• Nobles of Null is a forum based roleplay site where sci-fi and magic collide. Here, Earth remains fractured and divided despite humanity reaching out to the stars. Worse still, the trans-human slaves of one major power have escaped, only to establish their own Empire, seething with resentment at abuses of the past. Even the discovery of aliens, though medieval in development, has failed to rally these squabbling children of Earth together with its far darker implications. Worse still, is the discovery of the impossible - magic. Practiced by the alien locals, nearly depleted and therefore rare, its reality warping abilities remains abstract and distant to the general populace. All the while, unseen in the darkness of space, forces from without threaten to press in. For those with eyes opened by insight, it is clear that an era is about to end, and that a new age will dawn.

Day in the Life: Rescue from the Depths

"Dumb cow, quit whining, and keep the comms clean: physical reality here is having a hard time keeping itself pulled together as is." Wen jeered with annoyance as he rappelled down off of the transport, landing with a slight thud onto the mushy jungle terrain with the weight of his weapons, his backpack, and armor on him. While Hoshiko looked in one direction away from the transport, he was aiming in the opposite direction, scanning carefully with his eyeballs and other electronic sensors available to him.

"You get the hide by in virtual space when it comes time to rest. I'm the one stuck dealing with meat space." He noted to his female counterpart.
 
Jun immediately loaded up those old ad-reads for the sanitation spray with the catchy jingle and was JUST about to blast those over the comms before stopping herself. Such a thing would be immature.

She then started to notice that Wen and Hoshiko were doing all that military stuff.

"Hey are we actually in danger down here? Its just some Merchant that got lost right?"
 
"Mother Empress help me," Koyama breathed when Wen responded to Jun as she followed suit. Rappeling down, the rifle she'd chosen expanded enough for her to fit a hand between the two distinct halves. "One complains about being a beast of burden. The other complains about lacking the possibility of virtual space when they sleep."

"Just try and lucid dream, Wen." Was her answer to that when she finally started eyeing the owls. The urge for a pun so terrible it was somehow good was on the tip of her tongue while staring at their version of 'drones'. "Or not. That thing in your skull might take advantage."

From inside her helmet, she frowned in meatspace. "Guess the advanced sensor module I chose is useless out here." The readings they were sending back were not totally unlike what the ship had been spitting out. The HUD inside of her helmet pinged then skittered, pinged, skittered. She dialed it down to short-range to conserve her suit's power.

Her avatar however gave Hoshiko the side-eye. Arms folded beneath her chest.

"Quoting twenty-first-century human movies again." There was the audible snapping of fingers, "Something about giant bugs? I know there are Milsims back home involving things like that." The avatar waved its hand grandly. "Liberate their worlds. Epic last stands to orchestrated music. Apes wanting to live forever. Armor made from what looked like old all-terrain hydrocarbon fueled truck tires."
 
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"If you're going to say it, say it right," the princess reprimanded Jun. "Tight is Right!" she wiggled her hips for emphasis. Their thermoptic camouflage rendered this gesture in meatspace rather moot however. "And it's your call since you're on point, so whatever bad happens, it happens to you first," Hoshiko reminded her, sending the training page citation to her. Most people on point packed as much firepower as possible to return the favor to an ambush after all.

The princess tried to ignore the banter between the two bovines of their group, but her sister had picked on to something.

"To be fair, those games are some of our best sellers to the American Union. We're always the bridge bunnies that trade them their cool tech for all the interesting stuff in the field," the tiger princess pointed out to Koyama. As always, their mother was several moves ahead of American Intelligence. "Besides, our sensor suite isn't all useless. Shorter ranges, the fidelity is still pretty high. And long ranges, that's what we got the owls for," Hoshiko added. "Speaking of, they found something."

As the shuttle automatically retreated, with another one coming to go on-station, the group moved quickly and quietly through the forest. It was hard to tell what was more silent though. The group of Daqinren and the animals, or the forest and its seeming lack of wildlife. Ultimately, it wasn't too long before they were close enough to their scouts that video feed could start coming in.

