GATE: the clash of the titans V2

by Qun Nguyn1

Mostly AUs. A Gate has opened in Tokyo by a Roman-esque Empire, familiar scenario with familiar faces but the people marched through the Gate is from a vastly more powerful magic world. The stage is set. Earth Alliance vs The Holy Empire. Science vs Magic. The power of the thousand sun vs The Beast of the Apocalypse. Let the clash of Titans begin. Let the worlds have War.

12. Chapter 12: Operation Darkstorm

Chapter 12 : The Spear of God Casaba

---

"In the clarity of hindsight, it must be accounted that I was never truly a religious man. In these recent months, I have been compelled to ponder long and hard upon the nature of God.

For in contemplation of God, there is the consequence of heaven, and of its obverse, hell. Of these nations of the Empire I find myself among, I have discovered that hell is of earth indeed. These demi-human monsters, for I can scarce bring myself to call them human, must surely spring from the loins of Satan incarnate. Their history goes back tens thousand years, they built empires and watched them decay. Their spartan lives have changed little in all that time.

The rumors about them are true. Cannibalism, hallucinogenic drugs, beastiality, incest, every perversion of every sort is embraced by these monsters, they delight in cruelty and know how to refine it into an art.

When we first entered the prisoner camp, they divided us into groups based on our ranks then stripped us naked. The Empire has a traditional ritual called "humbling down", using overwhelming violence to engrave fear in the souls of every prisoner of war and get rid of all thoughts of resistance before it even formed.

This barbarian ritual will be performed by a Hali torturer priest. The Hali are famed torturers. For them, torment is an art form. Torturers among the Hali are venerated in the way that sports heroes are worshipped in America. Their exploits are discussed, the triumphs celebrated, their blunders the source of laughter. Torture is the favoured subject of discussion among men, and every man feels that he is at least an accomplished and knowledgable amateur. They debate the techniques of agony with gusto and enthusiasm.

So famed and feared are the Hali for their art of torture, it is said that one invasion of an unstoppable horde of Warrior Bunnies was aborted because although not a single Bunny feared death, not a one of them could bear to countenance the possibility of being taken alive for torture.

I have watched as my men have been tortured and rape to near death then brought back to life by dark Hali arts, have had unbearable indignities visited upon my own body.

My captors said I was lucky. The strongest-willed among us will be smeared with the secretions of female beast in heat, staked out over a crude bench and subjected to an unspeakable violation unto pass out. In fact in Sadera bestiality was a form of sadistic mass entertainment. The Coliseum and Circus Maximus were often the stages for public spectacles of the rape of criminal and outcast men and women by captured beasts.

After a day of torture the Darwinian doctors and Ptarh druid mages come to heal the victims. Their skills are magical, all wounds no matter how bad will heal overnight, they removing limbs and reattach its like legos.

Perhaps the proclivity for torture, and the vivisection of living screaming sentient beings has given the Empire certain advantages in the field of medicine. As late as the 19th century, European and American doctors had to learn their surgery on the bodies of cadavers, and even that comparatively innocent practice was frowned upon.

But the Empire did not truckle to tickle cadavers. Their torturers were artists and scientists, who did not hesitate to open a screaming body up and poke about inside. Forty thousand years before Leonardo da Vinci, the Hali priests were producing detailed and exquisite drawings of sapient creatures' anatomy, the arrangements of muscles and organs.

They had discovered the circulation of blood and the function of the different parts of the humanoid creatures. For amusement, they sawed off the tops of skulls to tease responses from naked brain tissue, removed glands to observe the effects of their absence, and built a science of medicine from the most heinous of acts.

By mine estimate their medicine, surgery, genetic therapy and biochemistry are at least a century ahead of ours, but that just makes their cruelty a lot more methodical and precise.

The Darwinian prison guards say that their Ptarh druid mages are notorious for their potent drugs, hallucinogens, amphetamines and steroids and were the first culture in Falmart history to make use of steroids. They are completely right. But that doesn't begin to cover things.

Where do the Ptarh mages get their steroids? My torturers make no secret of it, the Ptarh harvest it from the urine, in particular, the urine of riding beasts or giant wyverns during their mating season.

Once collected, the product is sifted, dried, distilled crudely. They make no secret of the process, the effort is restricted to men, and considered the work of senior men. Shaman's oversee part of the process. The distillation and purification process refines the product to a thick liquid gell. The Shaman's are insistent that the process removes 'poisons. The method would produce a concentrated dosage of steroids and hormones including testosterone, cholesterol, androgens, and adrenalin.

"There'd be no way to separate them out, however," They said. "Basically, its an unadulterated cocktail, literally you'd be chugging whatever was in the animal's system at the time, which could include some pretty toxic stuff."

It is asserted to be a profoundly consciousness raising substance, promising access to higher orders of reality, personal transcendance, various superhuman powers, spectacular hallucinations or simply a unique high.However there is a problem. If they're ingesting orally, most of the hormones and steroids would break down in the digestive system before it made it into the blood stream. So Ptarh custom provides that the sacred jelly, the distilled, jellied, hormone laden soup be forced into the anal cavity and held there, until the colon absorbs the liquid directly into the bloodstream.

Fifty thousand years ago, the Falmartians mastered the art of transfusing blood from one body to another, a practice that we have barely grasped this last one hundred year for the purpose of saving lives. But for the nobility of the Empire, it merely is a recreation. Old men take the blood of youths to steal vitality, warriors ingest the blood of their peers to increase their strength, old mother transfuse the blood of young girls, mages consume the blood of magical beasts.

Their dark arts isn't just limited to blood transfusion, the Falmartians also embraced cannibalism as a way to increase their magical power. Apparently, their distinctive anatomy and physiology allows for active horizontal gene transfer, this allows them to adapt to any environment by eating the local fauna and flora.

I have attended dinner parties where the assembled lords and ladies pay lots of gold to take into their bodies the blood and body parts of young people and powerful beasts. I watched two naked women share in transfusions from a prostrate male and engage in soulful kisses over his half conscious form. I watched a boy drained unto pale as the tube from his artery was injected into a half dozen men in succession as they chatted amiably about the invigorating effects of his vitality. I have watched old women eat the succulent breasts of young girls to regain their youth.

This is but the merest trace.

Luckily, the blood and meat of human is considered inferior by these creatures, so I was neither donor nor recipient. And yet, I must wonder if in this obscene practice, it is we who are the provincials, barely exploring a technique recently, that they have indulged tens thousand years. They laughed at my horror, and assured me that once we had mastered this art, we would follow in their steps joyously. I hope that they are wrong.

Nor is the art of abomination confined to blood. The Falmartians are masters not only of the subtraction of the body, but also of addition. It is nothing for them to sew beasts together into unspeakable monstrosities, creating terrify monsters, removing or adding, relocating limbs as they please.

The Empire make full use of the surgeon's art, and it is considered no remarkable thing to transplant from one person to another skin and bones, muscle and organs. There are warriors who have two extra arms, wet nurses with four and even six breasts, and libertines who indulge not one but two or even more male organs.

Family relations barely constrained their desire to 'forced evolution' in order to consolidate magical talents and political power into a small elite group through large-scale selective breeding programs. Such programs included both positive measures, such as encouraging individuals deemed particularly "fit" or "pure blood" to reproduce and engage in polygamy, even between siblings, and in some rare case between children and parents when it politically or genetically advantageous. And negative measures, such as marriage prohibitions and forced sterilization of people deemed unfit for reproduction.

In Falmart, women were proven to carry the magic bloodlines and so it was advantageous for a nobleman to marry his sister or half-sister; in such cases a special combination between endogamy and polygamy is found.

Normally, the noble's eldest son and daughter (who could be either siblings or half-siblings) inherited the title. All rulers of the Augustus dynasty uninterruptedly from the Eighth Emperor were married to their brothers and sisters, so as to keep the royal blood "pure" and to strengthen the line of succession. Emperor Molt's mother is reported to have been the half-sister to his father.

There doesn't seem to be a taboo these people don't violate.

Fathers could be expected to engage in "wife training" as a normal part of the father/daughter relationship (vaginal intercouse would not happen as one would want to keep her value high for went she's old enought to be sent to a husband). Her uncles & older brothers could also help out. And let's not leave the boys out. Children of both sexes could be expected to "service" their (usually male) elders.

Essentially, one way to look at the Empire is an entire civilization built on incest and eugenics principles.

Oh, and the age of consent, in most Falmartian societies, the age of consent for a sexual union is a matter for the family to decide, or a tribal custom. In most cases, this coincide with signs of puberty, and child prostitutes are a fact of life throught out the Empire.

The Falmartians, especially those living in the steppe, doesn't seem to make a distinction between a wooden dildo and a real horse' or prairie wolf's dick, to those people, both are sex toy, no different from a sex doll. The proliferation of beastiality phenomenon seems to be a side effect of widespread interracial marriage. They argue if an immanity or a high elf can freely marry a centaur, a minotaur or a volralden then what is the problem if a man or women want to fuck a horse, bulls or wolf for recreation.

Of course, I understand my reader is horrified. But I relate these things not to instill a sense of horror, but to impart to the reader, the realization that the Falmartian people are not like us.

The only things they seem to avoid doing is Hitler style genocide. They say that is a waste of good labor, culture genocide, however, is common practice. Slavery is only made obsolete because it was not economically efficient with the invention of cheap homunculus slaves.

Perhaps the least abhorrent thing about them is their attitude toward homosexuality.

Homosexuality in Falmart differs markedly from the contemporary West. They lacks words that would precisely translate "homosexual" and "heterosexual". The primary dichotomy of Falmart sexuality is active/dominant and passive/submissive. Falmart society is patriarchal, and the freeborn male citizen possesses political liberty and the right to rule both himself and his household. "Virtue" is seen as an active quality through which a man defined himself. The conquest mentality and "cult of virility" shapes same-sex relations.

It is expected and socially acceptable for a man to want sex with both female and male partners, as long as he take the penetrative role. The morality of the behavior depends on the social standing of the partner, not gender per se. Both women and young men are considered normal objects of desire, but outside marriage a man is supposed to act on his desires with only homunculus slaves, prostitutes, or animals.

Gender is not determine whether a sexual partner is acceptable, as long as a man's enjoyment did not encroach on another man's integrity. It is immoral to have sex with another freeborn man's wife, his marriageable daughter, his underage son, or with the man himself; sexual use of another man's slave is subject to the owner's permission. Lack of self-control, including in managing one's sex life, indicates that a man was incapable of governing others; too much indulgence in "low sensual pleasure" threaten to erode the elite male's identity as a cultured person.

The Holy Darwinian Empire is the utter opposite of everything we know as modern civilization, yet they are not savage. Rather, they are like a black mirror unto ourselves. As industrious, as clever, as restless and dynamic. They have taken my tanks apart like a child's puzzle, meditating over each component, striving to duplicate and better the production. I pray that the day when these demons set foot on Earth will never come.

Truly, ignorance was a gift from God. It would be better for all if the civilized nations never knew such a people existed. But in the knowledge which must come, I can only hope that providence inspires the spirit of man to unite and exterminate these brutes. Yet in my heart, I feel fear, as we try to kill them we are infact teaching them how to kill us..."

From Brigadier General Michael Summering best seller, Black Mirror The Cannibal Empire.

---

Yag Coast Confederation, Southern Azjania, Early June 2030

United States Marines, Second Lieutenant John Thomas sat in front of his cottage whittling a piece of wood, as Cat played at his feet.

It weren't rightly a cat though, it's head was too big, and its body was more like a rabbit. It had a set of jaws on it that were fit to scare a shark into going to church, and lordy, but it could open its mouth wide. But the there were no cats in this land, and since the critter was affectionate as one, he'd named it Cat. It behaved well enough.

He yawned. Still bright daylight though. Always daylight, the sun refused to sit. It just went around and around the horizon, never climbing too high, never getting too low. Until it was time for night, and then that would last months too. Queerest thing, this place. He didn't understand a lick of it, but he supposed a body could get used to it. A body could get used to anything.

A blue man came riding up slowly on a mothbeast. More queerness, a great shaggy beast, half cow, half sheep, with a head like a big moth. All the beasts were queer, all the plants, the way people built things, the stuff they ate. John Thomas watched him warily, as did the other men of the cottages, the men from 1st Armored Division.

"Hello John," the man called, "I hope you are well?"

"Well enough, Taz," Lieutenant Thomas inquired. "And yourself."

Taz was not unexpected. Every other day, the man would come with his books and his questions about every conceivable thing. He was friendly, and if you got past his coal black skin, and black teeth and the dark eyes, well, he was just about all right.

Thomas wasn't sure what Taz was.

Not a human, that was for sure. He might be a devil.

The higher officers had no truck with such talk, but John and the other Marines had debated it from time to time. John had given hell and devils a lot of thought, particularly, the first months after their capture.

November, 2029

John Thomas vomited, his guts aching. Half the men were writhing around. The soldiers, the guards looked on in mild surprise. The bastards. The damned poisoning bastards.

One of the guards bent down, picked up from the bowl of stew. He sniffed a root and chewed it thoughtfully. Didn't do him no harm, John realized. The buggers liked it. What kind of devils were these, that ate poison like it was candy.

Next to John, Charlie shuddered, his eyes going empty, even as he watched. Not another, thought John. How many's left? He groaned in misery, maybe, he thought, maybe they wouldn't torture us later. He groaned.

Over and over, they tortured, tongs and fires, things that cut and pinchers and clamps. John Thomas hadn't imagined there had been so many ways to hurt a man. And the worst part of it, were the questions.

John Thomas, what does a sheep look like? John Thomas, how do you make this knot? John Thomas, what sort of birds are there in your country? John Thomas, how many countries are there? They wanted to know all about Jesus and Moses. They wanted to hear the tankers drinking songs. John Thomas, what are women like where you come from? John Thomas, tell us about Tobacco? John Thomas what is a rat? Where is China? Who are the Dutch? What is beer?

He begged and pleaded, confessed anything, called out to god. But nothing worked. Just those awful, questions, and the torture.

Of course, that wasn't the worst of it. They'd done other things. He'd glimpsed some of the men being cut open while alive, the bastards poking around inside, as if examining how they was made. He'd seen more of it than he wanted, the careful examinations, the 'doctors' with their practiced eye, examining every finger and toe, every hair. The dispassionate indifference of those. He hadn't seen much, just enough. But he'd heard the screaming, the screaming that went on and on, of men living far longer than they should.

This was hell, he'd come to realize.

January, 2030

"We need you to help us, John," Taz said.

John Thomas looked at the Soltam K7 130mm mortar. He recognized it well enough. It had been taken off an M1129 self-propelled mortar, dragged out here among the wreck. These people had no infantry mortar, no rifle. He'd glimpsed cannons and rockets of a sort, and bows and crossbows. But they were damned clever. Give them an infantry mortar, who knows what they might do with it.

"I can't help you, Taz," John Thomas said carefully. "You should leave those things alone. Bad ju ju. Evil spirits."

"I will ask you again, John Thomas," Taz said.

"Will you hurt me, if I don't help you?" John asked cautiously.

A look passed over Taz's face. Calculation. Reflection.

"No John, we will not hurt you. But we need this Soltam mortar. The Hali. They're getting angrier and angrier. You don't want them to come back, do you John Thomas."

Someone had been talking, if they knew what it was called.

"I'd like to help you, Taz," he said, "but I don't know nothing about it. We didn't come near them."

"Who did?"

