NationStates Jolt Archive

At exactly 23:34:48 Mallbertan Standard Time, the hundred plates which mark the maws of countless arcologies opened simulatneously, with the groaning of rusted metal and ancient gears. From forth the belly of this tortured land great spires arose like one, cylindrical shafts which reached towards pallid sickly skies. Huge industrial vents, they gleamed shiny new, bright steel against the corrupted surroundings.

With a shriek of steam and whistles, these smokestacks belched out a thick viscous vapour, black and menacing, like bottled night. This smoke, this terrible blast of gas which smelled like forgotten crypt and stale oil quickly blocked the sun, the sky, and cast Mallberta into sudden night.

In truth, it blocked more tha light. It blocked vision, blocked thought, blocked all manner of arcane practice. Moreover, it blocked all the insidious waves and rays which men devised in a driven panoptic quest.

As vapour continued to burst intermittingtly from the pipes below, snow, black as coal, drifted slowly to the ground. Darkness had fallen on Mallberta, now and forever.

OOC: Erm... are you expecting us to do anything or is this just some helpful info?

bump

OOC: Erm... are you expecting us to do anything or is this just some helpful info?

The question stands...

"Shit... look at that, milady..."

Serendis nos Fithurin peered over the shoulder of Ataralassë at the monitor... Menelmacar's net of Elenpalantíri watched the surface of the entire globe, and it all came right here. "Some sort of black cloud, Atara..."

"Indeed... get a look at this, though..." She put it through to the holo, and an image of the country of Mallberta, in three vertical-exaggerated dimensions, snapped into being, frighteningly crisp with its newspaper-reading resolution. "Look at this..."

The MISSION Agent-Commander zoomed in on an arcology - it mattered not which one, they were all doing the same thing - and it could clearly be seen... the vast, hideously ugly conglomeration of rusted and corroded metal in the midst of the dead plains, and its smokestacks belching fumes into the sky... and then the arcology faded out, vanished entirely from the image; nothing was visible save the cloud itself, and as the cloud spread the ground beneath it faded as well.

"It's blocking the sensors, Atara," Serendis mused. "Run through the other spectra."

"I did... here, I'll show you..." Ataralassë ran through several spectrums, infrared, ultraviolet, radio emissions, gamma rays, everything... from doppler radar to seismic readings, even thaumatalurgical sensors. Nothing below the cloud whatsoever.

"How in the name of..." She grabbed a passing aide by the shoulder. "Get me Celebrimbor over at Science, and quickly!"

-----

"No, Lady Serendis," the grandson of the Lady Sirithil said softly with a sigh, "I'm staring at the same readings you are - thanks for sending them over, by the way - and I have no clue what sort of substance could have that effect. Presumably there's a way to get around it; otherwise the Mallbertans would be blinding themselves as well. But I'd need samples of the particles making up the cloud, to be sure."

"Dammit... all right, I'll see what I can do," Serendis replied. "Got a suitably-equipped Vilyulairë I can borrow? I don't think I've got anything in my Prefecture that's really set up for this sort of thing."

"Sure thing... I'll have a vessel requisitioned for you within the hour."

http://www.weirdozone.0catch.com/projects/nationstates/sirithil/sirithilnosfeanor.gifLady Sirithil nos Fëanor
Elentári of the Eternal Noldorin Empire of Menelmacar
High Queen and Lady-Protector of Elvenkind
"We have known freedom's price. We have shown freedom's power. We will see freedom's victory."
~US President George W. Bush
We Love the Iraqi Information Minister (http://www.welovetheiraqiinformationminister.com)
Clicky-clicky!

His footsteps fell heavily, echoing like the dull ringing of gothic bells through hallways of steel and stone and flesh and bone, startling against the staccato backdrop of slow drips and subtle groanings. The tunnels seemed narrower now, or perhaps he had grown still larger, and his twisted head nearly scraped the uneven ceilings. It was strange to be moving around in the depths once more; how long had it been since he’d last left his chamber? A decade? Perhaps a century? He suspected the latter, if only due to the changes in his form: while he had no mirror, he knew he’d changed dramatically. He was certainly no longer human.

That long sleep… so cold, so empty… in some ways better than the raging tides of thought that coursed through his waking mind. He’d grown so close to MALLNET he could never really escape it. Countless reports, floods of data, always churning just below his conscious thought.

Still, it was no everyday occasion that brought him here, into the very core of the Ascetic Tunnels arcologies. The Lady had summoned him, and she was one who stood no hesitation.

The bony growths on the carapace of his shoulders, sharp as spear and curved like horns, barely scraped through the oblong entry into the core; the heart of Mallberta, the center of MALLNET, and the domicile of the Nighted, the Lady of the Depths.

