Zippy Zip-A-Long

[Herculine]

Kinda reminds me of Starcraft...

 

Great stuff this!

[Maharg67]

Thank you again, Herculine, for you fine feedback. How like Starcraft?

 

COSMIC OPERA

CHAPTER EIGHT

 

Good and bad news prevailed! Kvatch was saved but now under siege again though enemy numbers had been reduced. Problem was so had German and Cyrodilin forces.

 

German folk seemed to be settling well into the two fort based settlements and some villages close to them but there were some Cyrodilins who were fearful of them, who were predjudiced. Problem was also that some of the Germans were prejudiced against such as the orcs and amphibious folk. Another problem was that various artisan guilds were worried about the impact that new German technologies might have on their power, influence and profits. While some guild folk were more open to change, others seemed to be going out of their way to impede progress. The Archery Guild of such as bowers and fletchers were concerned about the development of muskets. The Teamsters Guild were worried about the development of steam engines to drive trains, boats and wagons. The Mages Guild were concerned about many developments but were trying to keep an open mind to it all.

 

Other Germans came through and with them Austrians. This time there were more soldiers and many more civilians. There were no tanks or other such war-machines but many more trucks and horse drawn wagons and carts. There were also some captured American made trucks and jeeps along with some American GI prisoners.

 

Rommel had the American GIs freed at once because what could they do, where could they go? The war of that other world was not relevant to Tamriel.

 

The Eternal Champion met with the young Empress, her brothers had officially abdicated from being on it, and she was truly a spitfire of temper but also damned clever and canny. She sat listening to information about the newcomers until she had gained enough for her needs. Then she leaned forward and officially declared that newcomers could move inside the Duchy they were in but not go outside of it with out permission from the Imperial Council or herself. The Empress seemed to be wary of the Eternal Champion and yet not hostile.

 

The Empress sat in a fine armchair, of padded ornate wood, that she called her travelling throne. She was beautiful in a striking manner with a fine noble nose and bone structure to her face. Her figure was slimly voluptuous, well padded by Cyrdoilin standards, and her eyes were darkly beautiful and penetrating. She wore ornate armour of Legionary design but it was more for appearance than actual protection. On a big round table next to her was an expensive, well made map of Tamriel with markers on it showing positions of various forces.

 

The Empress spoke. "The Empire is strong but not as strong as it was before the Oblivion Invasions began. The Imperial Government is far from broke but neither does it have an excess of treasury funds to spend."

 

The Eternal Champion sat in a more humble but still comfortable padded wooden armchair. "I can get you two thousand goldworth at short notice."

 

The Empress frowned softly. "We will need bronze, fine hard woods and other materials to make the muzzle loading cannons and muskets that the Germans speak of. Or do we try to develop more advanced 'guns' than those. Magically forged steel could be turned into breech loading rifles and magically forged bronze in breech loading cannons. We could make shells and bullets."

 

The other woman noted. "Trickier but the weapons will be more effective in many ways. Confining the newcomers to one Duchy makes sense unless we need their military forces to go to other areas."

 

"Then they will gain permission to do so." The Empress frowned. "I want to know more about these damned traitors who have joined the ranks of the super-mutant enemies. Have the Blades learned anything more? I know the Imperial Intelligence Office hasn't, the stupid dandies."

 

"Very little except that the Mythic Dawn Cult is active once more though how this is linked with the troubles, we do not know." The Eternal Champion sighed. "I need to travel to the Imperial City to speak to various people there, including both of your brothers. Something has come up there that may give us some much needed clues to what is really going on. Also there are some disturbing stories I need to check out such as quickly opening and closing Oblivion Gates, the sighting of dragons and some others."

 

The Empress nodded. "Do not tarry too long. I will most likely be returning to the Imperial City myself soon."

 

They parted ways from that neat but largely bare tower chamber. The Empress studied the markers on the map and then frowned softly.

 

TO BE CONTINUED

Edited July 13, 2010 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

COSMIC OPERA

CHAPTER NINE

 

Farmers and other villagers at night around a bonfire cooking meat. Peaceful? Villagers sometimes laughing madly. A villager smashing his head against a stone brick wall. An old farm dog cowering in a yard corner, beaten and tied by heavy chains to an iron post. Children in a crude iron cage.

