15[20:04] Keldar surveils the southern front, watching Akasha stalk up and down the depleted and sheltered lines of Elegba's grand volunteers. Meanwhile, Stranger stands aboard the Final Word attempting to weave the fractious Lookshyan host together in the wake of losing one of its great heroes. 15[20:05] In another world entirely, Xu Sim and Xia Lan float beneath a foreign sky, watching half a battle unwind in the ghost of the Yellow River and trying to figure out how to get or reach home. 15[20:06] It's nearly dark; the sun is red and low in the west; the Underworld's sky is an indifferent gray, stars winking into view one by one above as they just barely outshine the dim light of the realms of the dead. [20:21] <@Ferrinus> 12Keldar's troops are here and ready to be pulled together into any sort of array. What the Dawn Sergeant wants to do is simple - march on over, under cover fire from the lightning ballistae and other Shogunate contraptions that the Lookshyans have brought with them, and then simply grind the remains of Elegba's forces to dust. Hopefully, between Keldar and the remaining Terrestrial [20:21] <@Ferrinus> 12soldiers, the warstrider itself can be dismantled or at least disabled. [20:21] Xu Sim: "We should snatch up one of the Raksha nobility and see what we can do to find our way back." [20:22] <@Ferrinus> 12Still, Keldar has to ascertain such a plan's feasibility, and that's why he's been thinking, pacing, peering through a spyglass, and occasionally and circumspectly asking Stranger if the Lookshyans have got their shit together. [20:22] 13Xia Lan peers out from the storm rider. "Any chance of finding them isolated and easily kidnappable? Pity there aren't any lengthy unguarded trade routes around..." [20:23] 14Stranger has finished working the officers on both sides of the divide. The final touch is going to have to come from Vuol Ballare herself, he wagers. [20:24] 14To that end, he requests a private audience with the Dragonlord, even over whatever Codex-like divide they're using to communicate. Emissary business. 15[20:25] Stranger's able to take a private communication with Ballare below-decks while she continues the fight above. [20:27] "Aren't you the one with a history of banditry? Tell me where to aim this thing," he suggests. [20:27] 14Stranger: "Hail Dragonlord. Given your pressing duties and my own here attending to the Dawn Sergeant, I'll be brief. I'm sure you've noticed that there is a rift in your officer corps, and that it has to do with the late, fallen Nessun Dorma." 15[20:28] "Grief is ugly," Ballare says. [20:29] 13Xia Lan: "They usually were miles away from anybody else, and I was working with more than two of us. Give me a second..." [20:31] 14Stranger: "Perhaps. There will be time for it later; I'm not concerned with grief qua grief right now. I'm concerned about how it can be used and focused. And that starts at the top." 15[20:34] Ballare is silent, clearly waiting for Stranger to continue. [20:35] <@Ferrinus> 12Keldar's going to grill Ballare's subordinates while Stranger deals with the thunderer herself. He needs to know what kind of tricks the southern Raksha have displayed so far, especially whether they've got landmines or sinkholes or other traps to hide behind. 15[20:37] The Lookshyans don't have an answer for Keldar; because of their superior firepower at range they haven't pushed infantry into the zones held by Elegba yet. [20:38] "I am not Xu Sim, Dragonlord. I am not here to heal your men and women and make them whole; I was not Nessun Dorma's friend and I have no aim to be yours. What I am is a pragmatist and a realist, and what I see is an army with a very worrying faultline. This concerns me because as soon as we win here -- and we will win here -- the issue will become what we do about Thorns. The Office [20:38] of the Emissary of Nexus has had to make a choice about which faction with which to throw in our lot; given what Thorns is and what Thorns represents, you will not find it surprising that we have chosen you. But the bannermen of Lookshy will need to be their finest force, both now and during the spoils. And both of us know that right now, they are not." 15[20:39] Ballare: "...what are you proposing?" [20:43] 13Xia Lan: "...ugh, I never had the head for this, Kana always handled this part. Try and skim the back edge? Might be less expected of an angle." [20:44] "The impression that I received from Dorma's officers is that you have not addressed the fall of their liegelord to any sort of satisfaction of theirs; the impression I received from your officers is that they remain preoccupied with what Dorma's officers think and believe. I do not get the impression that you are a speechifier; neither am I, really. I