Eternal
The transports are going to have enough protection with the escorts. Besides you’d rather be on the biggest, most well armed thing in the sky.
Zana seems a little surprised to see you aboard the Storm III when you’re about to lift off, but says that it’ll be an honor to be so close to you on this mission. She then says she’s going to be walking around the Storm III making sure everything is running smoothly. You see this as reasonable so you think nothing more of it and tell her to carry on.
After about a half hour you finally get used to the idea of being so high in the air and less paranoid. You didn’t think it possible for you to be, but somewhere in the back of your mind, you had the concern of this thing falling out of the sky which is probably why you haven’t stayed in one place on the ship for very long and have felt the need to pace about it.
You also have been bumping into Zana every so often. Not on purpose, but you seem to just be appearing in the same places she happens to be. This wouldn’t be a problem, but each time you do, Zana seems increasingly agitated whenever she sees you and it’s obvious that she attempts to leave the area as soon as possible.
The next time you see her she’s coming out of a door on the top deck of the ship wearing a heavy jacket with some sort of backpack on her back. Once again you completely surprise her.
“Hey Zana, once again we meet again.” you say.
“Heh! Um yeah, my Emperor. Still following me I see.” Zana replies.
“Not on purpose, but should I be following you?”
“No. I mean, there’s no reason to of course, it’s just what I’ve been doing is so boring and not very interesting.”
“Probably, but there isn’t much to do on here anyway…so what’s that on your back?”
“Oh this? Uh, just a back pack full of stuff…”
“Zana, why the hell are you so nervous? Every time we’ve bumped into each other you’ve run off like your ass is on fire.”
“Have I? My apologies then my Emperor. I suppose your presence is just a little unnerving at times. We all want to do our best in front of you, you know.”
You give a sideways glance at Zana. You’ve NEVER known Zana to ever be nervous around you. In fact she’s always been very casual to the point that most rulers would probably find it disrespectful.
“Okay…I understand…so what’s in the backpack?”
“Um…as I said nothing of important my Emperor, just tools…”
“Okay so let me see inside.”
And it’s at this point Zana goes silent for a moment and her nervous facial expression turns into one of complete desperation before she turns around to run from you.
“STOP ZANA! STOP HER!” you shout and go after her.
You have no idea where she thinks she can run to until you see her attempting to climb the railing of the Storm III in an attempt to jump off it. Fortunately you and another crew member grab her before she’s able to. She then tries to fumble with something inside her jacket, but you wrestle it away from her. It’s some sort of black rectangular device with a button on it.
“What the hell is this Zana?” you say while your crewmembers keep her from getting up.
“Why don’t you press it and find out TYRANT!” Zana shouts and now her expression has changed again, but to one of complete hatred.
You’ve never been the most technologically inclined, but if you had to guess, Zana has planted a bomb aboard this ship and this thing is going to detonate it. You immediately tell crewmembers in your vicinity to spread the word and to look for it while you hang on to the detonation device for safekeeping.
You then tell your crew to take off Zana’s backpack. It’s odd as it really isn’t a bkacpack at all so much as it’s a large sheet of canvas with reinforced rope attached. You’ve never seen anything like it before, but you again if you had to guess, it was supposed to decrease the speed of Zana’s fall.
“Interesting invention. I’m guessing one of your own design? I’m just wondering though we’re quite far from any land mass. Even had this invention worked, were you really planning on swimming all the way back to Evigrus?” you say.
“I calculated the distance, maybe I would’ve made it, maybe not, but either way it would’ve been better than allowing your continued existence! Murderer! Tyrant!”
“So who put you up to this? Semra?”
“Nobody put me up to this tyrant! I have my OWN reasons as I’m sure countless people would have for wanting you dead! The only difference is that I had the guts to actually try to kill you. YOU MURDERED MY FAMILY! YOU STOLE MY LIFE!” Zana screams with her mouth spitting saliva in anger.
“Zana you’ve lost me. You claim I murdered your family, but from what I know I wasn’t even in the vicinity of the destroyed village of where Klemto found you.”