 

The approach of the thunder of horses. Moving quickly. No lights!

 

Villagers wrestle with each other crazily. One lifts up a half burned and half raw human arm, bites into it. Blood flows down to his chin.

 

Two men drag a seminaked, clothes torn, young woman into the big grassy area close to the roaring bonfire. Thunk, an arrow strikes one man in the eye and he falls dead, writhing terribly, to the ground. The other man screams weirdly, dropping the woman to the ground, and then an arrow kills him. A pair of knights in grey armour and with no identifying symbols except for simple odd ones, charge into the area and begin to slay villagers, their longswords biting through necks, into chests, stabbing and hacking with great expertise. The big armoured warhorses trample others to death.

 

Knights, foot-soldiers, archers and battlemages sweep through the village. With them come priests with their own special spiritual magic. A village cottage begins to burn. A priest in plain grey robes crouches and sanctifies the fallen seminaked woman. She is gently taken away to safety as is the old farmdog, lifted up and carried. The old dog wags his tail in gratitude. The children are rescued as are other innocents, others that can be saved. The rest are killed and their bodies are burned. What is good in the village will be taken and used again, even many humble things, but the rest will be destroyed or left to rot. The village will be declared forbidden ground for a hundred years despite it being cleansed by priests and priestesses.

 

But the dark force that caused all the evil has already gained what it came to get and has escaped.

 

The Knights of the Light have failed again but they will go on seeking to find and at least identify the dark force at work.

 

TO BE CONTINUED

Edited July 13, 2010 by Maharg67

[Herculine]

Kinda reminds me of Starcraft...

 

Great stuff this!

 

The mixture of antiquity, technology and magic, sci-fi and fantasy in unison. A premise I've always found appealing.

[Maharg67]

Again, thank you, Herculine!

[Maharg67]

COSMIC OPERA

CHAPTER TEN

 

General Patton came through another gateway and with him a fair sized army of American and Canadian soldiers. The army had been surrounded by Nazi stormtroopers of a new kind, cyborgs of terrible strength and body-armour plating. There had been zombies, vampires and werewolves. There were no normal German soldiers in the bizarre army. Reports had come from the French Resistance, strange reports, that French freedom-fighters and common German soldiers had joined forces to fight Hitler's new monsters. Hitler had gone worse than just insane, had gone truly demonic and had turned against normal Germans and Austrians. His beasts had ransacked Berlin to creat a expanding zone of death and destruction until even the SS had turned against him out of desperation to survive. Patton's army had been smashing across France, driving the enemy back, but his supply lines had become stretched and reinforcements had been left behind. Then he was surrounded.

 

But when German aircraft had attacked, they had bombed and strafed the monsters. Word came through, somehow, from Allied Command. Against all past decisions a truce had been committed between the Allies and the newly formed Anti-Nazi Alliance of Germany-Austria. Nazis were being rounded up and executed in fair sized numbers but all knew these were prominant scapegoats. Goring died fleeing from giant bat creatures that tore his small aircraft to bits. Himler was executed. The Soviets protested the truce until their advancing forces met the monsters at the eastern border of Germany; they quickly changed their mind as many peasant soldiers fled from the monsters in panic, dropping their weapons. The other soldiers were quickly overwhelmed and butchered. The Communists were forced, most reluctantly, to utilise the help of the Orthodox priests. Stalin ranted and raved, then died as his own high command officers shot him in the back. It seemed that the Russians feared Stalin but they feared monsters even more.

 

The Japanese called for a truce and the Allies, again with much reluctance, agreed.

 

Patton led a long line of American war-machines across Tamriel as local people stared in shock and wonder. With him came Canadian infantry in their trucks, half-tracks and Kangeroo APCs (altered Ram and Sherman tanks) and refugees of French nationality. They came to park in a great grassy clearing and there Patton met with an Imperial Envoy and the Eternal Champion in a tent. Patton was not happy about being stuck on another world so far from his beloved USA but of course his feelings were not unique. Close to the area was a large force of Legionaries and Guard contingents from various Cyrodilin cities.