John Thomas thought quickly, and then named men he knew were dead.

"I'm sorry Taz."

"I'm sorry too, John Thomas."

February, 2030

"John Thomas, come with me now!" Taz looked grim, a little angry. He had the soldiers with him. They were hard looking men.

John felt a rush of fear. Things had been good for a while. But that could change any time. He'd been expecting it. They brought him to a scene of carnage. The mortar had exploded. Things were still burning, there was a man torn in half, his guts splayed around.

At least, John Thomas thought, they're like us on the inside too.

"Used too much powder," John Thomas said. He could see it in his minds eye. Tyros, feeling their way around. They'd been smart enough to figure out the principles of it. Or maybe they'd picked it up, someone told them, or showed them. But there was a big difference between having an idea how it all worked, and knowing the craft of the big gun.

"You know these things, John Thomas," and there was something flat and insistent. He wasn't going to be allowed to lie.

"I know them, Taz. Don't like them much, but I know my way around them."

"Will you help us now, John Thomas?"

John gave a long heavy sigh. He looked at the wrecked man, at the blood and smoke. These people, these ones, hadn't done him harm. They'd treated him kindly enough, and they'd been patient. Maybe they deserved a bit better than he'd given them. Stories about lambs and clever dogs and the doings of foreign ports, that wasn't much. Maybe he should start earning keep with something a little more practical.

"I'll help you, Taz."

June 2030

"I have news John Thomas, may I come inside."

John put aside his whittling, sank the knife in the wood so Cat couldn't pry it out. Cat was entirely too clever sometimes. The creature took some watching.

"You are always welcome in my house, Taz," John said politely.

Taz nodded cordially. He'd learned nodding from John and the men. It wasn't something that come natural to these people. John knew he only did it to comfort him, make him feel at home.

They opened the door to the cottage. John hadn't built it himself, he'd had help, from the other tank crewmen and from their guardians. Their captors had grown very liberal. They'd allowed the marines to build a little village of cottages, at least for the summers. John had made it look as much like an American cottage as he'd been able to manage.

His two women were inside, an silver-haired elf and a red-haired human, both half naked . They'd even given him women of his chosing, and it had been a long time since John had a woman of his own. What they did together during their hallucinogenic steroid-fueled orgies, well, they didn't need a lot of speech. They'd picked up a fair bit of his, and he had learned a share of them, and so they got along. During the long nights, you didn't care where the allegiance of the warm bodies cuddling against you belong. John nodded to them, they took themselve to the other room. His eyes slid along their swelling boobs, their rounded ass.

Lieutenant Thomas sat at the table, a good old table he'd made himself, and beckoned Taz to take the seat across. Taz placed himself down, and put a roll of fabric on the table between them.

"First, John Thomas, something to show you."

John took the bundle, there was something heavy in it. A length of iron he judged. Carefully he unwrapped it. It was a RPG-7 launcher. The Russian's, he could not be sure. He grunted, noncommittally. The ruggedness, simplicity, low cost, and effectiveness of the RPG-7 has made it the most widely used anti-armor weapon in the world.

"It's ours, John Thomas," he said, "We made it."

"Is that so?"

John picked it up, hefted it. He was no expert, but he judged the weight right. He held it up and stared down the barrel. Looked true enough. He examined the iron sight, the trigger.

"Decent job, does it work?" From the condition, he judged they hadn't fired it yet.

"We don't know John Thomas, we will need your help."

John grunted again. "I'm not expert with these little things. I wish we had a blacksmith, or maybe a gunsmith. The big mortar, that's one thing. But these RPG-7s, might be tricky. Officers might be better."

No response one way or the other to the mention of officers. John Thomas didn't know if General Summering or his officers were alive or dead. Or for that matter, the fate of the soldiers who weren't in his little village. He had the impression at least some of them were, just from the new questions they asked sometimes. Like they'd been talking to others, trying to verify stories or cross them up. The captors, these Yag, they were friendly enough. But they were careful.

"I'll see what we can do together," he said.

Taz smiled, taking the weapon, and wrapping it up.

"Is this what you come to show me?" John asked.

"No, John Thomas, this was just for pleasure. But I have news that will make you happy."

He leaned forward.

"We have decided to build a Battlewagon."

---

Capital Sadera, Southern Azjania, Early May 2030

"Hmm… Just the right amount of bitterness as always."

The sharp, almost tingly flavor of grounded Tsalal beans was something that the 3rd Prince Diabo El Caesar would never get tired of. Its distinctive aroma was enticing and, in itself, something of a drug that he just couldn't stop taking. Perhaps such was the reason for this four-star-rated tavern in the northwest end of Sadrea, the Eternal capital of Darwinia, to only serve them in quaint amounts. It was either that or an entirely different reason related to ongoing events.

Prince Diabo felt himself sinking in his seat from the plentiful comforting feelings he was getting from each sip of the tsalal. Still, as the Prime Minister of The Holy Darwinian Empire, he has to maintain a certain standard of civility in public, and so he continued to sit with a firm pose. Sitting on the seat opposite him was someone of different circumstances, leaning onto the seat with an almost crooked back and displaying his displeasure with the tsalal's pungent aroma.

"This is too high class for my taste! Blegh!"

Accompanying his hoarse voice was his equally rough personality. The man was Hendric Vortumnus, an illustrious sage serving with the Darwinian Imperial Agricultural Research Council. Unimpressed by the cup of tsalal's taste, he put it back down on its saucer and elected never to touch it again. As for why an importance royalty like Diabo and a rugged, no-nonsense sage of the Agriculture Ministry were having coffee together in the middle of the capital, there was no particularly special reason. As the Prime Minister of The Holy Darwinian Empire, Diabo maintained a plethora of contacts and friends in all the Ministries as he believed in getting to know better the men he was sending on missions across the Empire by the stroke of his pen. One of these friends was the man sitting in front of him.

"With time, you'll get used to it."

"Sure, if they'd only give me an office away from a plant nursery and paperwork to mull over day and night, I don't see why not."

The two shared a chuckle with one another. It had been a while since they'd seen eye to eye, and despite their fields and social statuses being worlds apart, they somehow still hit things off, although that was largely down to Diabo's agreeable personality. Wondering how his friend has been doing lately, he brought up relevant recent events.

"So, how's the deployment upstate? The Emperor wants a report on Project Ceres ."

The question was expected, but it still caught Hendric with his pants down. His eyes darted here and there as he rested his jaw on his hands, deep in thought about how he'd answer. As if settling on something agreeable, he snapped his fingers and leaned forward.

"Over our long history, the people of Falmart have eaten and cultivated just about every edible part of every edible plant, and in fact have eaten a great deal that was not edible. The list of cultivars is extremely long, and even the list of cultivars that have diverged significantly from wild forms is extensive. It took 10,000 maesters almost 10 years to make, not a complete survey, but merely a recognition of the staples. The results are promising, we have identified 12 type of 'extremophile' crops that can survive both nuclear and chemical attacks.

An extremophile is an organism that is able to live ( and in some cases thrive) in extreme environments, i.e. environments that make survival challenging such as due to extreme temperature, radiation, salinity, or pH level.

Kadhash - a ground hugging leafy succulent roughly analogous to cabbage or lettuce, closely related to the Kerguelen cabbage, the plant propagates through extensive, hardy root systems which endure the winters. The leaf clusters sprout early, grow quickly and are adapted to herbivores, regrowing quickly. Kadhash roots were found to be easy to propagate. The leaf clusters matured rapidly enough that heads could be harvested twenty or even thirty times in a growing season, and properly dried for long term storage, retained significant nutrition.

Kulka Root - A small, starchy, barely palatable tuber, which could be regrown from stems. Kulka had the advantage of being an extremely durable widely spread plant which could grow in a variety of harsh conditions and competed well against red weeds, and needed almost no maintenance apart from planting and harvesting. It stored well. The modern form is considerably larger than the wild form, but remains a distinctly acquired taste.

Pycha -a large, relatively nutritious and non-toxic root crop, somewhat similar to potatoes. It has a tall stem crowned with tough narrow leaves and propagates through rootlets. It co-evolved with the Shaghui, whose heavy claws were adapted to digging it out of the ground in winter, severing the roots and allowing new plants to propagate in spring.

Usk - An unrelated root crop, this one has tubers growing as nodules within the root complex, so a single plant may produce as much as two dozen tubers at various stages of growth. Only the mature tubers, usually 1/5 to 1/3 o the tubers, however, are edible. Immature growths are so alkaloid as to be toxic. If disturbed, immature tubers will rapidly put out new root complexes. The plants life cycle is about ten weeks, and it takes a tuber about three weeks to grow to proper maturity. Harvesting consists of uprooting and replanting.

Chipangu's Black Tubers - a large variety of root crops exist, some as supplements, some as local staples, either related to the identified species or representing completely different species, roughly analogous to Yams, Turnips, Sweet Potatoes, Onions, Turnips, Carrots, etc.

Note: Chipangu's flora had adapted to the unique solar and seasonal regimes of the bottom of an already dimly lit world. With roughly one sixteenth of the solar energy arriving at the pole as compared to the equator, offset by long daylight hours, Chipangu plants evolved to be highly efficient at metabolizing sunlight. Whereas temperate plants in Falmart metabolize roughly 9% of solar energy, Chipangu plants metabolized 15% to 18%. Or about three times most efficient photosynthetic plants on Earth. Chipangu's plants must deal with crippling winters and extended nights unique on the planet, and hence much of their metabolic activity goes into storing nutrients or preparing seeds to survive the long night. Thus, Chipangu plants are often extremely high in starches and sugars, often to toxic levels. A number of Chipangu's wild and domesticated plants are literally inedible to non-antarctic life. The Falmartians have evolved particular mutations to digest some of their provenance. This is roughly comparable to the mutation in northern human populations allowing some groups to digest milk.

Windseeds - actually a generic term for a large number of cereal grains, tree seeds and bush seeds, almost all having the advantage of leaf extensions, allowing them to propagate by wind. Windseeds were popular cultivars and seem roughly analogous to grains. They are usually harvested just prior to ripeness, and are either ground to powder or boiled for consumption. In their natural form, they can be stored for up to ten years. Windseed agriculture tends to correlate to domestication of hive monkeys used for harvesting.

Spintree - Not a true tree, but a sort of bush. The spintree wraps fibers spiralling around a central core, to produce a trunk and an explosion of branches. The plant produces nutritious berries which can be pounded to a pulp and then dried out for storage. The trunk can be unwound, and the long fibers separated out for textiles. This is usually done just after berry harvesting. Left unattended 'tree' portion, dies and dries out in fall, but the underlying root complex will live for decades. This cultivar was relatively easy to maintain, but difficult to propagate, and requires a period of maturation before it becomes productive. Over tens thousands of years, a large variety of subspecies have been cultivated, producing a multitude of berries and textiles.

Milk Tree - several related subspecies of thick boled, heavy rooted trees, water loving and usually found near rivers and lakes, notable for sap which can be tapped, somewhat similar to maple syrup. There are a variety of harvesting techniques, usually involving tunneling under the main root system and tapping. The sap runs only through the later part of summer, but stores well. The pulp of the tree is edible and nutritious, particularly in late summer and fall, but the trees take so long to mature that cutting them down for eating is discouraged.

Fphulul -the product of dwarf shrubs, producing a pod roughly analogous to peas or beans. The plant is an annual, dying each summer, with the pod beans drying out to become seeds which sprout in the summer. A natural cultivar requiring extensive labour and extremely wide spread, existing in very harsh locations.

Cluster Worms - not strictly a plant cultivar. These are relatively fast growing and voracious worms which consume decomposing water soaked leaves. Originally found in swampy pockets, their ability to consume otherwise inedible leaves and plant matter and produce protein lead to their adoption as a pseudo-cultivar. Typically, farming involves digging shallow 'worm pits' which are filled with vegetable matter, waste, 'night soil' and heavily watered. The pit is then sifted every few weeks and mature worms are harvested. In the winter, the worms survive by freezing solid, and reactivating when thawed. Eventually accumulation of worm wastes reduces the numbers and quality of the worms, the pit will eventually become so toxic that the worms within choke on their own waste products, and new pits must be dug.

Quad-Hive- Again, not strictly a plant cultivar, but treated as such.

The Quad-Hive is unique in the animal kingdom. An Eusocal insect community made up of four different insect Species (The Quad-Bee, The Quad-Termite, The Lesser Quad Ant, and the Greater Quad-Ant.) These creatures share resources, and create an insect society unparallel in the animal kingdom in terms of complexity, structure, and specialization of labor. It is unclear how this came to be, but this symbiotic sharing of food and labor proved extremely beneficial in the arctic climate. What is clear is how this truth is enforced. All four species release queens and drones at the same time, and after mating, a young queen will seek out the other three species. If they fail to find all four, the young queens die, however, upon finding their counterparts, they link together into a single "Chimera Queen". Over time the Abdomen and lower Thorax latterly fuse together, the exoskeleton dissolving at the point of contact. The four actually begin to exchange bodily fluids, and share nutrients. Should one die, it releases a powerful toxin that kills the other 3. This ensures that the good of one colony is the good of all four species. A worker shares food and cooperates with a worker from another species as readily as she would with her own sister, as they all have a single mother to protect. The lesser Quad ant is a form of "cutter" similar to those found in South America. It specialized in gathering during the green season, and it matter into an edible fungus. The greater Quad Ant is a "honey pot ant" like those found in the desert regions of Australia, and the Americas. These store food within them for long periods during the white Quad Termites build the hive, but also turn wood into digestible matter. The Quad Bees, like most bees, gather nectar and create honey during the green season, and, along with the Termites, are responsible for the building of the hive itself. The hives are massive, rivaling those of the Hive Monkeys. Indeed, the two communities often use sites abandoned by the other for building materials and food gathering. The hives grow as tall as trees above ground, 60 METERS, but are even more massive underneath. The shear scale of labor specialization is astonishing, with as many as 753 specialized worker castes between the four species.

Quad-Hive cultivation seems to have been directly inspired by cluster worms cultivation, taking place in dryer more elevated locations. This is one of the rare instances where the archeological evidence of the relationship is unequivocal. Quad-Hive cultivation begins approximately a thousand years after worm cultivation becomes widespread and the techniques refined, earliest Quad-Hive cultivation sites are all adjacent to extremely productive worm sites. And the earliest Quad-Hive production techniques are identical to those used for worms, even down to specific tools. Only over time do production techniques specialize.

Yag Berry - Yag Berry plant was a river shore plant growing annually tall stalk, producing seasonal flowers and a cluster of berries. Each berry contained a hard seed. The plant's reproductive strategy was to have the berries consumed by shoreline herbivores, who would then excrete the seeds in their travel. The Yag Berry is highly seasonal and sprouts relatively late in the year. The pulpy flesh of the berry can be dried and stored for extremely long periods, losing almost no nutritional value. In addition, the pulpy basal leaves are edible (though poorly so), and the stalks are used for textiles. Even the flowers are pollinated by specialized bees, which produce honey. The Yag Berry is labour intensive but responds extremely well to cultivation. To support Yag Berry's, the local cultures engaged in extensive water management practices, including building canals, flooding, ponding, ditching, etc.

There are of course, a great many other cultivar plants and a few insects, including some local staples, but these are too numerous to list.

