Chapter 96. Long-Awaited Arrivals

FUCKING PRELATE. FUCKING TEMPLE! FUUUUUUCKING CATS! This was supposed to be a vacation start! Not the "oops I accidentally fundamental truths". Again. AAAARGH.

Ok. Fine. Whatever. It seems to be fairly well self-managing, at least. But good grief, I so do not need yet another metric fuckton of publicity on top of everything. Because of course priests did not even think about keeping this quiet. Nope, no way. Let's instead tell everyfuckingoneever that "Lady Gillespie did it again! Not sure what that is and why, but she totally did it." My only saving grace is that we DO depart in the evening. The airship is ready, the luggage is ready, all the possible matters have been settled, in spite of my best efforts to pile in even more issues to deal with, arglbargl.

So... last doublecheck. Everyone who needs to be alerted is alerted? Yes. Affairs sorted out and set to take care of themselves? Yes. Outstanding issues to deal with? None. Rooms? Cleaned up and prepared to be covered up for the duration of our absence. So... What else is there to... do?... Oh. Ooh. OOOOOOH fuckbisquits why.

To explain my most recent bout of dismay? My long-play with the assassin heads had borne fruit. And how. This person? That's the fucking Old Man On The Mountain himself. I've had been given descriptions of him, and he matches them to the tee. Golly, that's quite a lot of people around. Some of them interestingly garbed and armed, too. Not quite the Assassin's Creed here, but they do wear this distinct set of clothes inside of their own keep. Presumably, to set the "chosen" apart from the commoners tending to the daily humdrum any fortification tends to invite. So what do we have here... Huh. That's actually pretty neat. Unlike the historic Alamut, this settlement is built inside the caldera of an extinguished volcano, and the keep encircles it, being cut into the crater edges and built atop it. Impressive, and the resulting fortified town could probably last for decades if sieged. There are gardens inside, and volcanic ash grounds are probably pretty fertile, so starving them out is not a problem. Wonder how they handle water, though, volcano should... Ooh. Hot springs. Gods damn it, that's like... the perfect spot for a stronghold.

So... What do I do about it?... Oh. Yeah. No. Not tolerating this. Now, they're... ah. Good. I was wondering if they will bury the heads, but apparently when it's only a few remnants of a body, they just put them on the memorial pillars in the mausoleum of sorts. Huh, that's funny. Lots of unoccupied pillars, but each one has an inscription... Do they put a pillar in as soon as one gets indicted? Morbid.

I leave the heads and mausoleum behind. Nothing worthwhile in there. Note to self - experiment with mass shunting sometimes. How do I do it? And can it be done by someone else? Because it's not the teleportation trick I cribbed from oijans. Might be my own quantum fuckery that I simply didn't look into deep enough... Oh well, time to think about it later. Right now, infestation. Let's go full-on zerg on this place. First... Infiltrate and survey. There is remarkably little magic around here... And what little there is seems to be dedicated to detection. But detection of large beings. My eyespiders are flatly ignored by the magical tripwires, for the lack of a better term. Wonder why. Some kind of aversion to magic? Or just lack of aptitude? Or maybe they see little reason to bother and only put those out of a sense of duty and tradition rather than any actual security consideration? That is, if they even use those. So far all that I have found had been made decades ago at least, and lasted so long mostly due to not having been tripped at all. Hm.

Ok, so... Dudes are pretty distributed. They basically have a perimeter keep and they keep themselves spread all over the thing. Not really enough of them to hold the place in case of all-out siege, but I imagine townfolk join in in that case. As it is, they have the high ground, they have a lot of empty space at an incline that makes even a horseback charge a problem, nevermind bringing up the siege towers and catapults. Basically, the only way to really apply pressure to them is to commit for an all-out assault and hope the element of surprise holds out. Which would be devilishly hard to pull off, given the clear space around the thing. Siege engines are a no-go, hashishins will kill the crews with arrows and magic before they manage to set anything up. Trebuchet could probably apply the pressure from outside the easily shootable range, but it would be quite a feat to actually find a place around that could support that kind of machinery AND have some sort of view to the keep. Cannons would wreck their shit, of course, but that's still in the future.

So, in conclusion. The only feasible way to attack this place without relying on improbably lucky circumstances? Infiltration or betrayal. Or being an eldritch abomination that considers mortal constraints to be more of a masquerade guideline than anything else. Hm. So... set up "hatchery" here, here and here, let them think they have a fighting chance, I don't want mass suicides out of desperation, that would be just depressing to cause. Now, let's start simple... I'm going to take that assorted gravel and garbage and make basic golems out of them. Little ones. Nothing more than essentially wandering magical landmines. Once they're sufficiently spooked to search the castle, they're gonna run into more biological issues. Creep... Which is just a bunch of moss and plants smushed into a sort of communal plant that's reddish-violet in color... And ooh, that's nice. It actually gives a decent massage. Well, to ME. To the folks here it would cause extensive blistering due to highly acidic secretions covering it. Plants - mother nature's chemical processing facilities. Once they get over that, the actual monsters are gonna start. In the end, I went with an unholy hodgepodge of zerg, xenomorphs, necromorphs and other assorted "biomenace" imagery. Nothing slow-acting, though, I don't have the patience to cocoon those guys or whatever. Some infectors, though. Because having their dead pals "reanimate" and come after them is gonna net me some hilarious expressions, I just know it.

