then went to his desk and pulled out his God Killer shotgun and a bandolier of shells, pocketing the most powerful shells carved down in that lightless cavern all those weeks ago. Slinging the gun, he then altered his form into his drowned commissar form and then changed his face such that he looked like he was wearing a face plate of solid, sea corroded brass bolted together. He could see perfectly fine, and he had other senses, but the effect was thoroughly unnerving to look at for most mortals.
Hugging Skuld close, he said, “I’ll be back. Tell Gunnhild I love her.”
Exiting the room, he found the Erinyes already waiting, their new swords strapped to their sides and their bows and arrows replaced by AK-47s and magazines. They also wore blank faceplates made of half-silvered glassteel, moulded to their features and done up in faint, malevolent grins. Since they had no need to breathe, possessed telepathic communication, and light would always be more intense outside the masks and they could see perfectly in any level of illumination, there was literally no downside to the freakish masks.
Their appearances had also subtly changed due to either extended exposure to Lars or some sort of other weird side effect of the contract aside from the brands of his symbol above their sternums. For one thing, everything they wore looked like it had been submerged in salt water long enough to just start the process of disintegration but not quite long enough for it to have affected structural integrity. Metals looked slightly tarnished and fabrics ragged, but only ever so slightly in a way that just looked wrong. Strangely enough, when removed from their presence, any such item looked perfectly normal.
Even worse though was the way they moved to the mortal eye. Even while moving at full speed their motions appeared slowed and lazy, almost like they were underwater. Their hair and wings were the worst offenders, seeming to have buoyancy and inertia unnatural to the air, moving too slowly for their environment.
Looking around the Erinyes, Lars said to them telepathically We’re going to Silverymoon. Teleport on my mark.
An instant later the eight Erinyes all activated their natural teleportation abilities and Lars grabbed on to the space-time distortions and rode the extra-dimensional movement. For a teleportation it was a short jump, but Lars was quite glad he accompanied them all to Silverymoon as from the perspective of space and time the whole area was a gigantic snarl that only a daemon used to riding out on a communications boom during a Warp Storm could have a hope of figuring out.
Pushing the teleport into a stable zone, the nine of them appeared with an crack of displaced air into the sort of scene that only Lars could truly appreciate, having lived through this sort of thing more than once in his lifetimes.
The part of the city that was the heart of the mythal was gone. In its place was a bleeding hole in the fabric of the cosmos, a seething core of raw, untamed magic opened up to the mundane world, casting a harsh silver-white light over everything.
Around the crater formed by that destructive magic, the rest of the city burned all the colours of the rainbow as regular combustion was tainted by magic. In some places wood burned bright green flames that turned into creeping, ensnaring vines that wrapped up victims, preventing them from fleeing the same fires that created the vines in the first place. In other portions of the city stone melted and combusted, producing shimmering purple flames that turned to rolling yellow smoke that coated everything it touched in molten glass. In still other places would be fire fighters threw water on flames in attempts to douse them only for the water to burn like oil, spreading back to those who had thrown it and causing all the water in their bodies to similarly ignite, spreading the fires further.
There were other horrors too. Spells were randomly manifesting, and some of them were even starting to take on a life of their own. Lars watched in mute fascination as a woman went to scream only for the sound to take on the expression of ever shifting runes of strange colours in the air, strange, partly squamous, partly rugose things that only a daemon could appreciate. The words then formed into a writhing mass that flayed apart their creator with fire and cold and fossilization before they oozed off to find a dark hole to hide in.
Note to you girls, that thing is pure chaos, I would recommend not touching it, Lars advised.
Once the initial assessment was finished, a few subtler things were noticed. Like how there was a band of pirates, apparently either river pirates, landlocked ones, or very lost ones, looting the outskirts of the city, generally caring off anything or anyone that wasn’t pinned down or on fire.
Oh, and flying about the city above the hole in reality hurling balls of fire and bolts of lightning at each other were Alustriel and a gaunt woman surrounded by swirling bands of runes carved from magical light, her heart burning like a small star. Alustriel for her part seemed rather hard pressed by the attacks, forced on the defensive by the cackling monster.