Inside their virtuality, an old-school film projector showed a rotating slide show of the most pertinent images against the tent wall of their WWII FOB. There was a fight. An ambush. Bark was burnt off of trees, and Imperial supplies were ripped into and scattered across the ground.

Expended tranquilizer rounds littered the floor.
 
"I don't mind a nice, flattering, bodysuit but just going for tightness all the time makes me feel like I'm wearing a straight jacket. No one needs to feel like they're getting their chest squeezed all the time... its like some grabby date you can't get rid of... and does that mean skirts are out? Or like... does it have to be a tight skirt?"

Jun had plodded ahead, trying not to die now that she had been selected as the sacrificial cow. In this area there was nothing that looked like a Daqin hat they were looking for. "What do you think is in these?!" Jun asked, sounding just a bit too excited to find a bunch of tranquilizers.

She then decided that maybe she shouldn't focus on that around the Princesses.

Jun would carefully start checking around the Ambush point, trying not to do expose herself too much as she checked around the outside of the area before moving in towards the center.
 
Dai gave Wu a silent thumbs up in response to her question. It wasn't so much that she seemed bothered or put off by her co-worker- but in meatspace she seemed awfully distracted. She was trying to follow the flow of conversation and not get lost in her head, but old habits died hard and it was difficult not to start worrying the closer they got to their objective.

Jun speaking directly at the doctor earned her proper attention and Dai made the sign for so/so with her hand, "Fix is a strong word. I could take a look at him if we were somewhere proper... right now I can just make sure things dont get worse. Maybe. Knowing exactly how we work is my specialization, but he's talking about things that I've never had to deal with. So we'll see."

Just before rappelling down Dai took a moment to dig through one of her bags to produce a small, stuffed charm in the shape of a rooster and clip it directly to the strap of the same bag. Once her feet were on the ground and she was certain she wasn't about to get skewered, shot, or maimed she swiftly sped up to match just behind Jun's pace, "I would hate for anyone to start thinking you're the source of the bad luck, you should borrow this." She uncliped the little stuffed charm from her strap and pushed it assertively into her hand.
"Rooster's are very auspicious, just don't lose her. Double bad luck."

She fell back behind the group's point woman and looked directly down at the littering of tranquilizer rounds and then up at the canopy with a sigh, "Nothing you want, I'm sure. Does make me wish that every single one of you was toting around two guns at once. At least a bit."
 
Jun snuck over to Dai in the virtuality and discreetly slid her a VHS tape, "This is exactly what happened. Wen saw Hoshiko's boobs and went crazy." She would share a video of what she remembered, heavily edited to preserve the princess' modesty.

The video would fade in from Jun's perspective on some run down human ship as Wen was speaking:​

"Lady Hoshiko, you really do act like one of those attention-whores on the human networks."​
​
Strong, muscular arms wrapped around Hoshiko's body, hands suddenly gripping her breasts like a pair of stress balls, and he squeezed, hard. Five years of loyalty and frustration and stress, released in a moment on this royal bitch. Wen didn't say a word more in meat space, instead breathing down Hoshiko's naked neck with puffs of hot, wet air, his body pressing hers down onto the console, toying with her breasts in his hands and feeling every square centimeter of warm flesh with every single nerve in his palms. Depending on how the two princesses felt, they'd execute him or court marshal him. That was fine. He got the bragging rights of having groped a princess while doing his duty. Not a bad way to go out.

"AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! HE'S GROPING ME! THIS DUMB AS AN OX PEASANT IS ACTUALLY GROPING ME!" the princess's voice cackled across their shared realities. Grabbing Wen by the wrists in meatspace, she leaned in, eyes wide and wild while portions of their virtuality flashed with static, the shared processing load Hoshiko was responsible for flooding with errors. "Instead of the big titty cow, you went for me! Hoshiko! IS IT BECAUSE YOU THINK MINE AREN'T WORTH AS MUCH?!" She smiled at the man.
​
Wen dismissed his virtual self at this point and ignored the princess's insult. Instead, he greedily snorted in the attractive bodily odors emitted by the pampered, higher-class woman, then let out a hot, humid breath from his nostrils onto her exposed, well-cared-for skin. He took her amused response as a sign that he wouldn't be short on the spot for sexually assaulting a superior, squeezing her breasts further, pressing her body harder onto the human-made console.​
​
"After that he attacked us and I had to shoot him. His brain is broken... maybe we could prescribe him some sedatives? Just chill him out a little?" Jun asked.
 