Aglarond, Kingdom of Detroitland, Northern Tortolia, Falmart

During the Great Rearmament Period (52017-52029), a new and influential Dwarven guild was established in the capital city of Aglarond in the Kingdom of Detroitland, Tortolia. It is well known with what energy the taste for military matters became developed among that nation of ship-owners, shopkeepers, and mechanics.

Simple tradesmen jumped their counters to become extemporized Primuses, Praefectuses, and Legatuses, without having ever passed the School of Instruction at Sadera; nevertheless; they quickly rivaled their Immanity compeers of the Central continent, and, like them, carried off victories by dint of lavish expenditure in ammunition, money, and men.

But the point in which the dwarves singularly distanced the other races was in the science of gunnery. Not, indeed, that their weapons retained a higher degree of perfection than theirs, but that they exhibited unheard-of dimensions, and consequently attained hitherto unheard-of ranges. In point of grazing, plunging, oblique, or enfilading, or point-blank firing, the Immanity, Elves, and Volralden have nothing to learn; but their cannon, howitzers, and rockets are mere pocket-pistols compared with the formidable engines of the Dwarven artillery.

This fact need surprise no one. The Dwarves, the first mechanicians in the world, are engineers—just as the Elves are musicians and the Immanity are administrators—by right of gene. Nothing is more natural, therefore, than to perceive them applying their audacious ingenuity to the science of gunnery. Witness the marvels of Helblaster Volley Guns, A-6 Helstorm Multiple Rocket Launchers, and Vicker Rapid Fire Guns. The Armstrong rifled breech-loading, Palliser muzzle-loading, and Beaulieu canon-obusiers guns were compelled to bow before their Dwarves rivals.

Now when an dwarf has an idea, he directly seeks a second dwarf to share it. If there be three, they elect a president and two secretaries. Given four, they name a keeper of records, and the office is ready for work; five, they convene a general meeting, and the guild is fully constituted. So things were managed in Aglarond. The inventor of a new cannon associated himself with the caster and the borer. Thus was formed the nucleus of the "Gun Guild." In a single month after its formation it numbered 1,833 effective members and 30,565 corresponding members.

One condition was imposed as a sine quâ non upon every candidate for admission into the association, and that was the condition of having designed, or (more or less) perfected a cannon; or, in default of a cannon, at least a firearm of some description. It may, however, be mentioned that mere inventors of revolvers, fire-shooting carbines, and similar small arms, met with little consideration. Artillerists always commanded the chief place of favor.

The estimation in which these gentlemen were held, according to one of the most scientific exponents of the Gun Guild, was "proportional to the masses of their guns, and in the direct ratio of the square of the distances attained by their projectiles."

The Gun Guild once founded, it is easy to conceive the result of the inventive genius of the Empire. Their military weapons attained colossal proportions, and their projectiles, exceeding the prescribed limits, unfortunately occasionally cut in two some unoffending pedestrians. These inventions, in fact, left far in the rear the timid instruments of HUMAN artillery.

It is but fair to add that these Dwarves, brave as they have ever proved themselves to be, did not confine themselves to theories and formulae, but that they paid heavily, in propriâ personâ, for their inventions. Among them were to be counted officers of all ranks, from Centurio to Legatus; military men of every age, from those who were just making their début in the profession of arms up to those who had grown old in the gun-carriage.

Many had found their rest on the field of battle whose names figured in the "Book of Honor" of the Gun Guild; and of those who made good their return the greater proportion bore the marks of their indisputable valor by replace parts of their body.

Mechanical metal legs, artificial arms, steel hooks, caoutchouc jaws, silver craniums, platinum noses, were all to be found in the collection; and it was calculated by the great statistician Pitcairn that throughout the Gun Guild there was not quite one real arm between four persons and two legs between six. Nevertheless, these valiant artillerists took no particular account of these little facts, and felt justly proud when the despatches of a battle can return fire with ten times as many shells as the enemy.

On a winter night, at eight, a dense crowd pressed toward the saloons of the Gun Guild at No. 21 Empire Square. All the members of the association resident in Aglarond attended the invitation of their president. As regards the corresponding members, notices were delivered by hundreds throughout the streets of the city, and, large as was the great hall, it was quite inadequate to accommodate the crowd of savants. They overflowed into the adjoining rooms, down the narrow passages, into the outer courtyards. There they ran against the vulgar herd who pressed up to the doors, each struggling to reach the front ranks, all eager to learn the nature of the important communication of president Margrave Barbicane; all pushing, squeezing, crushing with that perfect freedom of action which is so peculiar to the masses when educated in ideas of "self-government."

On that evening a stranger who might have chanced to be in Aglarond could not have gained admission for love or money into the great hall. That was reserved exclusively for resident or corresponding members; no one else could possibly have obtained a place; and the city magnates, municipal councilors, and "select men" were compelled to mingle with the mere townspeople in order to catch stray bits of news from the interior.

Nevertheless the vast hall presented a curious spectacle. Its immense area was singularly adapted to the purpose. Lofty pillars formed of cannon, superposed upon huge mortars as a base, supported the fine steelwork of the arches, a perfect piece of cast-mithril lacework. Trophies of blunderbuses, matchlocks, arquebuses, carbines, all kinds of firearms, ancient and modern, were picturesquely interlaced against the walls. The gas lit up in full glare myriads of revolvers grouped in the form of lustres, while groups of pistols, and candelabra formed of muskets bound together, completed this magnificent display of brilliance. Models of cannon, bronze castings, sights covered with dents, plates battered by the shots of the Gun Guild, assortments of rammers and sponges, chaplets of shells, wreaths of projectiles, garlands of howitzers—in short, all the apparatus of the artillerist, enchanted the eye by this wonderful arrangement and induced a kind of belief that their real purpose was ornamental rather than deadly.

At the further end of the saloon the president, assisted by four secretaries, occupied a large platform. His chair, supported by a carved gun-carriage, was modeled upon the ponderous proportions of a 32-inch mortar. It was pointed at an angle of ninety degrees, and suspended upon truncheons, so that the president could balance himself upon it as upon a rocking-chair, a very agreeable fact in the very hot weather. Upon the table (a huge iron plate supported upon six carronades) stood an inkstand of exquisite elegance, made of a beautifully chased gold piece, and a sonnette, which, when required, could give forth a report equal to that of a revolver. During violent debates this novel kind of bell scarcely sufficed to drown the clamor of these excitable artillerists.

In front of the table benches arranged in zigzag form, like the circumvallations of a retrenchment, formed a succession of bastions and curtains set apart for the use of the members of the club; and on this especial evening one might say, "All the world was on the ramparts." The president was sufficiently well known, however, for all to be assured that he would not put his colleagues to discomfort without some very strong motive.

Margrave of Aglarond, Lord Impey Barbicane was a Dwarven man of 400 years of age, calm, cold, austere; of a singularly serious and self-contained demeanor, punctual as a chronometer, of imperturbable temper and immovable character; by no means chivalrous, yet adventurous withal, and always bringing practical ideas to bear upon the very rashest enterprises; a Northern colonist and the implacable enemy of the Elven gentlemen of the South, those ancient cavaliers of the mother country. In a word, he was a dwarf to the backbone.

Barbicane had made a large fortune as a timber merchant. Being nominated director of artillery during the Rearmament, he proved himself fertile in invention. Bold in his conceptions, he contributed powerfully to the progress of that arm and gave an immense impetus to experimental researches.

He was personage of the middle height, having, by a rare exception in the Gun Guild, all his limbs complete. His strongly marked features seemed drawn by square and rule; and if it be true that, in order to judge a man's character one must look at his profile, Barbicane, so examined, exhibited the most certain indications of energy, audacity, and sang-froid.

At this moment he was sitting in his armchair, silent, absorbed, lost in reflection, sheltered under his Stahlhelm helmet —a kind of black cylinder metal helmet which always seems firmly screwed upon the head of a dwarf.

Just when the deep-toned clock in the great hall struck eight, Margrave Barbicane, as if he had been set in motion by a spring, raised himself up. A profound silence ensued, and the speaker, in a somewhat emphatic tone of voice, commenced as follows.

"My brave colleagues, Her Imperial Highness, The illustrious Pina Co Lada had sent us a challage! To build the greatest cannon this world has ever seen. A weapon so powerful that its projectiles will never land as they will move at a so extraordinarily speed that when combined with the rate it is falling due to gravity, produces a curved path that matches the curvature of the planet. A weapon that will leave its mark on the heaven itself. She challenged us to build not just one mile-long cannon, but ONE THOUSAND one-mile cannons. So tell me, my brave companions, can we do it!?"

"YES WE CAN!' The crowd answered.

"Then let's do it!"

It is impossible to describe the effect produced by the last words of the honorable president—the cries, the shouts, the succession of roars, hurrahs, and all the varied vociferations which the Falmartian language is capable of supplying. It was a scene of indescribable confusion and uproar. They shouted, they clapped, they stamped on the floor of the hall. All the weapons in the museum discharged at once could not have more violently set in motion the waves of sound. One need not be surprised at this. There are some cannoneers nearly as noisy as their own guns.

Margrave Barbicane remained calm in the midst of this enthusiastic clamor; perhaps he was desirous of addressing a few more words to his colleagues, for by his gestures he demanded silence, and his powerful alarum was worn out by its violent reports. No attention, however, was paid to his request. He was presently torn from his seat and passed from the hands of his faithful colleagues into the arms of a no less excited crowd.

Nothing can astound a dwarf. It has often been asserted that the word "impossible" is not a dwarven one. People have evidently been deceived by the dictionary. For the Dwarves, all is easy, all is simple; and as for mechanical difficulties, they are overcome before they arise. Between president Barbicane's proposition and its realization no true Dwarf would have allowed even the semblance of a difficulty to be possible. A thing with them is no sooner said than done.

On the next day, Margrave Barbicane called together his foremen and addressed them as follows: "My friend, our business in this mountain region is to construct an Artillery Complex with 50 Volkanones, each measuring three meter in its interior diameter, two meter thick, and with a stone revetment of six meter in thickness. We have, therefore, fifty wells of 19 meter in diameter to dig up to a depth of 1300 meters. This great work must be completed within 50 days (25 earth days), so that you have 18,420,500 cubic meter of rock to excavate in 50 days; that is to say, in round numbers, 368,500 cubic meter per day (12 hours). That which would present no difficulty to fifty thousand titans working in open space, will be of course more troublesome in a comparatively confined space. However, the thing must be done, and I reckon for its accomplishment upon your courage as much as upon your skill."

At four o'clock the next morning the first stroke of the giant adamantine pickaxe was struck upon the soil of Detroitland; and from that moment that prince of tools was never inactive for one moment in the hands of the excavators. The Titan gangs relieved each other every three hours.

On the 4th of May, fifty Titan workmen commenced digging, in the very center of the enclosed space on the summit of Stones Hill, a circular hole 19 meter in diameter. The pickaxe first struck upon a kind of black earth, six inches in thickness, which was speedily disposed of. To this earth succeeded two meter of fine sand, which was carefully laid aside as being valuable for serving the casting of the inner mould. After the sand appeared some compact white clay, resembling the chalk of Great Britain, which extended down to a depth of four meter. Then the adamantine of the picks struck upon the hard bed of the soil; a kind of rock formed of petrified shells, very dry, very solid, and which the picks could with difficulty penetrate. At this point the excavation exhibited a depth of six and a half meter and the work of the masonry was begun.

At the bottom of the excavation they constructed a wheel of orichalcum, a kind of circle strongly bolted together, and of immense strength. The center of this metal disc was hollowed out to a diameter equal to the exterior diameter of the Volkanone. Upon this wheel rested the first layers of the masonry, the stones of which were bound together by hydraulic cement, with irresistible tenacity. The workmen, after laying the stones from the circumference to the center, were thus enclosed within a kind of well seven meter in diameter. When this work was accomplished, the miners resumed their picks and cut away the rock from underneath the wheel itself, taking care to support it as they advanced upon blocks of great thickness. At every two meter which the hole gained in depth they successively withdrew the blocks. The wheel then sank little by little, and with it the massive ring of masonry, on the upper bed of which the masons labored incessantly, always reserving some vent holes to permit the escape of gas during the operation of the casting.

This kind of work required on the part of the workmen extreme nicety and minute attention. More than one, in digging underneath the wheel, was dangerously injured by the splinters of stone. But their ardor never relaxed, night or day. By day they worked under the rays of the scorching sun; by night, under the gleam of the electric light. The sounds of the picks against the rock, the bursting of mines, the grinding of the machines, the wreaths of smoke scattered through the air. Nevertheless, the works advanced regularly, as the steam-cranes actively removed the rubbish. Of unexpected obstacles there was little account; and with regard to foreseen difficulties, they were speedily disposed of.

At the expiration of the first week the well had attained the depth assigned for that lapse of time, namely, 185 meter. This depth was doubled in the second week, and trebled in the third. During the fouth week workmen had to contend with a sheet of water which made its way right across the outer soil. It became necessary to employ very powerful pumps and magic compressed-air engines to drain it off, so as to close up the orifice from whence it issued; just as one stops a leak on board ship. They at last succeeded in getting the upper hand of these untoward streams; only, in consequence of the loosening of the soil, the wheel partly gave way, and a slight partial settlement ensued. This accident cost the life of several workmen.

No fresh occurrence thenceforward arrested the progress of the operation; and on final day, two hours before the expiration of the period fixed by Barbicane, all 50 wells, lined throughout with its facing of stone, had attained the depth of 1300 meter. At the bottom the masonry rested upon a massive block measuring thirty feet in thickness, while on the upper portion it was level with the surrounding soil.

President Barbicane and the members of the Gun Guild warmly congratulated their engineer Baron Murchison; the cyclopean work had been accomplished with extraordinary rapidity.

During these 50 days Margrave Barbicane never quitted Stones Hill for a single instant. Keeping ever close by the work of excavation, he busied himself incessantly with the welfare and health of his workpeople. Many workmen, it is true, paid with their lives for the rashness inherent in these dangerous labors; but these mishaps are impossible to be avoided, and they are classed among the details with which the Dwarves trouble themselves but little. They have in fact more regard for human nature in general than for the individual in particular. Nevertheless, Barbicane professed opposite principles to these, and put them in force at every opportunity. So, thanks to his care, his intelligence, his useful intervention in all difficulties, his prodigious and humane sagacity, the average of accidents did not exceed that of central countries, noted for their excessive precautions.

---

May 2030 Nevada Test Site, United States.

From the nearby bunker, Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, General Liam Nuttall adjusted his welder's goggles, all around him were assembled the great and the good of Project CASABA, Scientists and high rank military officers. A large clock slowly counted down the minutes and seconds until detonation or 'second sun' as some were referring to the test.

In his mind's eye Nuttall could see the city laid out, the walled compound with the 150 meter high tower upon which at the top rested a Klaxon IX neutron device, fully armed and with a clockwork timer counting down to detonation. Around the compound the had been built a series of buildings and various structures whose damage post detonation would enable scientists to measure blast and thermal effects at various distances from the bomb.

Arrayed around the city were hundreds of recording sites, all packed with still and motion camera's, along with thousands of specialist instruments, many of them high speed camera's with exposure times of one nanoseconds. Some of these devices used mirrors and film rotating at insane speeds, while others used electronic means to capture pictures at heretofore unimaginably short exposure times.

Other devices would measure the light intensity and spectrum of the fire ball, while downwind were extensive collectors for fallout and measuring radiological isotope production.

Orbiting the doomed city at various ranges were nearly a hundred aircraft, some of which were drone's outfitted with various instruments for collecting radioactive debris from the fireball post detonation.

