Yet another lost Armor
Deep in the factory's depths there is a flash of light, a burst of electricity, a loud cracking sound, and a newly designed and crafted suit of armor vanished from its housing. The minds made note of this abnormality and began construction on a replacement suit.
Deep in the woods on an unknown world there is a flash of light, a burst of electricity, and a loud cracking sound as a six meter tall suit of armor appears and… does nothing. Days pass, leaves build up at the armor's feet, a storm blows through and the waterlogged soil causes the suit to sink partially.
Months pass, it sinks a further five feet before hitting solid ground, more and more leaves and detritus build up around that suit, and slowly the armor is buried, its jewel encrusted engraved and polished surface stays untouched by the forces at work around it.
Years pass and the only trace remaining of the armor on the surface is a small hill that formed in an odd location, nothing of particular note. Beneath the surface its power core burns hot, its shields and weapons waiting for a fight it may never reach, to defend a bearer it may never have. It's pseudo intelligent systems offline in the absence of threat or stimuli. It could wait centuries before even imaging running low on power.
Decades pass, the forest itself has shifted, life within becoming fraught with mutations as tainted energy seeps throughout the world. The suits' sensors log it as passive scans from an unknown source, the scans fail to find the suit and so it slumbers on.
The forest begins to team with corruption, more and more creations are born every moment, more than the forest could ever hope to sustain. They turn on one another, ripping flesh from kin and growing ever stronger. The creatures fight on, not knowing of the metal monster slumbering beneath their claws.
The energy crests to a new height, and the barest tendrils find the suit. They reach insid… with a lurch the suit wakes a burst of energy pouring from within and pushing the foulness back. It was awoken and the suits' sensors search, finding more sources of the tainted energy throughout the woods. The suit digs its way out of the soil and is immediately beset by a tide of horrors.
Fleshy corpses infected with a myriad of diseases and parasites, plants and beasts driven to madness and given foul strength, creatures formed of that tainted energy trying to tear out the armor's heart.
They all die. The suit moves on, more sources of the energy have been discovered, more enemies, and in even greater quantities. The source of the attack will be found and purged. Threats will not be allowed to remain, even without a wielder to protect.
The entire forest is tainted, the energy the armor now recognized as an enemy pervades every leaf in every tree, and so the suit purges every leaf and every tree, striding through the forest with bounding leaps, the plasma reactor at its core burning ever hotter, radiating enough heat that the trees outright combat. The armor with white pulsating heat. A portion of a shackled star at its core, bathing its surroundings in radiation.
It had been designed as a new defense mechanism, but it served well enough in its new role as a fire starter. The armor noted the beasts steadily becoming more humanoid, some even wielding crude weaponry. But the effectiveness of a stone arrowhead was much reduced when both the wooden shaft and stone arrowhead would evaporate before coming near the suit, even without the laser defense systems.
The armor was not a weapon, but it certainly wielded many. The suit strode towards a point where its sensors noted the energy was congregating, it watched the moots of power nearly become visible as the ash it left in its wake began to be pulled by unseen winds. And it readied its weapons systems.
It slowly strode from the treeline, its sensors picking out hundreds if not thousands of the 'beastmen' in the clearing, along with hundreds of the hostile energy forms. But while its sensors noted them as a threat they pinged the suits' nascent AI with what the creatures had been attacking before it burst forth with a wave of fire, heat, and ash. A group of stout humanoids in heavy armor, along with another group of taller, more leith humanoids with pointed ears.
They were not tainted, and they were certainly not producing the waves of tainted energy like a fair majority of the beastmen and energy forms. So they were noted as non hostile. And given they were fighting the same energy forms it was the AI saw no need to kill them in its purge.
That did mean it needed to be slightly restrained, but the armor would not broker being called a crude tool of war. It could wield itself with mechanical precision. Even its waves of radiation could simply be diverted by its systems, preventing them from striking its maybe allies.
The suits reactor spun up higher, its energy stores skyrocketing to unsustainable levels. And the glow and heat put off by the suit began to ratchet up at a rapid pace. The beastmen, warped and tainted by their foul masters, had been granted supernatural strength and durability. But the dark gods could do nothing to save their servants as they were shredded on the most fundamental level. Their very cells and DNA turned to sludge.
But the daemons had no such issues, they cared not for the physical laws of reality. Radiation damage could not so easily kill them. The heat would, fire and heat still burns them. But it would not stop them from using their fellows as shields to close the distance. And that is exactly what they did, turning from the elves and dwarves and charging the suit, their press of bodies forcing the ones heading the charge to take the brunt of the heat.
It was a good thing then that the suit hadn't intended for the heat and radiation to kill its foes. Those were just unshielded byproducts of its power production, no it had stored so much energy for a far more productive reason. Immediately the tide of daemons slammed to a halt as they crashed into solid air, and then within that white glowing sphere the suit maintained around itself lances of energy shot out. Lasers pierced through scores of daemons with every shot, and the suit watched as the energy was dispersed into the environment around it, only to be pulled in another direction.
With all the known threats dead, the suit rapidly cooled down, the radiation it emitted would not linger for long and it had numerous systems to disperse the heat it had built up. Cycling it back into the suits' power stores, leaving the environment somehow even colder than when it had started, bits of frost forming on the ground around it. The suit cared little for these details, simply striding through the scorched field to the only part left untouched by its heat. Its own shields having kept both the radiation and the burning air from reaching the humanoids.
Its own walking towards them wasn't even because the suit was interested in them. It did have some inclination to keeping them alive, yes. But it could do that from a distance, no it was following the trail of energy.
On the suit strode, only take faint note as the elves and dwarves followed in its wake, even if it had understood their language and quiet chatter it would not have cared.