prefer to do my work in backrooms [20:44] rather than at podiums. But you will need to make a grand gesture, a tough-but-fair, come-to-the-Dragon moment where you bring your command deck together. Dorma's people think you're an asshole, but they can work with and respect an asshole so long as she's effective, direct, and honest about what she needs them to do; your people think Dorma was a pitiful cautionary tale, but they [20:44] respect his sacrifice, and you can use that respect to bind them closer to the fallen Dragonlord's officers who revere him." [20:44] "Let's go!" [20:45] "The other option is that the whispering on your command deck continues, the rift widens, and Thorns has a backdoor into your unit morale." 15[20:52] Xia Lan and Xu Sim surge forward, across the river and towards the bank ranks of the furthest raksha, seeking their generals and lieutenants. 15[20:55] Ballare is silent for a long time before she says "You talk sense. But know this: Nessun Dorma shook hands with the devil and now he does it in Hell. I am not Nessun Dorma." [20:56] 14Stranger: "Of course not, Dragonlord. I could not have this conversation with Nessun Dorma. That is one of the many reasons you have prospered, and he has fallen." 15[20:57] "So it is. Get off my ship, Emissary." [20:57] 14Stranger will not attempt to counsel her on her speech or dictate its contents any further, nor will he keep her from the front any longer than she wishes. [20:58] 14A smile tugs at the corner of his mouth. "With pleasure, Dragonlord." [20:59] <@Ferrinus> "It's like this," 12says Keldar to Stranger, once the Eclipse is back among the people. "We can crush them... except they've definitely got some kind of trap or situational advantage that we can't see and that they're counting on getting sprung once we come across the river." [20:59] 14Stranger: "Have we been unable to get eyes on this trap?" [20:59] <@Ferrinus> 12Keldar: "I can't figure out what it is. If the Lookshyans can't, I don't know, pave a whole new battlefield in front of us as we go, I have a mind to go in ahead of the troops and try to spring whatever it is myself." [21:00] "Well, that does sound sporting, at least. I've exhausted myself a bit with the rigors of getting past the stubborness of the entire assembled Lookshyan host." 14He quickly summarizes his conversations with the officers and Ballare. [21:01] "But give me a bit of time and I'll be fit to join you. I can also ask the Crows to take a cursory look from the air." [21:02] <@Ferrinus> 12Keldar: "Bird's eye view would be good. If we can pull together, basically, two units - us and some of the Terrestrials, then our combined forces bringing up the rear - I think we can do this." 15[21:20] Qaile's tribe is able to make a furtive report to Stranger, who can explain to Keldar, and the two of them can disseminate that information how they please. The temporary loss of their forward flyers has taught them that there are tangible distortions in space peppered across the southern front. There aren't enough crows to find the weak spots between them, but there are at least a 15[21:20] few; the rest found themselves flying back across the river where they came from. [21:22] <@Ferrinus> 12Keldar: "Interesting. Bit of a relief - not being able to bring as many people to bear as I like's a better problem to solve than half my men getting blown to hell." [21:23] 13As their rider approaches the group of raksha, Xia Lan has to bat a few arrows out of the way - surprisingly good shots, these guys - but the second she's in position to do so, she takes a running leap and flips out the front of the stormwind rider into the fray! [21:23] 13She lands while twirling her twin hooked swords, Before and After, casually swiping away any of the fletchers unlucky enough to be in her landing zone, or foolish enough to approach her afterwards. "Hello! Just here to visit, please keep your hands away!" [21:24] <@Ferrinus> 12How many of the Dragon-Blooded are willing to join Keldar and Stranger in probing the front lines - or are they all needed to guide the actual troops? [21:24] 14Stranger will formally release the crows from duties for the rest of the campaign; he's got a responsibility not to get them all killed. 15[21:25] Xia Lan and Xu Sim are both able to weave between the hail of arrows that descends upon them. [21:26] 13Honestly, archers are cowards. Can't even handle a little in-your-face action. 