The Cold War: Nukes, Commie sand the Gods.
Okay, as I asked for my old account (Jamusio EMP) to be deleted to wipe the slate clean and only post things I don't mind being sifted through (click here, Just to Clarify). So I have decided to compile all of the updates for my only finished TL and repost them under my new account. Be warned, the earlier ones are not as good or consistent in size, and I didn't know I had to press enter twice on word to have the effect of pressing it once on here, so the earlier posts are a bit wall-of-text ish.
Anyway, enjoy!
A bat flaps its wings, as it coasts through the void. It is alien. And the place it calls home, is space. It is an Alien Space Bat. It spies a blue and green marble hanging in the vast emptiness. Hundreds of versions, different possibilities lay over it in layers, many different on their own, many more bore the marks of its race, but this one it could see had yet to be... meddled in. And so, for the glorious purpose of Shit'N'Giggles, the ASB descended towards the world.
It uses its amazing powers to see into the minds of every being on the world, from the intellectual behemoths of the Dolphins, to the 2-dimensional minds of the Homo-Sapien, and realises two things. The people of this world say the date is 11am 24 May 1962 AD, and that the world is in turmoil. The idea that takes its fancy comes from the depths of mythology, an idea from 2 mostly forgotten and rarely believed pantheons. And then, it aligns both of them with the two opposing forces that control the world.
The steel citadel of Asgard appears next to the mouth of the Indigirka river in Siberia. It is lead by Odin. The major gods, are not invincible, but do posses amazing powers. Odin has amazing strength enough to fell a skyscraper, and is incredible durable, human forces would probably require a whole field army (by which I mean the formation) to be matched in destructive power. Odin can see everything in lands under his control from his throne Hlidskjalf and can travel anywhere in his lands instantaneously via his chariot. The second most powerful in the Norse gods, is Thor. He is stronger than Odin, commands the power of lightning, his weapon Mjolnir, which strength is measured in Mega-Tons, can make soldiers fearless and can give generals masterful, if aggressive, tactical ability. Thors son Magni is even more powerful than Thor. They align themselves with the Warsaw Pact.
Olympus, in the form of a sprawling city with shining walls appears spread across the flattened of top of Mount McKinley. They are led by a trio, Zeus, with control of weather in his area, at its head, Poseidon with the ability to move tectonic plates and control of any water, and finally Hades, who can instil great fear in his enemies and, at great effort, cause recently dead soldiers who were originally on his side to re-animate and continue fighting. They align with NATO.
The ASB makes Odin, Magni and Thor roughly as strong as Poseidon, Zeus and Hades. Both sides also bring along any demi-gods, heroes, mythical warriors, demons and beasts with them. From the outside, it would seem that the Agardians and their communist allies are more powerful, due to greater numbers human wise, and their total unification under Odin in their gods. But just like the Warsaw pacts seemed to be more powerful than NATO due to having more people and tanks and aircraft NATO, but was hiding poverty and weakness, so was the Agardians position precarious. As soon as they appeared next to Indigirka river, their enemies appeared in the north pole, and begun their constant assault. The Frost giants begin to wear away at the Asgardians, and the countdown to Ragnarok continues. And lastly, the numerous opposing sides both posses a deity that controls the weather, as such, mutually assured destruction will not be their to stop a war.
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I know that the language Zeus spoke first was modern Greek, but for some (obvious) reason, I can't get ancient greek on the translator. Next, we will have a convoy taking prisoners to a Siberian Gulag encounter Asgard.
Mount Mckinley 11:12am 1962 October 23
3 Mountain climbers scaled the flanks of Mount Mckinley, tired but determined. They looked up towards the peak, but it was obscured in a swirling mass of fog. Soon they entered the wall like mass of fog. They passed through it like it was a portal, one moment hanging in the blue sky, the sun near its zenith in the sky beating down on their back, the next, encased in a hazy half-light where alien shapes flickered on the corners of their vision. Blinded by the fog, they navigated by touch, hesitantly working their up the mountain. Suddenly there groping hands reached empty space, despite being only 3/4 up the mountain. The climbers clambered up, pulling themselves over the edge. As they stood up, they realised that the fog barrier was now behind them. As they gazed around, they saw that where the peak of the mountain had been, there was a huge tabletop plateau, and that beyond the fog barrier they had just climbed through, taking only 2 minutes, the peaks of the surrounding mountains were like thimbles on the infinitely distant ground. Then they looked forward. A huge wall, taller than the highest skyscrapers, gleaming with the brightest gold, and radiating a great strength beneath the gaudy outer covering. The wall stretched out to either horizons with a gentle curve, framing the infinite expanse of the sky. They could see a gate, with two, towering clear marble statues of a Woman on either side. She was holding a shield and a spear, and had an owl perching on her shoulder. Her shield was covered with strange symbols and words in hundreds of different languages, one of which was English, and said Athena.
The three climbers were called Kyle Shrew a 24 year old with dull ginger hair and broad shoulders, Daniel Wallace, a short 23 year old with blond hair and Theo Moor, a very tall 25 year old with jet black hair.
"Does that say Athena? Like, the Greek goddess Athena?" questioned Kyle
"Think so. That there" Theo pointed at a symbol on the shield "might be Mandarin."
"Well you both missed the real mind**** here. This is the second time we have climbed this, and it looks like the peak had been replaced with a mega sized Athens. And the mountains down there are a hell of a lot smaller than they should be. They should not look like thimbles."
"Calm down, the thin oxygen is probably just giving us something like a bad acid trip. Its just like that time when-" The door opened with a resounding groan, revealing a figure wreathed in glowing robes walking regally towards them. It, no, he, was flanked by two men, one with blue waving robes and a trident and dark brown skin, the other had a deathly pale face pulled taut around his skull, wearing a tattered grey robe that seemed to suck up the light light the maw of a black hole. More people came into view, a man in armour with a red gleaming sword, a shining golden man standing next to a woman who seemed to reflect every ray of moonlight from the dawn of the universe. The woman from the statue, another woman was next to her, an old crone with a plain earth stained dress, in sharp contrast to the radiance of the beautiful woman in rainbow robes next to her.
"Γεια σας θνητοί, εμείς είμαστε οι θεοί του Ολύμπου. Εμείς σημαίνει ότι καμία ζημιά." said the lead figure.
"That's Greek to me." said Kyle, without realising the amazingly obvious, world shatteringly face-palm inducing pun he had just crafted.
"Ah, sorry, we expected you to speak a different tongue. Can you understand this?"
"Crystal clear thanks"
"Good. I expect you have many questions, as do we. We are the gods of Olympus, as you have probably guessed."