Several A-277 drone's were set up as flying camera platforms, and two of their number would fly through the Mushroom cloud a few minutes post detonation to collect radiological samples from the top of the cloud.

Nuttall sorted all this in his head as a way of steadying his nerves, they were about to open a veritable Pandora's Box, unleashing some of the fundamental forces of nature as a weapon of horrendous destruction.

In the pre dawn darkness the clock hands swept down until as they reached zero a technician announced "Detonated!"

Upon detonation, the near-ground airburst of the 1 kiloton Klaxon IX neutron bomb produce a large blast wave and a powerful pulse of both thermal radiation and ionizing radiation in the form of fast (14.1 MeV) neutrons. 0.001 seconds after detonation the fissioning mass had expanded to a roughly spherical fireball 30 meters in diameter and light from the interior of the fireball was passing the shock front to radiate outwards with the baleful glare of atomic fire. Nuttall's eyes detected the double flash as the weapon detonated and in the distance in the blink of an eye the fireball exploded outwards, lighting up the pre dawn darkness in the very light of creation. The thermal pulse cause third degree burns to unprotected skin out to approximately 500 meters. The blast create pressures of at least 4.6 psi out to a radius of 600 meters, which severely damage all non-reinforced concrete structures. At the conventional effective combat range against modern main battle tanks and armored personnel carriers ( 690–900 m), the blast from a 1 kt neutron bomb destroy or damage to the point of nonusability almost all un-reinforced civilian buildings.

A neutron bomb is a nuclear warhead design that has been tweaked so it is much better at killing soldiers and civilians while doing much less damage to military vehicles and civilian buildings. It makes it easier to kill off the enemy soldiers so you can steal their stuff. Neutron bombs are also good to use if the enemy is invading your country. No sense in blowing huge holes in your own cities when all you want to do is exterminate enemy soldiers.

This weapons is what you call an "enhanced radiation bomb". They are specially constructed so more of the bomb's energy is emitted as neutrons instead of x-rays. This means there is far less blast to damage the buildings, but far more lethal neutron radiation to kill the enemy troops. Conventional nuclear warheads typically release 5% of the energy as neutrons, but in neutron bombs it is a whopping 40%. Neutron energy is higher as well: 14 MeV instead of the conventional 1 to 2 MeV.

Using neutron bombs to stop an enemy armored attack by rapidly incapacitating crews with a dose of 80+ Gy of radiation would require exploding large numbers of them to blanket the enemy forces, destroying all normal civilian buildings within c. 600 meters of the immediate area. Neutron activation from the explosions could make many building materials in the city radioactive, such as galvanized steel (see area denial use below).

Because liquid-filled objects like the human body are resistant to gross overpressure, the 4–5 psi blast overpressure would cause very few direct casualties at a range of c. 600 m. The powerful winds produced by this overpressure, however, could throw bodies into objects or throw debris at high velocity, including window glass, both with potentially lethal results. Casualties would be highly variable depending on surroundings, including potential building collapses.

The pulse of neutron radiation would cause immediate and permanent incapacitation to unprotected outdoor humans in the open out to 900 meters, with death occurring in one or two days. The median lethal dose (LD50) of 6 Gray would extend to between 1350 and 1400 meters for those unprotected and outdoors, where approximately half of those exposed would die of radiation sickness after several weeks.

A human residing within, or simply shielded by, at least one concrete building with walls and ceilings 30 cm (12 in) thick, or alternatively of damp soil 24 inches thick, would receive a neutron radiation exposure reduced by a factor of 10. Even near ground zero, basement sheltering or buildings with similar radiation shielding characteristics would drastically reduce the radiation dose.

Furthermore, the neutron absorption spectrum of air is disputed by some authorities, and depends in part on absorption by hydrogen from water vapor. Thus, absorption might vary exponentially with humidity, making neutron bombs far more deadly in desert climates than in humid ones.

However impressive this weapon may be, it is only a byproduct of Project CASABA. The real goal of the Project is the Spear of God: CASABA HOWITZER

---

The Casaba Howitzer is the result of ULTRON research into reducing the spread of the particles produced by a nuclear pulse unit. Make the cone narrow enough and it becomes a destructive beam.

The original nuclear shaped charge design called for the use of a tungsten plate. The particles that resulted from the detonation of a pulse unit would fit inside a cone with a spread of 22.5°. The particles would be relatively slow (between 10 and 100km/s depending on thrust requirements) and rather cool (14000°C in transit, 67000°C after hitting the plate).

As ULTRON noted, using lighter elements, such as plastics or even hydrogen, in a thick and narrow instead of wide and flat shape, you can achieve a very narrow cone and very high particle velocities. A Science & Global Security report from 1990 used polystyrene as the propellant material to produce a particle beam with a spread of 5.7° and a velocity of 1000km/s.

Particle velocity is derived from the Root Mean Square equation. It can be written as such:

Particle velocity = (24939 * Temp / Mass) ^ 0.5

24939 is a constant equal to Boltzmann's constant (1.38*10-23) divided by unitary molar mass in kg (1.66*10-27) times the degrees of freedom of motion (3). Temp is the nuclear detonation's temperature in Kelvin, and Mass is the mass of the propellant used in kg/mol.

For an atom bomb (108 K), uranium (238) will be ejected at 102km/s.
In a fusion reaction (109 K), deuterium (2) will be ejected at 3530km/s.

The difficulty is in transmitting this thermal energy to the propellant, and keeping the particle cone focused.

In a propulsion pulse unit, it is not known how efficiently a nuclear shaped charge is able to heat the propellant. Most sources cite a 85% of the device's energy being sent in the desired direction. It is unknown also whether this is before or after some of the propellant is accelerated in the wrong direction, and whether larger pulse units are more efficient (higher propellant mass fraction). This is important as it would allow a thermos-dynamic estimation of the particle velocity.

It would be reasonable to use a lower figure when calculating the amount of energy delivered to the propellant. Scott Lowther gave a 50% figure for small fission charges. An SDI nuclear weapons study, Project Prometheus, experimentally tested Casaba Howitzer weapons using plastic propellants. It achieved 10% efficiency. A Princeton University study from 1990 on third-generation nuclear weapons cited 5% instead, but for fusion devices with ten times better beam focus.

---

Effectiveness

Despite the reduction in cone spread, the stream of particles produced by by Casaba Howitzer dissipates much more quickly than an electro-magnetically accelerated particle beam or a laser.

It is possible to reduce the beam angle to 0.006 degrees in width, as reported by the third-generation nuclear weapons study. 0.057 degrees has been experimentally achieved by project Prometheus. The trade-off is much lower efficiency than propulsive units (5-10% vs 80-85%).

The theoretical maximal performance of a thermonuclear device is 25TJ/kg. Modern weapons are able to achieve 2.5TJ/kg, but this figure is for large weapons that have better scaling. Smaller warheads such as those tested for project Prometheus are likely to be in the kiloton range, and mass about 100kg. Better understanding of fission ignition has reduced the nuclear material requirement down to a kilogram or less.

A nuclear detonation only lasts a microsecond, so we can assume that the entire energy of the unit is delivered to the target in a single pulse of duration 10-6 seconds. As the particles produced expand in a cone with an angle θ, we can use the following equation to calculate the destructive potential at various distances:

Intensity = (Yield * Efficiency * 10^6) / (3.14 * (tan(θ) * Distance) ^2) Irradiance = (Yield * Efficiency) / (3.14 * (tan(θ) * Distance) ^2)

Intensity is measured in watts per square meter. Irradiance is joules per square meter. Yield is how much energy the nuclear charge delivers, converted to joules. Efficiency ranges from the 0.85 of a propulsion unit to the 0.05 of a Casaba Howitzer. θ is the cone angle. Distance is between the nuclear detonation and the target, in meters.

Let us calculate some examples:

Small Casaba Howitzer (50kg)
0.01 radian directivity (0.057 degrees)
5kt yield, 10% efficiency: 2.09TJ
Distance 1km: Irradiance = 673GJ/m^2
Distance 10km: Irradiance = 6.7GJ/m^2
Distance 100km: Irradiance = 67.2MJ/m^2
Distance 1000km: Irradiance = 672kJ/m^2

Large Casaba Howitzer (1000kg)
0.001 radian directivity (0.0057 degrees)
1Mt yield, 5% efficiency: 209TJ
Distance 1km: Irradiance = 6728TJ/m^2
Distance 10km: Irradiance = 67.3GJ/m^2
Distance 100km: Irradiance = 672MJ/m^2
Distance 1000km: Irradiance = 6.7MJ/m^2

Next Generation Megaton Nuclear lance
0.0001 radian directivity (0.00057 degrees)
1Mt yield, 20% efficiency:836TJ
Distance 1000km: Irradiance = 2691GJ/m^2
Distance 100000 km: Irradiance = 269MJ/m^2

To determine destructive capability, we can model the Casaba Howitzer as a direct energy weapon. We can recreate the particle strike as a laser weapon firing a single pulse with equal properties.

We will describe the strike as a laser pulse of duration 1 microsecond, containing X energy and with Y spot radius. A 1.63 micrometer laser focused by a 2cm diameter mirror consistently produces the same spot sizes as a 0.01 radian beam. A 20cm mirror is used for 0.001 radian beams, and 200cm for 0.0001. We test penetration against Aluminium.

Small Casaba Howitzer:
X = 2.09TJ
1km, Y = 0.994m: 734mm penetration
10km, Y = 9.94m: 0.73mm penetration

Large Casaba Howitzer:
X = 209TJ
50km, Y = 4.97m: 586mm penetration
500km, Y = 49.7m: 0.59mm penetration

Next Generation Megaton Nuclear lance:
X = 836TJ

1000km, Y = 9.94m: 293mm penetration
5000km, Y = 49.7m: 2.35mm penetration

The results reveal that the Casaba Howitzer is an extremely destructive weapon, with the larger models able to strike at distances usually reserved for lasers. Even a small Casaba Howitzer is effective at up to several kilometers, using technology tested in the 80s. Larger, more modern devices can strike at extreme distances. Next Generation devices will reach particle velocities of about 10000km/s, so time to target is negligible.

However, these distances are lower than those of powerful lasers, so the Casaba Howitzer will need a delivery system such as missile, or be used in defensive roles.

---

Making use of the Casaba Howitzer:

The Casaba Howitzer's advantages are numerous, and can be exploited in four ways:

Terminal warhead

Missiles are hindered by the requirement to track the target and follow until impact. Lasers are increasingly effective as missiles close the distance to their target. Past a certain point, any missile touched by a laser is quickly destroyed. So quickly, that a laser defense's primary limitation is the time it takes to switch targets. In other words, a laser defense sets up a 'death zone' around itself, within which any wave of missiles will quickly be annihilated.

A combination of efficient lasers, multiple turrets and competent target handling can cut through hundreds of missiles.

The counter to this, on the missile side, is to perform randomized high-acceleration maneuvers called 'jinks'. This tactic is already used today by sea-skimming missiles once they enter the range of CIWS defenses. The problem is, this requires the missile to have powerful thrusters, lots of propellant and active, autonomous sensors that survive to the terminal stage of its attack. This means that missiles will end up being heavy, hard to bring up to speed, large (easy to track and hit) and expensive due to on-board electronics. These are all characteristics you want to avoid when trying to make massive waves of missiles economical, or if jinking through the death zone.

Using a Casaba Howitzer warhead solves this conundrum.

It allows missiles to deal damage from outside the death zone. It also removes the requirement of saving propellant for the terminal stage, or even the necessity of accelerating up to a high velocity intercept. It allows missiles to be lighter and smaller. Depending on the price of the nuclear technology, a few Casaba-Howitzer missiles may be cheaper than multitudes of kinetic impactors.

Point defense

The usefulness of a nuclear shaped charge extends further than just being a warhead. As calculated in the Effectiveness section of this post, the particle cones spread quickly, but remain effective at short ranges.

In a defensive role, a Casaba Howitzer will have to be lightweight and efficient in its use of fissile material. This is because it must be deployed in numbers comparable to the incoming projectiles. Optimizing for efficiency has the consequence of producing a wide cone.

This cone can be used to sweep away missiles in the terminal phase. Close enough, it will outright vaporize kinetics. Further away, it can still damage sensors and shatter propellant tanks through impulse shock. The large angle of the cone is advantageous, as it would reduce prevision requirements against jinking missiles, and might even catch several missiles at once.

Other advantages of using Casaba Howitzers as a point defense is that it can easily be aimed, does not consume power and has infinite firing rate. If you detect missiles coming in, dump your entire payload of defensive drones and have them point at targets. Once they come within range, all can detonate simultaneously.

This might actually be the preferred tactic, to prevent previous nuclear detonations from interfering with the detonation of subsequent charges. This is a concern if the Casaba Howitzers use fusion fuels that are sensitive to external sources of neutron radiation.

Example defensive Casaba Howitzer:
100kg, 10kt yield
85% efficiency: 35.56TJ beam
Beam velocity 1000km/s
Beam angle: 10 degrees
Effective range (penetrates 5mm of aluminium): 16km

This warhead can destroy anything within a 6.15km2 circle up to 16km away. It reaches targets in less than 16 milliseconds, and unlike a pin-point laser, it affects the entire surface of the target at once.

Booster

The awesome power of a nuclear shaped charge does not have to be used directly to damage targets. It can be used in innovative ways.

Instead of being used to generate high velocity particles in a narrow cone, a Casaba Howitzer can be used as a nuclear version of modern shaped charges. A metal cone is put in the way of a nuclear-heated beryllium filler. It is accelerated by the blast, like in an Explosively Formed Projectile. The only requirement is that the energy deposited into the metal lining is not sufficient to vaporize it.

Nuclear Explosive Formed Projectiles

The idea here is weaponize the nuclear pulse propulsion units designed for use in the Orion drive.

From the original project, we know that 85% of the nuclear yield can be directed into a narrow cone of 22 degrees or less. Instead of allowing beryllium filler particles to fly out into space, we place a thick metal plate on top.

In a NEFP, the metal plate is at a very shallow angle.

---

NEFP velocity

The main requirement of a NEFP is that the energy deposited into the metal lining is not sufficient to vaporize it.

Copper's melting point is about 1400K. Refractory materials such as tungsten can stay semi-solid at 3600K. Some materials can stay solid at even higher temperatures, but would not exhibit the plastic behaviour of metals. This limits the maximum metal plate temperatures to about 3500K.

We can use the contemporary performance of Explosively Formed Penetrators to estimate the maximum temperature of the filler in a nuclear design.

Thermal Science 2016 tracked the temperatures and pressures in a copper plate being driven by Octol, a mix of TNT and HMX. Octol has a detonation velocity of 2000m/s and a specific energy of 6.3MJ/kg.

We observe that the copper reaches temperatures around 622K if we average between the 545 and 698K in the last gasses driving it reach 4010K. In the experiment, the copper is 10mm thick, masses 12.5kg and is shaped as a hemisphere 150mm in radius, for an 'exposed' area of 0.14m^2.

Copper's heat capacity is 385kJ/kg/K and its heat conductivity is 385W/mK.

Tungsten's heat capacity is 133kJ/kg/K and its heat conductivity is 100W/mK.

If we substituted copper for tungsten, the metal plate would survive 3500K, a temperature 5.83 times higher, but requires only 2.04 times more energy due to the lower heat capacity.

