Consolidation (T.H.E) Let The Streets Run Red: Defence Upgrade of Verminsreach

[TheThird]

There was a night long ago in a land far away, it started as many others did, with the last gloaming shimmers of light kissing the horizon goodnight. But for the people of Konstantis, a horror awaited in the shadows below, as the calm eventide had settled over the city the last rays of light were dwindling in the streets and the silence grew. Clouds had gathered above the metropolis, covering the moon and its accompanying illumination only the fires lit by its people now brightened the long streets and narrow alleys.

The night was dark and full of terrors.

A plague had struck the province a few moons ago, its fear was still lingering upon the fair people, few were walking the streets and fewer would sit in a tavern. Nights were spent at home praying for better times or in bed, stricken with the pox or some other deadly scourge. Plague doctors adept in the arts of life and death from all over Terra had been summoned to their aid and all was being done. Yet with every soul saved it seemed two more would be infected anew.

Those nights were dark and full of terrors.

Konstantis was proud, the city had stood for centuries, lived through the reins of many an Emperor, its history was vast and its libraries overflowing with knowledge. Its walls had never seen the day an invader crossed its threshold and so its guards over the years fattened up with wine and feasts. They filled their pockets with bribes from shopkeepers and kept their swords sheathed so long that dust had grown. Only a few, true sons and daughters of Konstantis held their oath, trained day and night for a day to come in which their home was threatened, even if that idea seemed distant to them. Little did they know that below their city brooded hundreds upon thousands of vermin bred for this night and this night only. An army to take the great city of Konstantis, to tear down its famous walls, its banners, its status. Only to rebuild it so horridly, so disgustingly that even the gods would not dare set their eyes upon it.

This night is dark, and full of terrors.

@Dreadheart

 

[TheThird]

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Sabba was one of the many who sought to fight for the great city of Konstantis. He had grown up in the East with his family, his little sister Lilia his mother Sheval and his stern father Achmed. They were simple traders travelling from one city to the next seeking not to drown in the ocean of poverty, but for Sabba this was not enough, he sought more than this simple life, he wanted it all, and he wanted to live without fearing to starve, to not rely on others gratitude to survive.

As fate wished him well, one day his family decided to travel west, passing through the metropolis of Konstantis, it was awe-inducing, the building reached as high as mountains, and he had seen more people in this one market than he had in his entire life. Sabba instantaneously fell in love with this beauty of creation, He begged his father to stay and settle here, he lay on his knees eyes full of hope trying to convince Achmed of all the good this new home could bring them. But the words fell against an immovable wall, and nothing he could say or do would make his father change his way of life.

The dawn of light came and his family moved on, yet Sabba stayed, thrust from his family and alone in this new world. They left him no choice, his sister had cried his mother had pleaded but, just like with his father those cries fell unnoticed.

Work was easy to find at the docs everyone needed extra hands to carry their goods. Sabba worked day and night tirelessly, taking whatever labour they threw his way until soon he bought his own tiny apartment, it was in the slums of Konstantis, the sewer street they called it, but nonetheless, it was his own, his property. Next time his parents would come through Konstantis he would show them how much he had grown and all he had learned, they surely would have been proud.

But fate can take as fast as it can give, so when Sabba one night, that one fateful night, sat drunk in the alley after hours of festivities he heard something speaking from the shadows. He was startled at first, but his inquiring nature gave in, so he moved slowly towards the noise. It grew louder and more distinct, he was sure now that someone was talking. Their voices were scratchy, and their words seemed off-putting but silly Sabba moved closer, he had to see who this stranger in the shadows was.

The young man turned a corner catching a glimpse of two creatures he had never seen before, they were hunched over, smaller than him with long rat tails, the darkness covered most of their bodies but he could see their maws, filled with crooked violent teeth, Sabba new he was in the wrong place and stumbled back, but the poor young man was just too loud.

And as one last time looked upon his shimmering city of Konstantis the darkness caught up.

Sabba's story was not the only one that fell short on this dark night, for it was the beginning of an invasion, an invasion that none would see until it was too late. Konstantis would fall and Neuhaven would rise.

