Zippy Zip-A-Long

[Maharg67]

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-7-

THE ADVENTURES OF HERCULINE

IMPERIAL PRISON

 

It was a Blade that treacherously struck the Emperor down from behind and who died as Herculine slew him with a sweep of her blade. It was the Emperor who arose again, not dead but transformed, to stand amongst them to hand over the Amulet of Kings to Herculine. Emperor Semptim VII would now go to where no mere mortal could go, would meet with past Emperors and Empresses, now long dead, and would consult with them. He bowed to the Blades and to Herculine even as dead Blades came out of the walls of the Underprison to escort him in safety to a special place hidden within the depths of the White Gold Tower that had not truly been built by the Ayleids at all.

 

The Emperor departed, promising to 'keep in touch' and to 'assist as much as he was allowed to'.

 

Baurus and the other Blades were confused, it was obvious, and not all were happy but Baurus seemed more acceptive of the strange situation. He turned to Herculine. "I will go with you to Weynon Priory to meet wit Jeffre, the current head of the Order of Blades. Yet first we must escape from here, from the undead, from the Mythic Dawn."

 

Herculine shook her head. "The enemies are gone now. They sensed the death of the Emperor but they have not realised the truth of what has happened. The Empire will now think that the Emperor and both of his sons have died but as we both now know, there is Martin Septim who is now his one and only male heir. He has a daughter, he has Martin."

 

A BladeMage named Jadine stepped forward. She was a tough veteran of a battlemage. "You should give us the Amulet of Kings so that we, the Blades, can take it to Jeffre. You have done good but you are not one of us."

 

Baurus turned and frowned hard at his comrade. "Who do we serve, we serve the Emperors and Empresses, the Imperial Court of Cyrodiil. We will do as Uriel Septim VII ordered. We will be loyal to his commands even now. Step back, Jadine, and know your place."

 

But it was obvious that not all of the Blades were happy with this idea.

 

-CONTINUED-

Edited October 25, 2010 by Maharg67

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-8-

THE ADVENTURES OF HERCULINE

IMPERIAL SEWERS

 

The group of Blades staid tight in purpose and formation as they went through the sewers. They met there some friendly goblin workers, traditional servants of the Empire who far from minded the horribile stink and other conditions, who enjoyed the rats and sewer-crabs as meaty treats, who had seen a large number of intruders. Firstly the goblins had watched the heavily armed intruders go in one direction and then the opposite, both times befing in a hurry.

 

The sewer-goblins had little awareness of Imperial Affairs, or care for them, but even they knew that the death of an Emperor was a big thing. The goblins were fascinated by the fleshgolems and sniffed at them while the fleshgolems look no offence at all.

 

What truly amazed the golbins was that Herculine could speak not just one but many goblin languages fluently including the proper small details that humans, even gifted linquists, found hard to perfect. It turned out that she knew more goblin languages and had more knowledge of goblinkind than any of the sewer-goblins there. So it was that the sewer-goblins of Imperiarna, the Imperial Throne City, the City of the White Gold Tower, made sure she and her people got safely to the exit facing the river.

 

When they emerged into dim sunlight of morning, into fresh air full of the sounds of birds, they all felt better for it. They faced part of the great Imperial Lake, almost a small fresh water sea that surrounded the Imperial Island on which was situated Imperiarna and some outposts but also much green landscape of light spread forests. All of the Blades seemed happier and the fleshgolems enjoyed soaking up the sunshine.

 

They set out to go up to Imperiarna proper, to its open ways and not the Undercity that was between the Open Ways and the Sewers.

