Scene #6305: A Dark Maiden's Voyage

Owner	Pose
Bloody Revelations	Though plans past acquiring more and more giant and hyperdestructive toys had been more than a small degree of murky, after thoroughly exploring all other options, the self-designated leader of a very unpopular crew, albeit at least increasingly feared, crew has declared all other opportunities a wash. That's almost borderline code for going with the Alchemical's plan; hitting a sizable port for a shock raid, grabbing a foothold and drumming up ghost cannon fodder from whoever comes out to fight them. It's too small of a task to commit all three major resources against (Orcinus Rex, Luthe, the Brass Leviathan, as Haggard's summoning hadn't panned out to more than keeping the Hearthstone and a week of ??? research), but large enough to warrant one, the choice come down to being the smaller of the two mobile cities capable of loading up on tons of supplies and hundreds of prospective 'volunteers'; the great ghost precursor to all whales. A night attack, over the Sea of Shadows, on the southernmost, wealthiest, and softest of the Skullstone Archipelago's four islands. Close, rich, plenty of living who aren't suicidally loyal to the Silver Prince, and his projected 'face' to the outside world. Bloody Revelations isn't a sailor, but Orcinus Rex, especially directed along occult naval maps by the freaky former head of the shanty community of mad ghosts that live(d) in his mouth, certainly knows the ways out of the Ocean of Endless Night and into the dark night waters of the actual ocean, beyond the fake one hidden in the Labyrinth. It's hardly a half hour's voyage riding atop him or following in his wake when the ghastly six-finned city whale cruises out from the center of the Underworld to tens of thousands of miles out onto the ocean, without the end of one and the beginning of the other ever quite being obvious. Reasonably, the closest thing to teleportation that exists in Creation should be a surefire bet for an uninterceptible blitz attack, appearing right where one shouldn't be before one can be spotted and ships can arrive in defense. That makes it more than a little suspect when a dozen black silhouettes carrying flickering blue lights on the waves are closer than that of the dark shores still a mile past them in the distance. One could theoretically expect the Silver Prince to have cast a wide net with his Black Fleet, large and militarized by Creation's standards, but altogether not nearly enough to stretch thin against any of the superweapons in the group's possession. Instead, none of the ships are recognizable as any make that has existed on these waters thusfar. Sharp, cutting prows, steep concave sides, spines piled on walls piled on walls atop their decks, a complete lack of sails, massive rotating weapon batteries, and a light-absorbing grey-black colour; the design is coincidentally reminiscent of modern, state of the art ships, save for the fact they're obviously made, top to bottom, of Soulsteel. Three packs of four battleship-class vessels is far too much to be a coincidence, and twelve more of anything resembling First Age technology that the Silver Prince should have. They're spaced dead center, and flanking partially left and right in the path of the great ghost-whale and its entourage, on an obvious intercept course. Spying through long range vision (even old-fashioned telescopes) confirms immediately that there are nothing so quaint as ballistae or cannons aboard, and that the entire crew of each is filled by nephwracks --semi-insane bloodthirsty cousins to average ghosts-- making for easily thrice what it'd take to crush just about any fleet that isn't one of the Realm's core battlegroups. The Isle of Cormorant, the actual target, is directly behind.
Starbound Flotilla	"I can practically smell the disgusting hunger hanging on the breaths of these 'crews'. I would suspect it to be berserker front-line suicide, if not for the gleam of a bygone era." "Well, cool, guess we can't do any goddamn thing without Prince Second-Place knowing way ahead of time and prepping some bullshit. Suppose it's too late to turn back around and just let 'em eat each other instead?" "Floran thinksss, not that crazy. Isss violent, like sssavage Floran, but not sssavage enough, too ssstrong. Floran thinksss, gotta do now, not later. He'll reinforce if we go later." "'Fight now' is great advice, but it doesn't tell us much of /how/. What's our approach here? I can't smite much at all without something to smite with, you know." "Warning. I am seeing... Ten. No, twelve battleship-class vessels." "Hhhh. Any air escort?" "Skeptical. They're First-Age. They won't be lacking for anti-air." "We have to work with what we have." "And what the hell is 'what we have' here? We have nothing, dude." "We're salvagers. They're mentally unsound. So we salvage." "Star squad, take them apart." The Flotilla deploys from the whale. Six small starfighters in a tight V formation, trailing six shining gold exhaust trails. They're small, single-seat things, with cockpits that barely form over the body and could probably be swapped out for an open seat. But they fucking book it fast. "If they're as mad as they look, they can't repair. Insanity is vulnerable to sappers. Star squad, intercept at twelve, zero angels. Hit deck and disassemble." They're low, low as they can get to the water, maybe even under it if the Luthe tech was easy enough to intergrate in time. Unless something knocks them out of the attack, they surge up and out of it, dispersing their vehicles and landing on the decks of the pack of ships heading right for Orcinus Rex, with one thing in mind: Absolutely ripping them apart with a vicious engineer's eye. They don't need to destroy things, they just need to render them inoperable without some modest expertise. After all, if the crew are mad, bloodthirsty berserkers, they won't be able to make those critical Lore and Engineering checks you'd have to make to fix a busted First Age engine, right? But there's no absence of weapons drawn to strike at the crew aboard with ultraviolence as they try to navigate over and between the decks and engine sections.
Azure Armature	The whole situation smelled like a rat. Normally, it would be a constant of life - that your plans would be leaked to the enemy, especially one as insidious as the various slum-rats and cancerous black growths on the metal behind of Autocthonia's pimply back. Information was need-to-know, and even then, it got out. This situation was different. Azure Armature, AKA 'Blue', stood on the prow of one of the Team Vermilion ships (potentially the Big Ship) and considered the array against them. "Gentlemen." Her voice is soft, yet audible across the Vermilion fleet. "After this, we will have to do some housecleaning, as there is certainly a leak. But this is not the Silver Prince's moment of triumph. This is his moment of hubristic shame. He has sent his array of shiny, special craft fit to sink us, not knowing that pieces on the table are more fluid." She blinks to the top of Orcinius Rex in a puff of math, posed with arms crossed and scarf billowing like a flag in the dead wind. "Shock troops manning unbreakable prows. Direct. Simple. Our answer should be simple, likewise." "Clear their decks, and deny the prince both his crews and his trinkets." She then teleports up to the top mast of the lead ship, crouched, before spraying down the nephrack-laced deck with a few pyretic globs of sticky napalm shot. "And try not to get flipped yourselves."
Staren	The Star Hawk flies along behind the whale, or rides atop it to save on energy expenditure. He was expecting to take out the port's military capabilities, maybe a token garrison force, but now they're fighting ships? He can't assume a ship won't be able to hurt his mech, Flint taught that lesson quite well back in Boston. How did the Prince know? Some kind of divination magic, perhaps? Someone comes up with a plan to target weapons -- the berserk ghosts won't be able to repair them. Sounds good! <"I'm not familiar with ship designs... just paint targets and I'll shoot!"> He grants access to the tacnet to anyone who can use it. As soon as those getting closer indicate the locations of weapons, he launches a volley of missiles.
Wandering Dog	Wandering Dog is still injured from getting sent flying through the Underworld's sea, but not to the point where he actively needs to be bandaged up to keep his entrails from being out-trails. The martial artist still has painful joints and fast movements aren't fun, especially with his damaged muscles. But he has a responsibility, and that's to assist the team. He blusters a bit over the radio, 'I could take one or two crews', but really, he should focus on one. And so, as the group sees a dozen ships that are more reminiscent of modern ships than the ones Wandering Dog is familiar with, he frowns. Soulsteel ships, really? Who does that? And that's a lot of soulsteel, too. The martial artist steps onto the water, solid beneath his feet, before dashing forward and launching himself towards one of the ships. Deftly moving through the air (with a slight groan of pain as he lands foot-first into a nephwrack, his blow supercharged against the undead and creating golden flame in any wounds), Wandering Dog steps back and moves to take in as much of the ship as possible. "Alright, you stupid ghosts! Time to hear the dragon roar!" Essence swirls within and around Wandering Dog, as he screams a mighty roar. A massive torrent of oily water slams forward, moving rapidly to try and sweep Nephwracks overboard, taking any equipment with it, and depending on the durability of the ship, possibly rip some of it apart. It's a good technique, but probably not enough to take out the entire ship and her crew, but certainly to hinder several of the crew members!
