NationStates Jolt Archive


Well if this wasn't expected...

Auman
31-08-2005, 01:00
The dim green of their goggles just barely made out the tunnels before them. The light non-existant, NVG was just on the threshold of functionality. Butresses lined the sandy walls, the caverns were poorly maintained by the Orcs...Captain Gregor could make out some spots where Aumanii engineers had dug previously. The whole sector through which they were travelling was captured by the Orcs a few months previous and the military was hard pressed to take it back.

'They've been digging new tunnels...' whispered one of the Special Operatives that travelled with the Captain, as he pointed out an offshoot.

It was quiet...a little too quiet, as the cliche would put it. A diplomatic mission, such as this one should draw at least some attention, the casualties taken in the past month in these tunnels alone dictated that, but there was nothing.

The eight man team trudged on, the heavy boots of their power suits kicking and sifting the sandy floor below them. For miles they walked in near darkness.

'Halt!' shouted Captain Gregor as he flung his shotgun towards a skitter in the shadows, his men dropped to one knee and shouldered their weapons, defensively. Many sets of glowing eyes stared down at them, they were surrounded by Orcs...
Lord Sauron Reborn
10-03-2006, 01:09
A stinking mob of orcs surrounded the Aumanii, a veritable smorgasbord of different rifles and blades pointed at them. They were actually somewhat tentative--this was not the standard modus operandi of armed men when they came down into the tunnels--but the horned ones had spread word among the creatures of Hellespontos' "underworld" that such an incident was in the offing, and they restrained themselves as best they were able now that the time had apparently came. They seemed pretty unclear on what to do now that it had, though, and for a while merely chittered to one another in Orkish and cast sly glances at the nervous men until finally one of their number began to elbow his way viciously through the throng.

Durgaz had been a native of Mordor before he had been sent here. Standing head and shoulder above the snaga, he was clad only in a loincloth of flayed skin and carried his long-barreled gun like a staff. His filth-encrusted flesh was almost black, with a slick, bloody sheen to it, and covered in a network of scars and ugly tattoos. Here was an orc who had worked hard to achieve his current status, and understood the value of keeping up appearances. He spat in the dirt at the the feet of the Aumanii before he addressed them, looking each in turn up and down with fiercely intelligent eyes made disturbing by their contrast with a face particularly bestial even for one of his kind.

"An' what," he started awkwardly, tongue ill-used to anything but the Black Speech of his master, "are you boys doing down 'ere again?"
Auman
10-03-2006, 01:28
Gregor sneared, though the Orc couldn't see it. Gregor's expression was masked by the red camoflauge of his bug-eyed helmet.

'My orders tell me to make contact with the Orcs down here and begin...' Gregor sighed '...To begin negotiations. So, if you please Mr.Orc, take me to your leader.'

Captain Gregor lowered his shotgun and pumped it until all its shells lay on the ground and offered it to Durgaz as a sign of peaceful intent.
Lord Sauron Reborn
10-03-2006, 01:43
The crowd laughed uproariously at this, and the sneer on Durgaz's face became all the wider and more obnoxious.

"Well, isn't that nice?" he gloated as he snatched the shotgun away, one of his grimy minions stooping to grab up the shells. "Of course I'll show you boys downstairs. It'll be my 'onour."

Proferring a rough palm, he introduced himself with mock-formality, even dipping his knee slightly to the great amusement of his compatriots. "Durgaz of Gorgoroth, at yer service."
Auman
10-03-2006, 02:00
Gregor took Durgaz's hand and gripped it tightly, almost too tightly as the Orc could probably start to feel his bones were on the verge of breaking.

'Charmed.' he said, his voice distorted by his suits vox.

'Lead the way.'

Captain Gregor and his team followed the Orcs down a series of tunnels, often having to squeeze their thick, armoured, frames through partially collapsed tunnels. The environment was severely claustrophobic, the sight of sand pouring freely from openings in the rock didn't make the Aumanii feel confident at all. Men stood ontop of the ground, not underneath of it! Mining and tunneling had always been the dominion of robots, it's about time the government tried to settle this thing out...
Lord Sauron Reborn
14-03-2006, 18:51
After about an hour most of the orcs had split off--only the black uruk and a couple others remained by the time the party reached "the chute"; which basically amounted to a narrow shaft that slanted diagonally through several dozens of meters of dirt. By this stage it had to be clear to the Aumanii that--as ramshackle an affair as the habitation under the Hellespontos was--there had to be more to it than met the eye. The air was cloying and thin, granted, but the fact that it was breathable at all this far down had to mean something.

