The Strategic Table...

-We have a confirmed Kappa scenario!- /rang out through the local Markspace, was decoded for actual meaning and assessment, and then was spread basically around the whole planet within seconds.

Anatolia focused on the relayed images from the great crystal roc. The Haze was too high in the area for satellite confirmation, but that was fine. The gridwork of the landscape had been thoroughly investigated by Hagbloods or G&G teams within thirty miles of all the cities, lived-lines crawling all over them and fleshing out aerial surveillance from drones and similar things to a level the military felt comfortable with.

-The drow have opened up a Portal into the Underweb sufficiently clear of the Warp Zone to not trigger a Veil Eruption,- she /analyzed and relayed out, getting corroboration of the math, distortion mechanics, and likewise. -They are sending out scouts to sweep the area, and deploying forces under holoscreens for a raid.

-We are not going to let them know they’ve been spotted.- Which a direct missile bombardment would certainly do, and then they’d go looking for how they were spotted, and enough divinations might lead to the rocs. -Sacrifice two Crowns, put them at points Alpha and Beta, invert them, and let them eat the Warp.-

Spots glowed on the map. Cost analysis of sacrificing two Crowns vs a nuke, weighted with the diffusion of divinatory probabilities that would result, confirmed it as very cost-effective, indeed.

Mom’s voice slid through the Markspace as the teams to do the deed, as well as others to snipe out the drow scouts, were being hashed out and already heading out on deployment via Teleports. One of the rites of passage of getting your Bonded Weapon’s Teleport active was to do the Grand Run, circling the continent so you could deploy fairly close to any potential conflict zone.

It meant that ALL of the Hagblood Tens could converge on a single place with uncanny speed, a fact that would have badly frightened the Mentat Nines and Tens who imagined themselves the most adept teleporters on the planet. Suck Karma, glowheads...

-I’m going to get a dimensional lock on the Underweb before those Crowns are inverted.-

Supraintelligent minds whizzed through the possibilities, and many, many eyes glittered expectantly. Gatecutting was a high-end power open to Bonded Weapons. If they could open a Portal to the Underweb of their own... well, the elvar races might not like it, but they could also go traipsing into the Gloom...

Mom was already on the move faster than any of them. The drow Portal was about a hundred miles from the Warp Zone. The dimensional calculations had borrowed the back of her head for support, and were then fed into the hypercogs for verification. She could put down within five miles of the drow, seeing as they were close to Kiloplex Abepb, which she had done a run-by of. She was heading for them within two minutes of notification, coming from halfway around the continent in a series of Teleports to do so.

Anatolia smiled to herself, eyes glittering as a whole new set of possibilities opened up before her. Access to the Underweb travel paths of the Gloom was how the elvar races got around the galaxy quickly. It was certain to have its own dangers, but... the key thing was that it got around the Rift!

They could potentially expand out of this side of the galaxy, and if nothing else, expand their information network accordingly!

But of course, if they were going to send Hagbloods to the rest of the Empire, there was no way those Ranthas and Briggs were not going to be active. Just getting local G&G branches up, locating Good people to recruit, and quietly building some power would be fine.

The problem was that Corewards was going to be much more reactionary and conservative in nature, and the teamwork they had formed with the Umbrans and Coronals here on Janus III was likely to be animosity instead, and their organizations and teams judged as cults, heretics, blasphemers, and Warp sympathizers, if things went sideways.

Upsetting the apple cart with a society buried in the ruts for five thousand years would not go over well.

But... it also meant they had a route to claim the legacy of the Duke Corunsun, if they chose to employ it. Whether that was even possible was hard to say... but it was possibilities!...

----------------

Dark elvar, eh...

I was sliding across the landscape, my hair making a shroud of camouflage the scouting drow couldn’t see through, bending the air around me so as not to create a wake, moving at sixty mph through the rough terrain without a problem, path already charted... and incidentally feeding back to that nice roc who had remained on station, withdrawing a little but keeping everything in sight.

The kids were going to arrange a nice feast for him. Rocs loved thunder beetles, so scaring up one or two shouldn’t be an issue. These lands were plenty wild still, as the Rantha Hunting Teams ™ hadn’t been out in force, having so many other things to deal with, and easier ways to make Karma.

I watched jet bikes shooting off in all directions, under shadowy holo-cloaks that should have reduced them to just ripples in the air. But True Sight sees through all illusions, scientific or otherwise, and I could see them vaguely zipping around like hunting wasps, looking for targets and relaying them back, probing for weak points, hunting for prey, lining up avenues of advance and retreat...

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

They had long proved to be very, very effective at their craft. If their enemy didn’t know they were coming, they could swoop down, wipe out defenses, herd up the hapless natives, and empty most of a kiloplex in a remarkably short period of time, opening up temporary Portals and driving the helpless new slaves through them.

If the defeated refused to go, they were simply slaughtered, sometimes in mass dark rituals, other times to leave biological or magical surprises behind for those who came after, to horrific results.

They had little to no sense of restraint, no mercy, and were inventive, cruel, and happy to be that way.

