NationStates Jolt Archive

Within a sphere whose precise location was a result of the mixing, fusing, and overall turbulence of many realities swirling together within it, there sat a blinding star on a throne of jade.

This was his soul, and his fortress, and his palace, and his capital, and his dream. A great cauldron in which different realities twisted, overlapped, mixed together unexpectedly.

There were many realities, but they were all thin here. As if Reality, the quality of realness, had slowly drained out of this particular place, leaving a delirious animalistic presence that was the barest remnants of true realness.

The Sage-Emperor's body stood, contained within the much larger volume of his soul. It was clad in deep, white robes adorned with a silver stylized spider motif and strange Mesoamerican-like line-patterns. He held an ornate ivory staff whose tip sprouted a psychedelic mix of colored feathers.

His wild face strove to attain clarity within the delirious remnant of realness, even as his soul escaped his throne room, flowing rivers of soul energy that dove into his Empire, perturbing Minds, whispering in ears, sending minute catalysts that caused great motions within the terrestial and celestial spheres.

Honga Kakona...The Ground Is Ready.

On Pahuka and the Moons, the Osage military was being stored within great armored transport-ships, hardened against all types of attack. The new fire-lance armed banners (dark and otherwise), the encapsulated warrior-heroes of the new Gun Banner, the walking hordes of the Ancestral Legions, and various subpsyches emplanted in stabilized energy, all of them being readied for what looked liked a massive undertaking. Dozens of millions of soldiers moved across the landscapes of the Osage Empire, readying themselves in guarded reservoirs of hulklike armored and shielded asteroid-ships growing in number daily.

Tsizhu Kakona...The Sky Is Ready.

In the black curtain of Akadaspace, the Osage Empire's fleets moved in great concentrations. The massive shipyards, which looked like strange squids jetting through asteroid fields sending out thin paper-long tendrils that ensnared asteroids and began the seeding that would convert them into new ships, were forging new fleets even as the old ones began to gather and coalesce into recognizable units, from individual ships to mighty armadas. The police fleets also were growing in strength and number, more for the task of guarding Akada itself as the extrastellar armada went off to its purpose.

War drums sounded, quite literally, as giant rituals unleashing enormous amounts of psychodynamic activity sent metaphysical ripples through the system watched over by the star called Akada, making space itself seem to thrum with imagined life.

Thaba Ponka Washtage...Death to the Peacemakers.

The shape of the spider permeated the unconscious collective that was the Osage Empire, found as it was on every war banner being unfurled across the mobilizing giant. The fleets in orbit seemed to be organizing around two main foci, a larger and smaller one.

The larger one was by far the more impressive as far as fleet strength went, nearing, as it was, the majority of Osage fleet strength in vast shifting congomerations, aligning themselves temporarily and then switching off around several vast, moonlike battlestations that seemed to vibrate with unimagined power.

The battlestation Orion, intact as it was, seemed to be the focus for the second group, supported by a much smaller flotilla of fifty warships whose average size and strength seemed to be admittedly larger than the average size of the larger wargroup.

On a different plane, souls mingled and communicated with each other, smaller human configurations revolving satellite-like around Minds, who in turn revolved around larger minds, up to the two over-arching fleetminds in command of each wargroup, who were periodically touched by the most expansive soul in Akada - The presence of the Sage-Emperor.

The shells containing the acculumated military strength of the Osage ground forces flitted about in the space between the two foci around which most of the military arm of the Osage space forces were now gathered around, leaving a little core of elite forces as a reserve in case any unexpected situations or slight miscalculations evolved, and the police fleets and stationary weaponry emplaced on Osage moons and major populated asteroids were left as a national guard in case any enterprising enemies thought a retaliatory attack against Akada was a particularly astute plan.

The muscle of Akada was readying to leave, behind was left a strong skeletal defensive framework. Police fleets ceased their eternal struggle with their elusive pirate counterparts in the immense asteroid fields in the Empire's home system, withdrawing to key defensive positions inside them where the shipbuilders continued their work.

Messages streamed out across secure [read: metaphysical] channels to allies. The Empire's possible futures narrowed down to a minute selection of glory and defeat, and considering their dismaying track record, the Sage-Emperor had cause for concern.

But he had aces in his sleeves he had yet to play. Advantages his Empire had never possessed gave him hope. Plans whose genesis lay in the discovery of Sol by the Osage were coming, now, to fruition.

The Osage Empire balanced, in the eternity of a second as the fleetminds went through FTL calculations, on a thread.

Then plunged.