"You kin slide down there, boys." Durgaz spat, gesturing with the torch he carried at the unsavoury looking aperture, still a little irked at having "lost" the handshake. He was a powerful specimen, to be sure, but he couldn't match the Aumanii powersuits' servos. "The brass'll see you when yev finished yer crawl to the bottom. This is as far as I go."

And then he was off, patting one of the men heartily on his armored shoulder as he went, before disappearing back into the the darkness of the caves and international obscurity.
Auman
15-03-2006, 01:55
Gregor gazed down the hole in contemplation. We're going even deeper...Christ... Gregor thought. The team started on getting their rapelling gear anchored, the shaft was steep, steep enough to make getting back up difficult without climbing gear. When everything was set up, Gregor dropped a length of rope down into the shaft.

'You two stay here and make sure no one tampers with this, the rest of you, come with me.' Ordered the Captain as he latched himself in. Nodding to his anchor to see if he was ready to support his weight before descending down into the lightless void, Gregor's anxiety level increased.

'Down we go! he said to no one in particular before slowly lowering himself into the unknown.
Lord Sauron Reborn
16-03-2006, 21:29
Five hundred yards. Five hundred yards crawling downward through excremental foulness few surface-dwellers could even imagine. That was "the chute" for the nigh on half-mile of its descent.

Which made the massive, vaulted chamber one found himself in after dropping out its bottom all the more off-putting as the men clattered onto flagstones. Standing over the Aumanii as they picked themselves up were six creatures: four hulking monstrosities half-again the size of a man that were all guns, horns and fangs—probably Sauron’s great uruks—flanked an eerily eyeless man speaking with a grubby little snaga that Gregor guessed was probably one of his former “escorts”.

The man—in reality one of the urukkû, pale-skinned, eyeless throwbacks to the Black Númenóreans who had been bred with the uruks of Barad-dûr to produce the horned ones—stepped forward, offering his leathery hand to Gregor, and turned its head to him as if its socketless skull could see him perfectly. The Aumanii had the feeling that he had locked gazes with this fell creature, and shivered involuntarily when it spoke.

“Welcome, Aumanii.” it said simply, in an unearthly voice. “I hope you will forgive us the trouble you have had in coming here. Our master is not far.”

The handshake the urukkû gave, curiously, matched Gregor's servo-enhanced one strength for strength in a way the seemingly more impressive Durgaz’s grip had been unable to.

“But you will have to leave your guns and your armour here for the time being.”
Auman
19-03-2006, 00:51
Gregor struggled to match the Urukku, the grotesque thing...It had no eyes!. What kind of bullshit was this mission? Gregor seriously began to doubt that High Command knew what it was getting into.

“But you will have to leave your guns and your armour here for the time being.” It said, Gregor scoffed lightly.

'I don't mind the armour, friend. But the blade stays.' The Aumanii Captain had his hand on the hilt of Tolst since they entered the tunnels...hell, he hadn't even taken his blade off for more than a few moments since he was 10 years old, this was typical with all Aumanii ethnics.

'You can't just take a man's blade...'

In Auman, every boy is given a Falacata. Style varies from clan to clan, tribe to tribe, family to family. Gregor's blade was matte black, the hilt was crimson red and the pommel was a brilliantly shining silver snakehead. Every true Aumanii wears that blade they call Tolst from their tenth birthday until the day that they die...they sleep with it closer than their wives, and only take it off when bathing, changing clothes or making love. An Aumanii would sooner die than let some Orcs or their kin disarm them of it.
Lord Sauron Reborn
19-03-2006, 01:32
'You can't just take a man's blade...'

The urukkû's lips thinned, ever so slightly. Something in its expression said that it begged to differ. The orc, ordinarily a vicious beast to be both reviled and tread around with trepidation, was shifting nevously, and seemed to pale into total insignificance beside the two massive great uruks, whose countenance suddenly seemed a whole new kind've grim.