Lezard Valeth	Lezard is present. If he is repulsed by the necrotic horror that is Orcinus Rex, he shows no sign of it. He stands at the fore, or at least as much of one that he can claim, almost defiant as his tattered cape billows behind him in a wave of non-wind. They breach the surface and find the Silver Prince has a surprise for them. Glasses sweep the night, looking over the Soulsteel Vessels, each of which would bein a formidable battle in their own right. And there's a dozen. "Well, it appears that we need to demonstrate that we are a viable threat despite his little surprises." Lezard pushes his glasses up and smiles. "A dozen... This will be quite the battle. Allow me to show that there is more than one necromancer present in this place." The Philosopher's Stone is pulled from its fold in space, and he snaps it open, beginning to incant as he begins drawing on the local Essence flows. It's loud. It's bright. He's never had to learn the subtle ways of hiding one's power level like many Exalted. And as he shapes that power into his spell, he calls out. "I am he who hath entrusted his soul to the eternal vortex of time! Ye know me! And if ye do not, ye shall be made to know me. It shall be engraved on thy very soul! LEZARD VALETH! If ye shall accept the brand of Hel upon thee, thy sanctions shall in turn be lowered. I shall grant thee the deliverance of thy soul, and ye shall come now before me!" Tears open in space, baleful holes of pitch from which pour dozens of demons and spirits of multitudinous types, screeching and crying out as they rush towards the ships. Individually, they are weak, but en masse they are more significant. Significant enough, perhaps to force them to divert attention from Orcinus Rex and the assembled Elites.
All-Seeing Eye	The ships aren't the only thing on the water which are made of Soulsteel. Standing atop the main deck of one battleship is All-Seeing Eye. Empty Tidings' apparent interest in him is the only reason he's even standing. He wears long, silken robes, left unfastened at the chest to reveal his shock-white skin. The Alchemical's normally flawless skin is scored, torn in places, revealing thickly woven synthetic musculature and gleaming black Soulsteel servos. The bright, convivial smile he normally wears in such situations is much more subdued--more sly. A certain Abyssal had told him, months ago, that his chances of success were based largely upon how dirty he was willing to get his hands. Or, to use his words, how much black he'd tolerate upon his hat. That advice led him to the Silver Prince. Thus far, he's tolerated a lot--but he'll tolerate a lot more, if it means the death of another certain Abyssal and the end of her designs upon Creation. It is this deck that bears the brunt of Azure Armature's napalm. As it splashes upon the deck, Eye doesn't bother to strike back before he's finished. Finished with what? The glass of wine gently cradled in his hand, of course. He finishes it, tossing the glass overboard as flaming gobs of Alchemical fire splatter onto the deck. "I must say," calls Eye up to the other Alchemical. "I'm disappointed in your choice of friends. I suppose it's a bit much to expect discretion from an Estasian." A steel cable snaps into the night air like the crack of thunder. The attack is deliberate toying, more meant to chide Armature than truly wound her.
Azure Armature	The Tactical Operator, Operating Tactically - Azure Armature - immediately details her mission plan while enacting her blitz attack, sowing discord and sticking flames on the nephracks on deck. But it's just one ship. There's a dozen ships. The stage clears in a searing set of flames and burning corpses, a ship of silently screaming obsidian purged with tactical napalm. Down the mast, as Armature blasts away, All-Seeing Eye is the exact opposite. Sipping a glass of wine. Claslat, of course, is the more cosmopolitan of the great cities. But for all his Alucard, All-Seeing Eye does his best Richter impression, sending a line up to wrap around Armature's left arm, even through her half-formed barrier shield, and dragging her down to the deck with an empty 'thunk' of foreleg and knee on unyielding steel. Of course he does. The first thing that the Soulsteel Alchemical does is psychological warfare, as the two square off - the theatrics of the thing. Armature starts their 'argument' kneeling. "Ah. Claslat's finest." She begins, rising to her full height and adjusting her scarf down a bit, so she for once isn't mumbling darkly into her scarf. "I expected you here, but not to pick this fight. Not to speak to me about 'picking friends'." Her right hand - the one armed with the D-Buster - lets the digital rigging of the arm cannon fade away, instead her wrist snapping out with the cylinder of a beamklaive - unlit. "It would be better for us not to do this. Better for the Maker if either way this conflict broke, His interests would be maintained. But I don't think we'll pass without argument." Her left hand comes up, running dark-gloved fingers through her pale blue hair, leaving streaks of radiant golden blond as her fingers pass through. Her right thumb triggers the activation stud on the beamklaive, the snap-hiss of the blade alighting a brilliant gold, small side-emitters building a thick cross-guard for the heavy broadsword. "At least that golden one was able to see the Silver Prince was a pointless alliance for the sole convenience of that cancerous wart on Creation. Do you have some plan, some secret weapon for destroying the Silver Prince after? Permanently?" She brings the sword up in a high stance, thrumming with power. A tiny, empty smirk flickers across her unhidden lips. "I have enough faith that you do. Does that make your alliance more convenient?" With a step, Armature disappears, only to re-appear suddenly before All-Seeing Eye as if she had charged up, rather than just blinked forward, bringing her beamklaive down in a humming 'vwoom!' of a two-handed chop.
Bloody Revelations	The quantity of Soulsteel involved in the fleet ahead of them, as Wandering Dog correctly surmises, is absolutely obscene. The minute the Elites get close enough to appreciate it, it becomes perfectly obvious that these aren't just steel hulls with soulsteel ribs or reinforcements, but vast quantities of hundreds of tons of the supposedly rare magical metal, churned out on an industrial scale. Even on deck, every single missed shot causes the walls to shiver and wail, and Staren's direct missile strikes cause the hulls to outright scream as if alive. Likewise, Seft is not wrong. When the starfighters come out, the enemy begins firing without reservation, immediately pumping the air full of pale blue-green contrails. Hissing tongues of white hot energy lash at the aircraft from great range, but quickly lose their original targets as the fighters dive below their deck level, finding new bodies to shoot at when Lezard opens the gates. Rather than the one or two main energy weapons that modern remnants of the First Age can mount on their hulls, it seems that every battery aboard --main, secondary, and tertiary-- is powered enough to swat even demons out of the air like burning flies. Wandering Dog running on the surface of the water is thankfully exempt from the volume of glowing anti-air fire he sees tracing across the sky over him, having to take a single, sheer vertical leap for lack of handholds or ornamentation on the overhanging hulls. Once actually aboard, his Golden Janissary Style is instantaneously effective, turning his chosen target to ash on the spot and clearing his cohort from the deck in an instant. Even then, he is straight away confronted by nothing less than a swarm of vicious nephwrack marines, demonstrating that more than just critical crew aboard, these ships are prepared for boarding and capture. They're clad in even more soulsteel, using heavy hacking blades and portable Essence rifles as well. The same goes for the others undergoing their own boarding operations. They can't do anything to stop Azure Armature just teleporting aboard, but they can prevent her from having her way with the gunnery crews by having ranks of marines open fire on her from multiple levels up the ship's main mast array. The Flotilla has considerably greater numbers to swarm the vessel of their choice and split up the defense crew, albeit they find even the guns --strange mixes of medieval siege weapons and almost futuristic magitech, full of capsules and pumps of glowing fluids and strange gems-- haven't skimped on soulsteel expense, making sabotage a dire matter of 'finding the components that don't take artillery to break'. The swarms of demonic and ghostly summons at least have their desired effect straight away: swamping the crew of further ships to reduce their available firepower. Targeted missile strikes do a fine job of incinerating the gunners and causing volatile alchemical compounds to cook off.