Heat transfer by conduction is linear with the temperature difference. In the Thermal Science test, the copper started at 300K and ended up at 622K, averaging a 3548K temperature difference between the hot gasses and the metal plate.

A tungsten plate would heat up from 300K to 3500K, averaging 1900K. Its heat conductivity is 3.85 times lower than that of copper, so the temperature difference can be allowed to become 3.85 times higher for the same heating effect.

Considering all these factors, tungsten can survive a temperature difference 3.85 * 2.04 : 7.85 times higher.

This works out to a tungsten plate would average 1900K if it is accelerated by a gas of temperature just under 30000K.

This gas contains 7.42 times more energy than high explosive gas. It would accelerate a tungsten plate to a velocity 2.7 times faster.

We can safely say that Explosively Formed Projectiles can be propelled about three times faster using nuclear energy than using chemical explosives. This suggests velocities of about 6 to 9km/s.

Higher velocities can be achieved if we accept the fragmentation of the metal plate. These fragments have a theoretical velocity of 100km/s.

Even higher velocities, such as those cited in the Science & Global Security article, are the result of explosive fillers being heated to millions of Kelvins. They allow for velocities of up to 3% of the speed of light, as fast as the particles in a Casaba Howitzer. However, heating a metal liner and an explosive filler to those temperatures turn them into a plasma, and plasma-plasma interactions do not allow for much of the nuclear weapon's yield to be converted into kinetic energy.

---

NEFP efficiency

According to Friedwardt Winterberg, 50% of the nuclear blast is converted into the kinetic motion of the particles in the shaped charge's explosive filler. The rest goes into heating the filler.

Since the nuclear blast also destroys everything aft of the explosive filler, the configuration is assumed to be an 'open-faced sandwich'. Roughly 50% of the filler's kinetic energy is used to accelerate the metal plate in the target's direction.

Using the 85% efficiency for the nuclear blast, 50% for the filler and 50% for the metal plate, about 21% of the nuclear yield ends up in the projectile.

This is better than the 5% efficiency listed in experimental studies.

In a NEFP, this means that a 1 kiloton yield warhead could propel more than 21.7 tons of metal at the target at 9km/s.

This literal boulder would be immune to most forms of anti-missile defenses, such as Whipple shields, lasers, missile interceptors or even wide-angle defensive Casaba Howitzers.

A 2m wide 21.7 ton tungsten projectile would be 352mm thick. Using the hydrodynamic penetration model, this projectile would penetrate 947mm of aluminium. Armor materials suited to resisting laser fire would be less dense and suffer greater penetration. This isn't an exceptional penetration depth for the mass invested in the weapon.

Instead, the metal has incredible momentum. Striking a 10000 ton target would knock the target back at 19.5m/s. In practice, this would break the target in half through sheer mechanical stress. The relatively size of the projectile makes the impact resemble a cannonball ploughing through a building.

---

Spaced NEFP

In the Orion drive, the nuclear pulsed propulsion charges are detonated at a distance of 25 meters from the pusher plate. This spacing allows for the hot plasma (67000K) ejected by the nuclear charge to expand and cool down to 14000K. This greatly reduced the erosion and heating of the pusher plate.

A similar concept can be used to allow nuclear EFPs to both use high-temperature gasses and the high kinetic efficiency of solid metal plates.

By spacing the explosive filler from the metal plate, an initially very hot plasma can be accelerate a solid plate without vaporising the latter.

The advantage is that a very hot plasma allows for very fast EFPs and much lighter weapons. The disadvantage is that they will become much larger and there will be some efficiency losses from the metal plate not intercepting the entirety of the filler gasses.

Let us assume a 1 kt yield nuclear shaped charge with 85% directivity. We want the gasses arriving to accelerate a tungsten plate to be no hotter than 30000K, as calculated in our example above.

How hot can the initial filler get?

If we use the original 22.5 degree cone, and state that the filler starts out 1m wide (surface area 3.14m^2), then in 10 meters spacing it will have spread out to a disk 5m wide (19.47m^2). This linear expansion would cool the plasma by a factor 6.2. The initial plasma temperature can be 186000 K and allow velocities (186000/4010)^0.5 about 7 times higher than with chemical explosives.

If we increase the spacing to 20 meters, the plasma would cool by a factor 20. The initial plasma temperature can be 602400 K and velocities 12.25 higher.

We could instead reduce the radius of the filler down to 10cm and increase the propellant cone's angle to 45 degrees to achieve an expansion and cooling ratio within 10 meters of 7022, within 20 meters of 27755, allowing velocities 83 and 477 times faster!

Here is a simple equation to determine how the spacing and spread angle cools the plasma and allows for higher projectile velocities, based on the results from the experiment cited above.

Velocity factor = ((tanA * Spacing + Ri) / Ri ) ^ 2 * (Ts / Tc ))^0.5

Velocity factor is how much faster the NEFP projectile can be compared to a chemical EFP. Velocities for chemical EFPs at 2 to 3km/s.

A is half the spread angle. For the Orion drive, this is 11.25 degrees.
Spacing is the distance between the filler and the metal plate, in meters.
Ri is the initial radius of the filler, in meters.
Ts is the survivable temperature of the metal plate. For tungsten, it should be 30000 Kelvin.
Tc is the chemical gas temperature we are using as a reference. For our example, this is 4000 Kelvin.

Using this equation, we determine that a 1kt yield shaped charge with 85% directivity, spreading by 60 degrees (30 degree half-angle), Ri 15cm, and placed 10 meters away from a 16.7kg tungsten plate could reach velocities of up to 324km/s.

The same warhead with the same spread at 25 meters distance would be able to accelerate a 2.75kg plate to 798km/s.

A problem with very high spread angles is that some of the gas particle's kinetic energy is not perpendicular to the plate and therefore does not contribute to its acceleration. Great separation distances increases losses from gasses expanding laterally and not being intercepted by the plate. Overall efficiency would be lower in these cases.

Nuclear HEAT or Nuclear Munroe Projectile

Using the Monroe effect on metal cones angled sharply inwards allows for jets with tip velocities 7 to 10 times greater than the velocity of the explosive gasses driving them.

Modern HEAT weapons generate tip velocities of up to 14km/s using gasses that travel no faster than 2 or 3km/s.

A 'Nuclear Monroe Projectile' would therefore produce metal jets of 60 to 90km/s.

If the maximum particle velocity in a fusion shaped charge is 3% of the speed of light, then the Monroe effect can increase this velocity to 30%.

However, there are severe limitations that reduce the effectiveness of this type of weapon.

The first is the standoff distance.

While the tip of the jet can reach astounding velocities, the main body of the projectile reaches much lower velocity, with the rearmost 'slug' remaining mostly stationary relative to the warhead.

The large velocity differential stretches out the jet to the point of fragmentation and uselessness. Tip velocities of several tens of kilometers per second would disrupt a jet in milliseconds, meaning that it has to be fired close enough to its target to penetrate with an intact jet.

The standoff distance would be measured in single meters.

The second is efficiency.

In a NEFP, 21% of the nuclear yield ends up as the kinetic energy of the projectile. In a NMP, the kinetic energy is shared between a small fast tip, a slow moving body and a mostly stationary slug concentrating most of the mass. This reduces the overall efficiency of the weapon to a few percent.

The third limitation is, realistically getting an intact warhead close to the target before it detonates is a difficult task. In most cases, factors which make this easier (massed missile attacks, high velocity warheads) reduce the usefulness of nuclear warheads (high per-unit costs, waste of missile's kinetic energy).

Particle beam weapon

The ionized particles produced by a Casaba Howitzer can be used to feed a particle accelerator. Unlike a traditional accelerator, its main role is not to accelerate particles closer to the speed of light, but to use magnetic lens to focus the ions into a tightly collimated beam. At the muzzle, the ions are neutralized to reduce bloom using a co-axial electron beam.

The greatest point of concern is pushing the particles into the accelerator without reducing their velocity. A magnetic 'funnel', much like that of a mass spectrometer, can perform this role.

The second point of concern is preventing the particles from damaging the particle accelerator. This can be remedied by building the accelerator as a series of widely spaced loops of wire acting as electromagnets. The particle beam is focused in stages, narrowing after each loop.

The optimal Casaba Howitzer configuration for this weapon is a fusion device that is built to maximize particle velocity. 10000km/s (3% of the speed of light) may be achieved. This is much slower than an electromagnetically-accelerated particle beam weapon, but it has the advantage of requiring little to no external power (the electromagnets can be fed by the heat they receive from the nuclear detonation), massing much less than a regular particle accelerator and able to extend the range of small nuclear pulse weapons to useful distances (in the thousands of kilometers).

---

Nameless Glacier, Amazonia, Falmart

There is something deeply wrong in the world. In every land, in every civilization, in the depths of every mortal soul, this wrongness is felt in one way or another. For a lucky few, it will never grow beyond a vague sense of unease, a lingering feeling that even in the warmth of a midday sun, a presence lies in the shadows. For others, it will be a constant fear; a voice in the back of their minds that screams and pleads to never tread into certain places and never focus on certain thoughts. They might not fully grasp why these warnings must be followed, only that something terrible awaits them should they fail.

For some though, the dark malign cancer eating away at the world and every mortal mind within it, is plainly visible. They see it in the dirt of the earth, in the trees that grow from it, in the wood that burns in a hearth, in the dancing shapes cast by the fire, and in the eyes of all those gathered around it. A pure soul will instinctively recoil from this corruption, or seek the means to stamp it out, but few souls within the mortal races are truly pure. There will always be those in which the darkness takes root, festers and prevails. These are the slaves of darkness, mortals dedicated to the worship of the Runious Powers and the destruction of any who oppose them. Above any other titles they might once have had or now claim, they bear the supreme epithet "Warrior of Chaos".

The study of the Ruinous Powers is a perilous and upsetting endeavor, and no mortal scholar can truly understand the fickle and ever-shifting hierarchy exhibited amongst their dark followers. Anyone corrupted by the Dark Gods might be said to be a Warrior of Chaos, regardless of if they ever pick up a weapon or not, for by whatever means they might employ, every servant of darkness is dedicated to the hellish enslavement and ultimate extinction of mortal-kind. By the time of the reign of Emperor Karl Franz however, the term "Warrior of Chaos" is mostly reserved for the barbaric tribes of northern marauders that occupy the unforgiving borderlands between realities surrounding the Chaos Wastes.

We speak, of course, of the great nameless glacier at the heart of the white continent, a mass of ice the size of India, as much as half a mile thick in its center. It is said that every Amazonians, no matter where they are, can unerringly point out its direction. Even those who are not in its direct shadow, not near enough to see it loom like a distance mountain range can tell you where it is. Above the glacier, the air is chilled unnaturally, the air, lit by an intensity of reflected sunlight, seems to twist and shimmer above the glacier, as if the very fabric of reality was tortured by its weight, or as if its presence summoned things from the some unseen realm to test the boundaries of our world, to try and break through. It is subtle, and a southern person might never notice. But to the Amazonians, they have but to look at the summer sky, and to their eyes, the sky over the glacier is ... different and disturbing.

The glacier is not an insensate mass. In many respects it is alive in a strange and alien way. It moans sometimes, deep lowing sounds descend from it. Sometimes it crackles and rumbles. Occasionally, it shrieks or roars, as fissures open or some surface moisture congeals into a torrent. Often, it simply mutters to itself, an ongoing song of clicks and sighs, that some wise men say are words. To them, the sounds of the glacier are the ramblings of a malign but sleeping god.

It is a restless body, sometimes it extends lobes of ice, like an amoeba testing the ground with pseudopods. The ice moves, a river course freezing, swollen with white mass for a thousand yards, only to be withdrawn a few seasons later. The borders of the glacier are always in flux, sometimes extending, sometimes withdrawing, tendrils and probes and slopes constantly changing. Over the course of a century a sheer cliff face of ice will retreat into a deceptively gentle slope, or erupt in an avalanche. It is said that at night, it is most active, that in the cold, it twists and writhes, and that someday, it will wake.

On the surface of the glacier during summer, pools of water will melt on top of the ice, droplets merging to become puddles, puddles flowing together as streams, streams becoming lakes, which eventually force open fissures, finding their way into the interior of the glacier and vanishing with tremulous moans. Or sometimes, they just freeze when winter comes, the warm water trapped under a layer of ice, the outer layers cracking as the internal water slowly freezes. Or sometimes they find their way off the glacier, as a sudden shocking flash flood, a torrent of ice water sometimes leaping as if a waterfall, sometimes a raging flood river, gouging new channels, tearing new paths, picking up trees and boulders in its headlong violence.

Sometimes cold breezes come, strange climate conditions will send a river of air, or a splash like a wave of extreme cold, rushing down the shores of the glacier, a freezing torrent, that kills all the vegetation in its path, that strikes down men and animals, causing nature to flee. In these torrents, the air can drop 70 degrees of temperature in the space of an incident, fires will extinguish, and a sudden indrawn breath can leave a man coughing his lungs out as pink foam. There are stories of entire villages frozen solid in an instant, a man standing, hand raised, a woman at an extinguished fire, frozen too fast and hard to even fall over.

Few Amazonians have ventured onto the glacier itself, and none have ventured far. Those that do tell of a biting alien cold, an otherworldly clarity to the air, an alien landscape of white where even sounds are different. The air around the glacier is sucked dry of moisture, it sears the lungs, its extreme coldness bare of water vapour or dust, the reflection of sunlight bouncing from the ice and snow confers a kind of crystal luminosity, even sound waves propagate faster in the chilled air, bounce strangely off the sheer crystaline structure of frozen water. The handful of Amazonians that have dared the glacier report the sun beating down hot, but the air chill and a coldness that seemed to reach their core. Warmth was only an illusion, a dream, in the face of something vastly older, endlessly powerful, alien and malevolent.

For as long as the Amazonians have been in the white continent, the glacier has been the center of their world, terrifying, alien, a thing acknowledged only in their refusal to face it, a presence in their lives. Shamans and visionaries for thousands of years have had their dreams haunted by it. Theologies and prophecies, oracles and divinitions have been devoted to interpreting the noises it makes, the lights above it, the strange patterns in the air and the truculence of its movements. Every manifestation is a signal of terrors, of a sleeping god on the verge of waking.

Since the earliest migrations of humans into the Old World, many tribes have eked out short and brutal lives in the northern wastelands. The Tong, Norscans, Kurgan, and Hung represent the four major peoples of the Northern Wastes, each separated into a great many lesser tribes and clans. Though fundamentally the same as their southern kin, they have been corrupted for millennia by the radiant energy of Chaos that spills outwards from the northern pole. The influence of the Ruinous Powers has led to widespread mutation and social stagnation amongst these tribes, leaving them as little more than primitive savages. Accordingly, they are largely nomadic, unable to build any permanent settlements or great works beyond the occasional shrine. They instead cling to whatever livable patches of land might be found, before moving on when the dark energies of Chaos flow stronger and force them out.

Clans might bestow on their Chieftains titles such as Jarl or Zar, but the Northmen have little concept of allegiance beyond the most primitive expressions of blood or kinship. In lieu of any sense of nationality, a strict hierarchy guided by the concept of strength dominates their limited social structures. Whatever the title, tribes are invariably led by the most powerful warrior or sorcerer. The remaining warriors constitute an exalted echelon within their society, with slaves and thralls forming the bottom rung, typically expended as cheap labor, consorts, or sacrifices.