Kill the marauders, save the civilians. I’ll gather intelligence and then see if I can do anything about the psycho bitch on fire up there Lars ordered.
Why save the civilians? Orin asked.
Surprisingly it was Falagoro who answered, chastising Because it will be easier to annex this area later if we are seen as saviours rather than conquerors.
Nodding, Lars ran off into the holocaust that Silverymoon had become, looking for anyone out of place while the Erinyes began to open fire with single shots on the raiders, rushing between piles of rubble, picking off the confused attackers while remaining within cover. With their otherworldly motions, inexplicably deadly weapons and the scenes of carnage reflecting off their masks, they were beings of pure horror, causing the raiders to break and run into the fires of the night.
His jacket flowing behind him, a banner of rotted leather with the appearance of seaweed trailing behind him, Lars was on a whole other level of horror as he allowed the unnaturalness of the daemon to surge to the forefront, adding twists and angles to his body that did not add up properly and caused the eyes to ache just looking at him. Then he found his prey.
There was a smaller wizard’s duel occurring on the ground, with Silverymoon wizards hurling spells at a small group of attacking wizards that burned with lesser versions of the fires within what Lars presumed was their leader. The attackers seemed utterly at home in the wild magic produced by the glowing ball of light, capable of predicting when the magic would surge and when it would fizzle and timing their attacks and defence accordingly. Two of them seemed content to blast away at the defenders while a third, presumably the strongest, was countering their attacks, slowly drawing magic saturated strands of the Weave closer to her, building up to a massive attack.
Psychically grabbing a thread of magic they had been using, Lars yanked on it at exactly the wrong moment for his prey. The mage who had been gathering energy suddenly discovered that she was no longer in control of the chaotic spell she had been gathering, and that her heart had just been replaced with the fire seed of an empowered fireball with the ‘fire’ part replaced with pure force. The explosion turned her body to a fine red vapour and pummelled her compatriots, hurling one into the crater around the burning core of wild magic where he promptly had a brood of baby beholders spawn in his stomach and gnaw their way out, trailing entrails as they tried to escape the mutating effect of being so close to so much raw magic.
A few of them might have made it, but Lars didn’t care because he had bigger fish to fry. Rushing forward, he grabbed the broken and blood covered but still alive body of the other mage in the attacking party. With a sound of tearing metal his brass mask tore open, the jagged edges forming secondary teeth for the collection of swirling, gnashing, cutting teeth and tentacles and stars within his infinite maw, reaching out to grasp the mage and haul him into the bottomless depths.
The man screamed and died from shock, his body weakened by his injuries, but in the instant before his soul vacated his body Lars slipped past the shattered mental defences and pillaged the contents of the man’s mind. It seemed that they were lead by the woman duelling Alustriel, and their proficiency with magic and their ability to harness and even create wild magic stemmed from their ability to perceive and manipulate the Weave on a fundamental leave thanks to certain things they had discovered existing within the Weave itself.
Dropping the dead body, Lars resealed his mask and looked up. Marella, the name of the leader of this attack, was winning. She was using part of her concentration to begin building an attack similar to the one her minion had attempted to construct, but she was much better at it, and much more aware of the waves within the Weave.
Taking out his shotgun and flipping the safety off, Lars took the direct route.
Divinely crafted and enchanted, but not to the max or with daemonic blessings, buckshot slammed into Marella’s wards, explosively burning out on the shielding of raw magic, battering the psychotic mage with concussive force. A rib, illuminated by her glowing heart, visibly snapped. This distraction caused her to fail to catch a bolt of force hurled by Alustriel, and while it too splashed off her wards, she instinctively flinched and thus completely lost concentration on the spell she had been forming out of the magical remnants of her duel.