Bloody Revelations	It's still twelve whole ships though. Very large ones, with even just critical crew requirement measuring in the hundreds. The party doesn't have the manpower to swamp all of them at once. Powering into range on churning aquatic engines, the lead battlegroup opens fire with thundering blasts of Essence lightning and invisible explosive force, immediately trading heavy main gunnery shots with the Star Hawk, and peppering Orcinus Rex's unmissable flanks with smoking craters. The great hekatonkhire opens its tremendous maw --a process that takes a full thirty seconds-- as if to howl in slow motion, but instead disgorges its own contingent of decidedly more ramshackle and impromptu fast attack craft into the water, sending streams of cutters and corvettes through the barrage where the nephwracks suicidally loyal to the Abyssal instead charge out to engage in what is, for them, a holy war against heretics serving false idols. Many of them are immediately obliterated by the main batteries, but they're numerous and fast enough that some will reach. Bloody Revelations takes her spot atop the snout of the gargantuan beast, tapping her finger on the inside of her elbow with the air of someone who is unbelievably pissed and has rolled back around into keeping it fakely under control. "Oh I'm sure the source of the leak isn't hard to determine this time. Never-Ending Silence charted the course here, didn't he? He was so quick to switch sides too. Hmmm, I wonder." She touches a thumb to the black glass lotus around her neck. "I bet he thinks he's escaped far away by now, where I can't reach him; as if I don't know the real name to drag him back by. Oh he'll answer for it." Drawing blood, the Abyssal swipes her hand through the air, and 'paints' the crimson onto an invisible pane in the air, in the shape of a perfect circle. Already the ambient Essence charge spikes around her. "Cut their engines. And don't be in the way." she hisses.
Lezard Valeth	Lezard, meanwhile, seems almost serene in the midst of the rampant chaos. The fact that hundreds of demons and minor undead are being vaporized mean basically nothing to him. They are and have always been fodder. Some of the guns, perhaps brighter than others, track over to try to pot shot the mage, but the blasts spang off of the pages of the Philosopher's Stone, providing a hardpoint for Lezard to ensconce himself within unlike the rest of the craft. However, it becomes clear that it is not having as much effect as it needs to in order to swing things properly. The holes in space close, the waves of minions ending... And just when they might hope that they might have the chance to focus their fire, the holes reopen /within/ the craft, the hordes pouring out onto the ships that aren't being boarded by allies in order to try to simply swarm under the gunnery crews with weight of numbers. They don't need to kill the Marines. They need to keep the things at the guns. That said, the need for artillery is not a significant issue, as artillery is quite present. Lezard raise his hands as the Essence swirling around him shines gold. "SACRED JAVELIN!" He cries out, and one of the ship decks begins getting raked by lances of holy power that crash down from above. The fact that Lezard is such a vile person seems to not bar him from being able to harness it..
All-Seeing Eye	As Blue offers her response, Eye regards her casually, twirling his braided hair around a finger. His smile widens slightly when she reaches for her beamklaive, golden eyes alight with barely contained glee. Does he have a plan to destroy the Silver Prince? "The thought crossed my mind, darling." When she disappears, Eye goes for an evade. Tossing the robe in front of him, he attempts to make a nimble backflip, to have his back against the wall. Her read is perfect, and the sword cuts a searing gash across his slender, rippling back. His claylike skin crumbles to dust at the edges of the wound, but he manages to right himself, landing on his feet. Even without that wound, it's clear that the previous battle nearly killed him. She might even think he hasn't been to the Vats. She would be mistaken. When his face rises, despite the grievous wound--despite it not being the only such wound of its kind--he is smiling wide. There is the familiar click of an Alchemical's charms. The sound is unmistakable, a harbinger for a coming attack, unique to their culture's style of fighting. What will it be? What form will it take? His eyes remain human, his wrists free of crossbows. There is a sudden electric charge in the air. The shifting of Essence. Microturbines click into place along his spine--his face is to her, so she can only guess the purpose of the gradual whining noise. ESSENCE PERIPHERY TURBINES ONLINE "I don't enjoy it," he admits. A length of pure purple lightning burns brightly in his hand, there and heading for Azure's ankle in a flash. "But the sight of her, kicking and screaming?" He tugs backwards as soon as it appears he's snared her, seeking to throw her off balance. "Over being denied the chance to murder mortals?" Another lashes towards her sword arm, seeking to disarm her. "/That/--" His head whips around, his hair crackling with that same electricity, fine, needle-thin, razor-sharp steel cables gleaming within those raven tresses. The tip of his braid, beautiful and graceful, threatens to strike her face. "--I enjoy." His eyes fade away, the Alchemical intent on ending the fight quickly. Blasts of lightning are fired to cover him, allowing him to get his back away from the wall now that the fight has begun in earnest. "And when the screams turn from anger to agony--then, I'll finally be clean. Then, I'll start on the rest of them."
Wandering Dog	Wandering Dog's murderous kick succeeds, but his death wave isn't as effective as he wishes it had been. Nephwracks clad in soulsteel, with sharp blades and rifles. Wandering Dog's reinforcedsilk tunic takes a shot from a rifle, one that might have been worse with his injuries otherwise, while blades slice into his arms as he moves to block, trading blows with Golden Janissary-infused kicks and chops, but his mind is elsewhere. He can't fight the entire swarm head-on, not with how wounded his muscles are, so instead of wading into them and trying to crush them... Wandering Dog goes searching for the engine room. He suddenly leaps over the swarm, kicking into any heads that he can in the process and bounching off them, trying to find the way below deck. Certainly he'll be followed, or there'll be more crew down there to oppose him. But if he can start getting closer...he might be able to take out a ship. And for those that do decide to follow him, they get a painful reaction when Wandering Dog punches one of them in the chest, and he'd begin to hopefully explode when a lance of white fire strikes through his body. And then the fire strikes through another. And another. And several of them at once. It's unlikely to take out the entire swarm, since that's more energy than he has, but it should help thin it enough to cover Wandering Dog's charge towards the engine room!
Starbound Flotilla	"You know, little hypocritical for me to hate a traitor, but god damn, I sure wish I wasn't half an inch from getting shot down every damn second because of that guy playing all the angles here." "Clear the airwaves, Star Six. Star squad, board!" "A modest wounding on my part." "Star Three, assist Star Two! Star Six, Star Four, kill their engines!" "I'll make them pray a little /harder/!" "Fuck it, whatever, we're too far in." "What doesss monkeyfriend do?" "Break the formation." The Flotilla split up among the areas they've landed at. Armed and armored, they surge into action, though for Moonfin that means grabbing cover to catch his breath while Seft moves to give him cover, her shield flaring with crackling elemental energies to drive back assault. George and Pavo, each with a brutal short-range one-handed melee weapon, rush through the crew to try to reach engines, with Albert moving quickly behind. Moonfin and Biteblade find themselves unfortunately teaming up to try to disassemble weapons, which they do in wonderful ways. As per the Flotilla's usual approach, they don't do the convenentional tactic of breaking the weapons, or at least they stop trying after it becomes clear it's the least efficient route. Rather, whenever they get a spare moment, they inject huge volumes of scrap steel from their hull-building stores into the mechanisms. After all, the issue is not breaking the gleaming first-age superweapons, the issue is making them inoperable -- and could an insane ghost /really/ know just the right bits of metal that need to be in or not in a complicated superweapon? The original operators probably could have, but not these mad specters. George, Pavo, and Albert do their best to get to the areas designated for those churning aquatic engines. But when Albert finally makes it, he doesn't jump to cut it like Bloody has ordered. Rather, he engages the matter with the mad mentality that time under Revelations has taught him to embrace anew. Hopefully he can get there, and if he does, Albert dives right into trying to /dangerously overclock/ one of the back engines with mad mechanical knowledge... And only one of them. His hope is to make it so explosively overpowered that, for a moment, the vessel is driven to ram directly into one of its cohorts in the tightly-formed pack of vessels, disabling two in one go in the front. That'll depend on Pavo and George managing to combine their board-and-breach techniques to tear apart barriers and open up mechanisms, as well as fight off attackers on the vessel.
Staren	The ships are MADE of soulsteel?! That wail, where has he heard it before...? Can't think about it now, right now he's got to dodge! The arms and legs fold into it and the fire grazes it as Staren does a barrel roll. He's not sure there's been a leak. But Bloody Revelations seems too competent to just kill valuable underlings without being sure first... right? Explosive force isn't working well enough. The soulsteel's too sturdy. Staren circles around for another pass, switching weapons -- this time, he strafes a deck with the gatling railgun, pitting soulsteel against hypersonic metal, while releasing a second salvo of missiles -- this time with anti-tank warheads -- to target some of the weapons with masses of what was once metal raised to physics-breaking speeds and temperatures. Hopefully they punch through and hit something vital!
