Disclaimer: I don't own Overlord or Dungeons & Dragons
The Greater Apotheosis of Ainz Ooal Gown
Book : Consolidating Power
Chapter 2: Forging Peace in Wildspace
Beta:
Inside a command centre built on the surface of the planet of Glyth filled with various computers and holographic displays, Cocytus met with Deathwing and the Silver Queen to discuss their campaign to set up Sliver colonies on various uninhabited celestial bodies across Realmspace. The planet having previously been rendered lifeless by Atropus was a perfect base for their efforts now that Lord Ainz had killed the undead Primordial.
"The. Majority. Of. The. Dwarves. Will. No. Longer. Be. A problem." Cocytus reported to his colleagues. "Though. We. Must. Continue. To be. Wary. Of. Rogue Dwarves."
"That is good enough." Deathwing said with a pleased nod of his huge draconic head. "With this, we've secured peace with most of the major spacefaring powers in Realmspace."
A great achievement indeed. The Sliver Queen agreed. Though I am curious. How did you manage to get the Dwarves to agree to peace?
"I. Pointed out. That. We. Were. Only. Claiming. Uninhabited. And. Previously. Unclaimed. Bodies. And. That. Their. Contesting. Our. Claims. Was. Dishonorable. Claim-jumping." The god of warriors and honor said with an amused clack of his mandibles. "It. Was. A. Surprisingly. Effective argument."
"I am sure it was, Cocytus." Deathwing said, rolling his eyes. "And I'm sure that the fact we'd recently ravaged a large Dwarven fleet which had sought to contest our control of Glyth did not affect the persuasiveness of your argument at all."
"It. Might. Have." Cocytus admitted, amusement tinging his frigid tone.
If only we'd had such luck in our dealings with the Neogi and the Illithids. The Sliver Queen chimed in, her telepathic voice tinged with slight disapproval at her colleagues' taking their conversation on a tangent.
"Sadly. They. Are. Not. Open. To negotiation."
"Agreed." Deathwing said with a frustrated growl. "Things would be so much easier if they were. However, there is no need to fret. Everything is well in hand."
"So. They. Have. Responded as. We. Expected?"
"Yes," Deathwing said with a smug grin. "A large collection of them have gathered together with the intent of forming an alliance against us as we expected."
Do we know their muster point? The Sliver Queen asked, radiating eagerness.
"Our doppelgänger agents report there are several."
Cocytus mulled over what Deathwing said and clicked his mandibles in irritation. "That. Means. We. Must. Split. Our. Fleet. To. Attack. Them. All. This is. Not. Optimal."
"We make do with what we have." Deathwing said with a shrug. "Besides our plan is still viable, even with the limited number of ships at our disposal."
I can make up somewhat for our lack of ships. The Sliver Queen suggested.
"Are you sure?" Deathwing questioned skeptically.
I am. The Felmidian Lady of Beasts assured the god of the vacuum.
"Then. We. Shall. Look forward. To. Seeing. Your. Forces. In action." Cocytus said, cutting off any possible counter from Deathwing who frowned but otherwise accepted the rebuke with grace.
"Yes, we shall." Deathwing allowed. "And our enemies will tremble before our might."
Determined to put his grand statement into action, Deathwing commanded a fleet of conventional Felmidian ships as they moved to assault the main enemy concentration point around Locci, an airless rectangular moon dotted by craters from meteor impacts in orbit around the 'planet' of Garden, one of Glyth's neighboring worlds.
"That's an impressive fleet they've amassed. They outnumber us two to one." The Green Dragon serving as his executive officer said. She had taken the form of a lithe and curvaceous elf woman with pale white skin and bright green hair the same color of the scales of her true form. She was dressed in a professional looking uniform that consisted of a dark navy blue suit coat and skirt, a white shirt and neck tab.
She looked beautiful and if Deathwing was not on duty he'd be tempted to court her and invite her to be one of his mates. Sadly he was and such pleasures would have to wait.
"It is too small an advantage to make a difference, Ysera." Deathwing said, waving the hand of his own human form dismissively. "Are we in firing range?"
Ysera turned to the Dragonspawn manning the tactical control station. The centauroid creature with a humanoid torso with long, thick arms, a scaled reptilian head and a draconic lower body with four legs and a tail, examined his station for a moment before nodding back.
"We are, my Lord." Ysera informed him accordingly.