“I didn’t grow up in a village! I was going to be a princess! I would’ve ruled a kingdom one day! YOU and YOUR I EMPIRE destroyed all that before I even had a chance to enjoy a taste of such a life! Klemto didn’t just save a random Felkan baby, he saved a HEIR TO THE FELKAN FUCKING KINGDOM!” Zana shouts.
It was a very long time ago. Almost a different life even, but you vaguely remember seeing a crib in the Felkan royal palace, yet no baby or even signs of a dead one. You never thought too much of it at the time, but apparently even though Zana was just an infant, Klemto must’ve told her about her real heritage. He probably lied to you thinking that you would’ve had her killed.
“Because of YOU, I’ve had to live a miserable existence working on machinery surrounded by fucking GNOMES! You know what that’s like? Being the only human in community of damn gnomes? It SUCKS! Then when some humans do fucking arrive, they’re from the same nation that destroyed my birthright! It almost sickened me to even sleep with that crazy fool Elam!”
How long must she have been waiting for the right time to strike? Was it always this way or did it slowly gnaw at her? A life that was stolen from her. Did Klemto or the gnomes put her up to this? Was this their plan in some weird way?
“Okay, since you’re in a talkative mood, did Klemto or any gnome put you up to this?” you ask.
“What? So you’ll have an excuse to round them all up and destroy their souls again? I heard about what you did to them. And maybe I might find them to be timid, tiresome unattractive little know it alls, I find it deplorable what the Empire did to them. I can’t believe they allowed themselves to be dominated by a nation that systematically exterminated them from not just this life, but the next as well!”
“So did they help or not?” you ask again.
“No! No they did not! My father would’ve probably had me jailed if he knew what I was planning. Those cowards wouldn’t dare stand against the Empire, but I fucking would! And did! Not that this will save them. After you’re done killing me, you’ll probably have them all killed as well for any excuse will serve a tyrant!”
“It’s amusing that you keep calling me that. What did you think your parents were? They were a KING and QUEEN. You think they ruled by popular decision? Do you think YOU would have if you became queen? My actions that day weren’t even personal. I was just following orders like a soldier. Your actions however today are misguided and fatal. Such a waste. Even had I known your origins, I would not have had you killed if you had remained true to serving the Empire. You probably would’ve even replaced Elam as top engineer when such a time came. Your quest for vengeance was as pointless as your entire life.”
Zana says nothing else, she just continues to look at you with hatred in her eyes. At this point a few of your crew has come back saying that they found a bomb near the spare gunpowder barrels and another one near some vital machinery. They were disarmed and disposed of by dropping them over the side of the Storm.
“Well, I guess there’s only one more thing to dispose of.” You say and then nod to your crew still restraining Zana.
To her credit she doesn’t beg for her life and continues to curse you even as she’s falling over the side of the Storm to her death. Considering some of crew from the other nearby ships may be wondering what’s going on if they’ve seen someone being thrown overboard, you make an announcement that you want the crew to signal the other ships to let them know everything is fine and that the mission is going to continue as expected.
As for the mission, that goes off relatively quietly without much trouble. The portal is hooked and lifted up without any problems. There doesn’t even to be any weight concerns, though given that you had two transport ships just in case it isn’t too surprising.
There aren’t any svelk attacks either. When you bring Galen, Cassandra and the remaining Eyes aboard the Storm via rope ladder, Cassandra says if you’d arrived a few days before it might’ve been a different matter since they suffered a very large attack accompanied by mages. In fact Cassandra mentions that they were encountering a lot more mage types among the ranks of the svelk. She goes on to say that Semra’s group has disappeared completely meaning they stopped working on the portal and abandoned all their mining operations.
“Knowing Semra she’s probably changed her plans slightly again.” You say.
“Did you want us to stay then? I mean we might need some reinforcements, but I think the remainder of us can survive on our own a little longer out here.” Cassandra asks.