Though a great diaspora of peoples and cultures make up the Warriors of Chaos, they are universally bloodthirsty, ruthless and cruel. War is their natural state, and they pursue it relentlessly. They battle mostly amongst themselves, but occasionally unite against the Southern Realms whenever the power of Chaos is ascendant. These latter gatherings are only possible through the will of a great Champion who has convinced the tribes to put aside their petty rivalries and disputes. To fight and perish within the armies of Chaos under the gaze of the gods is the ultimate honor to the Northmen, and it is the ambition of every warrior to attract the attention of the Ruinous Powers through deeds of slaughter and conquest.

The worship of Chaos is the strongest unifying force amongst the Northern tribes, often supplanting every other consideration. Typically this worship is directed towards the entire Chaos pantheon rather than any single god, for in such harsh lands, it is hardly practical to reject a divine gift or favor, no matter the source. It is not unheard of however for certain tribes to devote themselves to a single deity, or even to a particularly powerful demi-god or daemon.

Fallen Chaos Champions, revered ancestors and other lesser spirits might also be venerated, but ultimately, it is the Chaos Gods to which the highest devotion is given. Khorne, the Blood God and Lord of Murder is worshipped under a thousand different names across the North. His followers are amongst the most numerous, for Khorne embodies courage, rage, strength and hate - the most basic and brutal of sentient emotions. The precepts of Tzeentch, the Raven God and the Changer of Ways, by contrast, can be difficult if not impossible for mortal minds to understand. The worship of Tzeentch is limited mainly to shamans, sorcerers, and other practitioners of the Dark Arts of Magic.

But change, hope, destiny and lies, the domain of the Raven God, are at the heart of any ascension to greatness, and Tzeentch has many devotees whether they recognize it or not. Nurgle, the Plague Lord and God of Disease, Decay, Destruction, Death and Rebirth, is perhaps the least worshiped in the northern wastes. He comes to prominence amongst the tribes only during times of great sickness, but his gifts are amongst the most powerful and everlasting. Slaanesh, the Dark Prince and God of Pleasure has likewise found few followers in the North, for the northmen have little time for luxury and decadence and rarely indulge themselves in their own desires.

A great many other gods are worshiped in the north, and while some are merely aspects of the great four, others might be separate entities, or other foul things let loose upon the ancient mortal world. The worship and favor of the gods is a vital and glorious part of the northern tribes. As these men cling so closely to the perimeter of the Realm of Chaos itself, to them the Ruinous Powers are not abstract concepts, but undeniable entities that mould the clay of human flesh and human minds into whatever grotesque new shapes might please them. The Dark Gods of Chaos demand total and complete devotion from their mortal followers, for the bloodshed and conflict unleashed in their names strengthens their influence over the mortal realms.

In return, the Ruinous Powers offer their greatest champions dark blessings and signs of their favor. Though the risks are terrible, even the smallest chance of gaining the attention of the gods cannot be ignored. A reward from Chaos, no matter how trivial, is the first step down a path that can lead to immortality - ultimate power or ultimate damnation. The gifts of the Ruinous Powers take many forms and usually reflect the attitudes of the god that granted them. A warrior may be imbued with terrible strength and fortitude, or their flesh might mutate, limbs changing into gaping mouths or writhing tentacles.

A practitioner of the arts of magic might find their eyes opened, sometimes literally, to new possibilities, able to see the world in a way others cannot fathom. Those less fortunate might be disfigured in an instant, beset by a multitude of debilitating mutations. Even the greatest champions of the dark gods have been known to devolve into repulsive, gibbering creatures known as Chaos Spawn though whether this represents the punishment or whimsy of the gods is beyond mortal understanding. Though repulsive, these former men are revered by the followers of Chaos for every Northman believes it is better to know the most vile existence at the behest of the gods, than to have never drawn their notice.

The fiercest warriors amongst the Northmen, those who show the greatest promise of earning the favor of Chaos, will be gifted a suit of hell-forged armor by their respective chieftain. These are works of such quality well beyond their own primitive smiths, instead crafted in the distant forges of Zharr-Naggrund or passed down the generations until their true origins fade into legend. Within the hierarchy of the Northmen's armies, Chaos armor is a clear sign of rank and status, though these warriors have only just begun their unholy quest. They hone their skills against the enemies of their tribe, or sometimes abandon their kin to gather with similarly clad warriors, forming new warbands that prowl the wastes seeking battle wherever it might come.

Should a warrior of Chaos excel in this arena, they will invariably feel the call to travel even further north and face the judgements of the Gods themselves. They will undertake a dark pilgrimage, braving the unnamed horrors of the Northern Wastes before entering the Realm of Chaos, a dimension of pure magic and sorcery. Infinitely worse things dwell here, and any aspiring champion who arrives will find themselves in a place of perpetual slaughter, a tangled landscape of insanity where the Dark Gods reign supreme. Most who attempt to master this battlefield will die in the attempt, though occasionally the Chaos Gods will acknowledge the strength and spirit of a mortal, and mark him as their own.

These are the Chosen, and while the gifts bestowed on them vary greatly, all carry with them the supernatural power and terrible grace of the Dark Gods, marking them as the true nobility of Chaos. The greatest mortal warriors of the dark powers are known as Chaos Lords, warriors and Chosen transformed into engines of mass destruction by the gifts of their patron god. They marshal to their warhosts not only the northern tribes, but regiments of lesser Chaos Warriors lured by the promise of greater glories. Yet every follower of Chaos is ultimately on a selfish quest for greater power, and champions are constantly challenging their rivals, with the followers of the defeated incorporated into the army of the victor. In this way the weakest Chaos warriors, Chosen and lords are routinely culled, and the greater host made stronger.

Everything that you have will be ours

We will leave you nothing but your tears

We will cut your stomachs out

to take the food from your bellies

Your childrens screams shall be our music

as we burn them for warmth on our fires

Your wives will bear our children

before we cut their throats

We will pass by, but our marks will never fade

We will take all that we value

All else shall be destroyed

None shall escape, nothing will be spared

Nothing will be left to you but the sight

of all things ruined

In the end, your eyes shall be gouged out

And the last of you will be left

To bear witness to our passing

as the carrion eaters devour your guts

The Proclamation of Zhir, The First Chosen, first issued to the Azul city of Kndar, circa 1580 I.C, there were no survivors.

The ultimate gift of the Chaos Gods however is demonhood, elevating a mortal follower into a purely magical entity and in the process granting them true immortality. This moment of apotheosis is sought by all those who walk the path of darkness, but only the most extraordinary among them will ever achieve it. These Daemon Princes are beings of godlike power, but forever bound to the will of their patron god.

A particularly successful champion of Chaos will find altogether stranger and more terrible things drawn to their presence. Mutated creatures, either those born from the natural world, or abominations fused into being within the realm of Chaos are a common sight within Chaos Armies. Most often these consist of giants and warhounds and sometimes even Dragon Ogres, one of the most ancient races and among the first to be wholly enslaved by Chaos. Demonic engines too might be harnessed, sentient cannons that belch forth demonic fire, or mobile warshrines piled high with corpses and other offerings.

It is known that the Ruinous Powers originated from a great calamity, when something glorious and wonderful died atop the world and unleashed the Dark Gods in its death throes. While the influence of Chaos certainly predates mankind and is felt across every species, it cannot be denied that humanity is uniquely susceptible to its lures; the most eager to pursue the path of damnation. It was from the corrupted tribes of the Northern Wastes that the Warriors of Chaos, as they are known today, were truly born, and when the Dark Gods march against the world it is always these northmen that form the foundation of their armies.

The Dark Gods value their mortal followers above all others, for it is the ambitions and souls of free-willed creatures that the Ruinous Powers engorge themselves upon. It is for this reason, that the ultimate champion of Chaos, one gifted with the blessings of each of the four gods, is always drawn from amongst the warriors of the Northern Wastes. These are the Everchosen, and twelve times they have marshaled the armies of the northmen marauders and led them south to bring ruin and glory. Twelve times they have been struck down by the mortal nations they sought to conquer, but now, the 13th Everchosen has been crowned.

A three eyed king stirs atop his dark throne, and the powers and treasures at his command are enough to eclipse even the greatest of his predecessors. He is equal parts Norscan warlord and fallen priest, a man of darkness and ruin. Doom to his enemies, doom to every people and all the gods invested in them. For when Archaron, Lord of the End Times rides unto the world, the world will know that the last war has begun.

That was the prophecy spread in the dark circles of occult society.

But... the problem with prophecies is that they're not always what they seem.

Twelve hours before Operation Götterdämmerung

The majestic towers of the abandone city of Vatizanth rise into the night revealing the blood moon with a celestial body streaking past above it like a giant eye looking down.

In the shadows in one of the forests near an Imperial settlement, two creatures of the night hided in the shadow, their full form could not be identified in the darkness of the night, the only things that could be spotted were the shape of their eyes with unique cross-shape were generals of a very dangerous northern tribe.

"You heard the rumors of our accursed enemies, the 'Heretical Empire', they apparently suffered a massive attack by the otherworld army." One of the mystery beings spoke with a deep voice but with a spark of joy for the news.

"Yes, although this is not a rumor, Warmaster Archaron said the Empire had stepped on the sphinx's tail when they opened the gate to another world and now they are stucking in a Great War, we will eventually have our chance," said an individual with his comrade.

"So, should we make our move as soon as possible?"

"Don't be so rush, we don't know how powerful this United Earth Alliance is, if the Heretical Empire wins this war, our precious spies could be in danger once again, we have to wait if the Terran Army attacks can cause more chaos in the Heretical Empire, then we can plan our next movements."

"I think you're right, if we're lucky soon this world will be our and the infidels will be purged, but when is that time supposed to be?"

"Soon, my fellow Champions, before being executed by the heretics, our Prophet said now is the time of ending, when the Empire and their false Gods will finally collapse into a trembling collection of shattered realms before being swallowed up by True Gods. If the otherworlder forces can manage to seriously hurt the military forces of the Heretical Empire, we will begin to enact our plan but for now, we just have to wait."

After that, the two dark beings disappeared back to their main camp without knowing they were tracked by a very special army.

Warmaster Archaron's Army Main Camp, Vatizanth, Amazonia

The nobles or knights rode out to hunt down northern cultists, they were like shepherds driving off wolves so the northern tribepreferred it when there were fewer nobles and knights around.

Until recently, they had to skulk around in the shadows, but now they could move around more freely.

In the darkness, over a hundred thousand chaos warriors gathered around the city of Vatizanth and gleefully rummaged through their spoils from a recent raid on a refugee caravan. Ever since the UEAADF bombers appeared, scores of villagers had fled. Laden down with luggage, they could not move fast, nor could they fight back. Why not attack them? There was no reason not to do so. They would slaughter and offer them to the Chaos Gods.

Their prey had not just been carrying coins and currency, but provisions as well. They filled their bellies with the food they had captured. They skinned the men alive then took turns raping the children and women while wearing the bloody face of their loved one, before cutting off their head sacrificed them to the Chaos Gods, but the more important cultist had already satiated their bestial lusts and were relaxing with wine.

In a large throne room without a dome, the Eight Generals of the Everchosen of Chaos gathered to discuss their strategy going forward. Wickedness and depravity radiated from their deformed forms.

"Good news! My spies have informed the human about the Imperial Family's location. With Tzeentch's blessing, the Humans will eliminate that bastard Molt and all his descendants for us." Egrimm the Spymaster bragged.

The group nodded in satisfaction. If the Emperor was killed the Empire would fall into chaos.

"Lord Arbaal! Warmaster Archaron and his army reached Lemuria Peninsula undetected." A malevolent female voice spoke up.

After hearing Dechala the Enchanted One, the Norscans' general laughed ecstatically. As expected of his Lord, the Great Three-Eyed King and the Lord of the End Times. Nature itself abhors his presence, the ground splits asunder at his feet, the air churns and swirls around him. He is Chaos Incarnate, the Herald of the Apocalypse, and where he walks the world trembles.

Standing tall in front of his army, Arbaal the Undefeated boldly declared. "Warriors of Tong, Norscans, Kurgan, and Hung. Our Warmaster, Archaron has come to Lemuria, in the sky the Eye of Terror has opened. They are the signs that the hour of fate will soon come. The Everchosen has departed from his black throne to prepares the blow that shall split the world asunder. Realms of old will fall, lost beneath the fury of the northlands, or smothered by vermin from below. Some heroes will battle on, too stubborn to realise all hope is lost. But their time is past, and a new age of Chaos and dismay beckons us. Right at this moment, our spies have penetrated deep into the enemy ranks and sowed chaos. Sharpen your weapons for our time has come."

"KILL THEM ALL!" The chaos-worshipping barbarians screamed with all their might.

Many chaos warriors in the place were dreaming about the blood bath and horrors they would unleash but in the midst of those perveted thoughts they heard a voice that sounded like a young girl.

"So you guys are the remnant of Chaos Insurgency, heretics like you don't deserve to exist."

"Who said that? Show yourself." Shouted one of the angry Chaos cultist.

In that moments under the low luminosity of the camp fire, a figure could be seen, the first thing anyone would think when they saw the girl was "black".

Her skin was so pale it was nearly transparent, her hair and clothes were black, and her eyes were bottomless pools of obsidian.

She held a heavy halberd in her hands.

It was a weapon that looked like someone had attached a heavy, slablike axe blade to a long shaft. It wasn't something a fragile little girl could swing like a matchstick. Nor was it something a girl in black lace should be wielding. That she could use such a weapon with her delicate, slender arms and her thin little fingers, as pale as white jade, was far beyond anyone's ability to imagine.

"Who you are?" Asked one of the generals, who showed signs of nerve and fear.

The girl, surrounded by an extremely powerful dark aura like the 'Death Incarnation' itself, said nothing, only advanced towards them.

She grasped the hem of her skirt and curtseyed elegantly.

At a glance, she looked to be around 13 if she was a human, and judging by her beauty and refined movements, she seemed to be a very well-bred girl. She had a brilliant smile on her face, but that smile did not reach her eyes. Her black pupils were filled with a hungry darkness, like a fathomless abyss.

The generals also retreated a little that sense of increased fear did not know why but they thought it has to be by an unknown magic.

"I repeat who you are, tell me before it hurts you." He shouted but inside the fear was consuming him.

The little girl stopped after the scream and from that pretty face, her eyes began to glow a spine-chilling crimson color.

"I'm Rory Mercury. Apostle of Emroy, God of War."

"I-is that the formal wear of the priestesses of the Temple of Emroy? One, one of the Thirteen Apostles, Rory the Bloody Reaper?!"

Where there is darkness, there is light. Fortunately for the mortals, each and every time the Everchosen have arisen to lead armies against the free lands of the south they have been driven back, for, it would seem, the Divine Powers that oppose the tide of Chaos Undivided are not without their own means. Throughout the troubled history of this world, whenever the Everchosen has been annointed by his daemonic masters, the mortal realms have risen up against him. Thirteen Apostles being the greatest of these champions to emerge from amongst the races of mortal.

An Apostle is a priest or priestess and chosen hero who has earned, through their unimaginable heroism and valor, the greatest favour of the 13 Gods. Every Apostle is a mortal who has earned the highest regard of the divine powers, short of having achieved godhood itself. Each is a legendary engine of mass destruction whose deeds have destroyed armies at a whim and whose skill at arms have decapitated Chaos Champions by the dozens.