Bloody Revelations	The incredible irony of half the forces on one side using sanctified attacks that burn void-touched ghosts into ash on contact is probably lost on the howling, bloodfrenzied masses it cuts down. First demons and zombies, then holy beams of light, Lezard draws the immediate bulk of attention as sustained pummeling renders the deck of one of the ships completely barren of unlife, vapourizing anything not deep inside the soulsteel hull while still out of range to fight back. Its flanking cohort takes aim at him, over Orcinus Rex in the main bombardment, to fire two sets of triple rows of thundering Essence beams, sweeping them at a brisk track to scissor him between them. Wandering Dog pummeling his way through the crew with Golden Janissary meets with the same general level of slaughter, as the specialized anti-undead martial art wielded by a superlative master is frankly well outside of the weight class of even the nastiest of undead marines. They can barely scratch him with their hooked black blades on the way down, laying waste to corridor after corridor of crew. It's only when he arrives at the engine room itself, surrounded by a veritable jungle of pipes and valves and boilers set with Hearthsthones and sloshing blue liquid, that a credible threat is launched at him, where the hatch is suddenly slammed shut behind him and sealed by a clever engineer, whereupon the whole cabin fills with blistering cold heat; the boilers crack and burst and spill burning blue liquid across the floor, spreading through the pipes to roast him alive. Taking the direct military approach is working out to be difficult for Staren though. Far from the sail and timber the protracted campaign against the Lintha had been dealing with far to the south, even if they're powered by magic, what he's fighting is equivalent to a dozen (now effectively ten) top scale military warships that could pass as flagships even in his own world. Brilliant lances of plasma slash and pierce at the Star Hawk as it passes overhead, matching his high speed with volume and tight firing corridors. The railgun splatters crew running across the decks for cover, and punches deep divots into the plating, breaking it loose from corners and stress points, but isn't nearly as effective as he'd like. The anti-tank warheads at least leave the specifically targeted weapons mostly flaming skeletons of soulsteel, as the rest of their structure melts instantly. Albert has likewise guessed as correctly as Seft, in that when the members of the Flotilla rush past the weapons they've hastily crammed full of dangerous junk, the mad, tunnel-visioned spectres that immediately fill the gap to obsessively fuss over them can't seem to do much of anything, yanking on sharp metal pieces in gibbering panic more than getting anything done. Though the engine room is identical to the one Wandering Dog has found himself in, with the exception of engineers he has to beat to (re)death with industrial tools, the groaning maze of nonsense soulsteel valves makes perfect sense for a moment, solely to him. From the outside, the boarded ship suddenly lurches as its engines go into overdrive, the water frothing and steaming behind as they start melting down almost immediately. It lists to one side from the uneven push, spinning about its front end, and then knifing into the fellow vessel to its port that George and Pavo have assailed, crumpling soulsteel hull with soulsteel bow.
Bloody Revelations	"Good enough." says Bloody Revelations, watching the carnage from not quite enough distance. A crackling bolt of Essence lightning explodes right next to her, caving a smouldering hole into the great whale's flesh with a fresh, subsonic groan of pain, but she barely even notices, pressing her hand into the center of the circular blood streak and swiping it over to face the two locked together battleships like an AR assist. The red ring glows from within, and then blazes with ruby light, sucking in prodigious quantities of ambient Essence in great, glowing rings, drawing in layer after layer of concentric bloody halos with great, crackling swooshes, and condensing them into a single point surrounded by an iris of crimson light. After just a moment's pause, the energy is released in a massive beam of scarlet energy limmed in crackling black lightning that lances across the waves with a blistering, ear piercing scream. It slams straight into the side of the overclocked battleship, and the soulsteel immediately turns red, then orange, then yellow, and begins bubbling and slagging away in great, hissing pools, adding its own terrible wailing to the hateful screech of the beam. Using both hands to turn it, Bloody Revelations directs it over the entire length of the vessel, and into the second one that had been immobilized by the crash, focusing it so that it rapidly bores through the entire length of its hull and shoots back out the other side, leaving a catastrophic reactor collapse and a hole big enough to drive two trucks through for the Flotilla to escape from. That's still only four fully taken out, however. The attack boats being sent out into the water to buy time and board vessels are being blown out of the water by the handful. Their own weapons are largely barbed ballistae and catapults of explosive pyre flame bombs, lobbed over the high sides and crippling the systems closest to the edge, but not making enough of a dent to avoid being gunned down. Across a couple of vessels, gunboats successfully get below the guns and begin hurling grapnel looks and chain ladders up the sides, scrambling up in scores to engage in vicious boarding actions, steel and screams ringing across the waves as they fight to protect their whale home. Bloodied and smoking, Orcinus Rex himself bellows out in wounded rage and accelerates with crashing undulations of his four-pronged tail, crashing head on into a fifth ship and capsizing it in slow motion, snapping up its fleeing crew in his massive maw, until some crew still aboard blow the main battery and drive him off with what amounts to a suicide explosion, sending the hekatonkhire reeling.
Azure Armature	Everyone always expects any teleporter to go for the back. It's expected. Only smoothbrained teleporters, thus, attack from the rear. But Armature isn't the only Galactic Brained cyber-badass this side of the bordermarches. And she's also not the only one with a killer trick. Her eyes widen, the irises whirring as her optical sensors try to compute - and fail to do so, in time - what All-Seeing Eye calls upon to do. Certainly, she had seen his mastery of the Live Wire style, but... Getting snapped in the face is a new experience. A new, painful experience. Tripped up and smacked around by an extended QTE, the surprise costs her Copy Galatine, the beamklaive being sent tumbling across the deck as the Nephwrack marines take their potshots at her, forcing her to blink back, and then start rolling through a ballet of elbows and snap kicks to handle the many extras that pile on to her. They don't matter - not between All-Seeing Eye and Armature's little corner of the fight, but they are a drain on her resources and abilities that the Soulsteel Alchemical doesn't have to handle, and get in a few licks themselves with sheer numbers. Tossing a few of the newhwrack marines overboard, Azure gains breathing room. "That is it, then? Your own pleasure of supremacy? Your primary objective is proving... a point?" Armature raises her hand, the digital rings of the 'arm cannon' reignighting over it to fire a few PKEW PKEW essence cannon shots. "I had hoped that you would be different! To see clearly, what needed to be done. But you are tied up in fantasy!" "It falls to me, then. Whatever has to be done." She announces, empty of tone. Her arm cannon, of course, fires off another PKOOM.
Staren	Staren's fought wood-and-iron ships, and even Abyssals that seem equivalent to WW2 battleships, but he's never actually /faced/ anything like a modern ship. Blasts of magical energy tear into the Star Hawk, leaving scorched wounds limned in glowing metal -- it's still operating after being hit with weapons like that only by virtue of being a massive war machine engineered with redundancies. But then, it's fighting ships for which the same thing could be said. Ships he hasn't really inflicted any structural damage to in turn. Then again, once weapons and crew are down what threat are they? Can Team Vermillion take them for salvage? Sounds like Dog's in trouble too, dealing with traps while boarding. Damn! Hopefully someone knows how to get him out, Staren doesn't see a practical way to reach him. Instead, he protects himself -- the Star Hawk flies up, high into the sky, then flips, raining down bursts of railgun fire at the decks of those ships that they haven't attacked yet, trying to distract the crew from firing some of the guns, at least!
Lezard Valeth	Lezard effectively renders one of the ships a non-threat while wreaking interference havoc with the others. This is satisfactory to him. Progress is being made. Unfortunately, there is always a price for progress. He has been identified as a threat and the ships react appropriately. Sorceror of Midgard or not, the high-caliber Essence cannons are enough to shatter castle walls, let alone mere flesh. Thankfully, Lezard is not merely flesh. The first blasts impact his reflexive barrier, sending him skidding back across Orcinus Rex, his boots digging into the ersatz deck on the creature. The second fusillade comes too quickly for him to regain equilibrium, however, and with a shout the Necromancer is forced to abandon his position, vanishing from it moments before the spot is incinerated. Lezard reappears on top of the denuded ship, using the crow's nest as his new location and forcing the others to consider turning their weapons on their own craft in order to try to dispose of him. He looks the worst for wear in the exchange however, Essence burns trailing across his body and his tattered cape alight, With a swirl of his cloak, he extinguishes it, before he grits his teeth. "You believe you have the best of me, do you?" He mutters. "We will see about that." Essence begins to gather around him once more, the beacon beckoning and saring them to try to interrupt them before he can build the power into something truly horrifying. In the meantime, however, he turns his gaze to more /surgical/ operations, choosing an as-yet unannhilated craft (Bloody's work lives up to its name) and beginning to hurl multicolored blazing bolts of light towards the rear of the ship, where he can approximate the engine room to be. "Prismatic Missile!" While each bolt is individually incapable of breaching that hull, perhaps enough of them focused in one point can do so efficiently enough to not impede his work...