“No. You’re all needed back home. Dokkrus will be invaded properly at some point in the future, but for now I’ve got more important things on my mind and I need all the security that I can get on the homefront right now. If the svelk suddenly start teleporting an invasion force then so be it. We’ll be prepared, I’m going to start calling the third gen Eternals back from Nyttrus anyway. Besides, we’ve got one of these portals now and if we get it working like how I want to get it working, then we’ll be fine.” You say and then turn to Galen.
“I want to talk to you about your findings, I assume you studied this one and several others while on your vacation.”
“Vacation? Dokkrus was the worst assignment that…” Galen starts to say until you glare at him.
“Uh, nevermind my Emperor. Yes, I’ll speak with you about what I found. Of course.”
With your mission accomplished and all your people aboard, you return to Evigrus where the airships land in the fields near New Dessel. The portal itself is moved into the mountain city.
From there you bump into Elam AND Klemto together. Good, this will save you time.
“Where is my daughter?” Klemto asks.
“Yeah, where is Zana my Emperor?” Elam says.
You snort and shake your head at this question.
“Well there’s no easy way to tell either of you this, so here it is. Zana was a traitor that tried to kill me while she was aboard the Storm. So I had her thrown overboard where I assume she died.”
Klemto and Elam’s jaws just about drop.
“WHAT?!” the pair of them exclaim.
“You heard me. She’s dead and that’s it.”
Klemto’s face displays the first signs of tears, but also of anger. He’s about to speak, but you stop him before he can do so.
“Klemto. I’d advise you to think VERY carefully the next words you say to me, because there are only a few reasons why I’m not going to have New Dessel purged of every gnome in here. Number one, I still believe I’ll need the help of gnomish engineers for this next project and two Zana made it very clear that her plans were all her own and not the result of some gnomish conspiracy. Given how passionate her hatred of me was, I have no reason to disbelieve her.”
Klemto says nothing.
“That being said, I’m ALSO going to forget the fact that YOU lied to me and that she was the daughter of the ex-Felkan royalty. I understand the lie, but this might’ve been avoided had you not lied to me in the first place…or failing that you needed to lie to her about her true heritage. Either way, I’ll let the knowledge of your OWN poor judgment be your punishment.”
Klemto continues to say nothing, the man is overcome with grief and can’t even be in your prescence, he just leaves holding his head in hands. Elam is still a bit in shock.
“Was…was there no other way?” he asks.
“Are you kidding me Elam? (Sigh) No. There was no other way. If it’s any consolation, she never loved or had any real affection for you. She even called you a fool that she only slept with due to the lack of other available humans that didn’t completely disgust her. Well that and I imagine she probably saw a possible opportunity to get closer to assassinate me by being closer to you.”
Elam just listens on in silence.
“And you, like Klemto, should count yourself lucky that I need you to work on this project because this incident wasn’t the first time you mistakenly placed your trust in an assassin. Or have we forgotten the OTHER bomb attempt on the first Storm that Warrick managed to stop?”
“Um, no your Emperor. Apologies. I…have no excuses and thank you for your mercy.”
“Hrm. Get that portal working and it will be a start.”
Elam leaves your presence and you’re left to rethink the “independence” policies on New Dessel. That time has now passed.
A few hours later during a discussion with Elam and Galen about how to get the portal working again, an emergency goes up throughout New Dessel. At first you think its some sort of sudden gnome uprising that Klemto has stirred up, but the event is much less urgent though perhaps a little tragic.
Klemto apparently went home, drank a lot of ale and then calmly shot himself in the head. He wasn’t always well liked by his people due to his decisions, but enough of them thought highly enough of him to immediately go into mourning due to his death. There is probably a fear of what will come next too since he was their leader for so long; in fact none of the gnomes of their little council even steps up to replace him.
Hardly matter though, since as far as you’re concerned this is as good as time as any to completely do away with the “era” of New Dessel “independence.” It was a long time coming anyway. Maybe Klemto even realized that and with the death of his daughter he saw no more point in seeing the “bad times” again.
