NationStates Jolt Archive


End of Rebellion

The Warmaster
02-04-2005, 01:40
Holy Empire of the Warmaster

One month had passed since the beginning of the revolution, and outwardly, little had changed. Of course, the unprecedented chaos and rioting at the mere notion that a body could secede from the control of the Imperium was gone, halted by an event that should have taken place years ago: the assassination of a Sacred Emperor.
Jamand clan Hord had secured the throne more than fifty years ago by promising to reform education, agriculture, and the military. However, while he had plugged the holes in the educational system, the harvests began to get even worse and a military violently opposed to the Sacred Emperor’s increasingly democratic method of governing flatly refused to have such filth touch it. The various clans and domains realized that the Sacred Emperor, by avoiding the use of the intelligence community to observe his subjects, also avoided any chance of discovering it if they quietly moved against their political enemies. Thoroughly disgusted with the ruler, the belligerent Domain Parios began secretly arming for war. Parios was a warrior domain, and the biggest in the Empire. This was a serious matter indeed, and things got worse. The military languished from lack of use. The illegal Fascist Party got bolder and bolder in its demonstrations. Some of the southeastern clans began a policy of genocide toward indigenous Chandrites, and the Sacred Emperor took no notice, preferring to reform the government until it bordered on democracy. By his fifty-first and last year of rule, he had completely withdrawn from public appearances, no longer wore the vestments of the throne, and some even whispered that he had turned away from the worship of the Seven True Gods, to accursed monotheism.
Domain Parios, grown to be a mighty force indeed, declared war on the Empire and invaded the Capitoline Peninsula within hours of its declaration. Limited Imperial forces halted their advance but could not drive them back. Air and armored advances were to no avail, as both sides settled into a trench network bristling with anti-aircraft guns and AP-firing sentry guns.
Lucifer of Domain Halcyon, heir to the Halcyite patriarchy, flew to the capital several days after, and used the Imperial Guard to assassinate the Sacred Emperor, promising them great rewards from the gods. The only reward they received for their betrayal was execution at the hands of the new Sacred Emperor. Assuming the throne, Lucifer immediately contracted both Imperial Armaments, Inc. and BioChem Laboratories to create weapons that could end the stalemate and destroy Domain Parios.

Lucifer sat back in his chair as a smile spread across his face. As Master Shaper Commodus turned off the viewscreen, hands went up in the audience. The Professor called on one, a Supreme Commander.
“Master shaper, how can you be completely sure the weapon will not affect loyalists?”
“Domain Parios is, essentially, a family. Despite a multitude of marriages and dilutions, the original genes remain in some form in all Parians. This will be the identifying trait the weapon requires. Of course, anyone with Parian genes in the release area will die too. However, losses should be few or none, as virtually everyone knows not to stray into a Class Five hazard area.”
An intendant asked the next question. “Will there be side effects that affect the landscape?”
“That is highly unlikely, as, again, a life form must have Parian genes to be affected by the weapon. There is a small chance that in the vast replications that the viruses will have to perform there will be mutations that will be harmful to us, or not bound by genetic restrictions. This is unlikely, as we deliberately engineered the virus to have the simplest DNA possible, so that mutations will be less likely. But to be safe, we should not reoccupy Parian territory until the decontamination process is complete.”
Lucifer stood, prompting everyone in the room to follow suit. With a smile of gratitude, he said, “Thank you, shaper. Your contribution to the war effort and to Imperial history is inestimable. However, its purpose must remain classified. I trust you will not betray the weapon’s existence?
“And now we shall return to the palace. I thank you again, master shaper.”

One week later, Emperor Lucifer was holding a conference in his throne room. The shaper caste had finally put their heads together and devised devastating weapons that could be used not just on the Parians. The warriors had prepared everything, and in exactly five minutes, the beginning of the end would be unleashed.
They passed the time in silence, the shapers wondering what terrible fate would befall them if the weapons didn’t work exactly as they were supposed to. The warriors meditated on the deaths of their foes, savoring the thoughts.
After what seemed an eternity, the Sacred Emperor stood and cried, “It is finished!” It was the signal to launch the final assault. One of the warrior subalterns reached for his communicator and repeated the signal.

In the War Room, the words were relayed by communicator to a subaltern, who picked up the telephone at his station. Dialing the number he had been told, he in turn repeated the signal to the commander tasked with the operation, hung up, and looked at his radar, waiting to see it.