Starbound Flotilla	"Stressed. Why is she shooting at /our/ ship!!" "We turned its broadsides to her. She trusts us to escape. Let's." "Fuck fuck fuck fuck RUN!" "Bird friend!! Get gunship!!" "I'm calling it down! You can depend on a blessing like this one!" "Ghhh... Right! Board, we must assist Orcinus, as it assists us!" The Flotilla are jostled and slammed about by the heavy beam. It takes a moment for each of them to get on their feet. Pavo has to help Albert up after he takes a nasty fall and probably suffers wounds from the mad ghosts aboard before she manages to blast them away. George scrambles like a madman, in his element, guiding Biteblade and Moonfin once they meet up, and yanking Seft's hand like a rescue attempt. He's halted only by some of the secondary explosions from the reactor collapse. Pavo calls in a gunship from above, something kept on reserve, in remote control, and swoops it down low so that all six can leap through the hole to dive in. "Fuuuuuuuuuuck!" Can be heard as all six arc into blink-teleporter range of the vessel, letting them flicker into its interior and scramble urgently into the seats. At least two of them need heavy bandaging, but Pavo manages to get them flying fast. "Star Four, punch it! Star Two, weapons, I'm wounded!" "I'm punching as hard as it punches you goddamn heathen! Get on those guns and get to blasting!" Pavo screeches, opening the throttle of the gunship wide. Five down, seven to go. "Moonie! I can't get any altitude with their anti-air! Get me torpedos /thirty seconds ago/!" "Tch. Artistry requires patience. Allow me to show you the fruits of my labor." Moonfin says, trying to get a lock on some of those flankers. The gunship skims water, with Pavo swearing increasingly offensively when her gunship takes on more trouble from moving between the space between air coverage and water, but soon Moonfin should have a lock on some of those vessels. "Were that I had properly devised names and theories for such destruction. In lieu: Fifth Sea Hylotl Maneuver: Seafloor Inferno!" Moonfin improvises his name for the sudden weird maneuvering of the torpedos that come out of the base of the gunship and surge low, then rise with piercing strikes the way an anti-armor rocket might surge through a tank, trying to attack the vessels where long ago they might have assumed Luthe granted them default supremacy. He's focused on any that are getting out of the convenient attack and defense angles of Orcinus and its massive maw, to prevent dangerous boarding or targeting of vitals among that wounded broadside.
All-Seeing Eye	"Don't talk to me about seeing clearly!" Eye watches Armature's cannon, attempting to read the projectile's trajectory. Warning lights glare angrily across his HUD, screaming admonishments about structural integrity, acceptable strain, and, now, distance. He cuts it close, as he always does, twirling out of the way. The shot grazes his perfectly cut abdomen, burning the claylike flesh away to reveal blackened, gleaming servos and thick, sparking wires. He rushes past Armature, firing a few blasts from his eyes to keep distance between them. The Alchemical runs up the exterior of the command console, springing off the back of it. He turns, in midair, each arm sending two whips towards her to wrap her in a clinch--one of steel, the other lighting. With graceful fluidity, he lifts both arms above his head as he falls. A scissor kick sends two /more/ whips towards her, sprouting from his ankles to add to the cables ensaring her. He lands. Thousands of volts of electricity course through all six of the flexible lengths ensaring the other Alchemical. "The Silver Prince is an enemy of reality, but he can be reasoned with. /That/ woman is a rabid gremlin loose in a nursery. You think you can control her? Manage her?" He laughs mirthlessly. "You think anyone can?" "No. She dies.~" The whine of the turbines increases, sparks flying with alarming ferocity from the cyborg's wounds. Parts begin to smoke. But the voltage increases.
Wandering Dog	Wandering Dog, even with his injuries, manages to force his way into the engine room. He gets a few moments to take a breath for his success...when the hatch is shut and sealed, trapping him inside. As the boilers burst and spill their burning liquid, Wandering Dog's reaction is frustrated. This is dangerous, and he needs a technique to get through it...he has none to protect him from heat itself, but he can protect himself from the damage it'd deal. He decides to use one of his best techniques for that, even if it's also part of Sidereal Martial Arts, and therefore not something that he'd like to use trivially. The martial artist's skin and body starts to turn metal, coating in some sort of strange steel as the liquid hits his feet, burning into him but nowhere near with the same speed, strength, or consistency as it would flesh. Wandering Dog moves, though, to try and find someone to use as a foothold, like a pipe or such, leap onto it, and start reaching for the hearthstones that seem to power this engine. And then, with his metal hands, the Dog moves to start channeling as much of his essence as he can into them, in an attempt to overload them. Hopefully, the metal body will stop an explosion from killing him. Though, since he can't channel necrotic essence, if the overloading doesn't work, Wandering Dog will do it the hard way and just straight try to yank the hearthstones out.
Bloody Revelations	tFrom the looks of the pitched deck battles as seen from above, snarling skeletal spectres falling in on each other and ripping one another to pieces with blades and teeth, Staren might figure that this would be an even tougher battle if the enemy had the ability to close. Having hundreds of them swarming all over him would be bad news, but with half a dozen aircraft in play, multiple Exalted on the field, and two archmages using battlefield-scale magic, the individual soldiers are almost irrelevant. As usual, the railgun shots from high altitude pound neat hammer dents back and forth across the deck, turning running nephwracks into chunky corpus salsa and washing the plates dark with faded blood. The craft still loyal to the hekatonkhire take the opportunity to cluster around its base, scaling its sides and chasing after the fleeing crew into the interior, waging bloody battle from hall to hall. It probably takes care of that vessel for now, but a series of hissing pops sound from just behind the Star Hawk, setting off its proximity alert, and then several spots of air suddenly burst into fiery shockwaves that batter him from multiple directions, launched from a strange scatter battery on the rearmost ship in the squad. Lezard is unchallenged on the wasteland of a ship he'd left previously, and the mounted weapons aboard the great mechanized vessels are slow to track him even after the spotters are able to locate him after his teleport. Though he is still building his energies, focusing directly on the engines --something that must be exposed to the water to some degree by necessity-- with powerful blasts of magic over and over and over again causes even the hollow soulsteel to groan, bend, crumple, and then fold in on itself, causing a godawful grinding sound as the turbines and the casing both scream at each other in agony from the friction of crippled blades. The second the ship is dead in the water, the baleful ruby eye turns on the drifting vessel. Even from this distance, the coalescing red halos are easily visible, and Lezard can see some of the crew throw themselves overboard while other scramble to the guns, firing back in a desperate attempt to take the Necromancer out before she fires, but finding their shots incinerated on the stationary wall of Essence at the front of her firing array. Another terrifying beam of screeching red and crackling black skewers it bow to stern, turning it into a sinking hulk from the one-two punch of black magic.