The spell, of a power not seen since the Fall of Netheril, was released only partially formed into the wild. Originally intended to sunder Alustriel’s connection to the Weave permanently, it instead manifested as a living field of null magic, a bizarre contradiction that still lashed out at its unintentional creator and the nearby Alustriel as it began to plummet towards the ground.
Both transparent pseudopods hit, completely nullifying all of the magical effects on both women, thus causing them to plummet towards the ground. Marella hit and bounced hard while Lars made a sliding save to catch Alustriel, letting his amorphous body deform beneath her to cushion the blow a little.
Dragging her into cover and making sure she would live; Lars sprang to his feet and ran into the open just in time to take a lightning bolt to the chest. Normally he would have just shrugged it off, but to keep his ammunition from cooking off Lars let the energy conduct through his body around his weapons, inflicting damage to his Warp substance.
Standing in front of the burning ball of light, drawing wisps of energy into her already mending body like a white dwarf feeding off a larger companion star and about to go nova, Marella stood, her empty sockets burning with malevolent sunlight while her blood dribbled from her mouth and burned like thermite.
Pumping his shotgun, Lars blasted Marella, but this time the mage threw up a shield of force that caught the deadly pellets well before they reached her personal wards.
Well… this will take some thought Lars muttered telepathically.
He turned to run just in time to take an arrow to the shoulder, only this one hurt. Crying out in agony as the arrow burnt his essence, Lars then took another one in the gut in his distraction before he managed to roll away into a pile of rubble. Marella also took several arrows, but they flared on her wards, their enchantments causing them to explode well away from the psychotic mage.
Pulling out the arrows with conjured tentacles, Lars looked at them and realized that they were of elven make and divinely enchanted. Creating an eye, he extended it up over his cover. In the second before he had it shot off, he caught glimpse of a sight that would have made him wet himself if he felt had the capacity to feel fear or physically wet himself.
Three… no… four avatars of the elven pantheon stood a good kilometre away, backed up by a massive elven war host. Two of the gods were armed with longbows and two with swords. Lars had initially miscounted as distinguishing such powerful auras from each other at this range was difficult and one of the sword armed elves had dark skin that made her harder to distinguish from the background.
Lifted off his feet by an explosion generated by Marella throwing a fireball at him, Lars discovered that he was trapped between a mage capable of beating down one of the Chosen of this universe’s goddess of magic in a magical duel, and four martial minded elven gods!
The phrase ‘rock and a hard place’ came to mind.
Calling out, Lars ordered All right girls! Full retreat! Meet at my position… wherever that might be once I’m done running.
Crawling out of his crater to find that the air was now filling up with non-divine arrows from the mortal followers of the gods, Lars allowed himself to become a pincushion if it meant he could use the distraction to get into the ruins of a building. Squeezing through burning rubble, he switched out his regular shells for the full power ones.
Lars had just enough time to get one shell in when he was forced to duck to avoid having his head taken off by a longsword as he exited the rubble.
Corellon Larethian was standing right in front of him and did not seem in the mood to discuss who had caused what and why even though Lars was admittedly an eldritch horror from beyond he was a good guy. Lars was at close range with a master swordsman who had spent tens of thousands of years perfecting his art. Lars did the only thing he could do. He fired point blank range.
Amazingly Corellon dodged most of the shot, dancing around it, but two pellets struck him, grazing his flesh along his right side and nearly passing through completely but detonating just as they brushed the muscle beneath his skin. The leader of the elven pantheon cried out as the concussive force caused grievous damage to his right flank.
Muttering a telepathic Sorry Lars then smashed the distracted Corellon across the face with the butt of his gun, shattering the god’s jaw in the process with the divinely crafted weapon. Now thoroughly incapacitated for the time being, Lars managed to shove pasted and make for a less hostile section of the maelstrom of fire and magic and war that was Silverymoon.
Seeing her father wounded, Eilistraee cried out, rushing to go slay the foul creature that had laid him low. However before she could get there a blade lunged out from a pool of darkness she had not realized was deeper than usual. Barely parrying in time with her own sword, the collision of the two powerfully enchanted weapons in such a chaotic zone set off a shower of burning sparks.