The crone in brown let out a cackling laugh "Ahh Zeus, you young fool. The wheel of the universe is ever turning, just as the world turns from the sowing of fields to the reaping, and the fates have cut many threads since our last memories. This is not the same world, in fact, I wonder if something greater* than us created our memories of the old world, but truly, the strength of mortals has grown in our absence. I believe that were are lucky these people did not flee over the edge of the mountain at the sight of us, let alone recognise us. We will let you back to your land soon, but first, we must learn of your people, so we can show humanity more of us, and you must learn of us.
As the climbers and the Gods walked back into the bustling city, Zeus muttered under his breath "Dammit Dementer."
Indigirka River mouth. Siberia. USSR. 8pm.
The cold wind howled around the convoy, whisking away the black smoke belched out by the trucks engines. There are two truck in the centre of the convoy, crammed full of high risk political dissenters, flanked by smaller trucks with machine guns trained on the trucks. At the front of the convoy, and the back, are two more trucks, making tiny indentations of visibility in the writhing mass of the blizzard. One second, the storm was a maelstrom of chaotic movement, the next, the wind disappeared, leaving the falling snow to gentle waft to the ground. It was calm, but like the calm of a predator coiled to strike. Then, the blizzard exploded with movement, pieces of snow smashed together with whipcord speed, compressing and melding into golf ball hail stones. They smashed into the wheels of the trucks, piling up and clamping the wheels to the ground. The hail stones in the air pulled back to 5 metres from the convoy, forming into tendrils, circling and probing, but never passing that invisible 5 metre line. The storm wall parted at the front of the convoy, revealing a figure, wearing a sturdy, simple cloak. He held a gnarled wooden staff in his hand. He stood still, for seconds that seemed to stretch on to infinity. The a passenger wearing an officers uniform got out of the lead vehicle got out, holding his rifle and pointing it at the man.
"Hay, you, dumb-ass. What do you think you're doing, you ******* dumb-ass. Get out my way, or I might add you to the truck and put you in the Gulag with them." By now, the guns of the lead truck were trained on him, and 5 soldiers had their guns trained on him.
"I assume you are not a diplomat then. You will take me on your transport to your king. I will not permit you to leave other wise."
The officer burst into laughter, but his soldiers did not. They were looking fearfully at the tendrils of the storm, watching them reaching closer to the convoy, almost in anticipation. "**** Ohh, how I am afraid of incurring the wrath of the one eyed man with the stick. I bet that's how you lost your other eye, trying to catch a bullet with your stick. Come on. Take your best shot. You can harm me, and if you could, you would be killed by my men. If you survive your injuries, then you can spend the rest of your life in the frozen hell of the Gulag."
The old man pointed his stick at an individual hail stone, his eyes fixed unwavering on the officer. Then he swung his staff round with blinding speed, leaving it pointed at the officer. The ice ball swung round, guided by the staff. It slammed into the side of his head, cracking through his skull. His body went limp, held up by the hovering ice ball in his brain. Then the one eyed wanderer slammed his staff into the ground. The ice ball exploded, leaving his decapitated body to drop to the frozen ground.
The man spoke softly, but with a undeniable authority. "I am Odin One Eye of Asgard. You will take me to your king, or I will extract his location from you and leave you unarmed in the prisoner trucks."
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Vikings and commies aren't exactly going to meet without at least one person dying.
Washington DC. White house. 4pm October 26 1962
The skies of DC were grey and heavy with rain. The atmosphere outside the white house was electric, full of uncertainty and promise. The President had called a press meeting with only a days notice for the news agencies of the world to scramble their cynical, attentive forces.
The mob of journalists and reporters huddled around the eagle adorned podium. Kennedy stood tall at stand, aware but undisturbed by the presence of the cameras trained on him.
"We, as a nation, and our allies, are in hard times. Uncertain, changing times. Spy planes have recently photographed threatening images on Cuba. But today, I have good news for you, news that can offer more hope in these grim times. It may be hard for people to come to terms, some may even have their views of the universe changed or challenged, but I assure you, with my word as the President, that we are now stronger, than ever before. But actions speak louder than words, so a delegation of our new allies have come to speak to you today.
The grey skies flickered with light, then boomed, thunder and lighting shot out of the storm clouds, carefully avoiding causing harm to the city dwellers below. The clouds split at the top, revealing blue skies and light. From this gap, a glowing gold chariot sped towards the ground. Journalists began to scatter as the object approached, but seeing the calm look on the Presidents face, they stood firm, regaining their composure. In the last hundred metres of its descent, the golden object, no, the chariot, decelerated rapidly, deftly touching down with delicate grace of a hummingbird. A man, wreathed in gold and light, stepped down from the chariot and stood next to Kennedy.
"People of America. I am a Apollo, representative of the Olympian Gods to your nation. We believe, no, we guarantee, that we can offer you amazing gifts and abilities for you in your ongoing conflict with the Soviet Union. But today, this is not the time or place for troop counts and briefing. My people and our city, Olympus, have been transported to your mountain, Mount McKinley, without memory of the event. The ruling council of the city, is Zeus, Posideon, Hera, Apollo, Artemis, Dementer, Aphrodite, Athena, Dionysus, Areas, Hephaestus and Hermes. We are willing to assist you in your wars, join NATO, use are powers over the skies to block any nuclear attack against you, join the UN, in return, we want to have our control over Mount McKinley recognised, and any of our citizens are to be given joint citizen ship and freedom of movement between our nation and yours, and that any crime committed against one of our citizens by one of your people, from the lowly satyrs, nymphs and spirits, to the Olympian gods themselves, and even the abhorrent inhabitants of Hades, shall be given over to us, and treated under our laws." The mob of journalists exploded with questions, and Apollo, with the patience of a god, began to answer.
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I know this is not hugely action packed, but neither are press conferences. Even with gods.
Operation Stampede is the plan for the joint American/Olympian invasion of Cuba. The plan for operation Stampede involved two phases. It can only happen with the assistance of our allies the Olympians in the form of destroying anything in the sky fielded against us, and removing the threat of Nuclear retaliation from Russia. They will also provide precision, high power strikes against enemy forces, and Ares and Hercules will be accompanying marines on the ground in human form. Posideon will be providing support from the sea, and will be transporting our soldiers. Apollo, Zeus and Artemis will be providing Ariel support. Our military tacticians and Athena have told us that this will be excessive force, but for political and propaganda purposes, every thing short of nuclear BDZ and war crimes will be used to gain control over Cuba, and smoke out this Red hive near our lands.