Bloody Revelations	Just about half the battle fleet is completely sterilized or wrecked beyond belief, far and away outside of any sane commander's expectations, which would contain no losses whatsoever. Half of the remainder are grappling with sustained, bloody boarding actions that make continued fire extremely difficult, but the largely automated firing systems only take a handful of gunners rather than multiple personnel to load, aim, and fire each weapon. The furious hekatonkhire is covered in a sheen of dark, oily blood, blooming red-black into the water around it as it ploughs on, far too big to avoid anything, and so simply trading volley after volley for another shot at capsizing a First Age vessel with its titanic bulk, crunching down on its sides with its impossibly huge teeth, like biting down on an especially thick tin can. This exposes the Father of Whales' flank, which the Flotilla is already on, rocking the bottoms of the two battleships lined up for a clean broadside on the thrashing ocean kaiju and causing a great deal of their blasts, beams, and explosives to fly wide, scattering the water around it like an appropriately comparative game of battleship. The Silver Prince's fleet begins sending out their launches, abandoning the decks to instead send the Marines towards Orcinus Rex instead, and the handful of straggling gunboats still strafing through the dense fire, though fully half have been consigned to the bottom already, and the rest are empty and anchored. With the launches away to try and take out their enemy's base and metaphorical queen piece at the same time, the remaining gunners on the swarmed ships turn their concentrated fire on Lezard and the Flotilla, raking their airspace with targeted clusters of beams meant to cut off escape routes and set up for multiple direct hits. One of them ceases firing completely for at-first unknown reasons, as its ghastly lights sputter out and it begins coasting only on its initial momentum. Bolts of writhing lightning and muffled explosions to its rear indicate that Wandering Dog has been successful with the engine room --which means he has thirty seconds to escape before another ear-shattering lance of thrumming energy screams through multiple layers of Soulsteel overhead. Since he fought head first into the engine room, it's extremely danger close, even considering he's running around knee deep in burning necrofuel. "Damn this absolute- where in the hell did that gutless melodramatic liar suddenly come up with this entire fleet?! This is disgusting!" even Bloody Revelations snarls from firing the battlefield death ray yet another time, apparently still unsatisfied with the ability to core a First Age battleship. "There's so many of them! Where was he hiding them?! And how many more?! We can't keep pushing Orcinus Rex into this!"
Azure Armature	As two Alchemicals lock into combat in the time-tested method of all true bullshit wuxia robo-people - with frikkin essence beams. Eye lasers scythe across Soulsteel deck plating and through undead shock troops as Azure Armature twirls through the fray, at times shoving, at times leaping, at times blinking around, but ever trying to maintain an 'economy' of her motion, of her energy. It's not a winning strategy: it is a strategy to 'not lose'. And All-Seeing Eye's essence beam tracks not like a turret, but the saccade motion of an eye - so far more deadly. A searing cut rakes across her photonic barrier, shattering her arm-shield into voxels but she presses on undeterred, leaping to deliver a dive-kick. This is stupid. She realizes this when she's captured by electric lines of Eye's blazing lines of essence-electricity, wrapped around her leg. The scissor kick that rises to meet her strikes AND latches two more lines on, all before the inevitable PSHKKKKKKKKK-zzzzzzzzap! Even for a moment, Armature is clinched. Not once, not twice, but an absurd number of times she's let taste the electric justice of a man too pretty to die. Thankfully, even besides the constant that 'certainly nothing goes "yes sir please may I have another eight times getting electrocuted"', it's that teleportation is actually cheating. A second and a half - ages, in 'getting blown out' timing - after she's wrapped up, she blinks away, not appearing for long moments, as her voice begins to echo around. "You... have me mistaken." "I never said I wanted to control her. Manage her. Those are your fabrications. My objectives are much simpler. Much cleaner. Much clearer." "She is a weapon against this unclearn world. A knife to carve out the poison that festers at the heart of things. You waste time with pleasure! It disgusts me." From the aftdeck, a shimmer of light, as Armature's cloaking field drops with a sparking flicker, her arm cannon already aimed and charged. One resounding KOOM rings out, right for Eye. His back, preferrably. Armature isn't picky.
Wandering Dog	As the engine is overcharged, Wandering Dog moves to start punching through the hatch with metal fists, given thirty seconds, and eventually manages to burst out with slightly-pained (but not really damaged) hands and an exploding ship on his trail. He leaps onto the water, landing in a crouch, huffing as he looks down at his scalded body from the liquid. It hurts, it really does. But he can't give up. Even if he's injured and pushing himself to the point he'll need to see a doctor after this, Wandering Dog can't give up. Dashing across the water, Wandering Dog's targets are the marines heading on boats to attack Orcinus Rex. He leaps onto their ship, using more of his anti-undead specialty, but not going full-power. His goal is to take a moment to breathe and analyze what sort of attack to do next, while also putting a dent in the Silver Prince's forces. "I'd consider giving you all a chance to surrender...but you're too crazy for that, aren't you?"
Lezard Valeth	It's very satisfying to see that Bloody Revelations is right on it when the ship gets locked down. Less satisfying, however, are the hurried counterattacks. The blast shatters the crow's nest, and Lezard is sent hurtling to the deck. On second thought, choosing such an exposed locaiton might not have been wise... He hits the ground with a crackling THUD, and a scream a short, sweet pain. Fire bolts through Lezard's mind as he rolls, immediately applying healing magic to deal with some broken bones. "Pride do goeth before the fall, it seems." He mutters to himself... And then his hand moves down tot he spike of soulsteel that is shoved into his gut. With a grimace, he grasps it, bracing himself before he pulls it out. A spray of blood washes over the deck, and Lezard clamps down on the wound, staunching the flow with his clothing before he uses his cloak to wrap it around himself like a belt. Self-reliance is important. First aid is a thing even for wizards. Looking slightly less intimidating and slightly more mortal at the moment, Lezard staggers to his feet through the pain, looking over the battlefield. "Feh." He mutters, "I need to finish gathering my power..." He mutters. He sweeps his gaze over the rest of the fleet, trying to locate the best option... And he sweeps out a hand, levelling it at the boat on the other flank. "LIGHTNING BOLT!" He cries, hurling a quick blast of lightning across the deck, trying to keep the gunners off. He just needs to bide a little longer...
Staren	Also, it turns out Bloody Revelations (still need a proper nickname for her) can fire big fuckoff magic beams, so that's good to know! It's pretty darn impressive. Alarms go off. Staren sees nothing behind him, but the hyperglass-enhanced mecha rotates and transforms in nearly an instant, the humanoid shape crouched behind its beam shield... but he can't block what he can't see, so the shield doesn't do much as magical explosions rock his machine this way and that, a shower of tiny broken pieces raining down out of the holes already blown in it, and new tears in the plating appearing where the explosions hit hardest. "Rrrrgh!" Staren grunts as his machine shakes around him. Not good. He can't take much more of this. <"I'm going to hit them with everything I've got, but then I need to fall back!"> Which he realizes is a problem right after he says it, since only Revelations and possibly the hekatonchire can get him out of here. Hmm. Well, that's a problem to solve a few seconds from now. Right now... Staren's eyes... well, his mental focus anyway, dart across the VR view he's piloting from; He doesn't actually see screens, but a 360-degree view assembled from his cameras to look as if he's seeing out of the head, with windows called up at a thought for things like views from specific cameras or approximated map overviews. Any remaining empty decks or weapons he hasn't blasted yet are the main targets. The falling mecha transforms into a plane with arms and legs, nose down. The backpacks open again, releasing waves of missiles a human would need a shoulder launcher to shoot one of, while ports on its gunpod -- the missile one Staren hadn't used in ages -- disgorge mini and micro-missiles. There are a few basic explosives, but also high-tech plasma that burns most things (soulsteel is not most things) to ash with minimal shockwave, more anti-tank warheads... and some of the missiles are actually torpedoes, that fall into the water and then seek out engines! The Star Hawk slows its fall as it fires, then starts to fly back towards Orcinus Rex and transforms to plane mode again. It's been a strangely banterless battle. But against ships manned by undead berserkers... there's just noone to talk to. A-few-seconds-from-now Staren realizes that there are ships /flanking/ the hekatonchire. Well, crap.
