Da Warpath - "From Ashes to Empire"
2 weeks ago
Alex Polimeni
Hail, warrior!
In the weeks before every Animosity Campaign, we hold a prelude period we call Da Warpath, featuring reveals, information and pre-registration for the coming narrative event. With Animosity VII - Azyr Asunder kicking off this July 12th, the hour is at hand...
... Da Warpath has begun!
***
Steel grey clouds roiled and churned in the skies, drowning the plateau below in a dread deluge. Rain pounded the sky-dock and the warring air vessels above it ceaselessly, matched only by the exchange of gunfire between the two fleets. Scrap metal and warpstone spattered off Kharadron iron, while Wolfram incendiaries and lead tore the blasphemous Skryre craft from the air.
Dainn Brisingrsson watched the exchange from the prow of The Final Bond with cold disinterest, spinning a heart-shaped locket in one hand as rain and bullets landed about him in equal measure. He was larger than the average duardin and even seemed larger than life itself, clad in his splint-mailed admiral’s coat that was too heavy for the winds to whip up. Yet there was something grounding to his silhouette, with his collar undone and sleeves rolled up above well-muscled forearms to reveal more of the jagged black-gold tattoos that criss-crossed his scar-ridden, burned body even over his bald head. His silver beard stood out against his mottled, smoke-grey skin and was unfashionably short given his age.
Just another thing his ‘peers’ ridiculed him for, though never to his face.
None had the stones for that.
“Shrieker, ten o’clock,” Dainn ordered, his voice a whiskey-aged growl that rolled across the deck of his ship like smoke curling from a dying cigar.
Dainn gestured at a larger Skryre vessel and the cannon that arced with warp lightning. A torpedo launched from The Final Bond and impacted the skaven’s mockery of their ironclads. Instead of exploding, a keening wail emanated from the spectral warhead, tearing wretched souls from verminous bodies. As the skaven went limp, none could steer the craft or unleash the weapon’s stored charge, and it crashed into the fields below where it detonated amongst the horde of skaven there.
Dainn rushed down the hall, desperate to find @#$%&. He didn’t know how they had found their hidden base, but he needed to talk to her before it was too late. He needed to make things right.
“A reminder of your wife?” the princeling beside him asked, bringing him back to reality.
“A reminder of why we do what we must,” Dainn replied, voice crackling with heat from a dying fire.
He tucked the locket into his coat and raised his voice to carry over howling winds and staccato gunfire. “Deploy! Get me a perimeter!”
Dark frigates snapped into action as ordered, the first wave dropping enormous golems while the second dropped marines and mercenaries. They advanced against the tide of vermin in unison, the soldiers using the golems as cover against incoming fire while returning with their own. The soil churned beneath the feet of the golems, the toxic sludge they sprayed sloughing off the skin of the enemy before seeping into the ground along with blood and offal. Only the most armoured and mutated of the skaven abominations closed with the advancing Wolfram forces, only for their stormvermin to get scythed down by whirring saws meant for deforestation while their plated stormfiends were pulverized by mining pistons.
“@#$%&!” Dainn shouted, rushing towards the elevator filled with his closest confidants and supporters. They looked at him with disgust, fear, and guilt, except for @#$%& - her face was an abyss.
He banged his fist on the doors as they closed on him, cursing the eight of them.
Dainn felt a rush of familiar sorcery, eyes opening as a bridge of screaming souls manifested before him. A motley group of mercenaries emerged, hauling bulging bags and dragging a Skryre arch-warlock between them, both full of the information Dainn was seeking. They saluted sharply. “Objective secured, sir.”
“You’ve earned your bonus today, lads,” Dainn replied, clapping their leader on the shoulder and smiling when he didn’t flinch. “Now go join the perimeter and prepare for phase two.”
“Yessir!” they said with joy, saluting once more.
The Black Marines he helped invent saluted as he passed, guns blazing into the ghostly horde that followed him. Dainn rushed into the lab, running past tombstones, grave-sand, and screaming spirits that railed against their soul-shackles.
“All ahead full,” Dainn ordered. “Open bay doors.”
The Final Bond roared forward at speed that seemed impossible for its size. Well-oiled bay doors screeched open as it passed over the sky-dock, carpet bombing it with a variety of urns. Each urn struck and exploded with ash, unleashing spirit after spirit until a screaming tide of them flooded into the fort.
Dainn whipped open the ancient tome bound in blackened iron, finding the page with thirteen twisted runes and his notes on them.