In any event, things are starting to look up for you and you’re one step closer to your ultimate goals.
Zana seems a little surprised to see you aboard the Storm III when you’re about to lift off, but says that it’ll be an honor to be so close to you on this mission. She then says she’s going to be walking around the Storm III making sure everything is running smoothly. You see this as reasonable so you think nothing more of it and tell her to carry on.
After about a half hour you finally get used to the idea of being so high in the air and less paranoid. You didn’t think it possible for you to be, but somewhere in the back of your mind, you had the concern of this thing falling out of the sky which is probably why you haven’t stayed in one place on the ship for very long and have felt the need to pace about it.
You also have been bumping into Zana every so often. Not on purpose, but you seem to just be appearing in the same places she happens to be. This wouldn’t be a problem, but each time you do, Zana seems increasingly agitated whenever she sees you and it’s obvious that she attempts to leave the area as soon as possible.
The next time you see her she’s coming out of a door on the top deck of the ship wearing a heavy jacket with some sort of backpack on her back. Once again you completely surprise her.
“Hey Zana, once again we meet again.” you say.
“Heh! Um yeah, my Emperor. Still following me I see.” Zana replies.
“Not on purpose, but should I be following you?”
“No. I mean, there’s no reason to of course, it’s just what I’ve been doing is so boring and not very interesting.”
“Probably, but there isn’t much to do on here anyway…so what’s that on your back?”
“Oh this? Uh, just a back pack full of stuff…”
“Zana, why the hell are you so nervous? Every time we’ve bumped into each other you’ve run off like your ass is on fire.”
“Have I? My apologies then my Emperor. I suppose your presence is just a little unnerving at times. We all want to do our best in front of you, you know.”
You give a sideways glance at Zana. You’ve NEVER known Zana to ever be nervous around you. In fact she’s always been very casual to the point that most rulers would probably find it disrespectful.
“Okay…I understand…so what’s in the backpack?”
“Um…as I said nothing of important my Emperor, just tools…”
“Okay so let me see inside.”
And it’s at this point Zana goes silent for a moment and her nervous facial expression turns into one of complete desperation before she turns around to run from you.
“STOP ZANA! STOP HER!” you shout and go after her.
You have no idea where she thinks she can run to until you see her attempting to climb the railing of the Storm III in an attempt to jump off it. Fortunately you and another crew member grab her before she’s able to. She then tries to fumble with something inside her jacket, but you wrestle it away from her. It’s some sort of black rectangular device with a button on it.
“What the hell is this Zana?” you say while your crewmembers keep her from getting up.
“Why don’t you press it and find out TYRANT!” Zana shouts and now her expression has changed again, but to one of complete hatred.
You’ve never been the most technologically inclined, but if you had to guess, Zana has planted a bomb aboard this ship and this thing is going to detonate it. You immediately tell crewmembers in your vicinity to spread the word and to look for it while you hang on to the detonation device for safekeeping.
You then tell your crew to take off Zana’s backpack. It’s odd as it really isn’t a bkacpack at all so much as it’s a large sheet of canvas with reinforced rope attached. You’ve never seen anything like it before, but you again if you had to guess, it was supposed to decrease the speed of Zana’s fall.
“Interesting invention. I’m guessing one of your own design? I’m just wondering though we’re quite far from any land mass. Even had this invention worked, were you really planning on swimming all the way back to Evigrus?” you say.
“I calculated the distance, maybe I would’ve made it, maybe not, but either way it would’ve been better than allowing your continued existence! Murderer! Tyrant!”
“So who put you up to this? Semra?”
“Nobody put me up to this tyrant! I have my OWN reasons as I’m sure countless people would have for wanting you dead! The only difference is that I had the guts to actually try to kill you. YOU MURDERED MY FAMILY! YOU STOLE MY LIFE!” Zana screams with her mouth spitting saliva in anger.
“Zana you’ve lost me. You claim I murdered your family, but from what I know I wasn’t even in the vicinity of the destroyed village of where Klemto found you.”