Starbound Flotilla	"Left wing damaged! Jesus fuck, go right!" "No!! Right hull damage, have to go up!" "I can't /ascend/, that's where the blasphemous goddamn lasers are!" "Warning. Incoming! Sweeping from above!" "I see a direct hit! Wait... shields! Shields!!" "Direct hit /harder/ next! God damn it, evading!" "They are killing the whale... like whalers." "What? Moonie, head on straight, this is a battle!" "George." "What!" "Grant me a direct power conduit to the gunship reactor." "The fuck are-- Whatever! Here! Take all the damn power, I don't give a shit." The Flotilla are being battered by near-misses. Lasers graze painfully along engines and wings, searing off fragments of metal along the body of the vessel as it pulls as hard as it can through evasive maneuvers. Systems within explode dramatically as power conduits overload and burst to maintain shield and hull integrity, searing the bodies of its operators in inopportune moments. They shout, half over radio and half over the air, to organize barely evading more hideous wounds. But at one point, Bloody Revelations has pointed out the pain Orcinus Rex is in. Now, in this extensive naval war, Revelations has rarely been concerned for sealife, and indeed it's unlikely she's not especially considering it /right now/ too. But the focus on preventing damage to the Father of Whales is probably exactly what Bloody Revelations needs right now. Moonfin opens the side door of the gunship. "Bring me over the flank group. Lezard Valeth is clearing a way, removing the obstructions of those anti-air cannons, and Staren's missile storm will grant us more than enough air cover. Take the chance." He speaks in tense, imperious tones to Pavo. A thick, heavy power cord is plugged directly into his power katana's sheath at his side. Hylotl have a particular hatred for whalers, and it's one Moonfin demonstrates now. "Sixth Sea Hylotl Style: Storms Upon Waves." He mutters quietly, then leans forward and falls headfirst out the side. As he moves down, he grasps the handle of the katana dramatically, and then... It's extended, held in elegant post-downstroke pose. He has landed on one of the decks of the ships still boarding and bombarding, likely back-to-back with Wandering Dog or something rather like that. He rises from his kneeling landing position, twirls his katana, slides it along the sheath, and gently tucks it away. Then, just as he clicks it into place, the results of a massive slice ought to manifest. At least, it might tear a gargantuan gash in the vessel. At most, it might cleanly cut one or more of those ships in half, leaving them sinking in a way that only the Flotilla could ever expect to properly salvage.
All-Seeing Eye	Eye scoffs, gritting his teeth as the blast pierces right through him--there is now a space in his torso where the Starmetal caste can see clean through to the other side of him. He knows better than to think he could win against her. Were he fully repaired, the odds would be more even, but even then, he'd have to try. Autochthon's Chosen were built to last, unlike certain... derivatives. As his eyes remain locked on her, his vision scans the ultraperiphery. Things are going well. Not great, but well--this was clearly a surprise for Revelations and her helpers. He hasn't had the impact he wanted, but his presence here has changed things for the better. He has a... fight to get back to. The Soulsteel lifts a hand, sighing, putting the back of it to his bleeding forehead. With exasperation, "And a weapon implies someone being there to /point/ it. /She/ will not be pointed. You'll try, and then she'll use one of those... toys you got her," He says, rolling his eye-cannons, "...to murder another thousand mortals for her demented passion project." "Then, she'll laugh her way to the nutriment dispensary, and I'll be on my chaise lounge, saying what?" He frowns archly. "Saying I told you so." He lifts a hand, palm outwards. "Goodbye," Eye flatly remarks, before those eye-cannons blast one last surprise attack. He turns and breaks into a sprint, the Boots of Perfected Speed carrying him through the crowd of nephwracks. Perhaps he can escape. Or, more likely, the Prince's footsoldiers will serve to soften the blow of whatever retaliation Blue offers.
Bloody Revelations	Even if it is a total coincidence that Orcinus Rex happens to be a whale-prototype in addition to being a hekatonkhire, a third canny observation from the Flotilla is . . . possibly, maybe, that Bloody Revelations is concerned with the bleeding and furious flagship whalebeast more than she should reasonably be for a theoretical expendable weapon. Trading it for 12 ships wouldn't be that bad, but she has even dimmed her siege setup of ludicrously obscene Death Essence rays to look to the incoming launches, already burning black with magical expenditure. It turns out to be a null effort. Wandering dog leaps to one of the boarding vessels and immediately draws the attention of its crew, setting upon him with a howling cacophony of battle cries and weapons discharges, but jumping a peerless martial artist of the Golden Janissary style on a cramped boat is a terrible idea (but then, what choice do they have? it's not as if the Abyssal will allow them to flee). Likewise, when Pavo's gunship escapes the battlegroup's effective AA range, Moonfin comes flying out from the craft at a shallow trajectory with all the momentum of the combat aircraft, only amplified by the hyperglass katana and powered armour enhancements he'd heaped on before. When physics catches up with the stroke of his blade, the water booms behind him, and a string of assault boats split cleanly in two, capsizing instantaneously as the larger battleship behind them suddenly sheds a quartet of weapon batteries into the water, sheared at their mounts. The boarding battle on the inverse is a mixed bag. One of the ships has been effectively claimed by a combination of Lezard's demons and the bloodthirsty nephwracks from Orcinus Rex aiming to slaughter the apostates who've chosen to serve the Neverborn wrong. Two others have failed, and the survivors are leaping back to the corvettes or staging their last stands. The Father of Whales himself finishes chomping on the hull of a now wrecked warship, taking a few good artillery hits to his blooded snout, exposing bone, in exchange for turning it into chewed tinfoil with jaws both larger than it is. Lezard's lightning chains across the entire deck of the last remaining ship of the second battle cluster, the first already scrapped to the last. It forks from nephwrack to nephwrack, finding an easy current through so many densely paced, metal-clad, seawater damped bodies, blasting a huge clear lane across its facing broadside. Staring dropping an absolute massacre of missile artillery completely flattens one of the four remaining in the last group, wiping out everything outdoors in one fell swoop, blowing up the energy supplies, ammo feeds, and alchemical depos powering its guns, and cumulatively pounding the deckplates until they cave in and allow further missiles to fall into the guts of the ship, soon billowing flame and smoke from every orifice as its crew bails. With only three battleships and a handful of gunboats left from the initially overwhelming assault, they begin a fighting retreat. The three quarters surviving of the last battlegroup turns rudder, blasting away with all guns at an overheating rate to fry the Elites on their tail and splinter any of the remaining pursuit corvettes, expelling their last few boarders. The lead ship, ostensibly supposed to be a tactical command flagship until it became host to the battle between Alchemicals, is in such chaos it can't even organize a retreat.
Wandering Dog	Wandering Dog takes out a gunboat, but his muscles are still sore. Regardless...if he fled now, his allies would look down on him. He still has energy and health, even if it'd take the last of what he has. Running across the waves, weaving in and out of shots, Wandering Dog leaps onto another ship, smashing through Nephwracks with the same techniques and taking out engineers first so that they can't weld him in, moving for another engine room. He tears apart everyone in his path in the process, metal fists slamming into them, as his muscles strain at the sheer effort he's putting in. He's not helping his condition, and is exhausting himself more... But tearing apart one of these horrible ships belonging to the Silver Prince is worth it, for Wandering Dog, as he tries to make it down to the engine room and move to flood the hearthstones with more essence. If he can blow up another ship, he'll be happy.
Azure Armature	In the grand scheme of things, the battle is in fact going well for the Silver Prince's forces. As is the way of things, pairing off one or more of the enemy elites in a do-nothing duel was an effective way to handle force dispersal. "You don't point a bomb. And haven't you noticed?" On the napalmed aftdeck of the mostly-cleared ship, raised up near the helm, highlit in relief by the flames, Azure Armature spreads her arms, as if to gesture not at the ship, but at the oceans, the land about them. "We are not in Autocthonia. These are not our people. That is why you lack clarity. This is why I question your vision. You shouldn't care. So, go ahead, Soulsteel. Be assured, you told me so." "And when I stand above a land reaped or not, but ripe with the souls that our Maker needs, and the land for his Processes to consume for fuel, to save the people - our people - that we left behind to come here." The Eye-Cannon rips one last surprise attack, a saccade laser of essence that burns across the deck and detonates the back of the ship violently in amber-red. In his flight, he notices - he should notice, his eyes percieve All - that the silver cylinder that had been disarmed so much earlier in the fight was missing from its discarded spot on the ground. And his retreat echoes that impassive, empty-toned voice of Armature, a golden swell of energy consuming the aftdeck, the smoke of the fire filling into a pillar of light. "Galatine." The beam of stolen solar power surges out, consuming the entire deck in a font of annihilating force as Armature swings the blade, having no need to catch All-Seeing Eye with her feet at all.
Staren	KABOOM! Staren makes some satisfying fireworks! And the problem he was charging into -- the flanking ships -- seems to be being handled nicely by Dog and Moonfin. Incredible! <"Nice work, guys!"> He can't let his guard down yet, though. More incoming magic fire blasts -- the Star Hawk narrowly dodges the worst of it, but when 'the worst of it' would probably have half-slagged him and forced him to land, that still means getting scorched all over -- the holes and tears in his armor widen a bit as edges melt away and drip off into the water, tiny bits of molten metal sizzling as they hit. He transforms to hybrid mode, brakes in midair, then transforms to humanoid and lands atop Orcinus Rex, and sweeps the gunpod around him. He's not actually OUT of armament, the gunpod holds more than it can fire at once, but this feels a bit like someone mistimed part of the fireworks show, and now a few lazy whistlers are launching after the starshell barrage. First, at any forces trying to get back into the boat Moonfin attacked, Staren launches a half-dozen plasma minimissiles. He fires the railgun too, but it's not precisely aimed, just keeping the pressure on. Then he turns on the fleet. 11 mini- and micro- missiles with anti-tank warheads go after some of the weapons still firing. It's... something. Hopefully they stop firing soon.
