ORDER VS CHAOS

THE SIEGE

Mother had guided them, with swift and steady hand, back toward Ursa. Not through Polaris, however: but through Leo. They'd been given their time to rest and recover. Now it was time to press the attack.

The drone forces would come pouring through the suffocating heat of Tunnel C--and from the opposite end of the cave, Praetor reinforcements (to replace those left behind to guard Canis) were already arriving.

"This cave," the voice in their collective minds warned them, "is pivotal to our victory. To lose Leo is to lose our grip on this foul Nest. To win is to gain control over this entire section of the caves: and a foothold with which to wage true war." The smaller servants of the Hive were being sent to Gemini, even now: and if they succeeded, the Hive would have taken a readily-defensible section of four interconnected caves. It would allow Mother's family to swiftly move to defend against any attack, without passing through enemy-held territory.

"Your goal is as it was before--but know that this time, Chaos is coming. Prepare your traps. Kill or turn any who oppose us. And when the Corrupted children of The House of Chaos come... Send them to their precious End."

The glitter of Leo's bay, and its sleepy inhabitants, had no idea what was coming for them.

---

After being granted a short period to rest and recuperate, the army of Order has been tasked with wholly taking over Leo. Mother urges them to remain together in preparation for battle against arriving Chaos forces. They will have one round to prepare any traps and defenses they like, or to spread Order across the land.

Chaos will arrive next round, and battle will commence.

Chaos/Order successful rolls will be added to the overall Order vs Chaos event tally. Other characters of any alignment are welcome to try and stop them. THIS IS A FREE-FOR-ALL BATTLE THREAD. That means that, while there is a posting order, anyone may attack anyone else. A character who is attacked may post additionally to roll for defense against each attack, as well as posting once for their own single action. See the Order vs Chaos Master Thread for scoring and more information!

SCORE TALLY

529

412

tagging those present who took part in THE BATTLE FOR CANIS thread. round one

@Bone @Orthus @Ace @Juggernaut @Alcina @Elysium @Scorn @Siren @Elayne @Ultraviolet

Bone's entrance was not the dramatic, roaring display it had been in Canis.

On the contrary, she was silent, blank-eyed, and oddly absent from the Hive's link.

Her family lived here. Mother knew this. The faint twinges of reluctance now and then were blooming into resistance--and Mother could not afford that now. Could not afford it poisoning the link, affecting the morale or concentration of her other soldiers. Affecting their resolve.

The white dragon, then, was purely Hive: controlled almost completely by Mother, a vessel for her will and not a thinking being of her own. There was almost a purity to it--to the absent surrender, to her pristine alabaster form spreading wings to cast a shadow across the bay, blank and balanced singularity of purpose. Her gaze was empty, her expression empty, her mind empty of all thoughts.

If and when the other dragons showed themselves, Mother would use Bone to try and talk them down or--if that failed--to force them aside. For now, she flew, circling, preparing herself for what might come, her skyborne gaze providing an additional perspective of the land far below to her Hive.

The Queen's pull touched her magic, threading it forth expertly, coiling it along dragon scales with a shimmer of protective power.

The time had come.

Alcina charged onto the sandy beaches, but she too, was quiet. Bringing more attention to their incursion while Chaos inevitably rallied elsewhere was a fool's errand. So instead she hunkered down amongst the white and yellow sands, preparing to ambush those horrible oil-beasts.

I will not fail you, Mother.

Blight pulled himself from the top of the seastack to look down, yawning and shaking himself thoroughly. He was hungry, and well-rested; if he were lucky, maybe he'd be able to snag some fish early on, feed well, and make an easy day of sunning himself.

Living in Leo was just like that: a permanent beachside vacation. Ironic that he was usually nocturnal, then, but it varied, and his stomach didn't care, right now. Dread was resting behind him, and so he crawled to the edge--yawning again--and cast his magic down and around. Let's see how the fish are doing, he thought to himself, casting his magic down. If they were currently feeding, their schools fat and near the surface, he could just try to scoop up a few of those--otherwise, he might need to range a little farther, looking for a cave deer instead.

Fish seemed, to Blight--despite being his main source of food--fickle. Sometimes they were easy and plentiful, even jumping out of the water as if beggint to be eaten. Other times... it was like they'd vanished into the deeps. He thought it was probably to do with the cycles of daylight, weather, pressure, rain--things like that--but he'd not been able to learn to predict it just yet.

Nothing at all came of his cast, and with a grumble he spread his wings and leapt, soaring down toward the glittering water with beats of tattered wings, unaware of the incursion.

A few moments after Blight had gone, Dread lifted his head sullenly. He'd wanted to sleep, more, but the plague dragon's departure had woken him, like it or not, and he wasn't about to get back to sleep any time soon. He set about his usual routine, instead: checking with his familiar (only just returned) that his hoard was safe, then checking over the half-hoard he kept atop the stack, and the unhatched Flint chrysalis taking up a broad swathe of the area. (He slept on this, to 'keep it warm,' like an egg, mostly because he was an idiot who thought chryslises were akin to eggs.)

The black dragon shook himself, fins rattling, and rose up to glance around. He himself was not hungry, not yet, but he did glance over the ledge to watch Blight where he dipped and dove. He could see him fishing, from here, and with a glance around, Dread looked over 'his' domain.

It was Bone he became aware of first--as the distant thud of another dragon's heartbeat, shaped with wings and claws and all those Bone-parts he so well knew. He was puzzled--usually she came to him, greeted him, though her visits to Leo were fewer these days. But now she was soaring almost furtively at the cave's edges.

He considered, and then--being Dread--dismissed this with a mental shrugs. SHE MUST HAVE OTHER THINGS TO DO HERE TODAY, he reasoned, with perfectly accurate logic.