"Very well. Fire at will." Deathwing ordered. "Cleanse wildspace of these fools who dare oppose the will of our Lord Ainz Ooal Gown!"
Having detected the approach of his fleet for some time, the enemy fleet of Neogi and Illithid ships had slowly been moving into an intercept formation. There was no haste to these efforts however as by their reckoning the Felmidian fleet was still a considerable distance away and they would have plenty of time to prepare for their arrival.
They reckoned wrong.
Well outside of what the Neogi and Illithids had imagined possible, Deathwing's ships opened fire and their own vessels died as his mass driver rounds and the particle beams from his cannons blasted apart their ships in droves.
"Enemy ships are attempting to close the distance." Ysera announced as the enemy finally began to properly respond.
Not that it would help them. Deathwing thought with a decidedly bloodthirsty grin.
"Maintain distance." The Dragon god ordered. "All they have on their pathetic vessels are catapults and ballistas or the odd cannon. Our weapons have an insurmountable range advantage and I want to exploit it for maximum effect."
"Yes, my Lord." Ysera replied dutifully as she relayed his orders.
Watching as enemy ships died one after another, Deathwing shook his head in disgust.
"This is a complete turkey shoot." He said with a disappointed sigh.
I was hoping for at least some challenge.
"What do you mean, my Lord." Ysera asked, tilting her head in confusion. It was a gesture more suited to a draconic form where their facial expressions were more limited and they had to rely more on body language, but it nevertheless worked well on her elvish form as well as it gave her an adorable quality.
"It is a saying from Old Earth," Deathwing explained, letting none of his attraction show. "It derives from the hunting of a bird known as a turkey which was apparently very easy under the correct circumstances. It means an opportunity to very easily take advantage of a situation."
"Fitting," the Green Dragon said with a nod.
"Indeed," Deathwing agreed. "Boring though. I wish I could go out there and burn them with my own breath."
"My Lord, remember your restrictions." The lesser Dragon said warningly. "You are a god now. You cannot simply exercise your power as you like. There are rules you must follow or you'll create trouble for the Supreme One."
Normally if any of his subordinates spoke to him like that, Deathwing would have him punished for insubordination. However, he'd specifically tasked her with reminding him of his restrictions if he forgot so she was exempt. As a result, all Deathwing could do was sigh in resignation and continue to watch the slaughter of his enemies.
"My Lord," the Goblin operating the sensors shouted suddenly. "The enemy are beginning to flee."
Deathwing sat up at that. Finally, he had something to do!
"Proceed as planned." The Lord of the Felmidian skies said. "Have the wings break up into wolf packs and hunt down. Do not let them escape!"
"Yes, my Lord." Ysera said at once as she began barking the appropriate orders to be relayed to the fleet so as to carry out his will.
That this offered Deathwing a nice view of the shapely posterior of her humanoid shape was an added bonus.
I'm definitely mating her when this is all done. The god of the vacuum thought to himself as he continued to admire the view.
Whilst Deathwing was having an easy time of it at Locci, the Sliver Queen was watching through the eyes of some of her newest children as they swam through the void towards the Skull of the Void and the Illithid colony that dwelt in the enormous skull that floated at a fixed position in Realmspace.
To make up for the lack of ships available to them, the Queen had engineered two new breeds of Slivers to function as bioships that were propelled through the void through the sheer power of her Swarm's psychic will and their faith in the Supreme One. The first and most numerous of the two were the Kraken Slivers. Crafted using the genetic material of their namesake gathered by the efforts of Lord Demiurge, these new Slivers had bodies roughly thirty feet long that maintained the upper body of their kind and a lower body that consisted of a ring of tentacles surrounding a large fang filled maw. Many of the tentacles of these Krakens were in turn armed with various bioweapons such as acid batteries and hypersonic spine launchers, making them incredibly deadly predators of the vacuum in their own right.
They however did not operate alone and hundreds of them swarmed around the three massive kilometers long forms of the massive Leviathan Slivers. Similar in appearance to the Kraken, the Leviathans were however covered in segmented stone-like carapace and were studded all over with clusters of bioweapons.
Perhaps it was their unexpected arrival. Or maybe it was their alien appearance. Whatever the case, the appearance of her fleet on approach to the Skull came as a shock the Illithids and Neogi gathered around it and they struggled to scramble a response as it closed.
Just as I hoped. The Sliver Queen crowed as she watched the palpable panic that swept across the enemy fleet as her own swam ever closer.