 

[Euthanor Nachimar]

@TheThird​

The viles turned white of the steam emitted from the brown-green liquid's boiling over the small candle. The wire stand allowed the vile enough space from the thin yellow tongue so as the glass remained solid, yet the vile's bottom was darkening from overuse. Several elixirs, samples and viles empty or filled alike populated the wooden workbench, while a piece of flesh was half-stripped of the tan skin, filled with bulges and blisters full of foul ooze.

Carefully, the Plague Doctor guided the sharp blade to remove the skin, only for the swollen greenish veins to be revelled beneath. The black cloth of the doctor's uninteresting outfit disturbed by the white apron, too stainned by oozes and coalgulated blood and acid. He carefully cut small square pieces around each of the blisters, picking them with forceps and placing them inside glass viles, with a wool parchment glued on their exterior, marked as "Specimen 57".

The laboratory was a narrow place inside a wooden structure, filled with shelved furnature in which numerous viles, bags, surgical tools and large cauldrons were stowed in a chaotic, yet coherent manner. The two windows that could illuminate the laboratory were covered with thick fabric, not allowing the sunlight to foul the samples kept and processed.

It had been weeks since the House Ravka embassy had arrived in Konstantis in pursue of the plague that had ravaged the city. Just like many other physicians and Plague Doctors, the Ravka sough to study the plague in hopes of producing a cure. This, however, was not the only reason of their arrival in the city. It was their task to bring samples of the plague back to Fuernburg, upon their return in the Iron Cult's domains, where the plague could be studied further and, perhaps, preserved in the Spires of the Iron citadel.

 

[TheThird]

In the dark, fetid sewers beneath the human city of Konstantis, two Eshkin slaves crouched low, their scrawny bodies pressed against the slimy stone walls. The dim light of a fungus lamp flickered in the foul air, casting long shadows over their matted fur. Above them, the city bustled with ignorant humans going about their lives, blissfully unaware of the storm about to descend upon them.

“You heard it, right? The big attack. It’s close,” hissed one of the rats, his ears twitching nervously as he sniffed the stagnant air.

“Y-yes, yes, the attack!” the second slave replied, excitement and fear lacing his voice. “The masters have been plan-planning this for week-weeks. The warlords are ready yes-yes. They’ll strike the harbour first, let the fleet in. Big, big ships full of Eshkin! They’ll swarm like a plague. The humans won’t know what hit them, yes-yes.”

The first rat scratched at his mangy fur, his eyes darting nervously. “And what about the rest of the city? What happens when the fleet-fleet hits the docks?”

The second Skaven leaned in closer, his sharp teeth glinting in the faint light. “Smaller forces, yes, will go through the streets. Rampage, cause chaos yes-yes. Smash and burn, yes-yes! Distract the defenders, keep them away from the harbor while the main army does the real work. The humans will be too busy chasing shadows to realize what’s happening until it’s too late.”

“Too late for them!” the first rat cackled, but then his tone darkened. “But there’s more… I’ve heard something else. Something secret.”

“Secret? What? Tell-tell!” the second rat’s eyes gleamed with curiosity.

The first Skaven leaned in even closer, whispering in a conspiratorial tone. “They’re making something new-new. A big kill-kill. Bigger than anything we’ve seen before. The Engineers have been working on it day-day and night-night, just for this attack on Konstantis yes-yes. Fire and poison mixed together. It burns, melts flesh, and poisons the air. The flesh bags won’t stand a chance.”

“F-fire and poison? Together?” The second rat's tail swished with excitement, eyes widening. “The city will burn, yes-yes. The defenders will scream-squeal as they melt, their bones turning to ash!” Both rats snickered, imagining the destruction soon to come. The city above, so peaceful and unaware, was doomed.