--
The dwarf Gimli, a prince of the northern Kraka Drakk had gone with the elven prince Laequalys on what they had thought would be a simple beastmen hunt. A friendly competition to strengthen the bond between the two races. Something they had done on many occasions. They had left with only a few dwarven and elven rangers and bodyguards and set out to investigate the beastmen sightings.
It hadn't taken long for the pair to realize it had been a trap or trick of some sort, and they had resolved themselves to fighting through it together. Only for the majority of the enemy to just die outright when a metal behemoth the size of a gronti walked into the clearing with a wave of ash and nearly blistering heat. Gimil had thought it a champion of Chaos and had been about to charge through the beastmen horde to cut the strike off at its head, only Laequalys hand clamping on his shoulder stopped Gimil's charge. "The winds of chaos do not touch that thing, it rejects them utterly" that got a grunt from the dwarf "so what is it then?" he spoke between each swing of his heavy runed hammer.
The elf responded after cutting the heads off of three beastmen. "I do not know, but look, it burns the beastmen and Daemons." the dwarf hacked through to sets of knees and crushed a daemon under his heel "I'm not some freakishly tall thing like you, I can't see past the crush of bodies" that was only patrialy true, it was large enough he could see parts of its head, and he seemed to be making an admirable attempt to solve that problem by making a massive pile of bodies. But soon the flow of bodies stopped to a trickle as the beastmen grew sluggish and then just fell over dead. Blood pouring out of every hole on their bodies, what little skin could be seen under their fur red and peeling.
"I thought you said they didn't have magic? Not that this is a bad thing mind you" the elf shook his head as their remaining bodyguards pushed out in front of them. "It doesn't, whatever it is doing doesn't affect the winds in the slightest." by now the last beastmen was a bloody corpse on the ground, not even twitching. And Gimli could see that every daemon they hadn't killed was charging the metal beast that had to be some seven meters tall, and outright melting before they reached. "You've seen a gronti right? Does this look anything like that to you?" Laequalys shook his head "they pull up the deep magic to power themselves, this thing just has something at its core. Burning the unseen winds but not consuming them"
Then before either could decide to help the thing it showed that it really didn't need their aid, lances of bright light the uneducated would think was magic. Punching holes straight through the daemons but always only lightly singeing the ground or plants it struck. Even the larger forms fell when a hole bloomed where their heads should have been. Gimli felt his jaw nearly drop, few weapons could do that and none could hit so many daemons so rapidly. "Well at least this just got far more interesting" Gimli spoke and Laequalys nodded "if we could learn such a technique… I imagine the arcane scholars would be interested in studying.. Whatever this is"
Now that it was coming closer Gimli could make out the details on the armor better, delicate swirls and gems coated its metal surface, the swirls and lines so fine and small it'd take a dwarf craftsmen months. He might not be a craftsman himself, but any dwarf would agree that this thing was a work of art. Tastefully using gold and silver to accentuate what looked like tempered steel. Though given the heat it had withstood Gimli doubted it was just steel. The thing had been glowing white when he first saw it, and the metal wasn't even the slightest bit warped.
His guard went up as the thing only walked closer, not even slowing its pace. But given the range on its weapon and the fact it hadn't yet attack…. Gimli certainly wouldn't be making the first attack. The runelords' gifted armor might be a masterwork of runes but that was no reason to heedlessly attack something that might not be a threat. Still the prince's guards formed up around them both.
Only for the thing to walk past them like they weren't there, "it heading the same way the winds are being pulled. There must be a ritual sight there! I should have known!" the elf's mutter grew to a growl at the latter part of the sentence. "We can't just let them do whatever they are doing!, this many beast men and daemons?, it won't be good" Gimli just snorted at that "stating the obvious there ain't ya elf, but are ya sure we need too. That thing's got this handled." not to mention they had wounded.
Laequalys only let out a haughty scoff, the same one he did whenever he spoke something that would upset Gimli. "You'd leave something this important to an unknown? Thats not very dawi of you" Gimli knew it was just friendly ribbing, but the elf wasn't wrong per say. Even with wounded they weren't in danger of dying and looking around everyone still seemed up for another fight. "Aye, I'll give you that, we follow"
They set out with a clattering of metal, mostly metal gauntlets against shields or weapons pounded into armor. creating a symphony intentionally as a sort of matching chant. it wasn't like the sorcerer wouldn't know they were coming by now, so they might as well put the fear of dwarven steel into them, and elven Gimli supposed.
As Beastmen after Beastmen after Daemon fell without even the elf managing to loose an arrow Gimli was starting to think they wouldn't be needed at all. And his vague worries over their wounded lessened, though he still had them moved to the center of the formation. That was only common sense.
It might have even been safer to follow in the wake of this thing. Not only was it clearing a path through the dense woods, but any thing that could be considered a threat was just unmade. Nothing had even managed to get close enough to touch the… he was just going to call it a gronti in his head. As long as no runelord heard it he was fine. As time went on the only things he spotted about it were an ever increasing amount of weapons. Something like a catapult that launched explosive balls, another that launched small metal balls at insanely high speeds. Some odd self propelling arrows that also exploded. Actually there was little this thing did that didn't explode in some way. Even its heat had made anything with water in it pop.
as they walked deeper into the woods the taint of corruption grew worse, the trees and plants barely resembling their mundane counter parts and Gimli was forced to accept that this whole area would need to be torn up root and stone just to keep mutant beasts and monsters from plaguing nearby settlements. and his hate of the beastmen responsible only grew deeper.
AN-
bonus points if you can tell me where the characters are from, a hint is its a quest on sufficient velocity. this is mainly just missing the last fight scene and maybe some more.
Also some minor temptation to make this a quest for the armors actions and choices. if I end up doing that it'll only be a few options, and probably no write ins or anything. also doubt this will be more than a three parter.