“I didn’t grow up in a village! I was going to be a princess! I would’ve ruled a kingdom one day! YOU and YOUR I EMPIRE destroyed all that before I even had a chance to enjoy a taste of such a life! Klemto didn’t just save a random Felkan baby, he saved a HEIR TO THE FELKAN FUCKING KINGDOM!” Zana shouts.
It was a very long time ago. Almost a different life even, but you vaguely remember seeing a crib in the Felkan royal palace, yet no baby or even signs of a dead one. You never thought too much of it at the time, but apparently even though Zana was just an infant, Klemto must’ve told her about her real heritage. He probably lied to you thinking that you would’ve had her killed.
“Because of YOU, I’ve had to live a miserable existence working on machinery surrounded by fucking GNOMES! You know what that’s like? Being the only human in community of damn gnomes? It SUCKS! Then when some humans do fucking arrive, they’re from the same nation that destroyed my birthright! It almost sickened me to even sleep with that crazy fool Elam!”
How long must she have been waiting for the right time to strike? Was it always this way or did it slowly gnaw at her? A life that was stolen from her. Did Klemto or the gnomes put her up to this? Was this their plan in some weird way?
“Okay, since you’re in a talkative mood, did Klemto or any gnome put you up to this?” you ask.
“What? So you’ll have an excuse to round them all up and destroy their souls again? I heard about what you did to them. And maybe I might find them to be timid, tiresome unattractive little know it alls, I find it deplorable what the Empire did to them. I can’t believe they allowed themselves to be dominated by a nation that systematically exterminated them from not just this life, but the next as well!”
“So did they help or not?” you ask again.
“No! No they did not! My father would’ve probably had me jailed if he knew what I was planning. Those cowards wouldn’t dare stand against the Empire, but I fucking would! And did! Not that this will save them. After you’re done killing me, you’ll probably have them all killed as well for any excuse will serve a tyrant!”
“It’s amusing that you keep calling me that. What did you think your parents were? They were a KING and QUEEN. You think they ruled by popular decision? Do you think YOU would have if you became queen? My actions that day weren’t even personal. I was just following orders like a soldier. Your actions however today are misguided and fatal. Such a waste. Even had I known your origins, I would not have had you killed if you had remained true to serving the Empire. You probably would’ve even replaced Elam as top engineer when such a time came. Your quest for vengeance was as pointless as your entire life.”
Zana says nothing else, she just continues to look at you with hatred in her eyes. At this point a few of your crew has come back saying that they found a bomb near the spare gunpowder barrels and another one near some vital machinery. They were disarmed and disposed of by dropping them over the side of the Storm.
“Well, I guess there’s only one more thing to dispose of.” You say and then nod to your crew still restraining Zana.
To her credit she doesn’t beg for her life and continues to curse you even as she’s falling over the side of the Storm to her death. Considering some of crew from the other nearby ships may be wondering what’s going on if they’ve seen someone being thrown overboard, you make an announcement that you want the crew to signal the other ships to let them know everything is fine and that the mission is going to continue as expected.
As for the mission, that goes off relatively quietly without much trouble. The portal is hooked and lifted up without any problems. There doesn’t even to be any weight concerns, though given that you had two transport ships just in case it isn’t too surprising.
There aren’t any svelk attacks either. When you bring Galen, Cassandra and the remaining Eyes aboard the Storm via rope ladder, Cassandra says if you’d arrived a few days before it might’ve been a different matter since they suffered a very large attack accompanied by mages. In fact Cassandra mentions that they were encountering a lot more mage types among the ranks of the svelk. She goes on to say that Semra’s group has disappeared completely meaning they stopped working on the portal and abandoned all their mining operations.
“Knowing Semra she’s probably changed her plans slightly again.” You say.
“Did you want us to stay then? I mean we might need some reinforcements, but I think the remainder of us can survive on our own a little longer out here.” Cassandra asks.