Lacking the range of the weapons of Deathwing's ships, the Sliver Queen was forced to close to more standard engagement ranges. This allowed the enemy to effectively open fire with their ballista, catapults and cannons, but her agile Krakens easily evaded the attacks and the fire barely dented the thick carapace of her Leviathans. In contrast, her acid batteries and spine launchers dealt death wherever they struck and her children's tentacles ripped, crushed or otherwise destroyed any enemy ship they wrapped around.
Within moments of the start of the fight, the battle had become a slaughter and enemy ships, especially those of the Neogi, began to flee only to be hunted down by packs of the fast swimming Kraken and destroyed. Meanwhile, the Leviathans used their size to batter their way through the collapsing enemy formations and towards the Skull itself where they proceeded to jam their largest tentacles directly into its gaping eye sockets and open up muscular airlocks across these tendrils from which a swarm of their more conventional brethren proceeded to surge into the strange structure's depths in the hunt for its Illithid inhabitants.
It is a bad day to be an Illithid. The Sliver Queen mused happily as her children began butchering the Skull's Illithid population in the name of Lord Ainz.
Not all was going well for the forces of Nazarick however. For as the news spread, probably through magical communication, of their preemptive attack, untouched elements of the enemy coalition decided it meant that Glyth was vulnerable and had showed up en masse to attack it.
Commanding the defense of the world, Cocytus winced as he observed the tactical display in the planet's command center. Just as it had been for days now their meager defense fleet, consisting of both conventional Felmidian ships and the new Sliver bioships, were grossly outnumbered. And by an ever growing margin as more and more enemy forces trickled in.
They'd been holding out fine for days but as more and more enemy ships arrived, drawn in as if moths to a flame, the increasingly battered defenders were steadily being overwhelmed. The only silver lining was that they seemed to not want to risk a direct engagement yet and limited their attacks to small hit and run attacks. At least that was the case before now. Now, seemingly deciding they had the numbers for it, they'd decided to press the attack at last and were making a beeline towards the planet.
"Should we send the defense fleet to attempt an interception?" The local commander and his temporary second-in-command, a Momon named Baziwood that had the human guise of a bearded middle-aged man with blue eyes and blond hair, asked.
"No. They. Would. Die. For. Nothing." Cocytus said grimly. "Pull. Them. Back. Have. Them. Retreat. Beyond. The. Fourth Ring."
"Through the assigned corridor?" Baziwood asked with a knowing grin.
"Exactly." Cocytus said, with an anticipatory click of his mandibles and a hiss of frigid breath.
Baziwood's grin turned into a smirk and he began barking the necessary orders. Meanwhile, the god watched as they translated into the markers on the tactical display moving in an orderly retreat down a highlighted section of the planet's Fourth Ring. More importantly, the display showed the foolish enemy was falling for the trap and had begun chasing after the retreating defense fleet.
"Wait. For it." The Vermin Lord said as he watched the enemy continue their pursuit. In their eager haste, the ragtag enemy had completely lost all cohesion, their formations falling completely apart and the fleet becoming little more than a blob of targets.
"Now!" Cocytus ordered as the enemy fully entered into the killzone of the hidden static defenses they'd built into the many tiny asteroids that made up Glyth's fourth ring.
At his command, these defenses revealed themselves. From hundreds of concealed burrows emerged swarms of Acid Cannon Slivers and Spine Launcher Slivers who shot their payloads at the enemy with abandon. Similarly, dozens of hidden missile, mass driver and particle cannon emplacements opened fire and reaped a deadly toll.
Within minutes, a hopeless situation had been completely reversed and hundreds of Illithid and Neogi ships burned.
"Send. In. The. Defense fleet." Cocytus said once the enemy fleet was whittled down into more manageable numbers. "Have. Them. Mop. Up."
"Yes, my Lord." Baziwood said eagerly as she rushed off to relay the god's orders.
This was too easy. There was no challenge. The god of warriors and honor thought with a dissatisfied shake of his head. No matter. What does matter is that I do the will of the Supreme One and I am certain that this action pleases him.
Done!
A short one this time.
I was tempted to write a longer campaign that included more battles but thought better of it. It would have become a whole 'book' in and of itself and that was not what I was aiming for. As such I trimmed it down to this. I hope it wasn't too much of a disappointment.
Well, that's all I have to say for this chapter so till next time agur!
