NationStates Jolt Archive

Somewhere In Dor Daedoloth, Arda

He didn't like it one bit, and he didn't trust the bastards who had chained him up like an animal as far as he could throw them. He didn't have any weapons; he knew full well that this was a mission from which he might not be able to return.

If he failed the eval - assuming he did return - then he would be summarily ejected from the Commonality, and his citizenship revoked.

If he returned a normal Nenyan, then he would gain a position amongst the Nobility for his entire family - and himself.

They would probably grant his family Nobility even if he failed to return as a normal Nenyan; but it would be nicer to be able to see his family again, when he returned.

For now, he was lead through the darkness with only the clank of chains as the nearest thing he had to a friend...

After all, the chains clanking reminded him that he wasn't dead.

[OOC: Morgy, this is with regards to that TG I sent you.]

Imperator Marshal Khaled Sudani--a tall, gruff Haradrim man with a cigarette poking out of his mouth-- stepped from the shadows into the meager light afforded by the dingy lamp which hung from the ceiling. The light flickered on and off, illuminating the features on the Marshal's face, and hiding them in turn. Eventually, he plucks the cigarette from his mouth and takes a seat, clearing his throat.

"So then, what was it you wanted to discuss?" he asks frankly, leaning back in his seat a bit.

Imperator Marshal Khaled Sudani--a tall, gruff Haradrim man with a cigarette poking out of his mouth-- stepped from the shadows into the meager light afforded by the dingy lamp which hung from the ceiling. The light flickered on and off, illuminating the features on the Marshal's face, and hiding them in turn. Eventually, he plucks the cigarette from his mouth and takes a seat, clearing his throat.

"So then, what was it you wanted to discuss?" he asks frankly, leaning back in his seat a bit.

The Nenyan raised both eyebrows, trying not to show the discomfort left over from being dragged to this place in leg-irons and chains (he wondered faintly if they'd used such anachronisms just for his 'pleasure'). Coldly, with an imperious air (which is especially strange for one who has just been in said leg irons), he asked the Haradrim, "Are you of important enough stature to deal with me? This is a matter of importance, I trust you understand. It was my understanding that I would be meeting with someone befitting the importance of this visit... but perhaps I misjudge?"

The Marshal snorts. "I answer only to the Council of Warlords, and to Lord Melkor himself. It is within my pervue to discuss with foreign or domestic agents issues that may affect our internal affairs; and I'm the de facto security cheif of the Five Kingdoms; as well as our primary defensive coordinator and the civil administrator of Near Harad. I'm about as important an agent as you're going to get, as the Warlords are busy planning the war with Kajal, Lord Alkanphel is away at present, and Melkor himself seldom deigns to entertain himself with the presence of foreigners."

With a slight nod to one of the guards, the man's chains are undone, and the shackles carried off. Taking a heavy draw off his cigarette, Sudani permits silence for a moment. "I too am a busy man, and have little time to be stalled. Please; do go on."

The Marshal snorts. "I answer only to the Council of Warlords, and to Lord Melkor himself. It is within my pervue to discuss with foreign or domestic agents issues that may affect our internal affairs; and I'm the de facto security cheif of the Five Kingdoms; as well as our primary defensive coordinator and the civil administrator of Near Harad. I'm about as important an agent as you're going to get, as the Warlords are busy planning the war with Kajal, Lord Alkanphel is away at present, and Melkor himself seldom deigns to entertain himself with the presence of foreigners."

With a slight nod to one of the guards, the man's chains are undone, and the shackles carried off. Taking a heavy draw off his cigarette, Sudani permits silence for a moment. "I too am a busy man, and have little time to be stalled. Please; do go on."

The ICEL man gives a small shrug of his upper body; his muscles hurt somewhat, and he wanted to stretch them, but he considered that that would be perceived as a weakness - perhaps. "Very well," the agent replied quietly.

"Perhaps I should start with a truth. Before the current administration took over, the old Empire had initially planned to bombard Dor Daedoloth from orbit and wipe you from the face of the Earth. We knew Mor... Lord Melkor... would survive to rebuild, but revenge seemed more important. As such," he draws out a small, round device (a scan would have noted he had nothing that was a weapon already, so this most definitely is not a weapon) from a small pocket in his left trouser leg, "we prepared for your defeat."

A projection on the wall displays several drones landing on an asteroid; the images shift quickly, but the impression is of mass drivers being fitted to several small asteroids.

"As you can likely guess from these images, we had planned to deploy several small asteroids against you. This, however, is deemed unacceptable by the new Laws and the new Administration. That is unfortunate on many levels, as a great many states would be glad to see an end to Dor Daedoloth..."

He pauses.

"But we are no longer amongst them," he finishes.

