[Nexus] AMEN XLVI: Divided We Fall

[happyturtle]

help me
Oh look it's sock puppet Moff and felt Moff, the Moffs that were given to Dark Lord by Moffs in fear and one as a present.

See I have living Moffs, better. But I'll get things ready..

Summoning circles appear on the outside of the base and those living lazor cannons which D had summoned earlyer have reappeared.

"And Greg? Where is he?" Moff B demands.

Moff A = a corpse in the Yellow Road
Moff B = negotiating with the Thing in the Walls
Moff C = outside
Moff D = in the meeting room

[D_Lord]

In the base. he hasn't left.

Felt Moff = former Moff was turned while alive into felt the hard way = still alive
Sock Puppet Moff = On D's hand also was a normal Moff = still alive

Greg = next to crazy towny who been stuck here for 40 years.

[Morty]

[Airspace]

At this point, it is entirely likely that the Watchtower airship bearing KR, DC, Wenomir, Boris and possibly some other members is approaching the AMEN base.

"Which way do we enter? Do we blast our way in?" Wenomir asks.

[happyturtle]

Everywhere

The Moff on watch for Watch sees the war zeppelin coming and sounds the alarm. "Invaders incoming by air! 2 o'clock high!"

But wait, didn't any alarm ability get destroyed when the Security Room was blasted? Indeed it did. Which is why Moff isn't sounding the alarm by any normal means. Instead, small portals just opened in all the primary rooms and corridors on the base, amplifying his message with lots of Yellow Road goodness.



With the Thing

Moff B yells at the Thing: "Then lead him back here to where the rest of us are!"


Meeting Room

The meeting room got a portal with the message above. Moff D leaps to his feet. "Right. Playtime's over." He grabs a massive gun from behind his back, where no gun possibly could have been. It doesn't look at all natural either. It looks... ooozed into shape, in a way that makes the eyes hurt to focus on.




Moff A = a corpse in the Yellow Road
Moff B = negotiating with the Thing in the Walls
Moff C = outside
Moff D = in the meeting room

[Darkcomet]

[Airspace]

"They should be noticing us right about...now."

[AMEN Base]

Hello, gentlemen.

Why don't we wreak some havoc.

That little telepathic mass-message gets sent at everyone in the AMEN base. It carries a psychic command to start going on a chaotic rampage heedless of the concept of 'friend or foe'. It's also not very strong, given that it is a mass-message and DC doesn't want to touch the crazy brains. Those with strong wills will likely be able to resist simply.

Those less so...well. They are likely to become liabilities right about now. (Requesting that someone specific play henchmen in response to this.) It also occurs to DC's player that considering the AMEN base just got blasted by a message amplified via a mind-bending realm of chaos, this could result in something entirely different from DC's intended result. Someone may very well suddenly think they're a dragon or something.

[Airspace]

"I'll activate the device, then break in however you wish. I was just going to blast the door down while they were reeling from the telepathic attack I just made." With that, DC will proceed to go...

...fly out of the airship. Real nice, DC. Don't even tell them that's what you just did. So now there's a psychic flying toward AMEN too. He doesn't appear to have that 'device' on him, but given the extradimensional storage involved, it's possible it deploys from it. Probable, even.

It is not yet activated as of this post.

[Devixer]

Airspace

"We break through the door. They've seen us already, stealth isn't an option, so we should be counting on high mobility and quick kills instead," Boris says, preparing to dismount the airship and carrying several firearms on his person.

[5a Violista]

[AMEN Base]
Front Room

Harley's still here, right?

The Moff, luckily, sent that warning, so now she could get a little prepared by a couple of her internal organs to produce and control electricity.

When DC finally "We're getting fished," she seethes. She doesn't like psychics. They think they can just go around, fishing whoever they want, doing whatever they want, whenever they want. In her opinion, there's a special spot in Oblivion reserved for all the psychics and their like.

Fortunately, as everybody knows, electricity is the best way to counter psychic attacks. (Or, at least, Harley thinks that everybody knows this.) Thus, to throw off the psychic control on her, she builds up the charge in her body, and draws her empty metal scabbard.

Harley assumes they're going to come flying through a window, or something, since that's the most dramatic way to enter a building.

[ThePhantom]

Mr E's room

Well, looks like its time. Well, its time for this backup room to start up. Mr E sits down in his chair, and sets the monitors to watch the outside. There's a few things he can do from here. Like the exploding cow catapult, but all Watchtower's forces are out of range of his stuff, so all he can do now is wait.