 

Patton paced back and forth with his pear handled pistols and looked from the Imperial Envoy in her ceremonial field armour and the hard eyed amazon of the Eternal Champion. He knew that the envoy was far more canny than her almost grandmotherly aspect would suggest and that the Eternal Champion was damned dangerous. For one thing, despite her appearance and her being on that world, she knew all about his world and acted as if she had been there many times, over many centuries, in many places and as many people. Normally he would have dismissed such claims as madness but those eyes and her very presence, they made it seem all together too real.

 

The discussion began as soon as Field-Marshal Rommel walked into the tent and exchanged frowns with Patton.

 

TO BE CONTINUED

Edited July 13, 2010 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

HOT AGAIN, HOTTEST DRIEST FEBUARY EVER RECORDED FOR PERTH, WESTERN AUSTRALIA.

 

TEMP HOVERING UP CLOSE TO AND SOMETIMES AROUND 40 CELSIUS (104 FAHRENHEIT)

 

HOT, HOT, HOT.

 

 

BUT WITH HOPEFULLY SOME COOL RELIEF COMING.

Edited July 13, 2010 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

COSMIC OPERA

CHAPTER ELEVEN

 

In bright late morning sunshine Oblivion Gates opened close to Mexico border but north of it in New Mexico during the last year of World War Two, 1944. Three open them did so and out came dremora and other daedric invaders like fire-pulse throwing scamps and bounding, snapping clannfears. They moved in raiding parties across the desert landscape. As they moved they were troubled for these creatures came to sense that they were in a strange new world.

 

One party came across a camp of poor illegal immagrants sneaking across the border. With their swords and armour, the dremora attacked. The Mexicans screamed and rushed away in horror, parents grabbing up children. But two men had revolver pistols and one fired his off, killing a dremora soldier with a single hit to the head. A scamp burned him down and the other man turned and fled, dropping his gun. Most of the Mexicans escaped as these lesser daedra were not used to this new landscape, its life or its smells and sounds. They took up the revolver pistols and bullets, that is the more intelligent dremora, and anything else they could carry of pots, blankets, cans of food and even the two dead Mexicans they had killed. They took the dead dremora, of course.

 

The signal went out like a strange whining call for all raiding parties to return to the gateways and they did as quickly and as sneakily as possible.

 

A clannfear was killed by a rattle-snake and then the reptile was ripped apart by other clannfears who did so with fangs but they left behind the torn up snake.

 

The daedric invaders left behind plenty of strange tracks and scents that led to the Oblivion Gates and the active Oblivion Gates could not only be seen and heard from afar, they could be easily seen at night from the sky.

 

TO BE CONTINUED

Edited July 13, 2010 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

COSMIC OPERA

CHAPTER TWELVE

 

The gateways between World War Two France of one world and Tamriel not only stabilized, they became to look something like the Oblivion Gates but were coloured of blue energies instead of red. These became known as the Earth Gates. The now permanent seeming gateways that brought the super-mutants were also Earth Gates but not from the same 'Earth' it seemed.

 

Then, once more, Oblivion Gates opened on Tamriel but this time dotted across the whole continent, scattered but in clusters of one great and three standard gateways. There seemed to be one such cluster for each land be in Morrowind, Cyrodiil or any of the others. Out of them swarmed not just the creatures of the kind of the last invasion but older types not seen for a long time and new kinds to be seen on that world. Not just dremora, clannfears, scamps, spider daedra, flame atronachs, frost atronachs, storm atronachs and xivilai invaded, the less powerful the kind of being, the more common they being. No, also came shock atronachs, worm daedra, dragon like daedragons and tall, thin scamp like scords who wore basic metallic armour and used basic metallic swords or powerful crossbows.

 

But the locals were not taken by surprise, not anywhere. Warnings had gone out and all over Tamriel battles broke out. It was the invaders who were truly taken by surprise as they ran into booby-traps of pits, as arrows and fireballs rained down upon them, as they found themselves charging fortified positions hastily but fairly well built. In Black Swamp they found the deadly swamps difficult to take which were so unlike their terrible homelands. The invaders were driven back but nobody was fooled; they would be back.

 

But in New Mexico there were soldiers watching the one great big and three standard Oblivion Gates now established firmly there. Sand bagged positions had heavy machineguns, some obsolete light cannons, five Sherman tanks and just over a hundred soldiers with bolt-action rifles, submachineguns, light machineguns, some mortors and two flame-throwers. With them were some hundred or so volunteers armed with a crazy mixture of shotguns, rifles and pistols. Reinforcements were on their way but would not get there for some days to come. It was not a great situation.