Phase 1
First, the navy and Posideon will destroy any ships the Cubans field against us, and then will sail to Havana. There, they will begin obliterating enemy formations in range of the guns outside the city, leaving the city itself intact. Fighter aircraft accompanied by Apollo and Artemis will gain air supremacy, only risking engagement with the enemy when assisted by the Olympian escort. The Olympians have demonstrated that Apollo and Artemis can fire weapons (arrows) from they're chariots, at speeds much faster than missiles with extreme, seemingly infallible accuracy, and power greater than the a navel cannon. This capability, plus the ability of Zeus to 'disintegrate' SAM missiles, will give us a high chance of zero casualties in Ariel engagements. After air supremacy is gained, Air Strikes with the help of Apollo and Artemis will be conducted on troops in the city of Havana.
Phase 2
After half an hour of the bombardment, 10,000 marines will be landed in Havana, headed by Hercules. By this point, Apollo and Artemis will have destroyed most of the soldiers in the city, and air strikes will make reinforcements impossible, by destroying any troops or tanks nearing the city with low power tactical atomic devices Ares will lead a company of 225 Rangers to spearhead the advance.
References for troop counts will also be distributed with this sheet.
27 October. 1962 Havana.
Troop transports and tanks roared across the bridge of solid water between Florida and Havana, courtesy of Posideon. In the skies, various types of soviet MiGs fought American F-3s and F-4s. The Cuban planes were being swatted like flies by Apollo and Artemis, exploding in flairs of golden and silver light respectively. Ares and Hercules both ran at the front of their battle groups across the bridge of water, yelling war cries and waving their swords. In the distance, mushroom clouds could be seen from were reinforcements had been nuked, and columns of fire rose from the city where Zeus was blasting Cuban soldiers. The water bridge ended at the docks, and the soldiers had captured them with extreme speed. A group of Cuban soldiers, roughly 30, had set up a machine gun nest in the rubble on a street corner near the dock, hidden from Zeus by their insignificance. The Rangers were stealthily approaching them, but Ares just ran at the Cubans, waving his red sword above his head and holding his hoplite shield in front of him. Machine guns bullets streaked out to meet him, but they only seemed to inflict paper cuts on him. He jumped when he was 20m from them, sailing through the air in a way that was definitely not natural. He landed on the machine gun, and lunged with a blinding movement, decapitating the gunner. He dropped the sword and grabbed the man’s submachine gun. He arced the gun round, and bullets of explosive energy shot out, slaughtering the men in the nest with a single slow swing of the gun.
As the soldiers and tanks advanced into the city they found for every Cuban they captured or killed, 10 had be struck down by Apollo or Artemis. In the distance, storm clouds, charged with electricity, converged on the radiation spreading mushroom clouds that marked where the Cubans had tried to reinforce the city. All ready the mushroom clouds were being absorbed into the storm clouds Zeus had created, which then shot upwards, depositing the radioactive matter into space.*
Thanks to the assistance of the Olympians, the battle for Havana was over in a record time of 27 minutes, with the whole city surrendering unconditionally except for a few diehards. There were various military bases, and certain towns and villages, that did not surrender, so were subject to the ultimate terror weapon. In the centre of the military bases, which were in most cases frightening the surrounding settlements into siding with them, Hades was called into action. He created portals in them, out of which flowed Hell Hounds. They were not invincible against gunfire, but the shock of the skeletal, flaming night black hounds bounding out of dark swirling mists in huge numbers were enough. Hades simply waited until he could tell (by reading FEAR levels) that the soldiers would surrender, then issued an ultimatum. Unconditional surrender or unconditional death. Cuba had fallen in only 1 and a half hours of fighting.
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Just so you know, it will be very different when gods fight gods. Also, *The message there is that you can only escape the consequences of nukes by liberal use of noobish Haxor. Next, we will have a Norse god supported attack in Japan, which will reveal to America that Operation Norse is not just propaganda. Hint, it will be like this, but in reverse, as the Olympians will not be on guard there, though there will be the start of a battle for sea supremacy between Njord and Posideon.
Also, I bet I have made some huge mistake somewhere (the term Base Delta Zero being used in a briefing doesn't count) that will be on the scale of be being wrong about Cuba being real. I know Cuba is real, that is just an example of the scale of wrongness I shall probably reach. (Don't you interpret that!)
In this Update I will explore increasing impact that mythical monsters appearing in places that are fitting for them wreaking havoc. But the main part of this update will be the failed nuclear and then the build up to a ground retaliation in response to the total defeat at Cuba. Next update, I will do that ground attack.
1962 November 1st 41.21.56.58 North 175 26 56 West Over the Pacific.
The Lockheed A-12 with its one man crewglided gracefully through the skies, a blot of darkness against the featureless blue sky, and the cotton ball clouds below. It was flying from a secret air base in America to photograph key Warsaw Pact industrial and military facilities, before returning home, like an extremely well funded Peeping Tom. The pilot who had passed the rigorous training to be aloud to fly the was encased in solitude except for his radio, and consumed entirely by controlling and monitoring the plane, relying on technology and well-rehearsed actions. The radio flickered into life, and a hoarse, tired voice spoke out of it: "Hey Jim, this is command, we have detected a strange incredibly high up storm in your path. It was spotted by a cargo ship. Can you see anything. Over."
"Hang on a sec" he said, turning away from the dials to look out at the empty sky. "Nope. Nothin--- wait, sorry, something just, well, I'm looking out, and its completely black. As black as my blackbird."
The radio operator responded, his transmission suddenly full of crackling interference. "S--rry, co-ld -u- repe-t tha-, -- gett-ng - lot of i-ter-fe-ren-e fro- --u. O-er."
"Ok. My Blackbird is completely covered in clouds, and the altimeter is going haywire. Over."
The voice returned, suddenly free of interference. "Brilliant. We read you, and your interference has disappeared. Are you playing music? I can hear something from your side."
"No, but I can hear something. Its really, hypnotic, actually. I-I think I should land. Right now."
"Pilot, there is only water beneath you, you can't land. Return to base immediately. Check your Oxygen tanks, you are displaying symptoms of oxygen starvation. Are you light headed? Over."
"It sounds like singing... I'm not gonna land, I just want to, to see. And hear. See and Hear. See and Hear."
An edge of panic was in the radio operators voice, a crowd of operators, soldiers, technicians and officers now crowded around him, listening intently. "Jim, turn back now. Right now. Over"
"No. I can see a tiny island in the distance through the clouds. I can land there. Easy. Then I can See and Hear. The Sirens call to me. I must go."
"Come on man, its me, William. Don't do this. I don't know what's wrong with you, but you can't to this. If you try to land there, you will die. The plane wont fit. What about Susan? You just married her. What about your friends? Turn back, and we can all forget this. Please."