"Tight isn't right if it's a guy you know probably more like torture," Koyama quipped in response to Hoshiko's opening remark. Even as her avatar leaned toward the projector her chin cupped in a hand as she squinted. "They were ambushed?" was the obvious choice as she continued her examination of the media on the projector. "A ruse?"

"And those burns on the trees. A Type Eight could probably do that. But it seems wrong to me." The tip of a telescopic antenna snapped against the screen. Directly on the marks. Then toward the spent casings. She gave first Dai, then Wu a look.

"Would your associate opt for using tranq rounds versus lethal out there? You two know her better than we do."
 
Hoshiko harrumphed. "I think pleated skirts are neat," she quietly admitted. With a wave, the walls of their base folded away to reveal their scene that they were standing in, even as their bodies moved onward in meatspace. "I'd still want a second opinion on Wen," the tiger princess remarked, 'picking up' one of the large tranquilizer rounds and eying its dented, dripping tip. "Mother-Empress tends to piggyback her own agenda on the agendas of others, so it doesn't hurt," she admitted, 'moving' on to the tree.

There was the hole, in and out, that a laser gun would have made of course. And a good portion of the tree itself had blasted away as its water explosively vaporized inside itself, but the dead embers and black was uneven, trailing downwards towards the ground. Hoshiko could only nod in agreement with her sister. They had all tinkered with one of the most expensive, high-performance weapons in virtuality at one time or another. A merchant might have gotten the funds to buy such a luxury weapon for themselves, but the mark left behind simply felt different.

"Oh, you've got to be kidding me," Hoshiko growled. Though they were all still moving in meatspace, their 'drones' saw it first. Linking the discovery to their virtuality, the princess expanded their little 'exhibit' to include it.

A massive, gaping cavern in the forest, carved into the world by the river.
 
Dai virtually waved her hands at the video of Wen making a fool of himself and looked a little green thereafter, "Interesting decision making. You're all really the Empire's finest, huh?

"Tranquilizers? Sakamoto? I certainly wouldn't put it past her. What's the value in a captured whatever if it's dead and poked full of giant holes?- but I can't tell you for certain. I mostly deal with lab work these days. It's crazy what you can get your claws on when you're as successful an entrepreneur as that Rooster is. There's not much she can't manage to get ahold of- with money or that mouth of hers." There was something sort of like pride in Dai's voice- but not quite, "I guess it depends on how badly she wants the person shooting at her. Given the locale and the trouble she's gone through to get out here... She's crazy enough to shoot non-lethals while someone is lasering the entire forest apart around her. That Rooster is determined and crafty."
 
"So a random merchant gets access to the Empire's finest weapons, but one of Mother Empress' direct children doesn't? Who fucked up in the bureaucracy?" Wen asked incredulously. He peered down the cavern, using his helmet's sensors to build a rough 3D map of the interior. "Splitting paths and varying widths, some places barely large enough to crawl through... Not unlike vessel breaching operations, but usually we would've had time to practice." The Ox commented. "I suggest we send in the drones first to assess hazards, then make a decision afterwards. One merchant isn't worth the lives of two princesses."
 
Jun would respond to Dai in the virtuallity directly first, "Look, Wen was a normal soldiery guy until he got cursed by Hoshiko's boobs. I don't know if they are still cursed or if the curse transferred or what. You're the doctor."

"You buy GUUCI weapons when you want to play soldier, just like how you buy a pleated skirt when you want to play schoolgirl... Not that I've got the body for that since I gotta lean into the big sis type, or the country-gal... though the real question is are you gonna wear shorts underneath or no? The compression shorts are supposed to be great for your health." Jun rambled, seemingly unworried about having some kind of laser blaster for use against trees.