Apparently, though, the eyeless one decided that blades or no blades, the Aumanii could do no harm where they were going.

"Very well. You may keep your blades, and follow me." it said after a heartbeat. "Strip."
Auman
19-03-2006, 01:37
The men shed their armour, and dropped it to the ground heavily. Now wearing red fatigues and stark black undershirts, Gregor and his team allowed themselves to be escorted once more.

The tension between them was palpable...at least with their blades they'd stand some sort of a chance if these beasts decided to change their minds.
Lord Sauron Reborn
20-03-2006, 21:14
When the eyeless one had said there was not far to go, Gregor mused, it had been lying. He was being lead a long, meandering route through corridor after corrdiror after corridor in this warren of bedrock. The air was even fouler without the power armour's filters; the Aumanii painfully aware of the ridiculous condition they had been reduced to every step of the way as they padded through the gloomy halls clutching their swords with naught but their underclothes to cover them. To show their anger openly to their sinister guide and its praetorians was suicide, Gregor knew, but one way or another, if this went on for much longer something in his men was going to give.

What they did not realise, though, was that the corridors that wound seemingly endlessly before them all sloped gently, almost imperceptibly down, gradually leading them deeper and deeper into the belly of the beast. If there had been tracking devices on their armour, they would discover on their return journey that they had descended only the merest fraction Hellespontos' seemingly bottomless depths while they still clad in them.

Finally, as they walked down yet another hallway, its walls gradually giving way to a murky grotto whose path ended or perhaps turned again somewhere so far distant it was swallowed entirely by the darkness, Gregor gathered his courage and started toward the urukkû to demand he be told just where the hell all this was going to end. At this point one of the horned ones seized his shoulder in a crushing grip and held him fast. With a devil's strength Gregor twisted his head, knuckles whitening as he gripped his falacata--but something in the great beast's twisted expression gave him pause. He even imagined it had shook its head at him warningly. The eyeless one, Gregor suddenly noticed, had now prostrated itself before the darkness, and the Aumanii squinted hard into the gloom.

And then he was aware of it.

The thing could only be picked out of the darkness, bizzarely, by its very blackness, for in odd ways it seemed blacker than the shadows themselves; drinking in such meagre light as there was in the cavern, devouring all other darkness--yet at the same time it seemed somehow luminous, its deathless vitality lending it an an evil glow. Shuddering at its unholy countenance, human and yet both more and less than human, Gregor found himself turning his head aside quite against his own free will, for he could not stand the sense of rising dread and mindless terror that threatened to engulf him when he looked into the depths of that heavy cowl. When it addressed him directly, he actually squeezed his eyes shut, its unnatural voice seeming both rasping screech and bass rumble all at once.

"Greetings, Gregor of Barkerville." it spoke, rising from its throne of granite, leaving Gregor stupefied for a heartbeat, for he did not remember having yet introduced himself to any of these foul creations. Some of his men physically covered their ears as they struggled to fight down the wails that they could feel welling up in their diaphragms of their own accord. He knew that this could only be one thing.

"My name was Akhôrahil," spake the Nazgûl. "What brings you to these halls?"
Auman
31-03-2006, 12:34
Gregor felt as if his bones were going to leap from his body. The sense of imminent death reaped havoc in his mind, panic nearly overtook him. Discipline, here, was only a catch phrase. The Captain struggled to regain his composure. He choked on his words.

'We...we want peace...Akhôrahil' Gregor stumbled over the Nazgul's name, it was far too difficult an Aumanii to pronounce. Gregor drew Tolst, the Falcata of Zemel'Caine...the great hero and slayer of Elves. Just as Gregor was about to be killed by the uncounted creatures surrounding him he dropped the blade at Akhôrahil's feet.

'Zemel'Caine was a great hero of the Aumanii people. He stood alone on the sands of Aelosia, two blades exactly like this one, served him until his passing. Upon last sight, Zemel'Caine was surrounded by hundreds of dead Elves...this blade I present you is Tolst, the original Tolst. A gift to you, a great leader, as a sign of respect from our people.'

The cavern went silent.