Emerging from the pool of magical shadows was an immaculately dressed man wielding a rapier cloaked in frost. He had an unearthly beauty about him, fouled but not lessened by the pair small of horns that adorned his forehead. Grinning slightly, he said, “Not today elf, not today.”
Emerging into visibility from around the glare of the wound in reality arrived a dozen squadrons of flying devils, already starting to throw fireballs and other magic down at the elven positions and at Marella. One particular devil wreathed in fire cackled maniacally as he hurled balls of fire possessing unholy heat down on his enemies.
A giant slug creature emerged from the rubble, toppling a building as it ground it under.
A wicked hag on a burning nightmare emerged out of the flames.
A powerful pit fiend leading legions of lesser devils teleported in to cordon off the city.
Walls of iron began to sprout up, dividing the battlefield towards the favour of the devils.
The forests about Silverymoon began to burn as a pair of devils marched through it, the younger female one throwing off indiscriminate fireballs while the older warrior let just the image of him terrify the mortals that saw him.
Another gigantic creature, this one more snake-like, appeared.
Eilistraee’s blood ran cold. The Archdukes! The Archdukes of Hell were here!
And then, standing out in the open like an orchestra conductor who had always been there, was Asmodeus.
ALL OF THEM!
“Retreat!” Eilistraee shouted out. “We can’t stop them!”
“A pity, I do not think either of us had tested all of our skills to the limit yet,” Levistus noted mockingly.
The elven gods and their followers looked hesitant for a moment as their leader was still trapped down in Silverymoon, wounded, but with Levistus holding Eilistraee at bay and all of the Nine present with their armies growing by the second, they had no chance of making a breakthrough.
Marella for her part looked almost sad at having her victory snatched from her, but one look from Asmodeus had her teleporting out in a second.
With the elves retreating and the battle won, Asmodeus cried out loudly yet majestically, “Restore order! Crush any resistance! We cannot stay here long, so find that creature! Alive! Ignore everything else!”
Meanwhile, completely oblivious to the arrival of the forces of Hell in Silverymoon due to spectacularly bad timing, Lars and the Erinyes teleported back to Nesmé. Covered in smoke and grime and the Erinyes showing tans on their exposed skin from overexposure to raw magic, they stumbled into the town square.
The army already mustered out, they looked at their marshal, still clutching at where he had been hit with the arrows of gods. Wincing, he looked at all of them and said, “We have a bit of a problem.”
I love learning. Teach me. I will listen. You know, if Christian dogma included a ten-foot tall Jesus walking around in battle armor and smashing retarded cultists with a gaint mace, I might just convert - Noble Ire on Jesus smashing Scientologists
I'm thinking FUBAR doesn't even begin to cover it. Unabashedly giggling like a school girl, indeed. I can't wait to see the fallout from this. Did the Silverymoon entourage leave Nesmé yet, or is that dwarf still having a nerdgasm?
Fragment of the Lord of Nightmares, release thy heavenly retribution. Blade of cold, black nothingness: become my power, become my body. Together, let us walk the path of destruction and smash even the souls of the Gods! RAGNA BLADE!
Lore Monkey | the Pichu-master™
Secularism—since AD 80
Av: Elika; Prince of Persia
No, Eilistraee got away. Corellon and Alustriel were however trapped within the cordon zone the devils set up.
Incidentally, I originally thought of having a sort of three way clash of swords/staves/whatever between Corellon, Lars, and Marella with Lars rapidly losing ground, only for a ruby rod to intervene, Asmodeus emerging out of nowhere to say something along the lines of "Not today." Eventually it morphed into Levistus getting into a duel with Eilistraee as I couldn't get everything to fit together properly for this chapter and the subsequent ones.
I love learning. Teach me. I will listen. You know, if Christian dogma included a ten-foot tall Jesus walking around in battle armor and smashing retarded cultists with a gaint mace, I might just convert - Noble Ire on Jesus smashing Scientologists
it would be completely appropriate for Asmodeus to pick up on just enough cosmic cooincidence and narativium to start singing Sympathy for the Devil when he comes for Lars next time.