"I can see them, three women, with the heads of birds. Its so beautiful. An Eagle, a Vulture and a Raven. I can See and Hear. See and H------"
The radio operator closed his eyes and took of his earphones, shaking his head. The whispering crowd around him fell silent. Jimmy Sullivan would not be the last person to be claimed by unnatural creatures. He was a proud member of a NATO country, so he would go to Tartarus, the Asphodel Fields, or Elysium if he was lucky. If his loyalty had been to a Warsaw Pact nation, he would have gone to Nifhel, Hel or Vahlalla. But the fact remained, the world was now home to creatures that did not belong, and would only cause harm.
Cuba. November 1st 1962.
Cuban intelligence had managed to get various pieces of important information out to their allies, before they were found an killed by Hermes, who was aided by the general truth that 'It takes a spy to find a spy, and a thief God can find spies without trying.' The Soviet leadership was locked in fierce debate over how best to respond to the attack on their allies, but the balance was tipped in favour of retaliation when an incredible opportunity was revealed by (now dead) Cuban spies. Ares and Hercules, two of the key fighters in the Olympian force, were both in Havana. A soviet sub was sent to Cuba, with a deadly payload, and a deadly mission, to destroy Havana, with the aim of killing the soldiers there, but most importantly, killing Ares and Hercules.
A nuclear missile burst out from the water, fired by a Submarine just below the surface. It streaked towards Havana, 10 times faster than a jet fighter. And a hell of a lot slower than a thunderbolt. A storm cloud materialised out of empty sky in the path of the missile, and shot out a streak of blue lighting towards the missile. It exploded in the sky, but the complex system to cause the nuclear fission* was destroyed, an the explosion was only the rocket fuel detonating. With no wish to ignite a full nuclear war that might overwhelm Zeus, the attempt at destruction was ignored, except as an object of ridicule.
Anti Climax. But the following day, an attack was devised by the soviet leadership, an attack that would not be thwarted, and would give a devastating demonstration of the power of their new allies...
*I think.
Lighting lashed down on Tokyo, ships sunk in flames and fires spread from building to building, trapping and killing occupying soldiers and civilians alike. The Communists wanted to keep Tokyo intact, so fire were only aloud to spread in areas with opposing soldiers in, other wise the fires are stopped by air spirits. Njord and Posideon wrestled in the seas, their bodies the waters themselves, with their titanic battle spread across the waters around Japan. The devastating Maelstroms and colliding waves mauled Soviet and American ships alike, nearly killing the soviet troop transports before they turned away from the danger zone.
MiG 21 flew un-harried across Japan, their enemies pulled from the sky by baseball sized chunks of hail, bombing targets and generally slaughtering all opposition. Troops began dropping in from helicopters, bypassing the writhing sea, and started to claim Tokyo. Heidmall, Thor and Magni led Spetnaz units into the heart of the city, overwhelming the surviving forces with ease. As soon as news of this god supported attack reached Washington, Kennedy realised that their forces would die without god support just as the Cubans had, so he contacted Olympus. Athena appeared through the presidential portal, and spoke frankly to the President. She was a master of strategy and tactics, and concluded that by the time it would take to muster forces to be sent along with the gods to reinforce Japan, and to transport them, there would be no American controlled areas to land in. Sending the gods in on their own would be suicide, as the Norse Gods were backed up by enough mortal air, ground and sea forces, that they would easily be able to overcome the Olympians. To save his forces from complete obliteration, Kennedy was forced to surrender all American forces on Japan, after as many as possible were evacuated. 10% escaped. 30% were captured. 60% were dead.
Arkhangelsk. Oblast. USSR.
2nd November. 1962. 2am.
It was -45 outside, the coldest November in record, and the wind was howling like a screaming banshee to boot. The skies were black, and the streets were covered with half a metre of ice. Reports were coming in from sailors saying the sea was freezing over. This was insane, thought Dimitri Tarasov, the local head of the party, it might be an unusually cold day, but the seas freezing? The sailors will of course be reprimanded for being wreckers and fear spreaders. He turned to look out of his thick window, and saw only a spinning mass of blizzard. Then, the cold intensified, a wave of cold passed through him, chilling him to the bone. It only lasted a second, and there seemed to be no evidence the cold snap had even occurred. But then, Dimitri's eyes recovered from the shock, and focused on what he was seeing. All motion in the swirling blizzard was gone, the snow just hung there. Then it dropped, like a marionette with its strings cut. In the co-ordination centre of the building, phones began to ring, from the hospital, the dock, the barracks and everywhere else. But still, it was only a freak weather phenomenon. The messages from the Dockyard somehow seemed urgent enough to warrant Dimitri's direct attention.
"Hello. This is Dimitri Tarasov. Who am I speaking to?" He spoke with tight formality, his arrogance failing to fully cover his growing fear.
"T-this is Leonid Vasiliev. I am the official party representative for the dock. We are experiencing some problems-- muffled screaming cuts through --just send us some help from the barracks, I don't, I-- a huge booming crash is heard in the background, then human screaming, and the word Giants is heard over the screaming --We are being attacked, by, by something just, wait please,-- Leonid is talking to another person at the dock. "We've gotta run now! its coming towards us! no, I must call for help. Idiot, now one can help us." now he speaks with panic in his voice, and the sounds of rending metal and dying men nearly make him inaudible -- I am abandoning my post, to seek safety in the rest of the city. Call for help, and run. Run now or--" the phone line is replaced with static. Already Dimitri could hear the screams moving closer from the harbour.