Jun also remembered that they were probably in danger, and she'd lower her weapon a bit. She may be a geologist playing soldier, but she did know fashion... and right now the fashion she wanted to show to the world could best be described as 'Good looking yet least dangerous soldier so maybe shoot me last'. Maybe she should have brought one of those Old War 1 guns that Hoshiko loved so much just so enemy soldiers wouldn't take her seriously?

Also she was supposed to be pointing for the squad or whatever.

That meant she'd have to go into the tunnels first.

"Yes. Lets send the drones into the horror-movie-monster-cave first. Once they are destroyed by the mutant hillbilly Aoi-Si that are down there we can leave... or like... explode the tunnel from a safe distance."

...

...

"Wait, they were shooting the laser at HER? How'd Aoi Si get GUUCIGUNS? I thought they all fought with spears and rocks?"
 
Through all this talk, Hoshiko retained her silence and her composure, though a small sigh betrayed some of her feelings on this matter.

"Some sort of valuable, big game," the tiger princess mused. "But she fired her laser weapon for some reason..." Hoshiko gave Jun the side eye for good measure. Of course the Aos Si didn't have laser guns. But there were other things she had to deal with too. "I'll have to show you the power of money some time Wen," she finally sighed.

"Looking through the eyes of our scouts, this isn't just a river-cave," she pointed out. "It would have turned into a canyon or something if it weren't for the all the plant roots holding the stuff up top mostly together." Pointing to their source of light, it almost looked like they were inside a giant, multi-tiered straw laid on it side, and snipped open lengthwise with a pair of scissors. "This place is massive. Far, far bigger than the orbital scans thought." In their virtuality, they scooted their FOB forward of their physical location, moving it along the pathway that their scouts had digitally mapped for them. Even though they were still moving and clearing in meatspace, the extra set of eyes and ears let them have a presence far in advance of their actual bodies. Traveling along the different 'floors' or 'levels' of the so called 'cavern', they chose the 'high-ground' closest to the constricted opening in the ceiling, a mid-upper level, and the light that poured in.

But they all suddenly winced in displeasure. It wasn't just the eyes and ears of their owl scouts that they had access to. They were also linked to their noses, and the smell of horrifically burnt flesh and hair - humanoid or near humanoid - was still unpleasant. Pushing their scouts forward, they finally found the sources of the stench.

Several Chongwu lay scattered about, all burnt in some capacity or other.
 
Jun had carefully taken point, doing her best not to get killed. She was digging deep into her memory for those soldiery videos she'd seen. Slicing the Pie. Best ways to slice the pie. Best pies. None of these things seemed to be helpful! She decided to just sorta move ahead. Slowly. Jun making sure to poke the area in front of her carefully with her foot first before deciding to move forward a bit and repeat the process.

"So Sakamoto shot the Chongwu?"

It didn't even occur to her that Sakamoto might have been shooting at something else and missed. Daqin were far too accurate for that. The only thing that made sense was that Sakamoto needed to kill them for some reason.

"... Do you think this was part of some Ancient Aoi Si ritual?" Jun asked quietly, worry creeping into her voice, "We won't be next will we?"

In the virtuality, Jun put up images of the dead Chongwu. She then used a red marker to try and find a pattern in how they Chongwu had died, drawing lines from where they were shot to where they died. Drawing lines between the dead Chongwu. Also she drew some pentagrams on the images trying to make some kinda arcane ritual...

Wait, did Aoi Si use pentagrams?
 
"I high doubt that." Wen commented back. He kept his guard up, periodically scanning the corpses to give his onboard computers as much forensic data as possible. A list of possible causes of death scrolled past his eyes, starting from the most common, down to the more esoteric possibilities. Once the more conventional causes were ruled out, he knelt down to take a closer look at one of the wounds himself. The flesh around the hole was cauterized, but there was also directionality to how the tissue was pushed away as well.

"Fuck their mother..." He muttered in confusion, standing him, using his computer to draw a line in the direction of the attacks, then aimed his weapon there. "These aren't laser wounds, nor are they bullet wounds. It looks like they've been pierced by something both hot and wide, like a heated tip of a spear. That doesn't sound like anything humans would give to the local Aos Si resistance, and normally heated metal wouldn't be able to cause this kind of damage anyways. No, this is something more esoteric."
 