 

-CONTINUED-

Edited October 25, 2010 by Maharg67

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-9-

THE ADVENTURES OF HERCULINE

IMPERIAL SEWERS

 

The Blades had their own fort linked to the city wall, fused into it in the Ayleid fashion, and there the group went first. Clearly there was much anger and frustration amongst the Blades Legion, along with fear. At first the Imperial Legionaries had blamed the Blades for what had happened but then had been forced to back down when it turned out that Mythic Dawn traitors in their ranks had also worked against the survival of the Emperor and the Imperial Princesses. Same was true of the Imperiarna Cityguards and other Imperial military, paramilitary and law enforcement services. Civilguards were considered to be paramilitary and not military. The Sheriff's Order was the law in the city and on the large island, with its Civilguards, Deputies and Constables. Somehow none of these or other imperial forces had managed to save the Emperor or his sons.

 

The Empress was still safely imprisoned in her luxurious castle-prison that was on the island but some hundred or so kilometres from the city boundaries. The Imperial Princess had been rescued from attack but, times having changed, many did not see that an Empress should truly have any power. Many stories, most of them wildly inaccurate and negative, were going around and it was feared that the Mythic Dawn and their mysterious allies were behind this as they were behind so much else of troubling nature.

 

The Imperial Leadership Council had taken over the role of the Emperor for now. The Imperial Elective Council demanded to have some say in what was happening but was ignored. The people were confused. The Templedom of the Nine Divines tried hard to calm down the population and to assist the Mages Guild and other forces to hunt down Mythic Dawn agents.

 

Herculine looked out of a narrow, barred window at the Ring Lake beyond that was large enough to be a fresh water sea. Two large sail-freighters were coming into port with barrels, sacks, crates and other containers full of tradegoods, of produce to feed the huge city. Though the city had means of food production both inside the walls and on the island protected by the shoreline defences, the city population needed the incoming food. In return it manufactured much that was needed in other parts of the Cyrodilin Empire. The huge sail-freighters were assisted by magic to move through the water that effected the hull and the air blowing against the sails. Arcane magic it was and Herculine frowned softly for the empire tended to use arcane magic too often for the wrong reasons. The Merchant-Traders Guild used arcane magic to improve their profits greatly as did others.

 

Yet there had been worse abuses of magic in Cyrodiil and other parts of Tamriel.

 

Baurus strode into the small chamber with its table, chairs, desk and other heavy wooden furniture. It was not a lavishly decorated chamber for it was meant for practical purposes. It even had a set of drawers, the bottom drawer of which was filled with mattress and pulled out to be a bed of sorts.

 

Baurus frowned softly. "You will be taking the Amulet of Kings to Jaffre. It is decided though there have been a few fools who have had to be put in their place. We can go by flyer, if you so wish, or even by one of the ancient teleporters. A small taskforce is being assembled."

 

Herculine watched a small lake whale spouting water and was pleased by the sight. "I prefer not to trust arcane magic lifted flyers or Ayleid mer magic powered teleporters. You, Baurus, will come with me and only you. I will provide the means to get to the priory. Even a small taskforce will attract too much attention from the wrong people and will make it harder to keep secrets, especially the secrets that I am about to show you. You know of the druids?"

 

"Natural magic, wild magic, the druids are still to be found in more isolated areas of Cyrodiil and some other areas of the empire. They are like a combination of the Divine Templedom and the Mages Guild or so one has heard." The young BladeKnight shrugged. "They are of little consequence."

 

Herculine frowned at him. "They why has every Emperor or Empress of the Cyrodilin Empire consulted with the High Druid Elders at least once every year in secret?" Then she softened her frown. "You have much to learn. I have druidic magic, intrinsic, and elemental along with other spell abilities for I am of the true magefolk."

 

Baurus looked startled. "I thought that was just a foolish story."

 

She shook her head. "All true magefolk have the True Dragonblood in them such as the Emperors and Empresses of Cyrodiil. All Cyrodilin Imperials have at least some of the True Dragonblood. Cyrodilin Commoners do not."

 

Outside of Cyrodiil people tended to think all Cyrodilins were Imperials. This was far from true. Imperials tended to live in Imperiarna and Imperiarna Island that the city was on. The vast majority of Cyrodilins were Commoners. Only Imperials could use the ancient dragonori magic but both Imperials and Commoners could use arcane magic though for some reason Commoners were better at using arcane magic than were Imperials.

