Account of the Neptor conflict

            Account of the Neptor conflict 08.11.58776   The crackle of energy drops me to the floor of a ship. As I looked around, I found the layout familiar. Two officers stood up from their chairs and saluted, I nodded back and they sat back at their command center and went back to their tasks. The smell of ozone coming from me is powerful. As I walk out of the portal room and into the corridor, I have a flash of Father Ruhle dieing, but that hasn’t happened yet… or has it? The walk to the bridge is long and thought provoking. I entered the bridge and Admiral Leukemia looked very surprised to see me, again. I have lost count of how many times I have done this loop. She has said the same thing to me every time I walk through the door. “High Priest, what are you doing here?” This time I cut her off before she could start talking. “Admiral, I have come to take command of this operation. A seer has foretold of your demise in the upcoming war. Please join me in your ready room so we might discuss further plans.” I don’t bother waiting for a response or even make eye contact. I have seen Ambella cut her in half hundreds of times now, it needs to end. I enter the council chambers and sit at the first seat, not where someone of my standing should be seated. Leukemia walks in with her hand on her sword, would she dare to strike at me? “Your Grace, I was not expecting you here for this skirmish. This is a simple occupation while we locate the artifacts and anything else of value.” I grind my teeth as she speaks and take a sip from her wine glass already on the table. “I have neither the time nor inclination to explain my action to you. Your life and this operation are in grave danger. I have been shown visions by Killmare, and she has sent me here to have Katar verify them. You do not just get sent back to the Umbra, you die.” For a brief minute Leukemia ponders what I just said. She slowly walks over to the table and pushes a button on the command panel. “Yes sir?”… Leukemia looked me in the eyes to see if I would give away anything else before she spoke softly and calmly. “I need you to comm Katar and have her port to this ship as soon as she can. This is a hostile planet so please make sure the communication is kept undiscovered. We don’t need the locals knowing we are here.”               I spend the next day relaxing and training. I will need to be in tip top shape to face the Supreme Commander again. The Destroyer and her damn cannon is far too powerful to be a mere mortal weapon. I have explained it to the engineers and weapon smiths that are on board here. I know her footage of some of her shots is out there on the black web, but she hasn’t taken them yet. I spent the better part of the morning explain to Leukemia that she severs our ties to the gods somehow. I myself have died do to the weapon many times, but not that it counts. I will miss killing Björn again. That little bastard has become a real pain.             A few hours later Katar arrives on the ship with her personal mussel, they never know what hits them. Corvus can tear through normal troops like an angry child through tissue paper. I wonder how Mortus will see his actions this time around. That bitch has stolen more than a few kills from me, and now that I have killed Corvus a few times, I have gotten used to our conversations. Katar and Leukemia enter the room I am resting in without knocking or even announcing themselves.             Leukemia looks at me and waits for me to say something, I lay my head back on my pillow and close my eyes, she can’t hurt me. Katar steeps up to me and places both her hands on my bare stomach. I wonder what horrors she sees when she does this. After a few seconds Katar steeps back, and walks into my bathroom. She gets ill and falls to the floor.             “That is the first time that has happened.” I look at Leukemia and watch her walk over and tend to our sister. Katar does not appear to have her normal cherry color to her cheeks and her eyes are moving rapidly all around.             I came out of my quarters the next day to much scurrying around, something different has happened. I make my way to the bridge and find Katar, Leukemia, and the twins standing at the comms table. As I walk in all four of them stop talking and watch me approach.             Pleasantries, even forced ones are exchanged, I know the lethality of the twins and their mystic bows. They on the other hand, have no clue what that cannon can do. We discuss my being here some more when Katar states she has a plan to stir up the loop I am in. At this point Leukemia make a comment that I should not be able to do this, and that it sounds like I might be siding with the Traveler and his kin. The mere thought makes my hand rise to strike her involuntarily. Her had was already on her sword and the twins stepped back and pulled their bows out. “Leukemia, you are showing your true nature. Now stop with this childish crap and get ready for a retreat.”             Katar wants to try and take out the emperor, a tactic we have not attempted so early before. “I have seen how his public demise affects the populace when I saw your past experiences. This lead to a run in with the Supreme Commander again, well I guess this is our first run in and I had Katara just pull us back out. We will try sending the twins in the morning but I don’t see it going well. As long as I don’t have to face The Destroyer again, I’m ok with us just backing out of this.             The Twins report back after getting caught by that ass hat traveler again and they beat feet and got the hell out of there. Things this time around are going, well, weird. The troops are reporting odd environmental changes at the scorch deposit site, and scanners have lost all site of the Supreme Commander (I need to learn that bastards name) and his crew.             I heard an alarm and ran to the bridge as fast as I could. Father Ruhle was there heading out as I was heading in. That was when I realized, this is where I die. They somehow plant a bomb on the ship. Katar and Leukemia have escaped by now so I head to the escape pods. Then the fire suppression system went off, everywhere, all at once. All the alarms started sounding and then some of that crappy old human music started playing at full volume, I have to admit though, the premises of the song was rather interesting. Father Ruhle followed me to the rear of the ship and that was when we heard all the alarms for the escape pods sound. What in the name of blood is going on. None of this has happened before. I make my way to the portal room where we find a group hold up in the room. There are bodies all over out front and then some fool tosses a grenade out here. I caught it and absorbed the energy and stored it up for later use. The sudden realization that Ambella was standing behind me with the Supreme Commander made me go into full soak mode. That was when Father Ruhle exploded all over the corridor and everything erupted into elemental fire. When I turned and saw that they were accompanied by the Grey, I figured that this was not the time for this and teleported back to the base.   This is the account from Necrosis, Hema-Titian High Priest. 