 

There was a group in a tent with one side open towards the alien gateways. General James Brady had come out of retirement to lead this force. He was damned strong willed and a fine conventional warfare man but this situation was beyond him. Which made him grateful that a strange, secretive team had been sent by Washington DC HQ to assist him. A genius professor in a wheelchair, a bunch of misfit psychics, two other brilliant scientists, some special field agents who were professional killers, techs, other support staff and three he could not so easily define. Professor Exmen brushed some dust off his bold head and then took another look at the biggest of the oblivion gates through a powerful pair of binoculars.

 

"A torn up rattle-snake was found. On it was some strange blood. I have examined it. It is like nothing found on this world." The professor sighed and passed the binoculars back to the general. "It is life, but not as we know it, Jim."

 

A young, attractive but cooly efficient woman stood next to the professor. She held a file in her hands with fine black and white photos of evidence left by the invading monsters, including neatly typed notes, maps with marking and such like. The heat did not seem to touch her. The field agents were much the same, now in outdoor clothes and openly armed with submachineguns. The psychics were a mixed bunch, eccentric, but mainly quiet with nervousness and the heat. Techs were busy with setting up a mixture of known and exotic equipment, much of it top secret in nature. There was another tent back from this which was set up with two clerks, a normal radio operator and an admin officer who carried out many functions. In another tent was a laboratory with other techs and some scientists. Of course there were other tents and a horrible army type toilet shed.

 

Further to the back were some army trucks, jeeps and beeps (small six wheeled trucks) plus a yellow school bus, some cars and farm pick-up trucks.

 

The professor went on speaking. "The tracks indicate at least three kinds of invading creatures came. Odd scorch marks on the ground where the Mexicans were killed, indicated at least one kind of energy weapon was used. My mind wanders to HG Wells and the heat beams of the Martians."

 

The general nodded. "One of my favourite books when I was younger. I read it twice. I doubt the tracks left behind indicate Martian tripods, thankfully."

 

Another coolly efficient women came into the tent with a heavy tray full of tea cups of tea or coffee, some glasses, a bowl of sugar, teaspoons and some biscuits along with a made up jug of cooled water and another jug powder milk. She put it on a small camp table and began to hand out hot tea and coffee. Some took glasses of cool water. The general went to ask how the water was cooled but something told him not to.

 

The three coolly efficient women looked like identical triplets. They wore good casual outdoor clothes including jeans. They were openly armed with holstered Colt .45 pistols and Thompson submachineguns. They were beautiful and sexy but somehow they were not quite human.

 

The professor took a few gulps of cool water and wiped sweat off his face. "We need an air-conditioned caravan for the special equipment, which does not like heat too much, which we can enjoy also. Now the fighting with the Japanese is ended, I suppose many resources will be sent back home."

 

The general shrugged. "Who knows. I do know these gates and the monsters will get the government wanting to bringing many here but the European situation is grim and not everybody trusts the Japanese even though they have left many islands and even China. Nobody knows why Japan suddenly ended the war and is so keen to just leave many of its occupied lands behind to prove it no longer wishes to fight the Allies. Nobody knows why the Russians have ceased to attack them."

 

Then one of the women spoke, one of the cool women, the one with the file. "Japan has been attacked by a great reptilian monster that arose from the sea. Its name is Godzilla. It has been driven back into the sea for now but it heals fast and other monsters, most much smaller and less powerful Godzilla, threaten the Japanese Empire. A great and powerful force of chaos threatens many worlds and it is called Retirw. Retirw always has reasons for what it does but its reasons are not sane as we know sanity, or at least as you know it. Yet the same force has sent us three and we will assist you with special abilities and bits of special information that Retirw allows us to have. Yet Retirw is not the main threat, not the darkness itself that wishes to consume worlds. That is Rerhsilbup and its monstrous servant, Rotide."

 

The general frowned. The professor finished drinking his cool water and gestured for a refill. The woman who had brought the tray, refilled his glass with cool water. Things were getting much stranger and very quickly so.

 

TO BE CONTINUED

Edited July 13, 2010 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

"First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a communist;

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist;

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew;

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak out." - Pastor Martin Niemöller

Edited July 13, 2010 by Maharg67