163 miles outside Korronis, the Imperial capital, a recently erected artillery battery stood ready. There were twenty of them, massive guns three times as wide as a man was tall, and in total as long as a football field. Its commander, safely within the heavily soundproofed control dome ten hills away, hung up his phone and asked his subordinates if the guns were aimed the right way. When they confirmed that they were, he gave the order to fire.
Incredibly dense projectiles weighing tons hurtled up the shaft and across the sky, propelled to speeds exceeding Mach 1 by magnetic accelerators in the gun barrels, developed by the shapers and now used to deadly effect against the Parian army. The second volley arced up across the firmament, and the third...and the fourth...

Miles away, Subaltern Sy’ishran of Domain Parios idly wiped his gun with a rag. He wasn’t cleaning it well, he knew that, but his superiors were hardly going to investigate weapons as if they were drilling. No, this was not a drill. They were trapped in this mudhole of a trench, an event not seen since World War One, because defensive technology had finally pulled ahead of offensive technology. The Imperials had time on their side, and the Parian commanders had already wasted thousands of lives trying to extract them from their trenches.
He heard a shrieking noise and thought it might be a sonic boom...
Then the scene exploded into pure hell.
Twenty titanic explosions ripped across the horizon, throwing up tons of dirt, blocking out the sun. Another shriek. Another twenty explosions, but this time they were a little closer to where he was. Sy’ishran hadn’t moved, too frozen with shock. He realized now he had to start.
He’d thought the massive ripping sound of bombs rushing through the sky faster than sound could catch up to it was the worst sound he would ever hear. He was wrong. A chorus of screams punctuated the day, as the ones who had been unlucky enough to catch shrapnel shrieked and moaned and screamed and coughed blood. Limbs littered the ground, ground dyed red by the blood of Parians.
Sy’ishran fled. He pumped his legs furiously, as explosions resounded, ever closer to him. He tried to run faster, but he couldn’t seem to. Suddenly there was a huge BOOM behind him. His eardrums exploded at the huge wave of pressure, heat, and sound. He was flung through the air by a giant’s fist. Part of him vaguely sensed his legs were vaporized, but he was too worried about the trench wall hurtling towards him to care...He smashed into the wall with a wet smack, as of raw meat thrown on mud, accompanied by a sickening crack. Subaltern Sy’ishran of Domain Parios slid to the ground and stayed there.

The barrage went on for two weeks, the longest in human history, and easily the most devastating. The Parian army had taken 95% casualties, and what was left was maimed horribly. Simply put, the once-mighty Parian army was gone, destroyed by twenty guns and the genius of the shapers. But Sacred Emperor Lucifer’s vengeance against the heretics who dared turn against their divine master was not fulfilled. Again the controller at the War Room made a call.

In Imperial Missile Silo SW-05, a commander nodded, and put down his phone. Logging on to the Internet, he opened an e-mail from the High Command, containing the heavily encrypted codes for opening the glass case before him. Downloading it onto a disc, he slid the disc into the drive and waited for the glass case to open. In it was a row of red switches. He flicked the first five down. Immediately, he heard a hum as the launch doors for silos 2-6 slid open. Crew fled from the launch area, and a countdown begun. When it reached zero, the commander pressed the large red button, and heard a mighty roar and felt the earth shake as the five missiles hurtled into the air.

They impacted at five precisely determined points in Parian territory. They cracked open, and the warhead released a power more deadly than mere chemicals, more insidious than nuclear hell.
Disease...
The disease god, Shavan, must have cackled in triumph. The plague warheads had just released a virus, designed by the lethal genius of Master Shaper Commodus Kwaad, that was unlike any seen before. Created by the shaper, it attached to organisms sharing a specific gene, and infected them with a molecular plague that for several days would not harm anyone but would spread the disease through the infected person’s hands, his skin, his breath, his blood. After the latency period ended the virus would have taken hold, unable to be budged by any known or theoretical method. It would manifest as the blood vessels that were visible on the skin turning black, as indeed the blood cells themselves would, starved of oxygen and dying. The body would replace them, but that would eventually kill the victim were it not for the other effect.
The brain itself would decompose, as the virus spread into the skull and fed on the neurons. Memory would fail; coordination would decrease; and in no more than three weeks after the initial infection, the person would become braindead, and start to decompose where they were.
Simple. Brilliant. Effective. Brutal.
The Imperial forces didn’t have to do anything other than stay out of the infected zones while Domain Parios died.
Nebarri_Prime
02-04-2005, 01:44
OOC: (insert wisil sound here) wish i could spell wisil right of the top of my head....anyway thats a very long post wish i had the time to read it i will sometime i hope
The Warmaster
02-04-2005, 01:55
bump
The Warmaster
02-04-2005, 02:18
bump