The blue and purple energy from the portal swirled around. I was wondering where I would land as the Command Cruiser is where I normally landed, but that has been destroyed. The Crown, Leigh, and log page have been sent off to high ups. I have no more care or concern for these material objects as I am simply wanting out of the forsaken loop. I prepared a breathing spell in case I came out in the void of space and was relieved to find that I was back at home, in my temple. The few guards and other workers looked oddly at me when I emerge from the portal frame and step onto the arrival platform. “My lord!” on of the officers working the command console stand and bows in respect. “Grand Admiral Leukemia has requested to made aware of you arrival the instant you appear. She has been waiting a long time for your return sir.” I myself have no real clue how that fool Travelers time magic works, but I should have only left here mere minutes ago. “How long have I been gone?” The officers looked at each other and then one of them looked down at the command console and muttered “four hours… thirty-two minutes your grace.” “Fine, send her word I have returned and I will go and prepare myself for her arrival.” “Your Grace, she arrived moments after you left and has been waiting in your conference room.” I paused for a minute, ran all the possibilities through my head. I have no reason to fear her, let alone her disapproval. The time loop has distorted my memories of what I was doing just before I went to assist with the quelling of that forsaken planet. I made my way straight to the conference room not wanting to deal with any more crap from that wrecked witch then needed. As I entered the room, I could not hide the shock at what I saw. Leukemia, her face…. It was… she had obviously been involved in some kind of explosion, massive and devastating. There were bits of black charred horn protruding from her skin. She was marred and had scars all over her face. Her left eye was cybernetic, well, bio-nano cybernetics. I was not prepared for what I saw. “By your reaction, I see I am finally talking to the correct version of you.” She took a step back from me and that was when I noticed the others, twelve in total, all sons and daughters of the High Father. “You spent so much time trying to fix your time line, that you did not spend enough time worrying about what was happening at that time.” “Listen Witch, I…” Leukemia ‘s rage was pure and authentic, “You will never speak to me again in that tone!” As she spoke all the others powered up for a fight. Capillus charged up her shield and Arcturus had his bow knocked and aimed at my head. I slowly raised my hands so everyone could see them. They would have never challenged me before. Not even in force like this, what had happened? Flo walked towards me, her right arm now a twisted cybernetic device, made with real bone and cover partially with actual flesh. “The High Father had banished you in the past for your crimes of hubris. You were told to never return here, you were warned what would happen to you if you did.” “I was unaware…” Leukemia again snapped at me “You are a traitorous bastard!” I felt the flesh of my left arm tear forcibly from where it belonged and onto the floor. My legs were locked into place and the arrow from Arcturus priced my chest just above my heart. Their power, their speed, they have never moved like this before. I tried to focus, I tried to speak, I realized they had no intention of letting me ever speak again. I must have been able to touch my belt as I found myself halfway across the galaxy on a desert planet. I quickly healed my arm and removed the arrow from my chest. The pain those thing cause is unimaginable. The bones in my legs began to mend and the hole in my chest finally closed. Once the initial shock wore off, I took a deep breath. “Now what?” I have been the head of the Church for the High Father for countless centuries. My head was starting to clear. I teleported five or six more times and find somewhere I do not recognize anymore. I find that I have nothing of any value on me and that I am heading towards Federation Space. “What Now?”

Log Entry – Personal – Commander Steven Hunter, Legion Command Alpha.             It’s been just over two years since the attempted invasion of the Umbra and the appearance of Seth and his Special Forces team. We have almost finished integrating TOON into our new facility, and I can’t wait to get the full automation process up and running. The plans and schematics that Björn left in our system are really paying off. We have two tests starting up next week, first for the rail gun system that Ambella was using and then we are attempting to work with the mages for more protection on our armor and blessings on our weapons. All this time we thought that mages were useless in combat, now we are starting a whole new division of combat mages and we are working in tandem with them.             The guys have made it official; the new rail guns will be called AB-rockets, yea…. Ambella/Björn rockets… seriously needs more work in my opinion, but you never know what will catch on. The special Children of Blood rounds are still a mystery to us, but hopefully TOON with figure it out soon enough.             The new training facility for us is working better than I thought it would. The Grey Intensive Facility, yea gif, is working great. Our top soldiers are put through a rigorous setup of high speed movement and targeting scenarios that will hone their skills to new levels.             Corvus would be proud of the new melee training that all our guys are going through. New gear, no protection, just a healer standing on call for each training session. No casualties so far, but we did have a close call.             As Seth had stated, we will followed. Everywhere the Umbra dares to show their faces, we will shown up to put a stop to them. We have started the begging of new jump ships, more weapons, magic armor, battle priests, and mage medics. The Legion has been looking into more of our history and have thought about adopting a new symbol for us, now that we are restructuring our entire force. Since that Screaming Hag played such a big part in our successes, we were thinking of using her is some matter. The Bar in Greystone Harbor has become an offsite standby for us now and we have upgraded the local internet and security.             The rest of the planet has been stable for the last two years and there is nothing really to report.