Hm. OK, so... do I go for decapitating strike as the opening, or do I leave the Old Man for the last entree?... OOh, what's that? That's some interesting papers you have there, grandpa... And interesting portraits of my wives... and I do not like where this is going at all, so you're going to... Hrm. Actually, that worries me. Worries me enough that my actual opening gambit is to wait till the scribe steps out to the restroom, drop a lot of mass on him and tentacle-probe his brains out. Hrm. Less info than I wanted. I suppose it would be too much to hope to just learn oijan like this. Still, the impression of his memories is pretty clear. Since attempts on me and on my parents failed miserably, hashishins had the bright idea to target my wives. The people with the orders are to depart in the evening, actually, the whole decision was prompted by the head show. No matter, none of them... is going to leave. In fact, I think I just scarfed the last of the people who got the order. Some of them very publicly, with raptor-like shapes that I shamelessly ripped off zerglings.

The ongoing entertainment is... entertaining. After verifying that arrows do preciously little against my raptor and that it responds by biting off roughly half of the annoying shooter had made the present forces retreat backward, shouting down the corridors as they go. Apparently, some kind of pre-arranged signal to group up and defend. Aaand, they run straight into my golem mines. About a quarter of them dies as they set off several at once and a moment after, when spooked people jump on a few more of them and set them off as well. I take advantage of resulting chaos to send a couple of raptor-shapes charging through the crowd, bowling them over and grabbing some of the guys I tentatively pegged as important by the necks and dragging them along.

For the next few hours, I toy with them, letting them slowly consolidate and group up while constantly harassing groups with mines and hit-and-run abductions (which I kill shortly after, as most of them visibly shatter their marbles on a first good look) and gradually pare them down. Those who set off towards the exits of any sort are targeted and eaten with extreme prejudice to discourage the gang from trying to run. So... Here we go. The majority of surviving hashishins are barricading themselves in this tower... And I'm corralling the rest of them towards it. The brouhaha caught some attention from the village. This is intentional, I'm going to make it sound and look suspicious enough for everyone involved with the keep to come looking... but not quite at the point where villagers decide it's time to make a break for it. I want to separate the martial populace from civilians.

Hashishins seem to think that getting higher up is safer. Hm. So instead of clustering to one tower, they are gravitating towards the nearest one. Let's... change that up a little. Maybe? Rapidly filling several of the less populated towers with assorted "biomass" while messily killing people within seems to be clue enough for them that safety is only in the numbers and the lesser populated towers get abandoned in favor of more populated ones. I've put up a bastardized version of hydralisks out on the overviews, to discourage any attempts to just climb down the wall. So they move from tower to tower in quick dashes now. Good, good.

This is actually pretty therapeutic, come to think of it... Aaand somewhat disturbing when I think about it. I really should not be destressing by subjecting a number of militant people to gorehorror. Oh well. Let's see, what's next... Ah, acid butterflies. OOh, that was a nice effect. Ok, so... that's the last tower of the hashishins. The rest of the towers are abandoned, and I've slaughtered everyone who wasn't driven into this one... Now... Oh, yes, now the village is sending in a party... Hm. The tower was able to put out some kind of signal. Oh, they set fire to a flag. Very evocative, that. So I let the "rescue party" come up within easy reach of the tower, subtly harrying them with disturbing sounds and flicks of motion, but not giving them any indication on what is going on. Ah, the tower decides to sally... Jolly good timing.

I crush the rescue party. Literally. A couple of towers next to the one in question shudder and shed the stone shell, the flesh within heaving globes of acidic mucus on top of the doomed party. Which is crushed and melted in short order, prompting a lot of despair in the tower with survivors. I let the "towers" collapse on themselves, no reason to let villagers see more than distant glimpses of some kind of calamity. They appear to be lacking any sort of martial presence by now, I guess everyone who was used to fighting went with the rescue party. Now... the tower.

It appears that people are really losing their marbles there. Oh. Well, that's just peachy, because the Old Man was just beheaded by his own disciples and head tossed down to me, apparently in hopes that I will grant mercy for this act of betrayal. Actually... why not? In the next moment, every single clump of mass I have secreted through the tower conjures a needle. Frangible design, it would on the environs density change split into sectors and fan out. The survivors so far are.. well. Shredded would be the best way to describe it. I am quite confident none of them had lived long enough to process the signals enough to understand they're dead. And that is a wrap. Pulling the mass back is an effort, but trivial in comparison. I do leave plenty of me secreted throughout the keep, dormant, just in case someone gets the bright idea to restart. The remains (whatever I didn't eat, at least) are all piled into a messy pile in front of the gates, with Old Man's head on top. All the documents I could find went into the fireplace along with a generous helping of fire magic.

Hashishins... exterminated. I wonder if I should make another public push... Nah. Too early. Salaadin needs to verify his "trump" turned out to be a low card. I wonder if that would be enough to make him willing to negotiate, or I would need to deprive Sultanate of something else later to get him to swallow the pride. Time will tell, I suppose.

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Back in Parsee, things are processing apace. Lily-Anne returns from her visit to her folks (she went to see Abe and Monica before going on a vacation with me, which is eminently understandable and I would have suggested it if she didn't do it first), we all pile onto the ship and depart the Academy amidst much fanfare from students and professors alike. I wonder if they're glad to send me off to vacation or just glad to see me going?

"Well then..." - I suggest as I lock the course and turn around to face my girls - "Vacation ahoy."