He could barely make out the breathtaking curvature of her body, huge and hard, horned and spiked like some nightmarish ancient armor in the dim flickering light, a throbbing red light barely within luminal range. She shifted slightly, body scraping across cracked concrete and ancient cables, legs clattering on the hard slick floor.

He kneeled slightly, as best he could in this strange new form.

Lady, it is complete. Darkness has fallen, no light to torment you.

He was nearly bowled over at the power of her thoughts, nearly destroyed by the frantic madness, the hunger that drove them.

It is NEVER complete. I can feel it there, somewhere… I can feel THEM…

He staggered backwards, unsteady.

I WILL have them… and I WILL receive my just rewards…

The gravitic cruiser MIS Din-sûl (Silent Wind) sat in low orbit over north-central Asia, six hundred fifty meters of galvorn-sheathed hull hidden well among the orbital detritus of civilization, ranging from long-dead obsolete satellites to vast warships and space stations. It was a wonder geostationary satellites were even useful these days, and most nations with fleets, Menelmacar included, engaged in fairly regular "orbital maintenance", which usually involved target practice and expired equipment and debris. But this was not one of those missions.

From Din-sûl's launch bay a GS-1/R Vilyulairë (Skywraith) dropship launched, bound planetward; this research-equipped variant of the venerable and versatile Menelmacari version of the transport helicopter - something like a Pave Hawk, only gravitic and transatmospheric - festooned with all manner of sensors and antennae. Even from here, high above, the cloud was clearly visible like a festering, gangrenous wound upon Mother Terra, covering all of what was once Mongolia under its ebon cloak. Down, down into the increasingly tortured atmosphere - the hand of MALLNET had not been kind to its surroundings - descended the GS-1/R, descending into the inky blackness of the cloud itself.

"We're flying blind now... I don't think we've been spotted."

"Right. Level off."

"Leveled off at... um, whatever altitude we're at."

"Good. Opening doors now."

Along the leading edge of the wings were strung numerous special modules; doors on the forward sides of these spread open, and inside was a special staticly-charged film that would capture the particulates clogging the atmosphere, so they could be carried back to Menelmacar for careful analysis. For ten, twenty, fifty, a hundred miles and more they flew on like this; periodically the film would rotate inside the modules, exposing a new section to the chemicals. After some time the vessel pulled up again, bursting from the dence sable fog almost as a whale leaping from the ocean into the sunlight. Yet instead of falling back as such a creature would, the Vilyulairë continued to climb, returning to the Din-sûl.

(OOC: Barring, of course, any trouble from the Mallbertans - if the ship is detected and attacked, that takes precedence over the return to the cruiser at this point.)

http://www.weirdozone.0catch.com/projects/nationstates/sirithil/sirithilnosfeanor.gifLady Sirithil nos Fëanor
Elentári of the Eternal Noldorin Empire of Menelmacar
High Queen and Lady-Protector of Elvenkind
"We have known freedom's price. We have shown freedom's power. We will see freedom's victory."
~US President George W. Bush
We Love the Iraqi Information Minister (http://www.welovetheiraqiinformationminister.com)
Clicky-clicky!

MALLNET quivered, a network of billions of minds processing data at speed and in ways nearly totally incomprehensible; it's very language was now nearly completely alien, an absurd conglomeration of analog waves and digital spikes of ones and zeros; total gibberish to anything but itself. A vague sense of consciousness, not personified but collective and subordinate, flickered uneasily throughout this vast accumulation of mind and purpose, a protosentience perhaps, but only in the sense that true reflective reason and thought were incompatible with its basic fungal structure. It was a tool; a powerful tool, a tool with a vague agenda of growth and consumption, of damp darkness and slow expansion, but a tool nonetheless.

It quivered, uncertain, briefly inactive at the first touch of the graceful dropship. The network reached up now, indeed to the very skies, thick billows of gas suspended above utterly wasted landscapes. It could feel as the craft penetrated the murky clouds, tearing thoughtlessly through the delicate shroud without the faintest recognition of the clouds very significance.

As seconds passed, MALLNET focused on this unforeseen disturbance, gathering intellect upon the Skywraith, tracking it, analyzing it, understanding it.

Ten seconds after the Menelmacari craft had plumbed the foggy depths of the Mallbertan darkness, MALLNET knew every inch of the vessel, had accessed thousands of data files from sources foreign and otherwise. The Menelmacari had thought the cloud a product of MALLNET; but it was MALLNET.

Deep below, in the belly of the spidery networks of tunnel and chamber, MALLNET reported its manifold findings in a flood of information, a blast of intelligence that surged through the mind of the Advocate; if MALLNET was the tool, then by all means, he was the craftsman.