[D_Lord]

[AMEN Base]

Fire

The living Lazor cannons start firing at the about anything in the sky. The ones of the other side of the valcano start walking over with their odd three feet.

With the Thing

Bussy now so he gets to stay about 500 feet down, unless he finds the stairs.

[Airspace]

Problem with doing telegraphic general talking, and if you do a wide area with something being most of the that space well it gives glimpse into the mind there. And it's freecky, missed-up, just wrong, just plain wrong.

[KerfuffleMach2]

Outside Security Room

Ivaz steps out of the room with a grin on her face. Random, senseless destruction was always fun. And she got a couple neat toys.

Just as she decides to head back to Riverside to check on the airfield, Moff's message blares from the room she just left. And then DC's message blares in her head.

Ivaz shakes her head a little. She didn't really have much practice against psychic attacks, but she had a strong enough will to stave off that one.

I hope they kill you, whoever they are.

Ivaz adjusts her black tie. Yeah, that ain't likely. Keeping her sense open, Ivaz makes her way to the front of the base.

[Earl of Purple]

Meeting Room, Maybe?

Dam'bul is a Karkassolith, which grants him resistance from mental attacks.

Unfortunately, he's also a long-time companion of Nephrim, who uses mind control like it's going out of fashion. So he's resistant to the Yellow Road, but not to DC's mental command. He draws his sabre as four large vines rip through the back of his suit's jacket; using those and his ability to choose his direction of 'down' he clambers out the room and starts looking for somebody to messily kill.

Hanger

A biplane is starting up as the succubus pilot responds to the warning. She doesn't spend as much time around Nephrim, so her resistance to mental attacks is intact. There's only the one, though; Pazuzu hasn't been able to replace the ones that were lost over Riverside yet.

It won't reach the air until next post.

[Reinholdt]

Meeting Room

"Dang it? Can't anyone get a dirt nap around here?"

Stu stops laying on the ground and teleports back into his suit. Then looks around. Fortunately for everyone, psychics don't affect him unless specifically modified to deal with magical flower constructs. And that'd require DC to work with Shayan or something.

Basewide

I'm not good at random chaotics wherein yellow road results in something randomly different, but I can say that a good third of the henchmen fall subject to failing their will saves for a combination of reasons. Of course, nobody notices for a moment. Until the henchmen that were grabbing weapons and preparing for war start stabbing and shooting each other. Then it's absolute chaos. But seeing as how they were all gathering to get ready to go out and follow orders, it's a largely self-contained mess of self-slaughter for the moment. Until mechano-panthers arrive to round things up anyways. Which doesn't happen yet.

Some mechano-panthers are gathering in the Main Room though, ready to fight or be instructed elsewhere.

Outside Base

The turrets and such out here, including AA weapons do start coming out of the walls and ground. Well some of them anyways. A good third seem to be malfunctioning. Probably cause someone smashed essential security equipment.

They'll fire at any hostile Watchtower targets in range.

The devices Mister Squiggles buried around AMEN that Alexandrian was concerned about being mines and such are actually just sensors. They are particularly designed to locate stealthed units and rapidly approaching craft. Not really applicable here even if the alarm system wasn't broken.

[happyturtle]

Meeting Room

A Shiny Glowing Purple Thing, aka a portal, opens in the meeting room. On the other side of the portal, can be seen an unconscious devil and a naked daegoloth - the latter happening to be the former leader of AMEN.

In the background, AMENites might recognize Watchtower.

Could be an opportunity.

Or a trap.

Spoiler

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Fleeing!

Decker gets down the stairs...

Staggers a bit...

Gathers her strength and keeps going...

Reaches the door...

Outside...

Decker can see and feel the border of the anti-teleport field as clearly as if it were the surface of a lake. It's just so obvious, so flagrant in it's overdesign. As she runs, she reaches her free hand out, thrusting it past the border, and opens a portal to AMEN's meeting room.

And that's the end of Decker's strength. She collapses on the ground, just short of the portal, with Ilpholin glued to her and half-pinned to the ground.

The portal remains open.

[UncleWolf]

Airspace

Cutter, Watchtower's doctor, hums idly to himself as he runs one last check through his pack, making sure all his supplies are there. He's completely unconcerned about anything going on outside the ship he's currently waiting aboard. He's there for a reserve and as a medic.

Even so, he unfolds a small bundle, revealing a roll of mono-molecular bladed scalpels. He smiles at them, feeling a little thrill in his heart at the thought of using one of them, and one by one, he takes them in his hands where they sink into his flesh, easily hidden.