Lezard Valeth	It is a battle well fought, but a battle all but won. Lezard scowls, feeling the momentum finally shift in their direction... And the flight of the final trio of ships. "Oh, no you /do not/." Lezard growls, turning away from the depopulated ship in order to focus on the last remnants of resistance. "Fools! You are too late! Now face our vengeance and despair!" The energy Lezard has been gathering spikes, and he funnels it into a terrible spell, energies crackling around him as he incants, "As silver maw opens, turn eyes heavenward unblinking!" "Now despair as crystalline eternity rushes in to embrace." A beam of azure-white light blasts outwards like a shining moonlight beacon, sweeping across the path of the trio of battleships... "WHITE DRAGON'S BREATH!" Then there is a cacaphony of crackling shards as crystals erupt /everywhere/ the beam passed. From the water, along the soulsteel ship, and puercing outwards from within any fool caught within the path of the powerful blaze of augmented Lordran Sorcery. The power threatens to entomb the ships and their crew completely in accursed crystal, solidifying them where they stand in suffering or, if they are lucky, death.
All-Seeing Eye	The light of Galatine burns, for a moment, so brightly that nothing can be seen. It subsides, leaving scorch marks across the deck. When it does, Armature can see the result of her handiwork. Lying upon the deck is Eye, one hand pressed upon the soulsteel footing, keeping him suspended just a few inches above it. His legs spread out behind him, his odd pose the result of predictive evasion calculations made with a split second to spare. Combat with other Chosen is frustrating--but that doesn't mean there are no winners. The skin on his back is gone, the musculature burnt to a crisp. Servos whine uselessly, the turbines from before sparking and fidgeting in place. Acrid black smoke rises from the wound in numerous places. He has no further words for her--just a hateful glare. If she has similar charms, she'd know he could have chosen a much better angle. His face is untouched. He rises, turns his back on her, and summons Tranquil Egress, the hoverbike ejecting from his palms and constructing itself in a series of whirrs and clicks. The throttle is pushed to the max immediately, sending a cloud of ashes as purple jets of Soulsteel-attuned Essence blaze and carry him away.
Starbound Flotilla	The Flotilla, having apparently dealt the bulk of their most intense efforts, still drive forward on pushing the attackers away. Moonfin continues slashes from the ground, albeit at considerably lower power, while the gunship marauds and tries to drive back the boarders and the ships thereof, at least those not already disabled. But sadly, it's looking like this puts them at the most dangerous positions. Moonfin is ill-suited to combat against hordes, and the gunship is still in range of the ships' most potent weapons. This batters and wounds them badly, even in the fighting retreat. Yet, oddly, they seem to demonstrate a sound refusal to retreat themselves. "Woah! Wizard friend hasss breath like big fuzzy bosss! Push along cryssstal!" "MD weapon emission at the deck. Force anyone near it back harder. Kill them all." "Re-kill them? Unundeath them? Well, don't hit the bit where Dog's ripping their shit. Butcher anything that closes on it though." "Staren's still got those micro-missiles. He ever run out of those? It's like it's never-ending. I'll work with the rain here. Albert, sweep anything he can't get and turn it to bits." "Hhhhh... I shall need retrieval shortly. They have battered me badly with strikes from distance." "Urgent. Well, it's the same up here! We need to land, the gunship isn't supposed to still be flying at all!!" They're going to need to land back on Orcinus, damaged as they are, but thankfully victorious. They're wounded, bandaging themselves even as they emerge from the brutalized vehicle, but capable enough to help with the bombardment. Now comes the siege on the island, and its destruction.
Bloody Revelations	The few stalwart/completely insane/thoroughly confused crew still left aboard the unfortunate vessel subject to Azure Armature's and All-Seeing Eye's dramatic duel become even less fortunate as the former maneuvers back to her win condition --the replicated Noble Phantasm-- and fires it. Even without the Knight of the Sun himself behind it, the synthesized replica of Galatine contains power enough to wipe the entire deck and above clean. Sunfire reduces everything in view to dust, surges around the turrets and bulkheads to disintegrate the spectres covered behind them, and crashes together like a river around rocks to wipe out even the crew at the rear, even pouring through the firing slits and windows embedded in the pile of soulsteel pillboxes that constitutes the main scouting and firing masts. The flagship is going nowhere because there is no one left to take it anywhere, save, dubiously, the crew still deep below scuttling around in the maintenance and armoury corridors. Similar can easily be said for the ship that Wandering Dog picks to go for round three. Deciding that he has enough spare blood for another go, it turns out that leaping aboard and slaughtering down through a ship that is actively fleeing, rather than bristling at combat readiness, is a far quicker and cleaner affair (it helps that Lezards demons and Orcinus Rex's faithful cleared out half the marines already). It sputters, sparks, and goes dark, drifting in the water, which is once again the signal for the titanic, lurid read death ray to carve through it on demand, taking its top off like opening a can with a blowtorch. The second of three ships attempting to escape makes it even less of a distance. The ray of light from Lezard is an ice cold colour rather than a bloody red one, focused and brilliant instead of crackling with fury, but it needs only trace a line over the stern of the escaping battleship all the way up to its bow, and the entire thing explodes into so many frozen spires of eerie grey-blue crystal, disturbingly patterned with swirling faces and pulsing with unstable magic. The entire crew, above and belowdecks, are rendered petrified, making for a fascinating diorama of agonized crystal statues within the slightly more transparent glacier they're now a part of. Though the Starbound gunship has to borderline crash land on Orcinus Rex's back, the whale barely seems to notice it, given the tapestry of wounds all up and down him already. With their mother vessels fleeing, the remaining assault boats have nowhere to go but to charge and to throw themselves on the enemy's swords, obnoxiously sure of their ghostly resurrection sometime in the near future, keeping both the Flotilla and Staren busy blasting them off from all sides, swatting them away with missiles and cutting them down with blades.
Bloody Revelations	Given the one remaining ship, the furious whale-behemoth-ghost pounds its tail into the water, churning up a mountainous geyser of bloody froth, and begins pursuing, looking to swallow its crew in revenge as well, but Orcinus Rex is all but limping along, quickly lagging behind as his injuries drag his speed to near-uselessness through a field of broken ships both belonging to the enemy and once to him. "Shhh, shh shh shh." Bloody Revelations whispers, somehow audible over the leviathan's earthquake-like rumbling. "Slow down. Rest. You're wounded. Just keep steady. I need to eyeball this one." After several moments of intense staring at the silhouette shrinking on the horizon, having stopped firing due to leaving its own weapons range by a mile, practically already back to Cormorant, Bloody Revelations takes a deep breath, exhales it halfway, holds, and then pushes her hands through the collapsing red iris, diverting the last of its energies into a faster, hotter, brighter beam, missing the ship by twenty meters vertical, but then swiping down through the air until it blisters and boils the sea, cleanly splitting it down the middle and leaving so much smoking and disintegrating soulsteel to fall into the depths. Releasing the battlefield spell, Bloody Revelations stands up back, lacing and cracking her fingers, the black bonfire around her starting to subside. "Ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. A dozen original pattern battleships, that much Soulsteel, a whole army I haven't heard anything about! Where could he possibly be keeping it all?! And the gall to attack one of his patron's own designs! The ungrateful backstabbing sacrilegious --dares to harm a hekatonkhire! And that wretch again; he was already on board, steering the flagship around and looking to take another run at me! Is he dealing arms to the Bodhisattva now?! Unacceptable! We're not-" A thoughtful moment passes. "We're not landing on Cormorant. You people can pull things up off the seafloor, yes? We won't be getting ghosts from town. We'll be getting them out of the thousands of tons of soulsteel that bastard left for us. Dredge it up. Anything light enough to haul away before sunrise. Get to work!"