"Pleased to meet you. Hope you guessed my name. But what's confusing you is the nature of my game."
Commander of the MFS Darwinian Selection Method (sexual)
Academia Nut wrote:And let's be honest here. Elves are pretty consistently written as complete dicks to non-elves, they just vary their level of arrogance depending on whether they're evil and the species they're interacting with.
The fact that one of the (commonly!) used terms used to describe non-elves on Toril translates to "Not-People" says it all, IMO.
Incidentally, I've already dreamed up a prestige class called the Noctis Sniper that blends together long range attacks, arcane boosts to capabilities, and hitting people where it hurts when they least expect it (aka sneak attacks). I've also thought of a theoretical 'Arcane Gunner' PrC (transfer the abilities of an arcane archer to guns) and a Bulletproof Monk PrC that would allow monk characters to remain relevant in a gunpowder world by giving them a Matrix/Equilibrium/Wanted sort of guns akimbo gun fu flavour. Close range combat with two pistols and striking limbs, dodging bullets, shooting bullets out of the air, that sort of thing.
Good-o. Just out of curiousity are using the "Spellslinger" advanced class from the Urban Aracana web enhancement, as a base for at least some of the abilities that these prestige classes would have? The Spellslinger uses magic to enhance his guns (and ammo). It's primarily designed for pistol -style weapons, but it might still be useful.
The best Lars, Skuld, and comanpy can hope for is that only northwestern Faerun gets reduced to lifeless wasteland, rather than a much-more apocalyptic "time and space fall apart" end-of-days worse case scenario. Fortunately, Silverymoon's destruction should've attract the attention of the other Chosen of Mystra and the local Silver Marches factions, so Noctis won't have to face 3-5 armies all at once.
P.S. Do the Chaos gods metaphysically count as Lars' parents and Gunnhild's grandparents? Does this mean Skuld has three mother-in-laws? (*poor Skuld curls out into the fetal position*)
MichaelAwesome wrote:The best Lars, Skuld, and comanpy can hope for is that only northwestern Faerun gets reduced to lifeless wasteland, rather than a much-more apocalyptic "time and space fall apart" end-of-days worse case scenario. Fortunately, Silverymoon's destruction should've attract the attention of the other Chosen of Mystra and the local Silver Marches factions, so Noctis won't have to face 3-5 armies all at once.
P.S. Do the Chaos gods metaphysically count as Lars' parents and Gunnhild's grandparents? Does this mean Skuld has three mother-in-laws? (*poor Skuld curls out into the fetal position*)
They are FEMALE....Asukhon, Mislaato and Reigle....actually i see more likely that LARS will be the one curling on foetal position, while Tzintchi watches Reigle and Asukhon engage in animated discussion with Skuld(who to this height it's likely to be fully tainted by Chaos on her soul) While Mislaato acts like a doting grandmother, along with Alica, and teach some nice games to Gunnhild.....
A devoted follower of the Chaos Goddess and her way.....
Buck Murdock: Oh, cut the bleeding heart crap, will ya? We've all got our switches, lights, and knobs to deal with, Striker. I mean, down here there are literally hundreds and thousands of blinking, beeping, and flashing lights, blinking and beeping and flashing - they're *flashing* and they're *beeping*. I can't stand it anymore! They're *blinking* and *beeping* and *flashing*! Why doesn't somebody pull the plug!
I love learning. Teach me. I will listen. You know, if Christian dogma included a ten-foot tall Jesus walking around in battle armor and smashing retarded cultists with a gaint mace, I might just convert - Noble Ire on Jesus smashing Scientologists
Washal the Pale sat in his library, slowly watching the flicker of a candle, his eyes caught in rapt fascination by the colour. The Whispered had made a bit of a breakthrough when they tried to use magic to read their writings. Actually, the rulers of the Shade Enclave had tried that first, but it was the Whispered who had actually started gleaning meaning out of what they read.