[Ashen Lilies]

[Airspace]

Watchtower's assault airship, the Butler B. Butler hovers idly a fair distance from AMEN, out of range of their anti-air defences, but also out of range of its own weapons.

Currently piloting it is KR, who's in her prototype power armor, now painted matte black with some occasional red bits.

[AMEN]

Kal prepares herself for the incoming conflict, changing out of her blouse and skirt into dark leather combat attire, loading up on all sorts of daggers and blades and sharp pointy things, as well as her trademark gauntlets.

[ThirdEmperor]

Meeting Room

As it so happens there's still somebody in the meeting room, trying to shake off the nausea that comes with gravity suddenly deciding to go up, down and upside down. It doesn't help his stomach when the Cat Burglar looks up to see an open portal to WATCH and the last person he wants to see lying in front of it.

.... How they hell did they pull off kidnapping her?

Not sure what else to do, he leaps to his feet and scurries to the portal to grab the two fiends and pull them through.

[Morty]

[Airspace]

"Let's cause a little more havoc, now," Wenomir says. "And see if this thing works from our current distance."

With that, he produces Mr. Squiggles' device and presses the button.

[D_Lord]

Amen base outside

Focus Fire

The living Lazor cannons change their angle of their attacks. Each set of three move to the beams meet and combine to vastly increase their range.

[Darkcomet]

[Airspace/Outside]

DC also remains out of conventional range for now. Perhaps they want to let AMEN bleed itself in there? Who knows. He doesn't seem affected by any glimpses he might've just gotten, either, probably because he's seen plenty of nasty things in his time or something.

First off he conjure up some force-fields to block laser cannon blasts coming for him and the airship. Won't last forever and they're not entirely likely to block everything, but that's what evasive maneuvers are for.

Secondly, the psychic does something that might be far more surprising to those in the AMEN base. A baseball-sized black orb hovers in front of him, held aloft by telekinesis, and something emerges from its extradimensional confines in a black blur.

The device now containing the orb resembles a gun, albeit a rather bulky one. This it has in common with DC's usual personal energy cannon type weapons. What is not normal is that it appears almost armored, thick plates covering portions of it, and it has what appear to be twin barrels: One large, and one smaller, more normal-looking one underneath.

As DC opens fire, a swirling multicolored field shimmers into existence in front of the larger barrel, projected by some insane magitech. It is, at first, unclear what it does.

But to those more sensitive to these things, it ought to become very clear what is going on: A magitech-powered electromagnetic field is generated by a device capable of cracking a planet in half when overloaded and combined advanced teleportation technology to project the hideously powerful field outward toward AMEN on multiple planes of existence. This helpfully bleeds off some of the power and makes it less likely to cause a giant EMP apocalypse or something.

Considering the nature of AMEN's Thing In The Walls, this may prove...painful.

[D_Lord]

Things start rumbling...........

Spoiler

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AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGG

KILLL HIM KILLL KILLL KILLL

DC now has every cannon Amen has focused on him, black threads forcing some of them into position and firing them. A lot more summoning portals start opening up and, well you could call it "that's a lot of minions", like people going what happened to the sun.

[FireFox]

Greg's Random Location

The old man is gasping at him and crying.
People!someone else!!!! I been alone but for that thing for I don't know how long!!!

Greg ignores the man. He ignores the feedback from the Yellow Road. He ignores the other psychic's command. He ignores everything as he slips into the fourth jhāna. And then he teleports.

[Meeting Room]

Greg suddenly appears in the meeting room, holding an assault rifle and standing in the middle of a revolving ring of fire and pressure.

[Zefir]

[Halls]

Zefir jsut leans on a wall, finaly managed that guy to disapear he regenerates. So he wakes upp as the attack starts seeing th yellow portal and all that stuff he isn't really ina mood.

WATCHTOWER, too? The Heck I think I just try to get out.

With that he stands up and DC's mind attack got him. As it happens a mesage seems to send back to DC. It has no power it's just like an answer. "OCCUPIED, get your own."

[The Alexandrian]

[Main Room]

Probing Roxanne's stalwart mental defenses won't cause DC to suffer any barrage of psychic counterattacks, but in the same vein, he likely won't be able to detect that his mass psychic broadcast was rejected by Roxanne's well-conditioned and equally well-disciplined mind. Her mental presence is simply stealthed. She cannot be detected through psychic scanning, and while I haven't read of any attempts at psychically scanning the base for lifeforms, I thought it noteworthy enough to briefly mention preemptively.