@Euthanor Nachimar

 

[Euthanor Nachimar]

The streets had become desolate in this district. Wherever the gaze turned, there were emptied market stools, scrolled tents and weeping cloaked figures, as the Plague Doctors carried the dead to the Black Maria; The wooden cart repurposed as a corpse carrier, roaming the streets pulled by oxen, accompanied by several grim figures with the beaked masks. They were not parts of House Ravka. They were recruited and volunteer people, denizens of the city.

On occasion, the weeping widows and children and elderly cried out, trying hopelessly to stop the Plague Doctors from dragging their relatives to the dreaded Black Maria, as they were still twitching and casting occasional ooze-drown breath. To Euthanor, they were already dead. It would all be a large pile of dead, outside the city, where they were burned on pyres blazing brighter than the moonlight awashing the night skies, forming a city on their own, inbetween the ever-rising hills of ashes.

"It cannot go on" the governor had once said, when House Ravka first arrived in the city. "We are being extinct. Loosing a war without a foe"

How blind were these Men. If thinking the plague, the vermin and the blight were no foes in and of themselves, with their own will and taint and plans of conquest. None of this mattered. For Plague Doctors such as Euthanor, veteran of a dozen epidemics in the underdistricts of Fuernburg and Odenn's large settlements and the hovels of the shanty ports along the river, such a plague far exceedded expectation. In defiance of divinity, the Ravka were determined to discover the malevolent source of such a miasma. It would not be the first, nor the last, to be put in a bottle for further testing and mutation. The Iron Cult had a long history of defiance, on that aspect. Although they understood plagues like the next, to them, epidemics were always driven by a malicious will manifesting on the world. To find what that was, would be to open the door in discovery and manipulation.

The lantern's light flickered, as the curfew was enforced by the city watch. Beaked, black figures with torches and lanterns at hand were the only sight one could see, in the streets, continuing their relentless hunt for the infected. Knockings on doors and people being dragged across became less and less frequent, as the night fell, yet never ceased.

There could be no truce with such a villain.

As Euthanor paced down the corridor, his hearing was capured by the noise produced by one of the Plague Doctors. He rushly removed his beaked mask, bending over to the gutter, as the greenish ooze fountained out his mouth. Euthanor approached, stopping the pace of another of the Black Maria's company with the wooden rod held at hand.

"But, sir-" the man complained. Euthanor shook his head in silence. They all knew what such meant. A tinny tear of the thick wrapped fabrics; A moment of exposure to the vomit of the plagued denizens; A mere sneeze; There were many the dangers faced by the Plague Doctors, and regardless the efforts, there were always cases of infection.

The man knelt over the gutter, spitting out any remnant of the ooze from his mouth. Panic started brewing within him, as the corner of his eye traced Euthanor's figure standing coldly above him. The lantern illuminating the evidence of his infection.

"I don't want to die, sir. Not like this..."

"You will not." Euthanor replied. The others of the company gently picked the man up and walked him towards the cart.

"Let him choose between a dagger and the blade." Euthanor instructed, before the company made way to the pyres outside the settlement.

The man's service to the Plague Doctors was a priviledge, to the eyes of the Iron Cult. His infection was seen not as a mistake, but as a casualty. The malicious villain that gave strength to such disease had laid a blow against the efforts of the Ravka. But the man victim, unlike the rest infected, deserved to die a warrior. Be it by taking his own life, should he chose, or be decapitated by one of his comrades, before his body was processed, sampled and eventually burned...

Euthanor's eyes returned to the miasma of the man against the gutter. It was thick, yet liquid, making its way towards the sewers, the place all foul things of the Men above traced their blightful journey to....

"Wait...."

Euthanor tilted his head to the side.

"The place all foul things end up to.... Where all evil is strongest...!" he reasoned.

"Could it be...?"

A sudden snap of light blazed behind the Plague Doctor's visor. He placed the lantern not too far from the cesspool, studying the way the iron rods were planted horizontally against the tiled street. A dump.... or...

A Window.

 

[TheThird]

The Eshkin swarm was a living tide beneath the city, a writhing mass of fur, claws, and teeth in the labyrinthine sewers of Konstantis. The damp, filth-choked tunnels echoed with the soft scritch-scratch of countless paws on stone and the low, chittering whispers of excited rats. The air was thick with the rank stench of decay, the musky tang of fur, and the acrid fumes wafting from strange, bubbling concoctions the Engineers had prepared in their hidden chambers.