The discoveries were… incredible. They still barely understood the huge majority of what they were looking at, but they were learning concepts that seemed impossible and nonsensical, and yet they were true. The Netherese had known of some of the mathematical concepts, used in the construction of their mythallars, but this went far, far beyond that. They had understood the concept of zero and to a certain extent the concepts of numbers less than zero, but they had never particularly considered either concept all that useful outside of some high level, esoteric magical applications.
Now the Whispered were grappling with infinity, which once they wrapped their heads around it became mind bogglingly useful when combined with other concepts. The idea that numbers held so much power was a staggering concept. Oh, there were numerologists who already claimed such things, but this was a much more subtle and nuanced approach.
Over the past several tendays since they had started deciphering their own writings, the Whispered who had not been rounded up by the rest of the Shadovar had began secret experimentation, things that they did away from the view of others because they looked crazy while doing it. They did things like raising weights to certain heights and measuring the time taken to fall and the depth of penetration into materials like loose sand or clay or other such things.
To write down the things in their head was a nightmare, but to actually take those writings, make predictions with them, and then confirm them was something entirely different. It was a glorious moment of epiphany to realize that they possessed in their hands the truth. That the universe obeyed an orderly set of rules realizable by simply looking at it!
And yet they had also quickly realized that their manic scribbling contained more information, bizarre information, and that their initial work, their initial truth was merely the surface of something larger, stranger, more complex, and ultimately more useful. Like the thing Washal had just discovered.
“The colour proves it, it proves everything. That the candle flame is orange proves that the world is orderly in ways we can’t imagine. That the candle flame is orange proves that the gods play dice,” Washal muttered while staring at the flame. He then began to chuckle. He barely understood the most fundamental precepts, the more complicated formulas required the measurement of concepts he didn’t even know how to build the measuring device for, and yet he knew that the colour of light produced by the candle was critical to the understanding of everything.
For decades Washal had studied the theories of magic, and now he discovered that the theories of the mundane were so much more interesting! He had always thought himself a master of precision in crafting his spells, yet looking at the results of what he saw before him made him feel sloppy and inefficient. Magic was a way of getting around the mundane, but if you didn’t understand the mundane you would never know where it was to get around it!
Yes, the few arcanists amongst the Whispered had already been putting their new knowledge to use improving their spellcasting. They had some interesting results already.
Yes, interesting results indeed.
Skuld had long lived in the shadow of her sisters, a fact that it had taken her quite some time to acknowledge in Urd’s case. She had a tendency to go overboard, to push too much power into things, to take the shortest direct line route even if that went through a mountain. Not over, through. Things she built had a tendency to explode when she wasn’t careful, which was far too often.
Living for months as a captive, stripped of all her divine powers and technological advantages, had given her a new perspective on things. For one, it had forced her to very carefully use her knowledge instead of immediately leaping for the solution that would produce the largest explosion. It had invested her with a sense of caution and of subtlety. She always had the capacity to build stable, robust systems, but she had never felt the need so acutely before.
Weeks spent meditating on the Shadow Weave had also altered her perspective. There wasn’t as much energy in there as in the Weave or from Yggdrasil, but it had some interesting properties, especially when used properly. It had not been used properly since it had been built. Its creator had disdained the brute force approach, but had limited understanding of all the ways to get around such limitations.
Skuld was not so limited.
She sat naked in a specially prepared pool of water, although mist and shadow from the dawn cloaked her such that she was as good as clothed. The pool was shallow, only up to her waist, but the water black as oil and had a mirrored surface, the only ripples coming from the steady, regular waves produced by the tremor of her body as she breathed and her heart beat. Around the perimeter of the pool there were a series of carefully carved runes from the Yggdrasil programming language. Skuld wasn’t sure if they would do anything, but they would hopefully protect her from any unforeseen surges of magic as she attempted this.
Surrounding the pool, laid out carefully, were pages and pages of parchment showing detailed plans and schematics. Both they and the pool itself had been in development since shortly after arrival at Nesmé, but neither had intended to be used together or so soon.