15[21:28] It looks like Ballare's officers are loath to follow Keldar and Stranger into battle, though they're happy to provide support. They get the impression that Ballare has hardened them against direct cooperation with the heroes of Nexus. [21:29] 14Well, that was probably going to happen anyway. [21:31] <@Ferrinus> 12Hmph. They'd better be ready to move on the signal, then. Here's the plan: both armies cross the river and take positions on the southern bank. Then Keldar and Stranger forge out in search of the widest safe path, or biggest cluster of safe paths, forward, which the Nexus and Lookshy armies will proceed to pour down with cold iron at the ready. Elegba's forces will see doom bearing [21:31] <@Ferrinus> 12down on them like a river through a collapsing dam. [21:43] <@Ferrinus> 12It's in full view of Elegba's forces, standing at the head of a great mass of troops who've just disembarked from barges and begun to array themselves, that Keldar roars wordlessly and bursts into golden-red flames. The earth beneath him splits as he tightens his grip on the grand daiklave currently driven point-first into the earth; as he draws the blade and levels it across the [21:43] <@Ferrinus> 12field before him, it becomes very hard to imagine Elegba living to see another day. [21:44] "Grittoth, Phanatus, strike forth," commands Xu Sim as a pair of snarling erymanthoi suddenly appear. [21:44] 14Stranger Visits Heaven had forgotten, somehow without ever seeing it before, the fully glory of the hero-saint-generals of the Solar Exalted. [22:05] 05Xu Sim calls upon the power of sorcery, and the brain of Ardua held firmly in its skullclamp, casting his reagents forth in the form of the deadly obsidian butterflies. However, the butterflies themselves are sickly and wan, lacking the deadly potency they require; they scatter off the shields of his enemies below. 15[22:08] Xia Lan feels a wicked draft as the butterflies whiz around her, cutting something even if it's not her enemies. If she or Xu Sim looks down, they'll see the ground split open like raw wounds, spread earth exposing ruthlessly geometric lines of stone. 15[22:11] A hideous mist spills forth from beneath. 15[22:25] Xia Lan is able to weave beneath the Cataphract's sword as Elegba, a world away, urges his comrades on. [22:30] <@Ferrinus> 12As Keldar's the mortal vanguard, the warstrider "Akasha" is the faerie's, and so the two titans are the first to meet. Keldar charges and leaps, bringing Terminus down in an essence-laden arc -- but the mighty blade clangs against one of Akasha's upraised limbs and is stopped dead! [22:36] 14Stranger steps back, judges the distance, and snaps his wrist forward. The parasol flies from his hand, a colorful streamer behind it tied to the Solar's wrist -- and hits the glass atop the watcher's mount on the Wailing Wall with a satisfying, spiderwebbing think [22:36] 14He snaps his wrist again, and the streamer and parasol fly back to his hand. [22:41] <@Ferrinus> 12Keldar drops and settles backwards into a defensive stance, crossing his daiklave over his torso, just as the metal monster readies a counterstrike. Incredibly, its enormous fist loses all momentum as it strikes the warrior's blade in mirror of the tableau both comabatants made mere seconds ago! [22:55] 5Grittoth, the orange-furred beast, rolls into the fray, swinging hairy arms and clubbing together the heads of its foes. [23:01] 5The green Phanatus screeches a dreadful, ear-piercing shriek, its mouth formed into a perfect hooting shape as it fanatically begins ripping goblins limb from limb. [23:10] 13As Xu Sim moves his rider, Xia Lan sees her chance and leaps!!-- And then is cruelly dragged back down into the fray by the grasping hands of one of these horrible freaks. This really is not going the way she drew it up. Guess that's why Kana always did it. [23:15] 5Xu Sim frowns as he continues calling up the next round of terrifying butterflies. Thank goodness for demons! They'd be really in bad shape if it wasn't for the help of those fearsome blood apes. "Just keep moving," 5he calls down to the Unfettered, unhelpfully but sympathetically. [23:16] 13She shouts back: "Thanks, hadn't figured that out!" 13right before she kicks uselessly at one of her attackers. [23:32] 13Then a bunch of horrible ghosts nearly drag her down with them, and she's too busy cursing up a storm in Flametongue to yell at Xu Sim anymore. [23:37] <@Ferrinus> 12The fight's narrowly going Keldar's way - he deflects another shatteringly powerful blow into the ground before running up the warstrider's arm and delivering a ringing blow to its cranium that doesn't so much as dent the metal but does leave it ringing like a bell and staggering for a few moments. [23:37] <@Ferrinus> 12From behind him, a hail of arrows falls like rain upon the warstrider, and does about as much damage. [23:38] 14Stranger slips around the outside of the fray -- dances almost -- as he hears the Dawn Guard advancing behind him. It could be going worse. 15[23:44] NEXT TIME: Desperation