“No. You’re all needed back home. Dokkrus will be invaded properly at some point in the future, but for now I’ve got more important things on my mind and I need all the security that I can get on the homefront right now. If the svelk suddenly start teleporting an invasion force then so be it. We’ll be prepared, I’m going to start calling the third gen Eternals back from Nyttrus anyway. Besides, we’ve got one of these portals now and if we get it working like how I want to get it working, then we’ll be fine.” You say and then turn to Galen.
“I want to talk to you about your findings, I assume you studied this one and several others while on your vacation.”
“Vacation? Dokkrus was the worst assignment that…” Galen starts to say until you glare at him.
“Uh, nevermind my Emperor. Yes, I’ll speak with you about what I found. Of course.”
With your mission accomplished and all your people aboard, you return to Evigrus where the airships land in the fields near New Dessel. The portal itself is moved into the mountain city.
From there you bump into Elam AND Klemto together. Good, this will save you time.
“Where is my daughter?” Klemto asks.
“Yeah, where is Zana my Emperor?” Elam says.
You snort and shake your head at this question.
“Well there’s no easy way to tell either of you this, so here it is. Zana was a traitor that tried to kill me while she was aboard the Storm. So I had her thrown overboard where I assume she died.”
Klemto and Elam’s jaws just about drop.
“WHAT?!” the pair of them exclaim.
“You heard me. She’s dead and that’s it.”
Klemto’s face displays the first signs of tears, but also of anger. He’s about to speak, but you stop him before he can do so.
“Klemto. I’d advise you to think VERY carefully the next words you say to me, because there are only a few reasons why I’m not going to have New Dessel purged of every gnome in here. Number one, I still believe I’ll need the help of gnomish engineers for this next project and two Zana made it very clear that her plans were all her own and not the result of some gnomish conspiracy. Given how passionate her hatred of me was, I have no reason to disbelieve her.”
Klemto says nothing.
“That being said, I’m ALSO going to forget the fact that YOU lied to me and that she was the daughter of the ex-Felkan royalty. I understand the lie, but this might’ve been avoided had you not lied to me in the first place…or failing that you needed to lie to her about her true heritage. Either way, I’ll let the knowledge of your OWN poor judgment be your punishment.”
Klemto continues to say nothing, the man is overcome with grief and can’t even be in your prescence, he just leaves holding his head in hands. Elam is still a bit in shock.
“Was…was there no other way?” he asks.
“Are you kidding me Elam? (Sigh) No. There was no other way. If it’s any consolation, she never loved or had any real affection for you. She even called you a fool that she only slept with due to the lack of other available humans that didn’t completely disgust her. Well that and I imagine she probably saw a possible opportunity to get closer to assassinate me by being closer to you.”
Elam just listens on in silence.
“And you, like Klemto, should count yourself lucky that I need you to work on this project because this incident wasn’t the first time you mistakenly placed your trust in an assassin. Or have we forgotten the OTHER bomb attempt on the first Storm that Warrick managed to stop?”
“Um, no your Emperor. Apologies. I…have no excuses and thank you for your mercy.”
“Hrm. Get that portal working and it will be a start.”
Elam leaves your presence and you’re left to rethink the “independence” policies on New Dessel. That time has now passed.
A few hours later during a discussion with Elam and Galen about how to get the portal working again, an emergency goes up throughout New Dessel. At first you think its some sort of sudden gnome uprising that Klemto has stirred up, but the event is much less urgent though perhaps a little tragic.
Klemto apparently went home, drank a lot of ale and then calmly shot himself in the head. He wasn’t always well liked by his people due to his decisions, but enough of them thought highly enough of him to immediately go into mourning due to his death. There is probably a fear of what will come next too since he was their leader for so long; in fact none of the gnomes of their little council even steps up to replace him.
Hardly matter though, since as far as you’re concerned this is as good as time as any to completely do away with the “era” of New Dessel “independence.” It was a long time coming anyway. Maybe Klemto even realized that and with the death of his daughter he saw no more point in seeing the “bad times” again.
In any event, things are starting to look up for you and you’re one step closer to your ultimate goals.