It had been a while since I had been through Darkmoor Advanced Infantry Training, but it all ca back pretty easily as I led the impromptu Striker team out of Innspot via one of the few concealed exits, basically wedged stones that not even the most muscular ogre could move without first removing the internal stones locking them in place.
I’d Sent the ssage on what was happening to all Eraltan and Sidhe Rangers, and all borderguard Sidhe and Shaden surface elves of multiple clans across multiple countries, too. Most had likely figured out what was happening, but my emphasis was on how dangerous an event this could be. We didn’t know how long it would last, so getting to defensive positions and remaining unseen was absolutely a good tactic to use.
The soon-to-be Principality of Umbravie, with thousands of emigrating Shaden elves working away with guidance from Erendyl elves, went quiet and still with amazing speed and surety. The very first thing the Shaden had made sure to have was evacuation routes in the case of bad things happening, and considering the legendarily bad timing of their returns to the surface world, I didn’t bla them. It took only hours for them to leave the tad lands they’d long cleared of monsters and threats empty and quiet, telling only the few Rangers who worked with them exactly what was happening.
Their most skilled would remain above-ground to fight, and they had countless things they could work on in their tunnels, not even being discomfited by the move. But things coming in to prey on them while they were weak were going to find very little, and what they did find was not going to be weak!
It was also very obvious to all the elves that human Rangers didn’t suffer like they did, so the No Magic was striking at the fact elves were intrinsically a magical race, not that they could wield magic. Just like human wizards only lost their spells and not their strength, the Rangers were still well able to fight… and the lessons drilled into them every year on the Day of No Magic on sotis magic just not being able to work ant all of them had invested in their Weapon Mastery.
I could have Teleported directly to the Fort, but I wasn’t going to waste power if I didn’t have to, and if I had to go rescue soone, I could do it from the trail as easily as anywhere. Coms were working fine, I only needed a mirror to Scry a location for a Teleport Fix (or the person involved to form a Focus for ), and I could certainly head out for a brisk march while doing all of that.
The Mule ambled along with us, a four-legged tallic cart that could hold all of a platoon’s supplies and packs easily, and navigate any terrain a trooper could, with anti-grav strong enough to let it glide over lakes or take on steep walls as needed. We only needed one, the other left at Innspot and being kitted out as a walking fire platform in case it was needed… sothing ours was set up with first, also just in case.
The skies were abnormally clear of large flying creatures (which would obviously be magical and so not feeling well right now), which also ant they were rather busy with smaller ones who didn’t have to fear any larger predators right now.
It also ant that when we did run into those creatures, they were on the ground, they were not feeling good, and they definitely were feeling pretty territorial.
Most of them saw us coming and rapidly hunted cover instead of going for us, not wanting a fight if they could help it. There was a manticore who had just killed an armored orc who got a bit over-aggressive and paid for it with lasers to the skull… a fate the orc’s buddies behind the next hill soon shared with him.
Nifloids were out in force, because this was a good ti to catch flying monsters on the ground and earn themselves a fair amount of at and a reputation. Not having to worry about elves and humans sniping them off with Fireballs was also a morale booster, and they were spilling out of their caves and hidey-holes, certain that they didn’t have to worry about magic being out there.
They did not, however, reckon with lasers, and the fact said photonic discharge implents looked an awful lot like magical tools.
Getting ploinked by a bright blue beam of light out of nowhere is exciting and alarming. Watching said bright blue beam of light vaporize the head of your group’s underboss was terrifying!
Ten more of them coming down, one of which was red and wound about with black streams, all of them scything through your warband which was all excited about being able to play in the open, kind of breaks all your enthusiasm down and replaces it with panic.
“You want it looking like we sohow still have magic, Lady Edge!” Ranger Karista spoke up as we trotted down toward the bodies of two dozen goblins and three of their dire wolf mounts scattered along a trickle of a stream.
“Exactly. I have no doubt of everyone’s competency at cold weapons, but we’re here to spread a rather frightening ssage.” I had my own Rifle, Dama Rosa, which I made sure to re-certify my training in regularly. I had also personally made every single part of it, calibrated every circuit, assembled every tempered molecule of it, aning it was also eligible to be an enchanted Weapon.
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A Magical gunpowder Weapon was fairly rare. Magical energy weapons? Even Sama and Briggs couldn’t make the real ones, although they could fake it by enchanting the barrels they devised. The level of Runecraft required to enchant atom-level circuits, crystalline structures, capacitors, regulators, modulators, lenses, and computer circuitry was way higher than even the tech level and QL requirents of the Weapons themselves, which started at 30 and only went higher.
One of the very, very few gifts I could give the two of them which they could appreciate had been personal energy Weapons!