 

At that moment somebody started to smash against the locked door with great force. Herculine turned, sensed angry Blades were trying to force their way into the room to take the Amulet of Kings from her, and she knew she had to act. She grabbed a startled Baurus by the hands and both of them vanished with a sparkling shimmer even as the foolish rebel Blades stormed into the room with Jadine the BladeMage leading them.

 

 

-CONTINUED-

[Maharg67]

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-31-

FALLOUT BLUES

DANZ007 (DANZIE)

IN MEGATON

 

Danzie, Justine and Lucas went deeper into the house on that level, which sank partly into the craterside. They found some bedrooms, a big study-library with mostly empty shelves but also a bookcase full of good stuff, a holoprojector in a set up holoprojection room, a laboratory-workshop, some biochem toiletrooms, a recycled water bathroom, storerooms, a smaller commonroom, a laundry and a kitchen with a big pantry room.

 

Then the real surprises came with the other level. This held a great museum room with many displays in status domes on-in platforms being mutated creatures frozen in motion, robots, a couple of atomic motorised vehicles, road signs, an electric tricar of a pointed shape with three wheels, robots in rest-recharge bays, a small workshop, a garage with two small vehicles but plenty of space for more vehicles, a basic gym, an indoor swimming pool chamber, a few partly full storeroms and some spare rooms.

 

Lucas assurred them it was all theirs but they were not fooled. They promised that they would see what they could pass over to the Sheriff's Office to use. Indeed they gave the Sheriff a rifle, some boxed bullets, some stimpaks, some boxcans of CRAM, a baseball bat for his son and a few other, small, items. Word would soon get around Megaton and there would be pressure on them for them to give up more resourcs to the town, to those in them.

 

Danzie walked around the big museum type chamber and studied the robotic protectrons. "Very interesting. Did you know that protectrons, while considered being part of the Tron Robotics Series, were actually manufactured in a totally different set of three factories than were other tron-robots? The internal build of the protectrons is different in some interesting ways, from that of such as the securatrons, worktrons, firetrons and others."

 

Justine, who had once been named Jasmine, was looking at a big, long display case full of mannequins dressed in PreDD civilian clothes. "Amazing what they used to wear. No protection. Such thin cloth out in the open. Skirts and dresses? They would have been so inefficient."

 

Danzie nodded. "There is something odd about the arrangement of this room. There is more than just a basic museum display here. It is set out like... like a puzzle of some kind."

 

Justine smiled. "I have the same feeling."

 

So they staid in that chamber to look things over.

 

-CONTINUED-

[Maharg67]

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-32-

FALLOUT BLUES

DANZ007 (DANZIE)

IN MEGATON

 

There was a puzzle in the layout of the museum exhibits. Then they found it was more than one puzzle.

 

The answer to one puzzle lay in hidden floor-safes, one beneath each of five big but lighter displays of mannequins in domes. In each floor-safe were EIDs in the form of coins, cards and notes. There were also finger-ingots of 24 carot gold, a mixture of gems, vialboxes of concentrated rejen and rejuve serums, small valuable artworks, weapon prototypes and other items. They kept the floor-safes hidden but decided to pass over $5,000 in EIDs to Megaton Town Council.

 

The answer to another puzzle lay in a vault-room with three exotic machines.

 

One was an exotic and intricate machine, a kind of cloning device designed to clone plants and small animals. For the first time they saw the symbol for CloneTek, a small specialised TekCorp that had only functioned within the parameters of the research and development of specialised cloning technologies, a few projects subcontracted to such as WestTek, USTek, RobCo, VaultTek and OverTek, the big umbrella TekCorp for all other TekCorps.

 

The second was a teleport-gate machine linked, possibly, to other machines like it.

 

The third was a super virtual reality hub with three SVR-capsulechairs.