He was already anxious; his meeting with the Lady of the Deep had left him deeply unsettled. This... intrusion certainly did nothing to rectify the situation. With a deep snarl which reverberate through slimy corridors, he took action: and not a moment to soon, as the graceful craft burst out of the cloud into the garish light of day.

Even as it did so, the clouds below it swirled rapidly, coalescing into a fist, a column, a vague appendage that grasped upwards, now appearing as a viscous boiling vapor, nearly liquid, and rushing towards the departing craft with the furious speed of the Advocate's anger.

OOC: Hmm, interesting...

*tag*

"Great Elbereth, would you look at that!"

Up went the dropship, climbing, climbing, pursued by an angry tendril... no, tentacle... claw, even... of the veil, reaching and grasping up at the fleeing dropship.

"Damn... crap, crap, crapcrapcrap... need more power..."

The cloud had almost gotten it now, the fingers seemed to waggle as they grasped for their Elven prize, and here and there they even brushed across parts of the wings and fuselage... even as the engines got more power, the cloud rushed onward still, matching it for speed.

"It's not enough..." The ship lurched as the tendrils grasped down on part of the wing for a moment, sliding off the surface.

"Drop a missile. Don't give it a target, just... drop it, wait a moment, and blow the warhead..."

The two Elven pilots grinned... one pressed the fire button. A single Aicasicil (Fell Dagger) missile dropped out of the Skywraith's launch bay, falling groundward, falling... when the missile had fallen a thousand feet, the copilot pressed the button again, just as the tendrils finally lurched upwards enough to grasp around the ship...

The missile suddenly tore itself apart.

The inverse gravitic pulse of the warhead's 'detonation' rippled outwards, a visible shockwave forming in an impossibly bright white flash as air and spores alike were compressed, pulverized, and blown outwards by an antigravitational field even light could not penetrate. The tendril was severed, the claws around the Vilyulairë dissipating like smoke on the breeze, the lower portion sent recoiling down towards the sea of inky blackness below. The ship sailed on, and all was serene and tranquil once more in the soiled atmosphere above the Veil of Mallberta.

http://www.weirdozone.0catch.com/projects/nationstates/sirithil/sirithilnosfeanor.gifLady Sirithil nos Fëanor
Elentári of the Eternal Noldorin Empire of Menelmacar
High Queen and Lady-Protector of Elvenkind
"We have known freedom's price. We have shown freedom's power. We will see freedom's victory."
~US President George W. Bush
We Love the Iraqi Information Minister (http://www.welovetheiraqiinformationminister.com)
Clicky-clicky!

<tag... btw, did my SOTG team ever make it out of the Ascetic Tunnels, or not, or is that still to be resolved?)

As the anomaly happened, dogs all across the counrty stirred and growled, their howls of pain piercing the calm of the night. Lord Dreadfire had been asleep in his bed, and as the fabric of time and space jarred, he sat up like the dead, glancing eastward towards Mallberta. He breathed heavily as he blinked hard and repeatedly, his gaze locked upon the eastern wall of his private quarters. The One Who Shall Remain Unnamed did not manifest, but instead spoke directly to Dreadfire.

Something is amiss in Mallberta, for they have not stirred until this day. The Gods are silent now, for what once rested in peace has now been awakened....

Dreadfire could feel it in his bones, and for the duration of the night he did not rest. Instead, he stood on the balcony of the Great Hall, starring at the sky.

OOC: Tag

MALLNET reached up and out, driven by the force of the Advocate's demands, great tendrils of boiling smoke pouring upward like a raging river, closer, ever closer to the accelerating dropship. He could feel the ship now, all smooth cool metal, with the faint warm beating of living flesh.

He hesitated slightly... these beings, they were not what he had expected. Their minds, now nearly open to him, had memories retreating deep into antiquity, back far past when he was still human, before he was even born. He scraped a few scraps, words and snapshots of experience, from the bare surface of their sentience.

Noldor?

In the span of this brief pause, MALLNET's thrust finally overtook his target, dwarfing it with furious darkness. The Advocate was pleased; he would know the meaning of this trespass, and the nature of these creatures. He smiled into the dark wetness of his lonely chamber, and closed the fist of MALLNET on the puny vessel.

And everything went white.

His cry of rage tore through the arcology, amplified and augmented by miles of steel and concrete and bone, sending drones crashing to the floor, their minds voided of all but his anger. The prey had escaped.

MALLNET lost focus, faded back into routine, the bare fragment of sentience spawned by unusual data slipping apart, and with it the Advocates attention. Moments later, he drifted away into the cold dark sleep of Mallbertan night.

ooc- SB, if you want to dig that thread up I'd be more than happy to finish it... I didn't have time to work on it at the time... otherwise, I'll TM you a brief synopsis of what I imagined would probably happen...