It took him a moment to notice the odd, almost-absent heartbeats of the Drones moving in. He puzzled over these, too, for a moment--the way they beat in synchronicity, the faintest rhythm risen to a drumbeat pitch--but didn't concern himself overmuch. He was curious, and he wing-walked to the edge to look that way, but he had no real sense of danger. It took a great deal to worry the dragon about anything, really, and a few weird heartbeats were probably more of an indicator that his magic had gone awry than anything sinister.

[quote='Cain' pid='99108' dateline='1677209431']

The forces of Order had spread their filth, and now they seemed to be returning to Ursa. Cain followed them from afar, pelt prickling on end as it avoided any traces of white flakes as it went, wings beating silently through the caves as it trailed them.

There were so many creatures of Order, and they all seemed efficient at killing. Approaching them without backup was a death sentence, even for an assassin like the Overseer. Cain wasn't one for swearing, but its mind was filled with expletives as the group of Hive soldiers slowed to a stop.

It was a trap, wasn't it? Shit. Fuck. Ass!

Master Vargas! Cain had tried-- and failed-- to reach out to its Master several times, but the magic didn't know where to take hold. Until it got a visual on its target, the connection was lost. It infuriated the scout, who now flew wide across the Hive's path, doing its utmost to stay far enough away to look more like a lesser than any sort of threat.

There were two options: head down to the water and try to scry Vargas and the rest of the Forge's location-- maybe it could set up a link again through the scrying? I should have been more thorough, it cursed itself. How long had it prepared, and prepared, and prepared just for everything to go to hell in a hand-basket within a day? No. Order's plan isn't perfect. There has to be a weakness. If it had more time-- if it wasn't worried about its backup running straight into the trap-- it could have figured it out. It knew it could. But, no matter.

The second option: head back, try to intercept the Forge, and let them know they were walking into a trap before they got there. Only issue was if they went through a different path, but if they weren't going through Leo, then they would miss the ambush entirely.

It focused its magic on seeking, an effort in two-fold: keeping tabs on potential threads, and finding its side of the War as it came into the battlefield, if it did. Its attention was split, however, and at this distance, the life-signatures of the Hive were little more than a blotch on the radar. Its attention honed on the distant tunnel entrance of Tunnel D.

Hopefully, it could find Vargas and warn him in time. Hand-foresaken-piece-of-shit Order. I'm not going to let you ruin everything.

That little kitten had scurried off before either he or Alcina could've killed him - while it didn't sour Juggernaut's day, it did feed the uncertainty within it. The doubt. The heresy. It should have no room to breed, he hadn't allowed it that - but unfortunately, there was a lot of his head that was just... empty space. Still young, still new, vulnerable and naive. (Not that he had recognised this fact yet.)

Here they would see battle. This cave of white sand and burning light, it was hotter than it was used too. The water flowed freely, in larger amounts than it had ever seen - strange, how the sound of it lapping at the grown faded so easily into the background. Like the fuzz of the network that beckoned him here, the warm drone of Mother's love. He was also embodying that last phrase then, the rays burning off of snow-white skeleton - one could hope the enemy hadn't brought a magnifying glass with them.

Dragons circled overhead, not all of them Her's. He felt a pang of worry for his other sister, a silent "Be careful." was sent her way - before it realised she wasn't here right now. Mother knew already, he was sure, thought it was hard to make out a clear intent from her constant, comforting white noise. She would take care of Bone, he knew.

Creating hazards here was more difficult, this time there were no bones to gather or towers to knock. It saw Alcina disappear into the sands - or try to, at least. He was harder to hide, so he wouldn't attempt it. He settled for what he had done before, striking holes in the damper sand, pits for others to misplace their limbs and trip.

Cadenza uncurled from resting as they had been on the beach. Their jaws opened in a yawn, and their wings stretched out wide. They absentmindedly attempted to cool themself from the warmth that made their motions more lazy and sleepy. And so they did, their magic lowering the air temperature around them by a few degrees.

Idly, they glanced at the sky now that they were more awake, and they perked up at seeing a dragon in the distance. They were fairly certain it was their dad, since they had settled on a shore somewhat near to the sea stack where their dad lived. But, he was not coming in their direction to visit them, it seemed. And- Was that another dark-colored dragon near the sea stack?

The antlered dragon wondered at this, if this was one of their siblings and they felt excitement.

So Cadenza took to the air, intending to greet the fellow dragon. The potential sibling! And so they were full of delight to meet Blight. They were wholly unaware of what was to come.

He still roiled with battle-induced fervor, the battle he had only gotten a TASTE of, because of how horrible LATE he had been. But this one was different. The sands were still, the water clear, the air filled with only the sounds of birdsong and waves. Mother's touch had yet to ravage the corruption that lurked in this place.

Painful infection still lurked within his body, tumors of infection and corruption that occasionally marred his mother-made, perfect design. He was unaware of the deeper affects of this- how the spark of chaotic magic that had catalyzed this plague may also be amplified his eagerness to destroy. But destroy only in mother's name, of course.

He would follow a similar lead to Juggarnaut, although different execution. He would go to the edge of the beach, where the trees grew, and ram into them, attempting to knock down some to use as a barricade. The trees stood fast, however, making frustration bloom inside him. Frustration he was eager to take out on all who opposed Mother.

Siren waits from the water. She can sense something in the air, some others around. If they're able to capture this cave, victory will be ever so closer to them. They must capture the caves to save everyone and get rid of the Chaos. Siren is fully prepared to fight, or even kill, anyone who comes through this area of their hiding place.

Waiting to strike, though, is Siren's specialty.

She has not learned any magic to truly help their group, but if any unsuspecting gembound comes close to them, it can quickly strike and perhaps drown them. But for now, they listen so they can watch, and wait to strike.