Deeper into the warren, where the tunnels widened into a sprawling cistern, a council of war was forming. Here, beneath the city’s oblivious streets, the warlords of the Eshkin gathered. Their hulking forms towered over the common vermin, their patchwork armor cobbled from scavenged steel, cracked bone, and scraps of boiled leather. Their weapons gleamed in the faint light of fungal lanterns curved blades, crude but wickedly sharp, and jagged spears dripping with virulent poisons.

The warlord Skrytch, a gnarled brute with fur as black as pitch and a voice like rusted iron, stood at the center of the gathering. He held a crooked staff crowned with the skull of a human child, its empty sockets filled with pulsing green doomstone. The council hushed as he raised a clawed hand, his red eyes burning with feverish intensity.

“Brothers! The time comes near, yes-yes!” Skrytch’s voice echoed off the slimy walls, stirring a chorus of eager squeaks and snarls. “The flesh-bags above know nothing-nothing! Blind to the doom that crawls beneath their feet!”

A murmur of agreement rippled through the gathered horde, tails flicking in anticipation. One of the Engineers stepped forward, his hunched form swathed in a tangle of soiled robes. Strange tools hung from his belt, and his hands were stained with chemical burns.

“G-great Warlord,” he began, his voice trembling with both fear and pride, “the device is almost ready, yes-yes. The burning-poison, the great-melting weapon! The humans will choke-die in their homes, yes-yes, and their defenses will crumble-crash!”

“Good-good,” Skrytch rasped, a cruel grin spreading across his scarred muzzle. “Show me.”

The Engineer gestured frantically to his attendants, who dragged a cumbersome cart into the circle. Atop it sat a massive metal drum, riddled with pipes and vents that hissed ominously. The thing quivered with barely-contained energy, the noxious green fumes seeping from its seams curling in the damp air like living things.

“With this,” the Engineer proclaimed, “we bring death, yes-yes! The wind itself will carry our fiery plague-plague, sowing fear-panic and death-death! The flesh-bags will fall-burn, and Konstantis will belong to us-us!”

The council erupted in savage cheers, the noise reverberating through the tunnels like thunder. Skrytch raised his staff once more, silencing them with a single gesture.

“The docks will burn first, yes-yes,” he declared, his voice cold and precise. “Then the poison-wind will spread through the streets. Our forces will strike-strike from below, smashing their weak walls, flooding their homes with death-death. When the time is right, the fleet will come-come, and Konstantis will drown in a sea of fur and claw!”

The Eshkin warlords pounded their weapons against the stone, a deafening rhythm that made the lesser rats cower. Skrytch turned to his second-in-command, a wiry, vicious rat named Rykitt, whose eyes gleamed with cunning.

“See to it that all war-bands are ready, yes-yes. The time to strike-strike is close.”

Rykitt nodded, baring his yellowed teeth. “They will be, mighty Warlord. The flesh-bags will not know what hit them!”

As the council dispersed, the tunnels came alive with frantic activity. Swarms of Eshkin darted through the sewers, carrying weapons, explosives, and stolen provisions. Engineers tinkered with their devices, their cruel inventions hissing and sparking as they prepared for war. Scouts scurried up through hidden grates, their beady eyes peering into the oblivious city above. Every rat, from the smallest slave to the mightiest warlord, knew their part in the grand plan.

Far above, the humans continued their desperate fight against the plague, their city already weakened by sickness and despair. They had no idea that their true enemy was not the disease, but the monstrous intelligence directing it, a tide of malice waiting to be unleashed.

Deep in the shadows, the Eshkin waited. Their time was coming. Soon.