But Lars was hibernating as he repaired damage to his otherworldly body, piecing together the very thoughts and emotions that bound him into his form, wounded by divine magic. The city, her city, their city, was in danger. Nesmé was a fragile thing, a child with the gleam of the future in its eye. Skuld would not let that be taken away.
She would not let Lars be taken away from her. She would not let Gunnhild be taken away from her. She would not let her family be taken from her.
It had hurt enough to lose her first one.
No psycho bitch with too much magic or flighty elf was going to take her family away from her. If she could be a bitch to Keiichi for loving her sister, then she was going to find the current trophy holder of ‘Bitch Queen’ and bludgeon the wannabe to death with the award.
Skuld reached out with her mind, plunging into the Shadow Weave, gathering forth immense amounts of magic. This would be her biggest project yet. She had seen Belldandy do something like this once to repair the temple, only this spell was much, much bigger and harder and Skuld had much less experience.
First she used the Shadow Weave to access the Plane of Shadow, an entire realm of shifting, malleable material, only partially real and thus only partially set in its shape. She began to draw material from that dark place, moulding it, creating a template for her later work.
Out around Nesmé, stretching from the fortifications previously used by the Riders and stretching out to encompass the entirety of the town and a considerable amount of additional space, the growing dawn shadows began to bubble forth with darkness, stretching out and swirling in the morning twilight, creating massive illusionary walls and black, monolithic structures.
The air thrummed with power, and Skuld gave the energy life and structure, an embryonic tone that reverberated up the spines of all of those who could hear it. The dark adapted workers ceased their labours and exited their factories, while those asleep awoke and exited their homes to gaze out upon the changing landscape.
Skuld then plunged sprues of shadow down, deep into the core of the planet, through the honeycombed layers of the Underdark to the deepest realms where the rock would glow if not for the fact that there was nowhere for light to exist. It was a realm of heat and shadow, a realm she could tap.
The brute force way would have been to simply draw the rock up, but that would severely drain Skuld’s reserves of power, and this spell was already trying enough. No, she was going to do something infinitely more subtle. She cloaked the material in shadow, near infinitely fine shadow that permeated every layer of the substance down to the atomic level. Quantum interaction ceased, and tens of thousands of tons of liquid rock became a mass of wave functions, unobserved by the universe.
Within the confines of her shadow construct, the particles could exist anywhere, in any configuration so long as they existed unobserved. Skuld chose to ‘observe’ them within the confines of her construct, the air taking on a percussive quality as the universe flexed and flowed into this new configuration. Aluminium, silicon, oxygen, iron, titanium, vanadium, and carbon were her rainbow as she painted in three dimensions.
The air itself sang with her creation, triumphant notes that filled the hearts of those who witnessed it with joy, causing many to collapse to their knees in exultant wonder. Bards, many of them originally hired as mercenaries to help bolster and coordinate the regiments, openly wept at the beauty and structure of the song, trying to memorize each note but knowing that the structure was too complex for any one man to perform alone.
With a final strung out note Skuld’s work was completed, just in time for the sun to breach the horizon, shedding rays of light that blew away the shadows like smoke suddenly caught by a strong wind, revealing the structure beneath.
What the people of Nesmé beheld was a star fortress, a great defensive work that had overlapping kill zones in every direction. The only way to get to the gates was via running a gauntlet that would allow the defenders to shoot at the fronts and backs of their enemies. Basalt and granite, diamond and sapphire, steel and stone composed the structure, folded and blended monocrystalline sheets that formed one solid, contiguous unit.
But the people of Nesmé saw not the solidity of the massive structure, for it appeared almost deceptively translucent despite the fact that it was opaque from one side to the other, for sheets of clear diamond and dark blue sapphire set on top of mottled black and gold stone created the image of near intangibility. Variances of the chemistry within the gem layers produced sparkling three dimensional dots that shone like stars. It appeared as if the very night sky had been peeled off the heavens and placed around Nesmé.