The military garrison of 500 soldiers and 12 tanks (tell me if that sort of number is stupid) had been rallied by their commanders, and were marching towards the dock. Reports had come that the sea had frozen all the way to the docks, but the only thing on the commanders minds was to quell the unexplained rioting. The fog hung thick in front of the armed column, the headlights on the jeeps cutting through 3 metres of fog, before stopping, like they had hit a wall of darkness. The column abruptly stopped as a building beyond the fog wall collapsed, the rubble just reaching far enough to tap gentle on the frontal armour on the lead tank. The tank commander poked his head out of his copula, looking around, as the soldiers fanned out. The fog gently, eerily rose upwards, revealing the dock to the soldiers. A looming humanoid figure, at least 15 metres tall stalked towards them through the rubble. Its body seemed to be made of hundreds of uneven boulders of ice, held together by clumps of hail stones, grinding and re-forming as it moved, like the gears on an insidious machine. The soldiers opened fire, blasting chunks out of it, as it reeled backwards in shock and pain from the heat and speed of the bullets. Golf ball sized chunks were cascading to the ground, just faster than it could re-grow them, and the tanks were blasting torso sized blocks of it. Shockingly fast for something so large and ungainly, it lurched towards the soldiers, blasting them with lethal hail as it approached. The hail stones pinged of the tank armour, leaving surprisingly deep dents. The bones they hit snapped and shattered under the onslaught, it was like a machine gun had been opened up on the soldiers. All the soldiers standing in the street were killed, but most had taken up positions in buildings when they started shooting. The guns continued to chip pieces of the giant, even as it grabbed the lead tank, swinging it round with the strength to pulverise the inhabitants, then throwing it at a building to the left, crushing the soldiers inside it. At this point, the rest of the unit Sh*t Brix. The Frost Giant shot its arm out in a huge lunge, reaching out at the second tank on the street. As the Giant crushed it, the tank discharged a high explosive round in its face, which ignited the fuel and ammo were crushed, causing the tank to explode. Despite this awesome spectacle, and half of the face of the giant being destroyed, it continued its rampage. An RPG hit it in the icy wound, causing it to stumble backwards. It shot out a hail of ice at the house the RPG had fired from. The concentrated blast shredded everything in the house, soldiers, bricks and all. Tank shots kept blasting the fallen giant, pinning it down. It raised its arm, and a clump of the hail stones flying above collided to form a car sized boulder, which then smashed downwards like a hammer onto the nearest tank. Then the ice chunk grew to form a temporary wall between the Giant and the tanks, letting it get up. The 10 remaining tanks blasted through the barrier, but the Frost Giant was gone. The tank at the back of the column was seized up and lifted into the air. The Frost Giant was deceptively fast, and had flanked them.Some of the soldiers were running, so the Frost Giant took the opportunity to crush them by throwing a tank at them, which then exploded#. The turrets struggled to traverse, as the Giant ran across their right flank, crushing the soldiers in the buildings, despite grenades, AK's and another RPG. When it reached the front of the column, and the tanks were just ready to fire on it, the Frost Giant jumped sideways, twisting sideways and crushing 4 tanks with a body slam. The resulting explosion, plus a volley from the other tanks as they spread around shattered the Frost Giant, but already more of them were moving towards them, and only 6 tanks an no infantry remained in the fight... Which then Exploded.
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#That is my new phrase.
Arkhangelsk just got Frost Gianted. That's not a word, but still. Correct me if I am wrong about how much the city would have in the way of soldiers. Also, hint, the city loses the fight. That was one just Frost Giant, and there are 13 who have reached the city.
It’s hard to say whether the event, now widely called the Descent of Gods, was a good thing for the world, or a bad thing. But even if the powers of the gods eliminate the threat of MAD and allow total war again, for the average westerner, the Descent was a good thing. Despite all the high minded implications of a world with gods, it has had much more basic effects. Thanks to Dementer, food is and never will be a problem again. Deserts are graced with un-explainable cool rain, turning their sand into fertile topsoil. Golden fields of wheat and rice and hops stretch into the horizon on what were once the most inhospitable and useless lands in the world. Pests and weeds no longer effect crops, which some say is too heavy handed an action by Dementer, resulting in significant drops in the numbers of animals that eat the pests, or that eat the crops themselves. Most people agree that having their weekly shop as cheap as a newspaper is worth a few dead ecologies, despite what the damned hippies might say.
Norse and Greek Paganism is on a worldwide rise, though the Abrahamic religions managed to ride the wave surprisingly well by throwing words around like Demons and Old Testament and End of Days. The Sikhs did the best out of the pre-Descent religions, thanks to the ‘All Religions are Different Paths to Truth’ meaning that Gods on earth don’t harm their credibility, even gods with different values.
The power of the Gods seems to be derived from a mix of Sc-Fi tech and pure magic, the latter of which has given a huge tech boost to the world. Nuclear Fusion is handled in satellite power stations, providing cheap and effective power to all. Wind spirits, paid with Olympian gold (more on that latter) fill huge blimps that carry converted Ocean Liners on grand tours around the world in the skies, at rates cheaper than a holiday for the average pre Descent family. Pebble Bed reactors power cars and planes, and are the primary competitors for Hydrogen fuel cell market.
There is significant tension in some areas between Gods and Mortals. No angry mob would try to kill a god, but semi magical races like Fawns are the new target for skinhead anger. The fact that creatures like Fawns are much longer lived than humans, and benefit from much better education, means that they are generally more qualified than humans, and some feared that they may form a new ruling class, taking top research, business and political jobs. Luckily, this scare was averted when it was discovered that Fawns, being part prey animal, were fundamentally different from humans. Descended from Hunters, Humans could deal with tasks involving concentration, repetition and patience, all of which are required to be a scientist, politician or business leader. Fawns cannot due to being half prey animal, and by human standards, Fawns are near ADHD.
After the events of Ragnorak, which coincided with the rise of the Titans, most of the human-god conflict died down. The idea of gods being separate from us, and the general feeling of inferiority that fuelled the tension, were dispelled when the same demons and monsters and giants that killed gods, killed us. Humans became brothers in arms with gods, and people saw all of the beings of Asgard and Olympus, from semi-magical fawns and nymphs, to full on immortals, like Zeus and Magni, as friends, neighbours and equals. It is speculated that the relations between humans and gods were on the path to war between gods and men, as the existents of gods had indirectly caused huge damage, as it allowed for a war between the Warsaw Pact and NATO without MAD to stop it. Now, without a common enemy, and with Ragnorak fading from public memory, tensions between gods and men are on the rise…
Part 8
Communist Cuba was annexed by the NATO/Olympian alliances.
In retaliation, American occupied Japan was conquered by the Warsaw/Norse alliance.
The opening shots had been fired, and only the sheer enormity of the war before them had kept it from escalating. But the stillness on the European front is like the water in bath about to overflow, held in place only by tension. It was only a matter of time.
Two days after the Soviet attack on Japan, Russian forces in East Berlin mounted a devastating attack, meeting fierce resistance from NATO troops. The NATO forces in West Berlin, numbering 15,000 at the start of the attack, are heavily outnumbered, facing an enemy of 40,000 men and cut off from the bulk of their forces. They are miles behind enemy lines; they fight fiercely nevertheless. Columns of tanks, supported by helicopters and Mechanized infantry clash with Soviet ground troops in the fields of Europe, dealing all the death modern technology can deal, as well as all the death that various magical creatures and gods can deal. Ares, having chosen a battalion worth of soldiers, drawn from the SAS, SOAR, US Army Rangers, and the Australian SAS, makes his way to Berlin via plane, protected by Wind Spirits loyal to Olympus. They intend to give the soldiers there a fighting chance to survive against the onslaught of the Warsaw Pact until more forces can reach them.
The sun rises over berlin, its crimson glow casting wild shadows over the arches and spires of the city. Below the towering buildings, both new and old, the streets are enveloped in war, echoing with the sounds of gunfire as soldiers fight and die for survival. Screams of dying men cut through the din of battle, only eclipsed by the sound of collapsing buildings and the harsh thunderclap of tanks.