@Euthanor Nachimar

 

[Dagon Erh]

The night sky hung heavy with storm clouds, the moon a ghostly smear in the roiling darkness above. At the helm of The Reaper, Captain Drahar loomed like a grotesque figurehead come to life, Drahar's shell-crusted frame swaying in rhythm with the ship’s lurching keel. The sea had turned bitter and cruel, waves clawing at the fleet with frothing talons. A lesser captain might curse the gods or spit a prayer to the heavens, but Drahar had no use for gods. Not while something far darker whispered through his mind.

A raspy chuckle bubbled from their throat, wet and gurgling. “Hold fast, lads,” Drahar barked, their voice a sandpaper rasp seasoned by brine and smoke. Their words carried the weight of command, their tone tinged with sardonic amusement. “This old wench of a sea ain’t had her fill of us just yet. If she spits y’out, that’s a kindness; if she drags y’under, well, welcome to the family!”

The crab-human’s massive claw twisted the wheel, the cracked and barnacled appendage glinting faintly in the lantern light. Their eyestalks swiveled, watching the chaotic swarm of Eshkin vessels struggling to keep pace behind The Brine Reaper. The rats were hardy enough, he supposed, in their own scrappy way vermin with just enough cleverness to take orders and just enough ferocity to be useful.

One of the rat warleader's an oily-haired wretch with a nose like a broken hook—clambered up the side of Drahar’s ship. He skittered across the deck, their claws clicking against the salt-streaked wood. The rat hesitated, tail lashing nervously as he approached the towering captain.

“C-captain Drahar,” the creature stammered, its voice like a wheeze through a reed. “The fleet, they’re erm they’re lagging, yes-yes! Can’t keep up in this devil’s current! We’ll lose-lost ships if we don’t slow!”

Drahar turned their eyestalks toward the rat with deliberate slowness, their grotesque mouth twisting into something that might have been a grin or perhaps just a grimace. They let the silence stretch uncomfortably before responding.

“Slow, you say? Slow’s the way t’the bottom, mate.” Their voice dripped with mockery, The Crabfeeders words slicing like rusted knives. “If yer boats can’t take a bit o’ wind an’ water, what’ll they do when the fire an’ steel come out t’greet us, eh? Tell your lot to lash the sticks tighter an’ grow some spines—or gills, if that’s easier. The sea don’t wait for cowards.”

The rat-warleader visibly quailed, but Drahar wasn’t finished. Their voice dropped to a low growl, the humor draining from it like blood from a wound. “An’ if I hear you squeakin’ ‘bout slowing again, I’ll lash your tail to the keel an’ let you learn a thing or two ‘bout keeping up.”

The rat scrambled back with a string of frantic apologies, vanishing over the railing as Drahar returned their attention to the horizon. Claws tightened on the wheel, their jagged edges gouging furrows into the ancient wood. Far ahead, the faint outline of Konstantis emerged, shrouded in the night’s haze a city of spires and walls, its heart already blackened by plague.

Drahar exhaled sharply, their voice carrying low over the deck. “Look at her,” he muttered, half to himself, half to the whispering voice that gnawed at the thoughts. “All proud an’ clueless, sittin’ there like a fish on a hook. She don’t know she’s already gutted, eh? Just a matter o’ time before we spill her insides out on the tide.”

Deep beneath the crabfeeder's shell-plated skull, Dagon Erh stirred a shadowy presence that crawled through their minds like a parasite. The whisper came, soft as the undertow and twice as deadly.

“We will crush them. Spill their blood. Let them drown in despair.”

Drahar smirked, a cruel, bitter thing that twisted their face. “Aye, aye. They’ll drown plenty. We’ll send ‘em screamin’ to the deeps. The Eshkin swarm’ll take the streets, an’ we’ll take what’s left. No gods, no kings, no mercy.”

Behind him, The Reaper surged forward, dragging the fleet in its wake like a drowning man clutching at driftwood. The ship was alive with the groans of timbers and the creaks of rigging, a song of impending doom. The sea hissed and spat, but Drahar didn’t care. The Crabfeeder feared no storm, no wave, no wrath of man or nature.

The only thing he feared was the voice that guided him, the ancient thing that controlled every move. And even then, fear was a luxury he had long since drowned.

@Euthanor Nachimar