Of all the mortal warriors across the civilisations of the Known World, 13 Apostles are the most feared, for they are truly like gods amongst Men. Clad in opulence magic armour and rich furs, they tower above even other chosen heroes, who are but feeble children by comparison. An Apostle's indomitable will is forged in the fires of war, their skills tempered and honed in the crucible of battle, and their blade is eternally quenched in blood.

Each Apostle has travelled a long and perilous road to their pre-eminence, a road paved with the broken corpses of less successful aspirants and fallen heroes. Regardless of their individual abilities, they are without exception powerful warriors, combining the superhuman strength of a dragon with the speed of a striking lightning. An Apostle's body regenerates any wound it recieves. Even if their body is torn apart to cellular level, the parts will heal if they are stuck together, in other words they cannot die. However, an apostle can be imprisoned or even de-facto eliminated by breaking them into small enough pieces and separating them over large distances, typically by burying said pieces.

The Apostle's abilities are enhanced further by "gifts" granted by their divine patrons. Seeking ever more glory in the eyes of their deities, an Apostle will test their mettle against the most accomplished of their foes' warriors, their forbidding challenge echoing across the field.

Those brave enough to meet an Apostle's summons to combat are briefly saluted before being hacked to pieces where they stand, for to stand against an Apostle is to invite a sudden and brutal death. Therefore, they are the enforcers of the Gods in keeping the Falmart in check by ''cutting tree branches'' that are grow to big, in this case is anyone attempting to make the advancement in dangerous technology and knowledge or putting down pesky races that come from beyond the Gate in other dimensions.

An Apostle is not only an exceptional warrior but also an exceptional missionary. A great leader, administrator and strategist, their sheer force of will and charisma binds legions of men and magical beasts alike to their service. Each Apostle's name is spoken in hushed whispers across the lands of Mortals, their violent deeds written in the blood of their enemies. The Apostle is the voice that condemns whole corrupted tribes and nations to death. Their gaze terrorises their followers into submission and grovelling obedience.

"Great armies shall be gathered and trained to fight all who embrace Evil. In the name of the Divine Thirteen, great warships shall be built to carry our holy warriors out amongst the Nine Sea, and we shall spread the True Faith to all the unbelievers. The power of the Thirteen will be felt far and wide, and the wicked shall be vanquished! Those who are prideful and refuse to bow down, shall be laid low and turned unto dust."

Despite their obviously superior power over normal magicans, a great numbers of cultists in the Chaos Insurgency still underestimates them due to their sheer delusion and arrogance.

Thirteen Apostles also are the Grandmaster of the Holy Order of Eden. The most powerful and influential religious institution in the Holy Darwinian Empire. As the world's oldest and largest continuously functioning global institution, it has played a prominent role in the history and development of Falmartian civilizations.

"Ara~ you knew? Mhm~ correct."

In the face of the laughing girl, the Eight Generals of Chaos clenched their teeth to strengthen their resolve. There were eight of them and only one of her, even if she was an Apostle, there was no way they could lose.

One of the generals approached Rory cracking his knuckles.

"Whore of Emroy, I – Kordel Shorgaar the Black Lightning will be your end!" He shouted to reassure himself while sweating profusely from fear. Kordel knew he only had one chance so he had to attack that bitch with his strongest spell.

Kordel levitates his staff in front of him vertically, then clasps his hands together. He then twists his head until it's perpendicular to the rest of his body and takes a bracing stance. He then produces a bolt of black lightning from the staff which extends and transforms into a dome of lightning, stationed far above his head and fastened to the ground by a large number of lightning pillars. A single jet-black pillar also reaches from the top of the dome toward the sky. "Chaos released: Thunder of Darkness!"

It all occurred in an instant.

There was a loud explosion below him, encasing the bewitched girl. A huge cloud of lightning still lingered for a couple of moments, it was so powerful that the atmosphere around became static.

"Hahaha! How do you like that, Emroy's harlot!?"

"Not bad – point a single finger at Kordel, "For a feeble Child!" She grined like a Cheshire cat, completely unaffected by the previous assault.

''Emroy Style: Majestic Hell's Fury!''

The War Apostle swinged her halberd releasing majestic flames covering a wide area in the form of a wave. The flames were very intense, when they hit the ground, they rushed towards Kordel like a large furious sea wave. The flames turned everything to ash upon contact and were hot enough to melt rocks along the way. The general tried to run, but was too slow for the flames. He was caught and only screamed once before disappearing into the inferno.

Witnessing the indignify end of Kordel Shorgaar the Black Lightning, Morathi the Invisible Slayer quivered in fear. Of course, a frontal attack would have no effect on an existence of that caliber. But perhaps an attack on her blind spot would reap better results for in the end, you couldn't hit what you couldn't see.

Morathi held up his sword in his right hand, and placed his left palm against the ring on his cross guard. The ring begins to spin as it releases dark energy. As it spins faster, the circle grows bigger and bigger until it's large enough to surround his body. The ring then splits into ten other glowing rings of similar size that encircle Morathi. With a slash of his sword, the circles go flying outwards and form a circular perimeter over a large area.

The dome creates a vacuum that nullifies the senses of spiritual energy, sight, sound, and scent. The only sense the victim retains is that of touch. Rory looked around with an amused look on her face. "This reminded me of my training with Master Emroy."

Morathi rushed forward and swung his adamantine blade towards Rory's neck with all of his strength, determined to cut her head off.

"Holy Chant: Sanctuary Veneration."

By generating a number of roman numeral-inscribed constructs from the fingers of her outstretched hand, several towering columns of mana, shaped like five-pointed cross, erupt upwards in a circular formation around Rory. The moment Morathi stepped foot into the pentagon-shaped seal he was immediately rent asunder by the "light of God."

"Too impatient! You shouldn't blindfold a lady on the first date." Rory mocked the dead general who had turned into chunks of flesh and gore on the floor.

As he heard those words Arbaal the Undefeated was already stretching his leg to gather mana to make it in front of the Apostle, he launched forth charging 100% power into his fist, his emotions and bloodlust were getting the better of him.

"YOU–WRETCHHHHH!"

Rory saw out of the corner of her eye the massive general moving towards her reeling back a fist, he was slower than she expected but his fist much more powerful than she thought he would be.

"Mountain Destructing Punch!" Arbaal howled.

"Amateur brute!" Rory muttered.

"Liushui Yanban!"

Rory easily diverted the blow off center with just one hand causing Arbaal to stumble away behind her. Using the momentum he pushed off his feet towards the wall, he was moving towards and bounced off, preparing another strike but again he hit nothing but empty air. Correcting himself and landing on the opposite wall, Arbaal charged forward again, his arm back in an attacking position but when he swung, Arbaal found himself suddenly on the ground. One of his arms had been severed clean and Rory was on top of him with her elegant legs on his back.

"I'm pretty disappointed, your attacks are too straightforward and easy to read." Rory taunted.

Arbaal didn't take the bait, he shouted 'burst' and his armor began to glow with light as his arm regenerated, he sped towards Rory launching a kick that to his surprise misses again, the acceleration of the maneuver sending him into a rock destroying it completely.

He needed more speed and decided to run around the arena, so he can get to top speed before coming back around and rounding on the alluring girl, but no connection again, he tried time and time again missing each time, Rory still with that smug look, which slightly ticked Arbaal off. He started trying even harder, mixing mock charges to disguise his true attack, but it didn't work no matter how many he did in-between real attacks, switching patterns and angle of his attacks, all of it was dodged so easily, with no sign of strain on the Apostle's exquisite face.

Arbaal was closing in on his limit, one final play he had in mind where he started his attack like regular coming around at full speed preparing another mock charge, but instead of falling back he used his mana boost to accelerate even faster than before at Rory performing a kicked that missed but carried his momentum into the air and landing down with a axe kick. His eyes wide as Rory seemingly disappeared again, only to see her blurry halberd coming towards his face from behind.

His vision turn red then dark forever.

From behind, Valnir the Sadist Reaper also rushed towards Rory, holding his tri-blade scythe. The general reached the girl in seconds and swung his scythe across Rory's chest. The petite girl held her halberd in front of her and blocked Valnir's strike. The weapons clashed and causing a bit of sparks to fly. Valnir attempted to overpower Rory with more power. But he realized that the dainty raven-haired beauty wasn't weak at all.

Valnir pushed back with all his power though and pushed Rory back. He swung his scythe towards Rory's head in attempt to half her head. Rory positioned his halberd horizontal to block the attack. While still holding back. She could see that Valnir was full of openings. The man did not have any defined fighting style. He was a brawler. It was annoying to fight against such a person.

The good thing was that they were unpredictable. But her Mystic Eyes quickly nullified that because it could predict the movements of her opponent. It was no fun. Added to the fact she had enough speed to react should anything unexpected happen, Rory found no joy in fighting a person like Valnir. That is why she had said she was not going to fight him but to simply incapacitate him.

The fool was also looking straight at her eyes. It was so annoying to fight someone who stupid enough to look straight into her eyes. Illusionary spell was easy to use given a situation like that. Rory had previously avoided using Illusionary incantation while fighting. It made things a lot easy. And there was no avoiding it as long as she had direct contact with an opponent.

Rory eyes spun slowly for a moment as she caught Valnir in her Illusionary world. It would only last for a few seconds. But that was what she wanted. While the general was inside her Illusionary world, his grip over his scythe weakened causing Rory to push back and make Valnir lose his balance. Rory jumped up and performed a round house kick hitting her opponent.

The man was sent sailing backwards along with his scythe that was firmly on his hand. Rory disappeared in a burst of speed and appeared behind Valnir. She kicked the man on the back while he was still carried by the momentum of being kick first by her. The kick sent the man crashing down the ground a small boom.

Dechala the Enchanted One shook her head. She knew that Valnir had been temporarily caught in an Illusion. She doubted that the man even noticed it. Knowing the fool, he might not have been aware of it. He would only show surprise upon being told about it.

They couldn't match that Emroy's bitch in wizardry skills or physical strength but Dechala had a secret weapon. Taking off her dress, Dechala reveals the Mark of Gomorrah tattooed on her skin. All who see the Mark of Gomorrah are instantly enchanted by Dechala − both men and women − into becoming completely captivated with her. Her influence affects them on an instinctual, unconscious level, unable to harm her or resist her to resist her control for too long will lead to vertigo, fever, headaches, and inevitably lead to brain damage.

To her surprise, Rory's dance of death actually came to a sudden end. The Apostle just stared at Dechala's huge milkers jiggling up and down as she performed provocative dance moves.

"It works, it actually works!" Burning with overwhelming pride, she gestured to the snake woman beside her.

"Vilitch do it now!"

Vilitch the Plague Witch, created an enormous "Poison Realm" around her body, large enough to dwarf multiple buildings and engulf a sizable portion of the city. If anyone unlucky enough to be within its radius, Vilitch can lower their resistance to anything, such as oxygen, causing them to become "poisoned" by high amounts of that substance. The Plague Witch then enlarged the bracelet on her arm and throws it at Rory, where it shrinks in size before making contact with a region of her body, at which point it forced all the potency of "Poison Realm" into this focal point, causing an "instant death" of that region of the body. To make sure, Vilitch throw every poision and plague in her arsenal at Rory.

The unbelievable happened twice, Rory was forced to one knee and began sweating.

"We did it! We defeat the whore of Emroy!" Vilitch and Dechala screamed in ecstasy. Their names will become legends comparable to the Everchosen. Howver, their state of euphoria was short-lived as Rory suddenly stood up as if nothing had happened.

"Lex divina!" Rory muttered.

Mouths gaping but before they could do anything, two sun-shaped marks appeared on Vilitch and Dechala rendering them completely immobile as the mark allowed Rory to take full control of their bodies. Their luck had really turned sour, Rory rarely used Lex divina on enemies beacuse it wasn't fun, but when she did, it meant a painful death to whoever dared to oppose Rory.

Tap, tap, tap.

The black leather boots drew closer. Fear squeezed their innards.

"Interesting abilities you have here!" Rory sincerely praised.

"Unfortunately, your opponent is me!" Rory said coldly.

The Apostles can develop immunity to any substance or mental-based attack they are hit with. The speed at which they gain immunity is extremely fast. Upon receiving the attack, their body would reflexively analyze and begin to generate immunity at a terrifying speed. As long as they have a minute, an Apostle can nullify almost any attack. Even when fighting viruses with unbelievable mutation rates, their immune systems automatically adapt to the change of "poison"; as long as the base of the poison remains the same, any change in the surface layer will cause their immunity to in turn adjust, rendering the poison ineffective.

Rory stood over Vilitch and Dechala paralyzed bodies. After opening two portal, she placed her hand on their tits and reaching for their ribcage. Pressing her hands against their ribs, Rory was able to feel the girls' heartbeat. They wererather slow… And then, they began beating rapidly as they realized what Rory was about to do.

"D-don't…"

Dechala stammered out with her worn-out voice - just as Rory opened a hole within her ribcage. And then quickly pushed her other hand through the portal - grasping the girl's heart. She ripped it out in one quick motion - the blood pump beating rapidly in her hands.

"One heartless bitch, aren't you?"

Rory taunted the dying women as she held the hearts in front of their faces. Rory squeezed them a few times - some blood squirting out of it and onto Vilitch's cheeks and forehead.

At this point the rest of the Chaos army scattered like leaves. They left everything behind and fled with all their might, driven by their fear of death.

"What, what the hell, how can we fight an Apostle!"

"Oh, no. No no no no no. You can't run away. Zeroth Division Attack!"

A telepathic message was transmitted to the dragon riders of the elite Zeroth Division. And soon a black blemish of sorts started to appeared in the sky to the east. The blemish gradually turned into a veil as it started to envelope the sky. Before long, the indistinct veil started to appear like it was made out of many dragons.

"Dragons? W-Wait… No… That can't be! Fuck!" The cultists started panicking.

"There's so many of them! There's too many!" They screamed in despair.

Thousands of Night Fury flew in circles all around Vatizanth, their uncountable number proving to be overwhelming to the Chaos army.

"All units, commence attack! I repeat: commence attack! Show the heretics the power of the glorious dragon riders of the Holy Order and burn them to cinders!" Knight Commander Vishnu gave orders through his manacom.

In response to his orders, the roar of thousands of Night Fury enveloped the sky before resonating throughout all of area. Having surrounded the city, the dragons simultaneously flew closer.

Egrimm's eyes widened as the swarm of Night Fury extended their necks and opened their mouths to allow for fireballs to form. All at once, the magical chants were completed, resulting in an ear-piercing, high-pitched sound. Then, the rain of fireballs commenced; each one filled to the brim with potent magical energy.

"A-A rain of fire…!"

KABLAM!

The mass of highly viscous flame bullets landed on the city, causing it to erupt like a volcano. Each one hardly had an effect on the fortress city itself, but the sheer amount of flame bullets allowed for even the humid environment of Vatizanth to burst into flames. Later touted by historians as the "rain of fire", the rage of the Holy Empire is unstoppable. Men, Magic beasts, Titans all burned to ash.

At the same time the fire went out for what seemed to be a kind of wind magic and the next thing that was heard were cries of pain and broken bones. The paladins in golden armor have entered the battle. The vastly more skilled and much better armed, far more organized with rigid disciplined and highly motivated paladins, cut through their disorganized enemies like hot knives through butter.

Rory jumped, carrying the heavy slab of metal that seemed to weigh several times more than her. She pursued the fleeing generals like a ferocious carnivore hunting down its prey.

The halberd covered in an immensely powerful soul-destroying magic cleaved through the cultists' heads like she was splitting watermelons at the beach, and the surrounding area was strewn with chunks of flesh.