At the start of the attack on Berlin, bombers and fighter flew in support of the attack troops, bombing the NATO troops un-harassed. Fighter planes were sent out to deal with them by NATO, which drew more reinforcements from the Warsaw pact. Soon the bulk of both sides air power was engaged above Berlin, and the skies above Berlin began to resemble a collision between two swarms of angry fireflies. The aerial battleground was streaked with trails from rockets and lit by the constant flashes of exploding planes, like a chaotic but purposeful fireworks show, were ownership of Europe’s skies, and thus its fate, will be decided.
On the outskirts of Berlin, a group of planes touch down, unloading tanks, jeeps and soldiers. A figure steps down from the ramp of the lead plane, restless, and eager for action. He holds a Hoplite shield in his left hand and a 50 calibre machine gun in his right. On his head is a red plumed helmet, and his chest armour bears the mark of a grinning skull. Red mist swirls around his body, and the bodies of his soldiers, giving them true aim, tireless limbs and limitless ammo. He is a walking war crime, the embodiment of berserker rage, the primal scream of a cornered man, the battle cry of a thousand soldiers, the red mist of rage, the burning fires of pillaged cities and the cry of the refugee. He is Ares, God of War.
Part 9
The Russian advance was slowly grinding through West Berlin thanks to superior numbers, having lost 25,000 men and killed 10000 only thanks to clever defensive tactics on NATO’s part, fighting street for street against the doomed defenders. Another line of defence was about to be broken, so the NATO troops pulled back, covered by heavy bombardment by air forces. They took up new positions in another line of fortified buildings and strongpoints, putting killing zones between themselves and the enemy, rather than being overrun in room to room fighting. This constant, ordered retreat was something they had repeated many times already, and the soldiers were tired, hungry and fighting for their lives, desperately reforming defensive lines rather than being cut of and eliminated. They were punching above their weight and making the enemy fight for every inch. And they were losing. Despite NATO advances, they were still far behind enemy lines, severely outnumbered and running low on every type of supply.
The Russian forces had noticed a pattern in their enemy’s movements, and were preparing to rush forward to capture the buildings in front of them, as they saw the tell-tail signs of another retreat. The constant retreats had forced the Russians to play by NATO commander’s rules, either charging through empty, sometimes mined building, or fighting pinned down by prepared strongpoints, trying to get through roads-turned-killing zones, at great cost to man and materiel. Not to mention the horrible effect on moral of knowing that every time you are about to break through and fight the enemy on fair terms or good un-fair terms, they disappear, forcing you to rush through possibly mined buildings, just to end up in a nearly identical situation, pinned down by strongpoints and snipers, once again.
The heavy guns in the enemy’s buildings had finally fallen silent, meaning the last of the enemy had retreated from their lines, and some of the enemies mortars and their jets had given a brief covering bombardment for the retreat. Somewhere, some of the Russians must have reached a strongpoint and were fighting in close quarters, forcing the NATO forces to retreat again. The Soviet commanders in the city had all reached this conclusion, accepting it as the only explanation, even though this time, none of them had radioed that they had broken through. Still, all the signs were there, and the enemy was silent, so the order was given. Russian troops rushed from their hiding places, ready to storm the deserted buildings once again. Half way across the killing zones, all across the defensive line, groups of Russian soldiers ran onto mines, as guns opened up on them from windows and balconies. It was a feint, no-one had broken through, and the NATO forces had led them straight into a trap. Hundreds of Russians lay dead, and their confidence was given another blow, as a grim, hoarse cheer rose from the buildings on the other side of the killing zone. Still, it was only another bump in the road to total victory. There was no way NATO would reach Berlin, let alone before the embattled troops in West Berlin were crushed. Of this, the Russian commanders were assured.
The Russians rushed back to their lines, taking heavy casualties from the trap they had sprung. And then, at the worst, or best possible time, depending who you are, Ares struck.
Ares struck behind the Russian forces in East Berlin, cutting through the supply lines and artillery, trapping groups of attacking soldiers between his men and the defending NATO troops. They swung round, stretching themselves thin as they drove forward behind the Russian troops, following the curve of the battle lines. Ares led at the front of this advance, obliterating buildings and letting his troops advance with incredible speed, driving all before them. Within 2 minutes of the attack, the Berserkers were a third of the way round the battle lines. Attacks were sent against them, but only 2nd line troops and support troops were left, everyone else was either miles away fighting NATO armies to the west, or trapped committed to fighting NATO troops in East Berlin. Those sparse attacks were slaughtered easily by the superhuman forces under Ares’s control, and were not repeated. 5 minutes after Ares attacked, his forces were half way round the city, and the Russian commanders realised that their shallow hope of defeating all the NATO troops in West Berlin then turning their huge numbers against the Berserkers was not going to come true. The Russian and NATO commanders watched speechless as the Ares Berserkers, deifying all military logic and fighting like demons, slaying dozens for every man they lost, came back round full circle . 90% of all Russian soldiers in Berlin were trapped in a thin strip of land between the Ares Berserkers and the NATO defences. Unknown to Ares, as soon as he appeared on the battle field, the soviet commanders, under the orders of a new directive, had called for reinforcements from Valhalla.
The battle was now a forgone conclusion, with surrender or death as the only two options. Russian troops were beginning to lay down arms, sometimes led by officers, sometimes by common sense. Soldiers on both sides were breathing sighs of relief, (or cries of rage in the case of the Ares Berserkers) knowing that at least they had survived, whether or not they had won. Men buried the dead, rested and counted losses. But the battle was not yet over. The superhuman attack of the Ares Berserkers would not be the only shock for the commanders this day.
Reinforcements arrived, a seemingly tiny number compared to the forces already in the fight, roughly a battalion worth of soldiers. They are led by Thor, God of Thunder. Commanded by him are a battalion of Spetnaz, their skin covered in blue arcs of lightning, and their bodies bursting with the power of Thor*…
*For the sake of the story and the plan of the ASB, imagine these guys are as powerful as the Ares Berserkers, and in nearly equal numbers.
Part 10
The remaining Russians who had not surrendered, roughly 60% of the total still living, numbered 6000 men. Their opponents inside West Berlin numbered 5000, and still had the advantage of their defences. The Russians withdrew from the areas under fire from the NATO strong points, and dug in. Neither side was confident enough to attack, so their fate hung on the upcoming battle between Ares and Thor. Thor’s battalion was called the Red Hammers by the soviet military, and had roughly the same powers as their counterparts in the Ares Berserkers. The Berserkers and the Hammers met a mile away from the battle lines in West Berlin. The best of the Warsaw Pact’s forces, infused with the power of Thor, now faced the best of NATO, empowered by the God of War. Both sides were tense and ready, like a predator coiled to pounce, or a storm ready to break. The skies above howled with the sounds of the air battle, while the superhuman soldiers waited amongst the rubble of houses and shops, the minds devoted to war and above the ideals that drove their sides, their humanity temporarily thrown aside in their service of Thor and Ares.