He leans forwards slightly. "The Commonality no longer cares, to be frank. We have no further interest in revenge. Nor, however, do we trust you. Yet we desire normalization of relations - even if for no other reason than to prevent another war. Yet more than that: we wish to arrange a quiet, secret alliance. If not now, then in the future. We do not wish the world to know that our relationship has changed beyond increased trade quotas, for they do not need to know. In public, nothing will really change. We will not associate with your allies, nor will we consider them to be our allies through you, should you accept our offer. We would also prefer if your allies were not notified of any change of diplomatic status with the Commonality; no doubt it would cause you difficulties were you to do so, as many of them consider us as enemies."

He pauses thoughtfully.

"It is more complex than that, of course, but that is the basic matter at hand."

Sudani arches a brow, folding his arms over his chest as the man speaks, pausing for a moment once he's finished to digest the information. "That's a bit of a stretch, isn't it?" he asks, with a slight chuckle. "Seriously now; I've got you coming in here and laying out your plans to destroy us--aborted though they may be-- but this admission still leaves for a rather lingering animosity, don't you think? You said you don't trust us, what makes you think we trust you any more? An alliance without trust can only end in ruin be it for one side or both."

He pauses to flick the ash off his cigarette. "Secondly, it is we who dictate policy to our allies; not the other way around. Of everyone on our 'side' as it were, the Five Kingdoms holds the longest standing grudge with the Commonality, and we would be setting a precedent in laying it aside. No one would question such a move; as we very seldom have anything to lose by announcing policy changes to our allies. I would even go so far as to guess that it would be a greater compromise to your position." He grins. "In theory."

Leaning forward slightly, his tone lowers. "But perhaps one way to go about doing this is to acquire the necessary trust; but I doubt you'd approve of our typical methods of doing so. Surely you have to have some ideas as to how to put us at ease; and vice versa. If not, we're probably wasting our time here."

Sudani arches a brow, folding his arms over his chest as the man speaks, pausing for a moment once he's finished to digest the information. "That's a bit of a stretch, isn't it?" he asks, with a slight chuckle. "Seriously now; I've got you coming in here and laying out your plans to destroy us--aborted though they may be-- but this admission still leaves for a rather lingering animosity, don't you think? You said you don't trust us, what makes you think we trust you any more? An alliance without trust can only end in ruin be it for one side or both."

He pauses to flick the ash off his cigarette. "Secondly, it is we who dictate policy to our allies; not the other way around. Of everyone on our 'side' as it were, the Five Kingdoms holds the longest standing grudge with the Commonality, and we would be setting a precedent in laying it aside. No one would question such a move; as we very seldom have anything to lose by announcing policy changes to our allies. I would even go so far as to guess that it would be a greater compromise to your position." He grins. "In theory."

Leaning forward slightly, his tone lowers. "But perhaps one way to go about doing this is to acquire the necessary trust; but I doubt you'd approve of our typical methods of doing so. Surely you have to have some ideas as to how to put us at ease; and vice versa. If not, we're probably wasting our time here."

The Nenyan shrugs slightly. Just slightly. Other than that, his face is pretty bland. Nenyan facial expressions are often exceptionally animate, but he's doing a good job of suppressing the movements of his face.

"We do not require your trust. We do not require you to trust us. Trust is built on co-operation, not on empty but grandiose gestures. Why, I could come here and offer you some great weapon with which to defeat your enemies - but that would not garner trust, not truly. It would merely be bribery, and we do not believe in that kind of bribery.

"Besides, we have had dealings in the past. Such as the agreement to destroy a large segment of the fleet that was threatening Arda - that rabble from the Ur Trade Pact. As I recall, we did destroy a vast number of ships, albeit not quite to plan - and we did not insist on payment as we might have done, seeing as our end of the bargain was met, regardless of the interference of Orm Embar.

"However, if trust is required, then we could provide certain information. We will not deal in material matters, however. Information is one thing... but to give material requires trust, yes? You have not earned that trust, any more than we have.

"So. You do not trust us, we do not trust you. Yet I say this: who cares? Ours will not be a partnership born of love, but then, who can say all partnerships born of love truly last? Our mutual hatred and our knowledge that we each have the capability to obliterate the other is surely bond enough, hm?"

"Information?" Sudani asks, leaning back again. His expression softens, and he douses the dying cigarette and drops the butt into the ashtray between them. "Please, by all means do go on. Perhaps this is something we can work with. Do you mean information now, or later on down the road?"

"Information?" Sudani asks, leaning back again. His expression softens, and he douses the dying cigarette and drops the butt into the ashtray between them. "Please, by all means do go on. Perhaps this is something we can work with. Do you mean information now, or later on down the road?"

The Nenyan still doesn't react very much, but if an empath were in the room, they would sense a spike of excitement from the man. "We could provide details of how the MI-AG Interaction works. I'm sure that you could see the potential of such information... especially seeing as nobody but us has had access to this specific data in the past. You might say the data is..."

