NationStates Jolt Archive

In orbit of Earth, a ship coasted, it was a smallish dropship, a dagger shape with an extrusion of some sort underneath it. Based off ancient legends, it was on a mission of… trade. It carried a cargo of… items, and a single occupant, dead.

A signal shot out from the ship narrow beamed, to avoid it being picked up or traced by anything not in line of sight, and it carefully avoided hitting anything, directed towards Arda, directed towards Barad-dûr, directed towards Sauron.

“Greetings to the Lord of Arda. We have a potential trade that we wish to discuss, that we believe you will find interesting.”

END OF THREAD TITLE= "ed RP" :wink:

For a time the Dark Lord's accursed realm remained silent, a brief flurry of activity going unseen beneath the shroud of cloud and shadow. Much could be read into even so simple a message, and the denizens of Mordor were ever wary.

The response was not overdue, however, sent by the same medium as had the overture; the clipped, rasping voice of some damned creature.

"Explain yourself."

The message that was returned could be interpreted as sarcastic, "Trade is generally the exchange of goods and services. You have something we want, and we suspect that we have something your master wants."

The dropship shifted orbit, just a little, ensuring that its way remained free of anything to intercept its signal and it slowly drifted, awaiting a response from the accursed creature below.

Again there was a long period of silence- one somewhat fraught down on Terra. Someone was clearly not comfortable conducting this conversation with an unknown orbiting ship over a any length of time.

After some minutes had gone by, a malformed mechanical device drifted into visual range of the archaic ship, apparently some manner of satellite. Six long segmented arms--almost resembling tentacles--ending in thick, triple-pronged pincers trailed behind a bulbous, node-ridden "head". It circled the C'tanni vessel twice, seemingly under its own power, sensors folding in and out of the pincers and probing tentatively at the ship.

It evidently learned little from this, as the tone of the operator's voice suggested when a further transmission was beamed out.

"Who are you," came the voice, managing to sound irate even through its harsh, sandpapery rasp, "and what, specifically, would you have us do with you now?" A pause, and then very curtly--"And why."

:!: :!: :idea: .::!TAG!::. :idea: :!: :!:

"I am the Lord Lieutenant of Emperor Mephet'ran, Lord of the C'tan," he responded, without hesitation, "Master of the Necrons. Whom precisely do I have the dubious plesure of addressing?"

The voice paused for a moment, "no, forget that, I don't care. You will provide landing co-ordinates and an approach vector, and inform your Masters that I have arrived in order to speak with them. Has this entered your tiny mind, miserable creature?"

The transmission cut, and the occupant waited with the endless patience of his race.

There is a nefarious plot afoot! Quick, to the TAGmobile!

Once again silence reigned. This revelation had clearly given the ground crew some pause for thought. It did not this time last for long, however, and when the final transmission came it was curt and to the point, with nary a hint of hesitation in the voice of the operator (different from and less vocally impaired than the last, apparently).

"I am transmitting landing vectors and co-ordinates to your ship. You will be given further instruction upon breaking cloud cover." A pause while the operator did something with the comm board. Then another transmission. "Be sure whatever passes for shielding on your craft it fully charged, Lord Lieutenant."

The shuttle soon pitched down, attempting gradually to slow its rapid declension. The craft would now be clearly visible to sensors, an arrowhead descending out of the void, plunging into Mordor's blackened skies with the force and purpose of an athletic diver. There were no shields per-se, and the noxious fumes and foul atmosphere of the Dark Lord's domain assailed the ship; suddenly subsumed in an ever-swirling mass of smoke, ash and dust before descending down into the roiling, lightning-wracked chaos of Mordor's tempestuous troposphere.

The craft's only occupant, strangely detached, watched, his mind merged with his ship. He could feel the obscene chemicals pressing in upon it--he didn't much like it, though he'd borne similar things many times. Enveloped entirely by tumultuous black clouds he was; thunder roaring all around, buffeting the ship while lightning clawed its hull; static charges surging through all its length. Yet it bore its punishment steadfastly, almost unscathed. Clouds of great black birds swirled improbably through the foul air, and other, more sinister creatures could be half-glimpsed on the edge of shadows.

And as the chaotic skies cleared before his ship it emerged little worse for the wear... Onto a scene of desolation. A great plain of broken rock strewn with ash and riven by fire lay before him, covered almost entirely in the feeble dwellings of its occupants. Rotting vistas of mouldering, lopsided houses; crumbling walls shored up with baulks of riddled timber, windows patched with soggy cardboard and roofs with rusted corrugated iron stood grand above sordid, shanty colonies of ramshackle huts like chicken-houses, all nestled up for safety against the insane, sprawling industrial machinery which sprawled throughout the land, belching all manner of noxious fumes and chemicals into the sky even as other machines fed them with materials ripped from the tortured ground.

The deathly pilot took much of this in at a glance, even as he turned the ship towards a vast volcano whose fiery summit had been all he could see of the cursed realm from orbit, its red maw looming molten and terrible like the very mouth of Hell. Closer now he could see ringed around its slopes a great factory city, siphoning off the torrent of magma that came down from that broken peak into deep channels--harvesting those subterranean minerals and metals from beneath the Earth for malign purposes. A monstrous cancer at the heart of the war industry it seemed, consuming resources and slaves at an unspeakable rate, fed in in an unending stream from the obscene slave-farms dotted around the viscous, bubbling black sea of Nurnen far to the south, where reeking fens and mires made up the lion's share of Mordor's vegetation.