 

Why would the machines be there? Datafiles spoke of something called the Dharma Initiative that rose after Doomsday to carry out a large, well organised but secret investigation into how and why Doomsday had taken place in the first place. The DI had set up that house and its odd contents, moving items from other places, but the datafiles did not say why this was done in the way it had been. They hid the chamber from the rest of Megaton.

 

But there was another puzzle to solve, a more subtle and clever one.

 

-CONTINUED-

Edited November 2, 2010 by Maharg67

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-33-

FALLOUT BLUES

DANZ003 (DANZER)

IN THE UNDEATHLANDS

 

As the group came to the small rise of rocky ground where the power-hatch was hidden, the entrance to the place that Professor Ashworth was seeking so avidly, a small horde of quickly shambling animated corpses, zombies, came towards them. Argyle, Herbert and Jasmine quietly and efficiently shot down one zombie after another, each zombie burning away into a black ash as it died with amazing speed. It was gettind darker and zhouls were on the move out there, were waging battles with zombies as zhoul swarms against zombie hordes. Argyle had mixed emotions to zhouls, his extra deformed ghoul like cousins as he had to ghoulers, or so called feral ghouls, who were half way between the madness of zhouls and the mixed 'normality' of ghouls.

 

Danz003, Danzer, focused on opening the power-hatch as they got to it as did Professor James Ashworth. Even as the disk shaped hatch slid open into a hidden slot, they began to move down into a shaft and away from the growing threat of the zombies. Then the power-hatch was sliding closed behind and above them, was clicking locked in multiple ways, and they began to make their way deep down into the ground. They were soon going down a gently sloping metallic hallway tunnel into the depths of an amazingly complicated underground facility designed in such a way as to actually be in itself a great big instrumentality.

 

Professor James Ashworth was a driven man, a man who sought to carry out Project Purity at almost any cost.

 

Danzer was concerned about his obssessive drive and it turned out that so were the others in the group.

 

-CONTINUED-

Edited December 1, 2010 by Maharg67

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-52-

THE ADVENTURES OF TIMESAGE COSMOS AND COMPANY

GINACOS FIGHTING MAD ON MARS

 

Ginacos, in power armour, slipped down the tilting deck of the skycruiser and Red Martian soldiers in power armour did the same. Traditionally Red Martian warriors fought near bare naked but for webbing of pouch dotted belts, weapons, canteens, other useful items and boots. Reluctantly a few had switched to power armour but then, upon finding just how powerful it made them, many others had done the same. The great four armed Green Martians had gained their own version of power armour, a dreadful warmachine of each otherm them. But no power armour was doing the skycruiser much good as it tilted down to the ground, black smoke pouring from its engines and lifters.

 

The Aquatic Martians had struck back against their enemies with mechameths, great four legged machines that were slower but much better armed and armoured than the towering battletripods and smaller mechatripods. Tripocs in exotic power armour moved across the red webgrass covered area of the Red Planet as skybattleships bombarded them from a distance. The Aquatic Martians, it seemed, could not bring themselves to leave the ground, at least not by very far. Now low flying enemy machines were scooting through the air about ten metres above the ground, on average. They were trijets, slow moving and fairly ponderous but also heavily armed and armoured for aircraft.

 

Ginacos hit the safety barrier at the edge of the deck and then leapt down to the ground that was only two or so metres from the tilted part of the skyship now. She hit the ground running as did other RedGuards, the soldiers of the new Red Martian fighting force. Redguards fired of heavy power-rifles that shot fletchettes or heavy calibre bullets. Tripocs fell despite their power armour but others turned and unleashed heat-beams to bring down a pair of RedGuards.

 

Then Ginacos was going slo-mo, was moving faster than time around herself, was striking down a nine limbed tripoc, hurling it backwards through the air. It was dead before it hit the ground. All around the great battle was raging as warmachines moved through the sky and on the ground. In the distance was one of the Great Canals that was so wide that from one shore the other could be hardly seen with normal vision. Tripocs were coming out of the water to attack RedGuard and allied forces on that side of the canal.