Ares felt joy as he saw the rubble of peace being trampled and used by the power of war. He smiled a dark grin, that held no humour or warmth, only a deep echo of primal fury. He was evil in most definitions of the word, and would kill any and all things necessary to achieve his goals. He could only feel joy when drenched in his foes blood and taking lives indiscriminately, the true definition of the Berserker. Unlike his brothers and sisters in Olympus, he did not at all fit well with his NATO allies. Thor was proud, and sought justice in all he saw and was an honourable warrior. He, like Ares, seemed to be a polar opposite to his side, only doing as he does because of loyalty to Odin. Thor saw Ares’s cruel smile as a taunt, and that was all that was needed. The air exploded with bullets, as both sides opened fire with extreme precision, firing shots that would have guaranteed death for all except soldiers with similar magically-endowed abilities.
Thor strode towards Ares, hammer swinging around his head and crackling with blue lightning. Ares brings his heavy calibre machine gun to bear of Thor, firing red bolts of energy instead of bullets, striking Thor in the chest and denting his armour. Thor stumbled backwards in surprise and pain, his eyes burning with intense anger. He lets go of his swinging hammer, which flies forward on the head of a lightning bolt, striking Ares in the chest. He flies 20 meters backwards, crashing into an empty shop front. Shelves of products lay scattered and broken around Ares’s unconscious form, Thor’s hammer lay heavily on his armour, and his head rested on a crushed can of beans. Thor did not see any humour in this as he picked his hammer up. He raised it above his head, preparing for a killing blow. Suddenly, Ares’s eyes shot open, burning red with anger. In a fluid motion, he raised his knees and kicked Thor full in the face with both legs, using the momentum to flip back onto his feet. He swung his shield round in a blinding movement, hitting Thor in the side of the head. Relentless, he lunged with his short hoplite sword at Thor’s head. He ducked, narrowly avoiding the point of the sword and pulled back his hammer in one movement, then drove it forward like a prize fighter’s punch into Ares’s gut, winding him. Ares narrowly avoids a Mjolnir to the head by a desperate dive to the side. He drops into a stance, his shield arm forward, sword arm held ready to stab, the edges of panic beginning to show on his face. Thor launches a bolt of lightning at Ares. Ares manages to pre-empt him, and raises his shield to deflect the bolt. Thor pulls his shield from his back, holding it in front of him as he advances, spinning his hammer above his head. Ares’s eyes dart around, looking for a way out, and spots a discarded artillery piece, just behind and to the left of Thor. Ares begins sprinting towards Thor, who assumes he is going to leap at him. Thor fires a bolt of lightning were he guesses Ares will be. He misses, when Ares jumps higher, and to the left, landing near the artillery piece and running to it. He picks it up, and swings it round towards Thor. He fires the loaded cannon. The cannon spits out an explosive shell, infused with Ares’s power. The blast sends Thor flying on a horizontal pillar of fire. Thor flies over the roofs of empty houses, collides with and shattering a church steeple, before coming to a stop under an ugly tower block. The tower block collapses on top of Thor, and Ares grins with vile joy. Ares turns his back on Thor, walking back to join the battle. From the rubble, there is a thunderclap and a blue flash of light. Mjlonir burst free of the rubble, cast by Thor’s last strength and flies towards Ares. The hammer collides with the back of Ares’s head, releasing all its godlike energy. An explosion of blue lightning bursts out, and Mjolnir momentarily resembled a Tesla Coil of epic proportions. The dense lightning obscured both Ares and Mjolnir, engulfing them in a ball of blue energy. Thick tendrils arcing off the ball, like a chaotic and magical fireworks display. The thunder subsided, and Ares’s steaming corpse dropped to the ground, like a puppet with its strings cut. Thor sighs with relief, before succumbing to his wounds, and dies amongst the rubble. Mjolnir shatters and breaks, and far of in Siberia, Odin’s heart misses a beat. The Ares Berserkers and the Red hammers continue to fight, and are, if anything, more powerful since the death of the entities empowering them. But the death of two men, even if they are gods, will never stop the tide of war. The gods have now tasted the bitterness of loss, and now, the hostility between the two pantheons can grow to rival the hostility between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. Zeus and Odin are no-longer fighting humans; they are now fighting each other.
The War between Gods has begun.
Part 11
The soviet sub glided silently through the freezing water of the Pacific, carrying a deadly payload of nuclear weapons. Most Submarines were grounded in their docks, because the pacific, and to a lesser extent, the Atlantic, was the battle ground of Njord and Poseidon. But this sub, was not staying home and safe, and was instead part of a very large gamble. The conflict between Njord and Poseidon was far too complex and alien for either side’s generals, or even most of the gods, to understand, but Njord had promised to divert Poseidon’s attention, and to give the sub a window of opportunity. The sub was currently over an Atlantic trench, and was hugging the seabed to avoid Poseidon’s forces that might blunder into it. But stray Kraken and sea demons were the least of their worries. Every man on board was resigned to death, and they were all ‘volunteers’ who would be rewarded by becoming ‘Heroes of Communism’ for their sacrifice. ICMB’s can be destroyed quickly and easily by both sides, but if a nuclear weapon reached its target without being detected, it would be unstoppable. So the plan was to have the sub surface just outside LA before detonating all its nuclear weapons, to destroy the city. They would be immediately noticed as soon as the surfaced, but by that point it would be too late to stop the explosion. All it cost was one sub, and they destroy one American city and any USNavy ships there. It was a trade off the Kremlin was willing to accept. The situation was as routine as it could be on a nuclear kamikaze ship, until something very distressing and confusing happened. Every clock stopped ticking, and the sailors on the ship felt as if the second they were in was stretching to infinity and nothingness and back again, never repeating and always in a loop of cause and effect through the ages. A great screeching, groaning sound was heard. Then the Sonar went insane, indicating a giant shape was reaching out of the trench towards them. The ship accelerated, but time stood still. The object, a hand, clamped around the sub, buckling the metal and setting off numerous warning lights. A voice boomed through the sub, a voice with no start or end, never beginning or ending.