Still other channels there were, though, the lava flowing in rivers from the peak of the mountain to Barad-dûr itself at the heart of Sauron's black capitol. Baroque and vulgar was the Dark Tower in its grandeur 'neath its shroud of Shadow, built in the shape of its ancient predecessor: “wall upon wall, battlement upon battlement, black, immeasurably strong, mountain of iron, gate of steel, tower of adamant...Barad-dûr, fortress of Sauron.” And then atop its jagged crown the great Eye, lidless and wreathed in flame; its gaze deeper than the Abyss, piercing cloud, shadow, earth and flesh--a weeping sore upon the skein of reality, crafted by blasphemous arts that He on the dark throne might know and observe All. Billions of soldiers, slaves and snaga averted their sight as they toiled and died under its baleful light, dominating the ruined sky like a burning red sun.

It was almost as one great war machine. The land itself seemed to be screaming its agony at the newcomer as it was defiled, a twisted dominion warped and violated to become nothing but the means to forge in strength one collosal army. The Lord Lieutenant cared not. After all, pain and suffering were his business.

“You will head due south two kilometres from your current position.” an inhuman voice growled suddenly over a comm board, the voice ringing harsh in the ancient Necron's mind. “You will come to a large canyon—you'll know it when you see it. Stabilise your craft as best you are able and make your descent. There is a landing pad able to receive you not far down; should be emitting the necesarry signals to guide you in.” The link was promptly severed.

The ship was quick to obey, flying low over the anguished plain, wide fissures like ravines visible upon it now, as though some great beast had clawed it in fury and rent its once verdant surface. The ship's master directed it to head into the deepest of these tattered wounds, picking up the signal promised earlier in that final narrowbeam. The emisarry of the C'tan paused to reflect just long enough to be made aware of the abundance of weapons locks on the dropship--in this environment it would barely have helped even if the Necrontyr vessel's ‘stealth’ systems had been active. Alongside this he could feel the shadows and phantoms of realms unseen snap and snarl and slaver on the edge of his conciousness, drawn like sharks to blood fresh-spilt.

The place was inhospitable as few could rightly conceive.

His vessel landed on a large platform carved from the stone at the side of the vast gouge, some way down its craggy side. From there could be seen a closer view of the strange goings on in the canyon. A rickety yet intricate network of wooden platforms (though it was a mystery what fell trees were used in their construction) clung to the walls like the spindly webs of some vast spider, and stunted, misshapen creatures clearly identifiable neither as Man nor Orc laboured in, on, and around them ceaselessly, shovelling things into bright fires and hewing the rock with crude pick-axes even as a clamour of iron upon steel rose from forges in the abysmal depths. Only slightly did these efforts slow as the doors of the dropship opened, offering at first only a darkened interior. Then a light--four lights in fact, shone out, the first the bar of sickly witch lightning illuminating the haft of a staff, above which two glittering jade eyes buried in a skull-like face of black metal surmounted by a golden circlet inset with shimmering rubies and emeralds like a crown stared blankly. The leering skull was surrounded by a corona of silver fibres, resembling wires or braided hair, sparkling in the glow reflected from the top of the Necron Lord's staff.

It was not that the skeletal mechanoid needed to use it, for he saw perfectly well in the dark, but he found it useful, just on this low setting, to irritate those who saw it. For it was captive sunlight--and probably the first true light that had reached down here for many a long year. He stepped down from the vessel and onto the rock protrusion and regarded the party that awaited him, the mechanical clank of his footsteps faintly resonant in the shadowed depths. Before him was arrayed only a small group: the sinister figure of a man whom Death should have claimed many an age ago, clad in a black shroud that seemed to drink in all the dismal light of the gulf—including that of the staff—standing at the forefront of an entourage of looming armoured shapes not quite distinguishable in the unnatural dark that formed a tight semi-circle behind him.

“Greetings,” spoke the cursed thing, voice almost serpentine. Distracted he seemed, as though called away from some pressing duty--certainly it did not seem likely that this dim-lit hole was his normal abiding place. “I am he who they call the Voice. Who might I have the pleasure of addressing?”

The figure stepped up to the Voice, a golden cloak about his shoulders glistening as he moved, his heels clicking slightly, deliberately, against the stony floor. He surveyed the other with his glowing gaze, and looking too deeply into his eyes, lesser men than the Voice would have quailed in terror, for to look into them was to look into an eternity of flames, soul-chilling nihilistic destruction, and those who stared too long would loose all hope for life.

The Necron Lord snapped the butt of his staff against the ground, the light dissapearing, "My name was Vesili," he said, his own voice disturbingly perfect, inflectionless, "I speak for Mephet'ran. I assume I can give the details of my proposal to you?"

The ancient sorcerer-lord regarded the Necron with its deathly glare cooly for a time, mildly surprised that it desired to make its overtures so immediately. Perhaps he should have gone back to the Tower, had it escorted to his chambers later...

"Feel free, Vesili," he replied at last, the hint of an almost regal accent bearly perceptible somwhere in that gravelly voice. "But if it is your wish for us to discuss these proposals here and now then it will have to be aboard your ship." He flashed a slightly lopsided grin that did not reach his bright, oddly intent eyes. "As you had to be directed to me at such short notice the required facilities are far from hand, I'm afraid."

After a moment, the doors of the ship closed, and the necron, which was, after all, as subtle as a half-brick in a sock, regarded the Voice coldly, "Very well, lead on," he said, deciding not to allow the locals to see the vessel's cargo just yet.