 

Ginacos came back into normal time motion in time to be hurled through the air by an explosion but before she blacked out she saw something that concerned her deeply, that frightened her far more than the tripocs could have ever done.

 

-CONTINUED-

Edited November 7, 2010 by Maharg67

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-53-

THE ADVENTURES OF TIMESAGE COSMOS AND COMPANY

PROFESSOR COSMOS ON THE HUNT AGAIN

 

The fears of Elizabeth, who would one day be Empress Elizabeth II of the British Empire, that her mother was being poisoned, turned out to be true. TimeSage Cosmos and Ninacos were escorted to the bedroom of the very sick monarch where she was surrounded by puzzled doctors, quietly bustling handmaidens, some Imperial Bodyguards in power armour and various others. Professor Cosmos ushered them out and then both he and his daughter were attending Empress Victoria with three quietly observing handmaiden bodyguards watching them carefully along with a stern faced human doctor who seemed both nervous and unconvinced of what the TimeLord and TimeLady were doing. The Duchess was also there but quietly stood in the background observing.

 

As the doctor was taken away by Imperial Bodyguards, it was he who had been secretly administering more poison to the Empress while pretending to give her hyperdermic shots of medicine, the monarch was visibly improving. Soon she was peacefully asleep as her temperature lowered to normal degrees and her pain slipped away.

 

They retired to an imperial antechamber designed for small informal meetings of a more discrete kind. Duchess Elizabeth sat in a large armchair that was more designed for comfort than for elegant appearance, unlike so much of the furniture in the great Imperial Buckingham Palace. "So, who dared poison my mother? Clearly the foolish doctor is little more than a pawn."

 

TimeSage Cosmos and Ninacos were also sitting in surprisingly comfortable chairs with cups of tea and plates of fine shortbread biscuits on a table between them. Ninacos spoke. "The poison came not from this world but from another but the poison is one that comes from a plant now grown on many worlds by many different species. The plant produces a substance that can be turned either into a very hard to detect or cure poison or a very potent healing serum useful to deal with many conditions, including aging. The plant is sashunt, the poison is sashunti and the healing serum is sashunto. Ironically enough, the best solution against sashunti poisoning is the use of sashunto as an antidote."

 

Elizabeth nodded. "So this could be the work of Professor Greening, the Starlord, the TimeMaster who is a rogue criminal TimeLord or the TimeThief?"

 

Cosmos nodded. "Or the daleks who have somehow become involved in all of this but somehow I consider that one of your suggestions may be more accurate. The surillins did do some space exploration, combining efforts with other intelligent species of their version of the Earth, but they never did come in contact with the plant sashunt in their travels. What we do know now is that the Empress has become a definate target and that there are traitors high up in the Imperial British Government and Imperial British Court Services. Yet these traitors may well be under pyschic influence."

 

"I have told the Imperial British Secret Service to treat the doctor carefully." Duchess Elizabeth sighed. "Torchwood will get its chance to question the doctor and to make a study of this amazing plant that you speak of. The British Empire could do well with such a plant."

 

Ninacos responded. "The plant would be difficult to grow on Earth except in special greenhouses. It would be costly to process and the healing serum would become the property of the powerful and wealthy, or so I fear."

 

Elizabeth frowned softly but then she relented. "Yes, perhaps you are right. The British Empire has enough elitism and class rigidity with out adding more reasons to promote it. Torchwood will be told to investigate the amazing plants. The Empire owes you much and so the Empire will now do what it can to assist you more strongly in your efforts to find this threat but also to make your stay on our world more comfortable. Do either of you play imperial chess?"

 

To Professor Cosmos and Ninacos it was clear that the Duchess was being far more than just sociable, that she was attempting to learn more about them in a subtle manner, but they pretended not to see through her manipulations.

 

Cosmos smiled. "We do not but we are both quick learners."

 

Ninacos smiled also. "Yes, the game sounds most interesting."

 

-CONTINUED-