Likewise, the EMP blast doesn't totally wreck her powered armor, as it is both properly shielded with physical materials and was properly shielded by a dedicated shielding system. I write was because the suit's dedicated shielding systems are no longer functional as the deflection of the EMP drained all of the power allotted to the system and most of the backup power for the redundant systems, so the shielding unit is effectively disabled 'cause she isn't diverting any more power from weapons systems to power her shields (which were raised when Moff sounded the alarm)!

With a emphatic oath, "****!" Roxanne signals her artillery using her neural uplink to Hatter Inc to relentlessly shell the area surrounding the AMEN base straight into the gaping maw of oblivion.

"Commence operation Rain Down!"

It might be immediately clear as the sky above is all of a sudden cluttered with live explosive ordinance why this event was so aptly dubbed Rain Down. Missile after missile hurtles out of the heavens above. Whether it was a sweltering sunny day or a chilly moonless night when the aggressive crew from WATCH launched their assault, they will find the light of the sky nearly blotted out by the sheer number of dumb missiles (and other random explosive devices including but not limited to live grenades, half-built robots, overloaded power cores, mortars, rockets, and several enormous rocks and heavy slabs of metal that closely resemble unfinished tanks that aren't actually explosive but have been added to the mix because they could damage something) plummeting to the ground, goring and mutilating the landscape encircling AMEN as clouds of dry, thick dust billow up into the skies, notably reducing visibility of the base and breatheability of the air.

But those are no more than advantageous sideeffects of the strike.

DC and WATCH's airship might be out of range of the base's defenses, but they might be within the radius of the missile strike. The base's defenses might also be well-within the radius of the missile strike (or, at least, danger close), though I imagine that the sacrifice of the automated defense turrets isn't a major setback if the EMP's splash damage rendered them inoperable as well.

Where the heck did all of those missiles and other random objects come from (besides randomly teleporting out of the sky), you ask? Well, Hatter Inc was gearing up for its grand opening in Riverside prior to the WATCH battle and Roxanne was convinced that they'd need to hold the city hostage if AMENside was to persist for any length of time and was evidently preparing to do just that!

That said, the explosives being fielded here couldn't possibly hope to crack a planet in half with ungodly force, but Roxanne is betting that they may be more than sufficient to ground WATCH's airship and gently persuade WATCH that seeking cover might be a good idea and that gamboling about outside of the base is a very, very, very bad idea.

Of course, Roxanne doesn't have the supplies to keep this artillery strike up for very long by any definition of the word and has exhausted most of her resources in this attack in this post alone. Whether AMEN prevails or loses this battle, Roxanne and Kohan probably won't ever have the money to finance the construction of a research lab or manufacture vast quantities of missiles and robots and various war machines ever again.

Beyond that, all Roxanne can do is take cover behind a thick, sturdy-looking wall, spin up her minigun, and wait for WATCH to knock on the front door, ready and raring to engage whoever is discharging weaponry in the meeting room if they should be suicidal enough to stroll out into the main room to go toe to toe with the heavy weapons gal.

[Earl of Purple]

Main Room

Dam'Bul responds oddly to the electromagnetic pulse, snapping back to reality and wiping his sabre on his jacket, which is then removed and thrown aside as he calmly takes another and puts it on. This might be because of his own ability to disrupt electronic devices that attempt to observe his natural form.

Hanger

One of the (few) advantages of a biplane over other, more advanced forms of aircraft is the complete lack of electronics- the Pazuzite aeroplane is ready to fly despite the pulse that would have fried the navigation, ignition, steering, weaponry and so much more on a modern plane. It doesn't, though; there's too much random junk being flung into the air for the biplane to survive out there for long.

[Ashen Lilies]

[Airspace]

The extra-range lasers hit the Butler B. Butler's shields, causing a bright flash of white light as the energy is deflected by the defensive forcefields.

That, and the incoming missile barrage gently persuade KR that what she thought would be a safe range for the airship to be safely out of the conflict was not quite safe enough, so she flies it back a little more.

The point of this thing is just to have a nearby staging ground, after all, not bombard AMEN with its ten million billion lasers and flamethrowers, and a constant barrage of anti-air does so interfere with that.

[Darkcomet]

[Airspace/Outside]

Well then.

Giant missile barrages and laser cannons and random minions? The 'minions', which I know pretty much nothing about, are probably going to get shredded themselves by that giant barrage of exploding. Probably the laser cannons too all things considered.