“Damn you for keeping us bound to your whims,” he seethed, hate filled eyes turning to the jar of gaseous aether-gold. A scarred fist smashed the jar while the other gestured with a bone wand swirling with amethyst power that captured the aether-gold and turned it to black smoke. Behind him, he heard the last of his Black Marines scream and a grenade go off. Dainn dragged the wand over his skin, injecting the black smoke into it.
“Go, old friends,” Dainn whispered. “Smoke’em out.”
Seven of Wolfram’s Spectre Marines stepped up to the edge of the deck, oily, green-yellow smog leaking through cracked lenses and misshapen joints. They hopped off the ship, falling to the sky-dock below, falling through its walls and into the darkness.
Then they banished it with an unholy eruption of sickly green balefire.
The princeling found his spine and spoke up: “No, you’re going to damage my sky-”
“Quiet, boy.” Dainn cut in. “We don’t build umgak, don’t insult your ancestors like that.”
“Our deal was to secure this place!”
Eyes of burnished gold turned to the young duardin, sending a cold shiver through his soul. “I’m well aware of our Contract.”
Dainn’s screams turned to cackling as he finished dragging the wand over his scalp, only for icy blades to plunge into his back. He kept laughing as his blood froze.
“I’ll never be a slave like you, damn fools,” he gurgled with his dying breaths. “Always… have an ace… up your sleeve.”
The few skaven that escaped the crematorium were scythed down in a ruthless dirge of gunfire, leaving their bodies to smoulder as the balefire turned meat, blood and bone to naught but ash.
Dainn watched his people closely. He noted which of them didn’t have the iron will to make it far in Wolfram Industries, and those that did. He’d make sure the gutless were transferred somewhere more fitting their constitutions and that mehrit was awarded where it was due, as demanded of the Code.
Everything he did was for his people, after all.
Every sacrifice he made, and would make.
Dainn’s Spectre Marines emerged, more smog leaking from their torn up suits than before as they marched up to their master. The balefire that flickered behind their cracked lenses turned to him as they saluted with hollow fists to hollow chests.
“Great work, as always,” Dainn told them. “Go get patched up while the clean up crew does its job.”
As the cleaners moved forward, vacuuming up every speck of corpse ash and loose revenant they could, Dainn turned back to the pale, trembling boy.
“Your throne is reclaimed, your Majesty,” he said with a mock bow. He pulled a cigar from a breast pocket, lighting it with a snap of his fingers that produced a spark of balefire. He drew the soul-burning flame into himself, savouring the pain it caused him as the green-black smoke spread throughout his form and wafted out of him. “Let’s celebrate this joyous milestone in our contract with a drink.”
Before the boy could reject, a servant in the black and silver of Wolfram Industries had set up a small table and poured a smokey amber liquid into two tumblers. Reluctantly, he took up one of the tumblers as Dainn did the same.
Dainn stalked the halls of his research facility, passing by the smoke spectres of his people as he approached the twisted metal ruin of the elevator. He gazed at it until it became his entire world, until someone spoke up from behind him.
“Boss… what now?”
“Priffa dreng,” Dainn offered, before downing the expensive drink he could no longer appreciate.
The boy shook with a manic laugh. “Prosper or die?! But you’re already dead!”
“I guess that only leaves me with one option then,” Dainn replied, his twisted smile curdling the boy’s blood. “You on the other hand… better pay your dues.”
“How? In taking this place, you destroyed the fields! How will I find settlers willing to come to this wasteland?!”
“Wolfram Industries offers favourable rates on zpud imports to all our long-term clients,” Dainn replied with a smile.
He turned away from his partner and stepped on the skaven’s neck as it tried to slink away. Despite his ephemeral state, the weight of his authority pinned the creature to the ground and it clawed at its throat in vain.
“Hold on there, critter,” Dainn said, his slick smile shimmering like oil. “You and I, we’re gonna make a deal you can’t refuse. You may not be able to screw a bolt straight, but I hear your kind is real good at meddling with a certain god’s plans… and your mad ideas may just help Wolfram Industries fulfill our motto…”
“This?” Dainn turned to his workforce and cocked an eyebrow. “This is a minor setback… First, we deal with snakes in our midst, then we get back to business as usual. We still have targets to meet by the third quarter, and now we have no excuses not to meet them.
“Unshackling the Future isn’t easy… but someone has to do it. For a brighter future, for us all.”