To a certain extent, this was true in that Skuld had crafted the stone to become a massive magical well, an artefact that drank magic directed towards it and the area around it like the night sky drank the light of a bonfire, like the light of the stars. No mortal magic could touch it, and even the magic of the gods would be hard pressed to overwhelm it. Only the works of mortals paid for in blood and iron could hope to scratch the surface of the fortress.
The fortress was a promise to the people of Nesmé, to the people of Noctis. The stars were theirs if only they would reach out and touch them.
Her work done, Skuld slumped over in her pool, exhausted from her work. Set free, her mind drifted.
Surprisingly she discovered Gunnhild at play, dancing amongst the dreams yet to come of the people of Nesmé. Past, present, and future; impossibility and possibility; what was, what could be, and what had been; all of it drifted and mingled and Gunnhild watched them with quiet, rapt fascination.
Looking up, Gunnhild squealed and rushed over to Skuld, hugging her legs while she said, “Mommy! Look at all the new friends I’ll have!”
It was hard for Skuld to interpret what she saw. Lars had explained to her what a bitch it was to try and look at the future but it wasn’t until she had seen it for herself that she understood why his predictions on things tended to be broad, general, and somewhat obvious in retrospect.
But as she looked, she realized that her decision to create the fortress herself now instead of giving the plans to the people to build themselves had been monumental. Its construction stood at a crossroads in time. Everything was still uncertain, still probabilistic, but down one branch many, many lights tended to die, tended to never exist, while down another the potential remained for tens of thousands to shine brightly.
Skuld guessed that without the fort, many, many people in Nesmé would have died. It weighed upon her like a great block to know this, to know they were so close to disaster.
“I like this one,” Gunnhild said, pointing to a flickering, undecided dream, a life that teetered like a coin on its edge, the balance disrupted but the outcome still undecided.
Examining the dream more closely, Skuld was taken aback when she discovered that the dreamer was barely conscious, barely capable of consciousness, and yet it reached out for her tentatively, its mind as delicate as its soft fingers.
A child, a child yet unborn, dreaming in the womb, and it asked without language, “Will I see the stars?”
Skuld didn’t know what to say, didn’t know how this was possible. She didn’t know whose child it was, although she suspected it wasn’t hers. Still, she just smiled back, metaphysical tears rolling down her face at the encounter.
Looking about the strange realm of dreams yet to come, she found thousands of similar tiny flickering lights, the dreaming of babes not yet born, some not yet conceived, and at how they were all balanced on a knife’s edge down this new road she had constructed, and dark and silent down the other path.
She cried. She cried tears, and she cried out to all of them, “I promise you the stars and the sun! I promise you summer shade and winter auroras! I promise you!”
Thousands of tiny lights all flared brightly as unborn minds in the future dreamed of Skuld’s voice, crying out in joy and curiosity and the images that filled their tiny minds before their ability to see yet had even formed. For those who still had a future, in their deepest, most soul felt dreams they would remember that voice and its promise.
They had been promised the stars.
The whole scene started to fade and Skuld said, “Let’s go momma, they need their rest,” nodding sagely before everything faded to black.
Skuld woke up shivering with fear and cold for a moment before the sun warmed her and hope renewed her. She lay naked under a thin sheet of black silk, Steb standing protectively over her, obviously having pulled her out of the pool before she risked drowning and covered her over.
Looking up at him, Skuld said mournfully, “Oh Steb, I still haven’t figured out how to fix your throat…”
Steb just made a few intricate hand signs that said You have given me back my life and my freedom. I owe you everything I have for that. I can live without speech a while longer. And you shall be busy goddess, very busy.
The distant sound of a foreign war horn made the warning very clear and real.
I love learning. Teach me. I will listen. You know, if Christian dogma included a ten-foot tall Jesus walking around in battle armor and smashing retarded cultists with a gaint mace, I might just convert - Noble Ire on Jesus smashing Scientologists
F#@K! 
Commander of the MFS Darwinian Selection Method (sexual)