The Elvar were a race color-coded for convenience. The darker their skin, the darker their souls. That didn’t mean even the palest elvar weren’t racist arrogant xenophobic snobs, but it did indicate how far they’d fallen into the grasp of the Warp Gods and lost control over their own desires and ambitions.

The drow naturally had three colors to them. Crimson, the deep, dark hue of dried blood, represented those drow with incredible innate discipline and ruthlessness, fighting off the influence of the Warp while at the same time giving in to the utter lack of restraint regarding what methods they used to do so. If Hell could have come here, they would have welcomed them warmly.

What rules existed in drow society came from the Crimson, Blood, Scarlet, Sanguine, and so forth and so on factions.

The purple factions were the self-absorbed, self-elitist types, thinking themselves above and better than their overly repressed scarlet kin and their utterly depraved black-skinned cousins, and generally represented the nobility of the drow. They preferred names dealing with royalty, shadows, and elitism, like Dark Monarchs, Shadow Lords, Masters of the Void, and similar arrogant stuff that placed them above their ilk.

The most numerous black-skinned factions were pretty much a catch-all of all levels of their society, dominated by the biotechs and artistic murderers who drove the lower levels of their society, and who often ended up forming the truly radical murderous elite. They gave no lip service to conformity or restraint on themselves or their actions at all, beyond what prudence would demand, and imagined themselves the equal or rivals of the denizens of the Warp, showing THEM what it meant to thirst for slaughter, endure in wretchedness, burn with ambition, or obsess madly. Naturally, they preferred names like the Corpse Eaters, Devils of Carnage, and Daemons of the End for their own factions.

It was all a great stinking lie, as their lack of resistance to the Warp meant they could no longer use the ancient magic of their race. Active use of psionics in any form also sent their souls closer and closer to the clutches of the Warp God they resonated with the most. In order to satiate the Warp Gods and buy time for themselves, they could only replace the thirst and price for their souls with those of others, and so the drow lived on the endless death of other races, slavery and slaughter in tandem as they offered up the souls of others on platters to stave off the consumption of their own.

The Warp Gods took them all, and doubtless found it very convenient to have such a force of fools working for them on the mortal plane.

Yet, regardless of their bribes, if a drow entered the Warp... they were dead and done, as the Warp Gods would reach out and suck them up, like any elvar, and enjoy their madness and self-obsession as they would few others.

Which is exactly what we were going to do to them.

---

The drow were not expecting anyone to come hunting for them. That simply was just not done. Who would be foolish enough to hunt the drow, the greatest hunters in all the galaxy? Even their pale-skinned kin weren’t dumb enough to do so, as the drow commanded the heart of the Underweb, where the elvar walked only with great care and circumspection. Who would chase them there? Then, when the time was right, the drow would come out and take their revenge, and who among the stars could deny them?

Alas for them, Rules were Rules, and their elitism and natural talents aside, they still had to abide by Levels, Ranks, and Skills.

Sure, they bioengineered themselves to higher Stats. Unfortunately for them, a society like theirs, so rife with murder, betrayal, ambition, and general lack of caring about what happened to others, was not a place with a high birth rate. Naturally, they tried to solve the population problem with clone rebirths if their elites died in battle (being terrified of dying and consumed was the whole point of their race, after all), and growing lots of Vatted for cannon fodder.

Vatted were limited to Six. Hitting Seven, they promptly went batshit crazy and got put down. So, they could grow sideways, but if they busted Seven, the Warp Gods were coming for their artificialized souls, and weren’t nothing they could do for it.

Sixes could get skilled, sure, but compared to Tens?

Thus, the majority of their soldiers were hastily grown Fours to Sixes... still a good degree above normal humans, whose soldiers were generally in the Two to Four range. Drow officers were definitely Sevens and above, always natural-born elites, and even if they couldn’t actively use psionics, they could employ psychic devices, and their biotech was the best in the galaxy.

Naturally they built on the inherent grace and coordination of their race, making themselves quicker, more agile, with faster reflexes and perfect balance, aiming for the ideal of finesse combat: never being hit while hitting your foe back = win. It was always about speed, speed, speed with them, be it fighting, shooting, flying, or otherwise.

Of course, they had to look good doing it, because their cultural obsessions simply did not go away for all this.

What you ended up with was a race of hyperfit, beautiful, and sexually enticing humanoids, all quite by design. The unfit were weeded out and their genecodes not replicated or passed on, continually winnowing out the genome and tightening it to an ever-more inbred status based on minor changes of aesthetics.

Oh, and they all had pale hair. If they had any psychic training at all, this was off-white, blended with pink, yellow, pea green, pale blue, faint purple, or the like, often indicating an odd personality type or quirk. The hair color could change if the focus of their racial insanity did, and ‘wearing many colors’ seemed to be a badge of honor among them, a test and show of their mastery of the Warp. Punkwarp style? Antiwarp? Retroelvar Warpish? Neoclassical Counterwarpish Polyspectral?

-Okay, girls, you’re getting a little wild with the hairstyle critiques-, I /mused into the Marktell with a grin, as the criticisms mounted up. Just how poorly their hair went with their generally glowy, lambent red-orange-yellow-milk white eyes was a key part of the fashion analysis. Generally, they were probably trying to ignore the windows to their corrupt souls...