He pauses for a moment, as if searching for a word, but it's clear that the delay is clearly for dramatic value.

He finishes, "Priceless."

[OOC: For anyone who is reading and doesn't know what the MI-AG Interaction is:

When an object using the magnetic impetus propulsion system (currently ONLY used by ICEL, without exception, although Feline uses a similar EM propulsion system, I think) gets too close to an object using an artificial gravity propulsion system (which are widely used), the resulting 'interaction' causes a big boom. The Interaction was introduced when ICEL, at that time known as EOTED, loaned a gravitic drive from a ToY nation for a new colony ship; the colony ship exploded in orbit, with all on board killed. The idea behind the Interaction was to prevent anyone - including myself - from combining electromagnetic propulsion with gravitic drives, thus increasing the maneuverability of the craft using the combination to a point that it would be considered 'godmoding'.

For Morgy: Just to be sure you know why the Nenyans believe this is valuable info: although it wouldn't give you access to MI (there's underlying theoretical work that only ICEL scientists have completed that would take years for anyone to catch up on, even with this data [Bao Ling, the inventor, was working on it for thirty years before the first application of the new technology occurred, remember]), it would give you the ability to design a countermeasure to prevent the MI-AG Interaction... which would clearly be useful, as ICEL kinetics use MI fields, which could be quite nasty in a combat situation. I note that research would be needed, as ICEL hasn't figured out how to prevent the MI-AG Interaction yet - but if resources were thrown at it, it could no doubt be resolved.]

*tag*

[OOC: *prods teh Evil One*]

73h 749

*watches yet another courtship with tall, dark and evil*

[OOC: *prods Morgy with the Hand of Ridiculous Proportions [tm]*]

[OOC: Just so that when Morgy finally looks in here (not sure if yer about at the mo, from what I read in your thread about your move) there's something interesting for him to find, I'll just skip ahead of what I was planning a little bit and throw in the first twist in the plot...]

The Nenyan got out the word 'Priceless'. That was when the weird stuff started, to put it mildly.

Firstly, his eyes begin to bulge in a vaguely alarming manner. He coughs, a wheezing wet sound issuing forth from his lungs; he twitches, most violently, the clanking of chains loud and shuddering through the room.

All of this occurs in the very first instant.

The next, the body of the Nenyan is twisting and contorting, as if something within is twisting and writhing in an effort to get free; the body flops to the ground with a hideous groan (hideous even compared to what the average Haradrim has heard), and continues to twitch even as it stiffens.

No doubt those in the room are somewhat concerned at the possibility of a biological agent - but that isn't the case at all.

The body jerks. Violently. Contorts, stretches, flesh yielding and shifting, the facial features rearranging and the body literally growing-

And then it stands, the hefty chains apparently not particuarly heavy to it. At about eight feet tall, and three quarters as wide; although its skin is more like leather than the pale soft skin that had been there before. It coughs, hackingly, and a small puff of something whisps away from its mouth, vanishing almost as soon as it appeared; it's almost impossible to know whether it was truly there or not.

The thing speaks in a voice of dread and malice, enough to send a normal, average Human being skittering into the shadows trembling with fear. Unfortunately, there are none of that calibre present.

"I tire of that game. - You will bring me to Melkor, Lord of All, now," the vile voice growls - and it speaks Quenya, but the manner of speech twists that beautiful tongue into something dark and foreboding. And that statement was clearly not a request.

And that was not a normal thing for a Nenyan to do. By any stretch of the imagination.

Perhaps most interestingly of all...the 'thing' has pure, milky white eyes, with no irises or pupils.

[oooh nice]

Sudani scowls, glaring up at the beast defiantly. Around him, the guards in the room tighten their grips on their weapons, bringing them to bear on the creature. Several of them shout at each other in the Southron tounge, and bolts are pulled back. Outside the door, the thump, thump of advancing Olog-Hai can be heard, gradually growing louder as they approach.

Sudani holds up his hand and barks a few terse orders to his men. Turning to the... beast, the corners of his mouth turn up in a wicked grin. He does not back off, rather he moves closer, an especially interesting move considering his lack of armaments. "Perhaps you will yet be accorded this honor," he chuckles, with a glint in his eye. "I think he'll like your style. Unfortunately, we are not in Angband, thus we'll have to take you there. If you're finished with your... display perhaps we can arrange transport."

The being chuckles quietly, tilting his head to one side. "Claiming the body of a Nenyan as a carriage to be brought here? I should say so. Lord Melkor is not fond of Nenyans. Despicable things. Do you have any idea how that body tasted? At any rate, yes, it would be wise for you to arrange transport. It would be tiresome to have to walk."