"Ueh, abbah… aiiiieeeee!"

Rory towered over of the fallen man. She swung her halberd lightly, sweeping it behind her legs before she raised it high above her head.

Her snow-white skin was dyed red by sprays of blood.

"Ufufu… Emroy-sama said so, you know. The goal of all life is death. No one can escape it."

A pitiful scream rang out just as the halberd swung down.

"Haa… haa… haa… why, what is an Apostle of Emroy doing here?!"

Tyrion the Unmovable cursed his misfortune as he ran with all his strength.

A pitiful scream rang out from the distance. Rory the Bloody Reaper had claimed another soul.

"Damn, damn it!"

There were no paths in the wilderness at night. The countryside was littered with swamps, rock formations, thorny thickets and trees. The man stumbled occasionally, his body was covered in mud and sweat, and his clothes were torn.

Once more, a howl rang out from in front of him.

He slipped on a patch of mud.

His body slid across the floor, and he bashed his head against the ground.

"Dammit, dammit, dammiiiiiiit, why is my luck so damn bad!"

Rory ran towards the Chaos general but when she reached him she sensed a buildup of magic from the Tong general. She did not stop trying to kick him though.

''Chaos Barrier!'' The general yelled as he began to spin furiously and while he released black magic from his body. The black magic he released created a dome of black mist that rotated around him at a fast speed.

Rory's foot hit the spinning magic and was sent back. She flipped in midair and landed down the ground.

''That was unexpected.'' She said to herself.

Tyrion the Unmovable stopped spinning releasing his defense magic. He smirked at Rory, ''This is my ultimate magic bestowed by the Chaos gods themselves, the ultimate defense magic. With this you cannot touch me anymore.'' he said confidently.

''Ultimate defense you say,'' Rory said, ''Shall we test that?'' The way the apostle of Emroy spoke made the general wish he did not say the "Chaos Barrier" was an ultimate defense.

Rory did a single hand spell, ''Emroy style: Great Fireball'' A large fireball flew towards the general. It was as big as the house. Due to the cult leader's current condition he could not escape the spell by running away from it. Rory was aware of that. The only way for the general to defend himself was to use his Chaos Barrier.

The saw the Fireball coming towards him. ''Chaos Barrier!'' He yelled as he activated his defense magic again.

Both magics clashed but the Chaos Barrier held on. Rory ended her magic allowing the cult leader to do the same. The general was breathing heavier than before and was barely standing. The Chaos Barrier was taking a toll on him.

The Chaos Barrier had passed Rory's first test, but barely.

Rory held another single hand spell again readying for casting another powerful incantation.

Emproy style: Dragon Flame Caterwaul!

Rory yelled as five small flame fish like creatures with two large fangs raced at the general in five different directions. It was a spell Rory had inventing herself. All creatures seek out their targets till they hit. The only way to stop them was to make them hit something.

Tyrion gathered his remaining magic and called upon the Chaos Barrier again. One by one the flame dragons hit the general's defense. When each hit it exploded and the fire it created became one with Tyrion's rotating dome of magic.

Tyrion realized this when he felt the heat rise up and stopped spinning to avoid being burned to death by his own magic. But he did not get away without suffering slight burns on his clothes and skin. The general fell on his knees while sweating and breathing heavily. The heat that had surrounded was too intense for him. His magic was also depleted.

'It is not a perfect defense' thought Rory to herself.

She decided to try another spell. She had yet to try it while fighting with someone other than her golems. The general provided her the opportunity to test the spell.

She flashed through several hand gestures and expanded large amounts of mana...well to others who did not have much mana as Rory had.

"Emroy Style: Majestic Flame Destroyer!''

Rory breathed amount an unimaginable wave of flames that covered the whole space in front of her reaching the size of a small city. The wave of flames went straight at Tyrion who had his eyes wide open like a frog. Despite it being big it was not as big enough for Rory's liking. Still the flames were powerful enough to incarnate everything they touched.

The flames burned everything on their path as they made their way towards the general's position. The heat of the flames was too intense as everyone close to the battle field felt the heat. The general began to fear for his life he could no longer do the Chaos Barrier. He also could not escape to anywhere; the flames had blocked each path he could take. Backwards was a cliff, he could not go anywhere. Tyrion the Unmovable closed his eyes as the flames reached him and burned him to ash.

"Ara~ weren't you having fun?"

There was the sound of footsteps.

Upon hearing the clear, bell-like voice, Egrimm the Spymaster desperately looked up. The black-clad girl towered over him, backlit by the silver disc of the moons.

"Weren't you having fun just now? Chaos worshipers ?"

She planted the pointed tip of her axe between the man's spread legs, a hair away from his groin.

"Aiiieeee! I, I, I've never killed anyone!"

"Ara, really now?"

"It's true! I'm just the guy who goes around listening!"

"Hmmmmmm?"

Rory thought briefly about this before speaking to the man again.

"Are you the one who planned the terrorist bombings of the Empire's military facilities!?

"No, I wasn't me. That was Dechala!" Egrimm begged pitifully.

"The other cultists have all been called to be with Emroy. Don't you feel lonely by yourself?"

The man shook his head desperately. He was not lonely, not lonely at all.

"However, won't it be sad if you're the only one left out?"

"No, please, I would really like to be left out!" the man begged.

Rory looked at him with a cold gaze that was as sharp as a knife.

"What should I do with you, then~"

As she said that, Rory clapped her hands together.

"I've got it, this should be a good idea. Why don't you tell me what are your friends planning ?"

With that, the black-clad girl grabbed one of the man's legs.

He could feel an unimaginable strength that belied her delicate appearance.

"Ru run ra~" she hummed to herself, as she dragged the man like a mop.

"It hurts! Please stop! Gwaahhhh!"

The wilderness here was filled with rocks and sand. They tore the man's clothes to shreds as he was dragged across them, and then rubbed his sweaty skin raw. Soon his body was covered in his own blood.

While Rory was busy chopping Egrimm's body into pieces, the blood-soaked Apostle was suddenly teleported to an endless field surrounded by countless floating blue flames with monolithic black gears gyrating in the distance.

Frowning, "This is ~ Emroy's Field of the Fallen Heroes!"

It is a kingdom of rubble littered with millions, or perhaps a countless number, of swords anchored in the ground like grave markers in a wasteland, yet are well preserved. The innumerable stuck swords give the impression of the mountain of corpses, with no stars or roads. It is a world likened to a steel mill, filled with weapons, flames, and giant gears all bathed in twilight from the extended horizon but even this faint illumination was opaqued by a thick haze formed from embers and wisps of black smog rising from the ground, produced by the forging of iron.

Right above her, a giant figure at least ten feet tall clad in black armor with long brown hair, a square jaw, and a stern demeanor looking down.

Piercing her halberd deep into the ground, Roy showed her complete submission to her master by taking off her unclean clothes and kowtow naked; i.e. kneeling and bowing so low as to have her head touching the ground; eyes glued to the ground not daring to look up. Her revered patron god, Emroy had summoned her for the first time in fifty years."

Even as her mouth felt like a block of marble by the overwhelming existence, Rory forced herself to speak. "It is the greatest honour to be in your presence, Master Emroy. How may I, your ever faithful servant, carry out your will?"

Her master grimaced. "Your incompetence brought me here!"

"M–master!"

What had I ~ She wasn't even able to finish the sentence.

Grabbing Rory's slender white thighs with his hands, Emroy lowered her petite figure towards his flanged dick - more tentacles whipping towards her ankles and prying her legs apart. Rory's eyes widened in shock as she saw and felt her master's giant pernach dick push the white stumps of her flawless thighs apart - and poke against her dainty pussy entrance.

"N-no Master! I-it's too big! T-There's no way it'll fit! S-stopp!" She called out in fear - that dick was wider than her legs! How was it ever going to fit inside her?

"Stop… Please, stop… P-pleaseeeeee!"

The demigoddess screamed - waving her arms around in a futile attempt to get him to stop. The giant war god didn't listen, though - and just kept pushing his battle dick against her labia- rubbing the metal tip against her clit for a moment before brutally thrusting it in. Rory screamed as her cunt was pierced with his giant dick- and immediately pushed beyond any safe limits. Her inner vagina walls tore - blood from them escaping from her cunt and running down Emroy's dick only serving as lubrication for it.

"G-get it out! Master Please!"

Rory begged one more time - but in turn, Emroy just pulled her further onto his dick. His pernach dick was completely sheathed up her cunt, its thick meat shaft shoving her shapely legs apart - which, combined with the powerful tentacles still pulling at her legs, was enough to dislocate them. These were loud pops as her shapely legs snapped out of their sockets coincided with more screams from Rory - tears finally starting to flow out of her eyes. Her legs gave one final kick each before snapping - one of them throwing its boot off her foot. Then, her legs went limp - just bent in an awkward, painful way around Emroy's dick.

Her narrow cervix broke as Emroy slammed his pernach dick through it - her fragile womb immediately filled to the brim with his pernach dick. His dick stretched her poor uterus out far beyond its limits - just like with her pussy proper. A massive bulge appeared at the front of her belly - growing larger and larger each time he hammered his dick up her petite form.

With both her legs broken, and her arms in her master iron grasp, Rory's movements were limited. The pain in her cunt resonated within her head, her small squishy tits heaving as she sobbed. Due to the apostle's small build, her uterus was pretty tiny as well.

Encompassing the head of Emroy's pernach dick was almost impossible. It ballooned out, pressing against her other innards - but keeping them safe for the moment. Rory's baby chamber would not hold out forever.

Finally, it burst - Emroy's pernach dick slipping into her abdominal cavity as it tore. However, that tearing sensation also pushed him over the edge - the man just unleashing his semen right into Rory's guts.

Her stomach, now filled with semen, bulged out once more, - some of it, along with her blood, flowing free from the massive hole that used to be her pussy cunt as Emroy dragged her up and off his dick causing her anterior vaginal wall to prolapse.

Just one fuck session, and Rory was already a broken, crying mess. The girl's underaged body was damaged heavily - but the wounds weren't really lethal. Her limbs, her insides, her head, they all hurt - her suffering continuing. One session was not enough to satisfy Emroy's urges, though. Twisting the little girl around, he propped his cock against another wonderful fuckhole.

"P-please, Master don't! D-don't put it my a-ass hole!"

Her voice cracked as she begged her master to spare her poor anus - her sobs also breaking up her words. But Emroy was merciless. His flanged dick slid in between the firm cheeks of her woderful ass. Her adolescent external anal sphincter never stood a chance - the pelvic floor muscles reflexively clenched shut but ripped open beyond repair. Her rectum was split open as the metal dick entered it. Rory screamed in pain yet again - her voice now hoarse with how much she'd been screaming.

Her anal canal was nowhere near long enough to sheathe Emroy's cock. It tore right past it and into her guts - which lasted only a second before being ripped apart. His flanged dick entered Rory's abdomen again, this time from a different entry point - and at a slightly different angle. Now, there was nothing protecting her the organs in her belly from his flanged dick - with hisdick going hard on it. Her belly was bloated up with the head of Emroy's flanged dick.

Most of her guts were reduced to bloody smears - some of them still coiling around his flangeddick. Her organs would pop one-by-one - flooding Rory's belly with more blood as more and more pain got to her.

The black-haired demigoddess begged as her master continued to force his dick through her innards - the contents of her abdomen just squashed into a bloody red. Her belly bulged out as the massive metal pushed her skin outwards - the progress of Emroy's dick up Rory's torso easily visualized in her skin.

Sending her crimson eyes downwards, Rory could see the bulge - and feel the urge to vomit at the sight of it. Her master flangeddick ramming into the base of her stomach also helped pushed that sensation - but she didn't even have the strength in her to throw up anymore. She just shook weakly on her Master's dick as her asshole was brutally pounded - the entire torso skewered on the giant dick - her abdomen little more than just a flesh sheath for the giant dick. And not even a really good one - Emroy wasn't even able to fit his entire dick inside her. Even if that was the case, Rory still made for a functionable fuckdoll - letting Emroy work towards another powerful climax.

The continued and overwhelming agony was making it hard for her to cling to her Rory continued to bleed out, her movements continued to slow down - only barely twitching by the time Emroy decided his next move. Grasping Rory's head with one hand Emroy squeezed down on it. Two fingers slid on both sides of her neck, while the others mingled in with her long, silky black hair. With a flick of his hand, he twisted her head to the side - far beyond how far it could go.

Rory's spine snapped. Her body jerked up on Emroy's dick - the neck breaking awakening a new wave of spasms that coursed down her entire body. What still remained of her asscheeks clenched on her master dick. Emroy came more of his semen into her ravaged body. His semen flooded her belly - mixing with the load of semen he left there earlier and the paste that her organs were turned into. The shivers going through the fleshy walls of her abdomen also released urine from her perforated bladder. Some of that liquid poured free from her pussy - and some of it trickled down his penis.

As his brutal punishment continued, Emroy didn't let go of Rory's head. Instead, he just pulled it further around - making her look straight at him. She had a completely disgraceful expression on her face. One of her crimson eyes was rolled back, while the other was facing forwards - a stream of tears escaping from both eyes. A trickle of blood was pouring down from her nostrils - the old nosebleed joined by a new one as a result of the neck snap. Her small mouth was open, her tongue having slipped out from between her parted lips - spilling drool and just adding to the disgusting look on her face.

"Master," Rory begged, squirming under the harsh grip. "It's enough, please! I learned my lesson. I won't do it again. Please!"

Dragging Rorys body off his dick, Emroy decided he wasn't done punishing Rory. Her legs were dislocated, her belly was obscenely swollen, her neck snapped, her asshole and vagina were both stretched out… But there was still one more thing he wanted to do to her. The God of War let her body hang upside down and pulled hard on both legs - each in a different direction. His high grip ensured that both legs would stay attached to her body - the pressure instead focusing on Rory's crotch. Her slit and ass were turned into one joint hole as her skin and flesh began to tear - and once that happened, there was no stopping it.

The split quickly moved up Rory's body. Her stomach burst open, a lot of digestive juices spilling free - her organs pouring out as well. The wound continued on, her chest being next. Her ribcage stayed together for a moment, but were eventually torn open as well - her sternum shattered into pieces. Her small tits were split from one another, her heart ending up on one side - each half of her body also receiving one of her lungs. Like her heart, her spine stuck to one half for the most part.

It took Rory a minute to fully recover. She had angered her Master but when and why? Rory has always been a loyal servant and she has just defeated eight generals of Chaos and their army.

"Please forgive my foolishness, Master Emroy." She broke down and sobbed like a child.

"While you are busy hunting small fish in the middle of nowhere, the heretics have informed the human the location of the Imperial family. Right as we speak, their nuclear bombers're on the way to assassinate the Emperor! We're about to have an unprecedented crisis. But here you're, pitifully ignorant, feeling so hubris just because you killed some Chaos Champions." Emroy sternly reprimanded Rory for her complacency.

Realizing the fault in her ignorant sense of superiority, Rory begged for a second chance. "Master Emroy, please let me atone for my arrogance. I will go to the Emperor right -

"No need," Emroy interrupted her mid sentece, his tone still cold. "Lady Hardy already sent her apostle, Giselle to the rescue. You mission will be rescue Princess Pina and her nephew Prince Ainsworth. They're hidding in a villa in Esthirant. Their survival is crucial for the fate of this world."

"Yes, right aways, Master!"