But that's just speculation. I have no control of this. What is not speculation is:

In response to seeing a ton of lasers aimed his way, and a ton of explosives about to rain down on his fragile mortal form, DC does just about the only thing he can.

First, he throws up a forcefield above him to block some of the explosions. This might have some extra effect as things that explode early might cause a chain reaction with the rain of explosives. He's not banking on this, though.

He dives down. He draws a particular void-black dagger. and propels it below him telekinetically, keeping it pointed at the ground blade-first. And then that standard reddish aura of his flares around him and it, a translucent red blade further extending from the weapon as he accelerates downward. Finally, he strikes the ground, the dirt and rock exploding around him and making a makeshift tunnel as it is blasted aside by psychokinetic shockwaves coming off the dagger.

DC does not emerge from the ground this round. He is taking cover down there. In the ground. This may make it exceedingly difficult to hit him with next to anything.

The EM weapon is also still active. This might make things more difficult.

So, he's blocking and evading via 'the ground'.

You are a cheap bastard, DC.

[D_Lord]

Outside

Minions in this case are more of random lesser monsters and some things from the Far Realms, You don't get as much power as an Elder Evil has and not have some people wanted to follow you.

And while the EMP is still active I'm guessing because it was described as a gun, then I'm guessing it's not hitting as much of the base with him driving down into the ground. The ground where D is also, so he can go down just fine but with parts of D being destroyed welll, expect cave ins, lava spilling out of tunnels and really load screaming in small area, like all the volume of a rock concert made by one being.

The lazor cannons with no way to get to DC are turning their focus to what they can hit, namely WATCH's airship. While the minons for the most part are getting hit by the general artillery being fired while some are still flying and the ones on the ground are trying to follow DC.

Meeting Room

Your aren't getting away that easy!!!!!


Que one big made of tentacles, hand reaching through the portal to watchtower.

[Ashen Lilies]

((Friendly OoC notice!

Spoiler

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RE: AMEN fight.

I'd like to make a note at this point that I brought the airship along mostly to have a staging ground for WATCH members to strike from, and because it makes IC sense to have it there, even if it's just as decoration, not because I'm interested in having large-scale fights with lots of weapons flying around.

I think it really shuts out a lot of lower powered characters if this battle were to solely devolve into us throwing as many missiles and bombs and lasers at each other as possible, because there's only so many people who can handle an aeriel disruptor barrage or a missile massacre.

If someone like Earl wants to send his biplanes at it, I don't mind RPing a dogfight (as much as you can reasonably call aeriel combat involving a zepellin a 'dogfight') I'm not going to have the airship close in for a ground bombardment of any sort, so it's not likely to be in range for any more ground-based defenses.

The Airship is not in range of ground-based assault.))

[Reinholdt]

(It would be nice to not have this fight all be eldritch armies vs. powerful psychics preventing anyone else from participating. Perhaps have him need to back away to hide somewhere and recuperate from his wounds? Though I'm sure he could still prevent any total basewide destruction should it tip too far in that direction.)

Basewide

The henchmen are still fighting each other. Death tolls are rising.

Mister Squiggles program is activated!
...
Only to have the entire base blasted with planet busting EMP just moments later. You're not going to find out what it does doing that. At least, not until the base's power and such reboots itself. Which is going to full of all sorts of errors, and corruption. Crazed psychos blasting important computer equipment. =x

On the upside, things around the base shut down. Like all outside defenses, the mechano-panthers, clone tanks...

Lights. Air-purification system designed to stop horrible volcanic toxins from killing everything.

At least that last one won't matter too much unless lava actually gets into the base.

Meeting Room

Oh hey. Portal. And some people on the other side. And a laser coming through and smacking Stu in the face and...
Oh wait.
"GAH! MY EYES!!" Stu flails for a second. Despite not actually having eyes. His suit is largely unaffected by EMP. It wasn't built by the Master of Goblins for nothing! It's a true marvel of engineering.

*clank*
That's the sound of the marvel of engineering falling and rolling on the floor. No one ever said the driver was worthy of it.
"MY BEAUTIFUL MANLY EYES!!"

[ThePhantom]

(Well, WATCHTOWER did come to destroy the base, which means destroying him. It makes sense that he would fight back, and his power scale is a lot higher than the other members. That's a problem that came up with the attack on MagCave, only this time its even harder to do because Thing-in-Walls=Base.)

Mr E's Room

And now the screens have gone dead. Great. Well, time to rely on the mechical and magical things. Mr E pulls a lever and his chair lowers down in the base. Time to head to the gardens, for a few special plants.