Sama’s was designed to be mounted as an underslung double-barrel combination on Fall. It was a wickedly fast-firing pulse laser intended for crowd-clearing, which could also ride the Force pulses of infinite ammunition the Autobow could generate, so generating kinetic impacts as well as thermal hard light. It was Main-Gauche, so it just shared in the rest of Fall’s Enhancents.
The second barrel was a dinsionally compressed grenade launcher, with a magazine that could hold a hundred of the things which she could select and differentiate on command. Potential weapons included mini-atomics, and had a launch range of a couple miles at the least.
She had never used it openly, but it was always with her.
Briggs’ toy was Nad Hello. He didn’t usually carry a missile weapon, so presenting him with a sidearm for so more extre ranged capability was only logical. Thus, it just looked like the single biggest goddamn slugthrower a humanoid could use, sized for his huge hands and strength, and able to ride in a hip holster… a hip holster cut for quick draw, which absolutely no one was going to expect from him.
It was naturally not the real weapon. The real Weapon was the fact that it Morphed into a six-barreled rotary Autocannon that could switch its configuration and ammunition on the fly. Each barrel was a peerless example of a different kind of weapon, the disc drum shifted between ammunition types with a thought, and the whole thing was engineered at TL16 standards, as high as we could push with Federation tech given the resources we had… and only then had I Enhanced it even higher.
It was a monomolecular automatic shotgun; a grenade launcher; an automatic rail gun; a very, very heavy pulse laser; an extrely heavy plasma cannon; and an extrely long-range saber bear that could pop a satellite in orbit.
Ca with a collapsible tripod to mount it on if desired, too.
The only ammunition it required was grenades, and it could carry up to a hundred of them in its rotary drum.
The shotgun wired-flechettes were a cone of death that sliced everything in front of him apart. It had been tested and taken down an acre of young pine trees with one pivoting sweep. Lightly armored foes just exploded in front of it.
The rail gun popped off a shot up to every half-second from the rotating barrels, armor-piercing rounds that could punch through tanks and out the other side, and mow down the heaviest-armored foes with little difficulty.
The pulse laser fired up to fifty bursts a second and was just a scythe of death sweeping across a battlefield, while capable of blasting through a tank or ch with sustained fire. Any color combination optional, including dancing up and down the spectrum with every shot.
The plasma cannon was the slowest, building up a rotating charge and focusing it through all six barrels at once, and then effectively disintegrating just about anything in its way when unleashed in a white-hot line of incandescent plasma.
The saber beam was for sniping when needed, usable as a needle or a saw as required. It was the only one that might need a scope or the Leyser sighting attached to it.
The power core was basically eternal, self-contained, refueled with air, and enhanced and strengthened with technomagic. It could easily drive a plasma-bear artillery cannon or a full-tech gunwing. The whole thing was Impervious and Indestructible after being made to the limits of Federation material technology. It wouldn’t jam, wouldn’t run out of power, wouldn’t overheat, and wouldn’t run out of normal ammunition.
I couldn’t Main-Gauche it to Endure, unfortunately, so Briggs had to enhance it with Naming Karma and goldweight… which he had, aghast at the sheer firepower he was toting around, and also aware of why he had that power.
Riding at his hip.
It had taken three years to make it back in Darkmoor. Making all of the barrels one way, then breaking them all down to make them another way, took quite a bit of ti…
Dama Rosa wasn’t nearly so fancy, just a laser Rifle sized for my 5’3 height, tricked out to the limits of tech and Enhanced just for days like this. Dread considered the Rifle a challenge to him, but even he had to acknowledge that when it was needed, it was useful, and I brought out the Dama at no other tis.
The Dama’s best trick was that its lasers could manifest as any of the Elental damage types, and could also carry my Reserves or Shards if needed. It had excellent range and could work as a sniper rifle if I pushed the beam up into ultraviolet to remain unseen, but its main purpose was to be brought out if I ended up sowhere or when that spells didn’t work, and I needed sothing to fall back on.
The default beams were ruby-red and wound about with black streaks that looked like twisting thorned vines for a second after being fired, too, tipped with the white fires of vivus to get dead things Burning.
Dread was currently riding the back of my belt, shrunken down and remaining that way, since he couldn’t Morph into anything but back to a full Staff under the No Magic effects, and was massively irritated by the whole situation. Passive effects only, no spells to Cast or to channel, effectively only good as a basic Weapon if needed, and my Prismatic Saber Lasa Spina would take care of that if needed right now, too.
Spina also defaulted to blood-red, typically had a Baneskull forming the guard. The various flas it Main-Gauched from Dread looked like twisting thorn vines around the bar of plasma that ford the blade, it normally zum-zumd when waved around, and laughing skulls could be seen in the flas that followed its movent.
They had all laughed when I demonstrated it. Right on trope, as usual!
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