Jun understood the implications.

She immediately switched from her Old War 2 communications officer outfit, to a dusty old brown hat, leather jacket, tan button down, and a whip hanging off her hip.
 
Sephi:
Wu wrinkled her nose at the scent of burnt, decaying flesh, something she was more familiar with than would've liked, and than she would ever have expected when first coming into Sakamoto's employ. She pressed forward with the rest of the Daqin group, following them quietly in the rear. Though they were fellow members of the Empire, Wu knew that the soldiers were unlike Sakamoto or even Dai, and had no such friendly relations with her.

Here eyes swept around the environment, staying alert for any signs of life or clues as to what might have happened to Sakamoto. The group approached the source, finding several burnt bodies littered on the ground, Chongwu from the looks of their remains. She suppressed a shudder of mixed disgust and fear, trying not to think about what might've happened to Sakamoto, and instead focusing on the grisly scene, quietly investigating it alongside the others as theories were passed around and analyzed. Though these wounds seemed unlike those of the guns that Aos Si rebels would normally have access to through sympathizers, Sakamoto and Wu's experiences with their relics had the Chongwu wondering to herself if perhaps the Aos Si were actually behind this still, just using some kind of unknown technology instead.
Click to expand...
 
The owls roosting above in their virtuality hooted.

"Maybe..." Hoshiko waved away the religious ritual analysis attempts that Jun had made, and focused the images they had of the injuries themselves. Nevermind that they were now practically walking past the bodies, their display in virtuality filling in with more and more grisly detail as their patrol kept moving. "Maybe something more like where we have to Secure, Contain and Protect people from the hazard," she pointed out to the heifer of the squad.

They could faintly hear the clack of rocks falling down and into the cavern in the distance. The owls hooted again.

"Stab wounds, but also electrical arc damage. Flesh being vaporized and all that." The twisted bodies of the chongwu seemed to still be screaming. "Sometimes separate. Sometimes together." Rocks clattered again, making the princess twitch her tail in annoyance. "I can't even think of any myth or whatever the Aos Si had that mentioned something like this." The owls hooted overhead in their virtuality, making Hoshiko put her hands on her hips in frustration. "What do you mean there's a horse? There shouldn't be a horse here."

Static crackled and fizzled where it shouldn't have, but the data feed from their owls made it clear.

The creature that peered down from the heavenly crack in the high ceiling, the glimpse they got before it pulled back and away, could only be described looking very much Like a horse, but not. Regally silhouetted by the sun behind it, the creature that peered down at their general locale looked much like a white horse with a horn. A horn splattered in red and char, that they all immediately knew matched the gory, carbonized holes in the bodies.

Hoshiko narrowed her eyes and readied her gun. Slowly.
 
"Oh you're mother fucking kidding me." It didn't take long for Wen to search through his data banks and find several entries for mythological beasts that were equestrian with horns.

"Is that a unicorn?!" He remarked to the group in hushed, frustrated tones as he also readied his weapon, and marched in the direction of the drones. "Not some alien, equestrian analog, not one of our biosmith's creations, just a wild mother fucking unicorn?! Does anything about this make any sense to the rest of you? In what reality would a human mythological construct show up as a physical entity, dozens of light years away from the human homeworld?!"
 
Imperial boots marched against alien gravel.

"Move!" a contact fizzled across their comms. The almost-equine creature unnaturally twitched at the crunching noise before leaping down from the cavernous crack. It almost soared through the air with unnatural grace, but now in full view, they could all see it clearly in that split second. The long, white setae covering its hard, beetle-like body bristled with crackling static as black, soulless compound eyes sighted in on where boot met stone

Chitinous mandibles parted, and lightning thundered!

Wen instinctively leaped aside, stone blasting into fragments as electricity arced past Jun. Their grip on the shared virtuality warbled and wavered with interference as the creature landed on long, spindly legs. Turning its head, its faceted eyes peered out on stalks, pointing at Jun as her active camouflage pigments struggled to adapt to the near lightning strike!
 
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