It seemed to hold a weary contempt for everything as it spoke “I am Kronus, Lord of Time*. You are of no value or significance to time or the fates, your existence only clutters the seamless void of Time”
With that, the hand began to crush the sub, seemingly without even exerting itself. The captain of the ship stood bewildered next to the red button rigged to activate the subs nuclear payload. He pressed it, seeing no other option but to at least hurt this being that would try to kill him. The huge explosion billowed out from the sub, shredding the hand that held it. The Titan bellowed a time rending scream the echoed back and forth through eternity. Kronus fell back into the trench and then deeper, down into Tartarus. The Titan rising had been delayed, hut not stopped. And far of in Valhalla, Eric the Red and Sigmund the Dragon Slayer leave the golden halls at the front of band of heroes on a quest against the Frost Giants.
Part 12
I admit, the first part of this update is very detailed and long, and isn’t entirely necessary, I went on a bit of a ramble about schematics. The best part is the second part, with the suit in action for the first time. Anyway…
Deus ex Machina
15 January 1963
Since the Descent of The Gods, Earth, many questions had arisen. Most, were very mundane, like ‘why can’t you make it good weather all the time?’ and ‘Can you get my wife out of Hades?’ but some questions were more imaginative. Those questions got the government funding and became projects in R&D. One of these clandestine blank check projects was to play an important role in world war three, (or as it is more commonly known, The War of Immortals). That project, was Project Tin Can Man.
The scientist who came up with the idea had brother in the Army. His brother had seen Heracules fighting in a battle, and told his scientist brother why he thought they were so effective. Heracules were as tough as multiple layers of tank armour, something that a good artillery shot could deal with. And he was as fast as a jet fighter, again, something humans can shoot down. And finally, Heracules wielded the power of 3-4 artillery pieces, which, obviously, is less than the power human forces can bring to bear. He said, the defining factor, was Heracules, and Thor and Ares and Magni etc didn’t have unimaginable amounts of power, it was the combination of the power, resilience and speed together that made them so hard to kill. Without any one of those three factors, they would be worth surprisingly little.
Attacks against them must be lucky, because they are so fast, concentrated, because they are so tough, and in huge numbers, because the attackers can be dealt with very quickly. This means it is incredibly hard to kill them, as huge amounts of force must be constantly ready to be diverted to attack them, and must be ready to suffer huge casualties when they do, which is nearly impossible if you are facing a force that is both conventional forces and gods.
The solution, was either to outnumber the enemy nearly 10-1, something NATO could not do, or to have more gods than the enemy. They had to create something with the abilities of a god. With 1963 tech.
The scientist took this (lengthy) observation to Project Tin Can Man’s Think Tank. They decided to keep the weapon humanoid, modelling it after a knights armour. The main problems they had, were the motors on the joints were far, far too big and required huge amounts of fuel to be carried, and even then, there would not be nearly enough armour to survive the punishment a god would dish out.
They had reached a dead end, when they were contacted by Hephaestus, who had shown an interest in this novel idea. He showed them how to craft metals, at great cost, from alloys that were unimaginably rare, even for the Smith God, that could seemingly break the hack of physics. Even the most efficient motors they made were too big for the joints, and lost a large portion of their energy to friction. Motors made from these metals, would require only tiny amounts of input energy, and produce energy in amounts orders of magnitude greater than what was put in. The ingredients for this metal are, sadly, vanishingly rare, so worldwide free energy is not going to be the result of this amazing metal.
Fuel still needed to be carried, as energy created by Exotic Motors, as they are called, can’t be sent back in to the machine and multiplied again, meaning Exotic Motors are not a perpetual motion machine.
The motors on the joints are linked into the pilot’s brain, and are in effect, ‘possessed’ by the pilot, once again thanks to magic, causing them to move just as the pilot’s body would. They are rectangular, half an inch high, 2 inches wide, 4 inches long. Each one provides 750 horsepower, and an incredible headache for any scientist or engineer. The armour is only 2 inches thick, and even is less on the joints, but is another case of mechanical realities being solved by magical handwavium, because it is heavily enchanted, giving it the equivalent strength of a main battle tanks armour. The enchanted armour is another quality the suit has that is impractically expensive to add to conventional forces.
The weapons are a machine gun on the left arm, capable of firing heavy calibre explosive rounds and is primarily anti-infantry. On the right arm, is a specially made anti-armour rifle, that thanks to the magical nature of its bullets and its sheer power, can penetrate tank armour. This is primarily to use as a weapons against Asgardians. Finally, there is a nacelle of rockets on both shoulders, linked to the inbuilt radar system, which is linked to the pilots mind. Except from the rockets, all the ammunition in the suit, is just energy, and is provided by the enchanted nature of the weapons systems. For extra versatility, the bullets and rockets can be given various effects at the will of the pilot, ie smoke, explosive, phosphorous etc. Of course, with the power available to the pilot and the durability of the suit, it was argued that weapons were unnecessary, as opponents could just be punched to death.
The suit could run at remarkable speeds, but flight was always a requirement. This was achieved by having a heavily insulated (magic again) jet engine on the back of the suit, along with two smaller secondary engines for manoeuvring. The manoeuvring jets are suspended behind the body on two metre long struts, protruding from the shoulder blades, slightly upwards and at a right angle to each other.
The suit itself is called Prometheus. Its first battle will be as the new head of the Ares Berserkers, and it is hoped to turn the tide of their battle in Berlin against the Red Hammers.
Deus Ex Machina Part 2.
Jason Alywood was overwhelmed with two emotions. Pride, at being chosen to pilot the Prometheus, and fear, for the upcoming battle. He had served 3 years in the SAS, and had been selected for the joint British-French-American project because of his mastery of dogfights, fist fights, and gun fights.
The wind roared around his helmet as he stood looking through the bomb bay door of the b-52 Stratofortress. He could see muzzel flashes from the troops below. The normal NATO and WARPAC troops were in a stalemate in their dug in positions, waiting for the outcome of the battle between the post-human forces to determine their fate. Near the superhuman battleground, Jason could see a swirling mass of blood red clouds, marking the place were Thor and Ares had killed each other.
A light turned on in the bomb bay, indicating they were over the drop zone. Jason jumped out of the plane, falling like a stone. With a thought, he activated the jets on the suit, and began to pull up. In his mind, he could ‘see’ what the radar detected, and realised a Mig-29 was bearing down on him. Mentally he scolded himself, he had pulled up to early and had flown into the battle above Berlin. He was amazed that the battle for air superiority was still on-going, surely they would have run out of planes by know? He spun in the air as a burst of cannon fire pierced the sky around him, turning onto his back to face the fighter. He raised his right arm, firing the cannon on it at the plane’s cockpit. Even the best pilot under optimal circumstances is shooting in the dark when their shooting unguided rounds at a target moving as fast as they are. The bullet clipped the wing, but was still powerful enough to knock of the end of the wing, destabilising the fighter.
The MIG spun threw the air, out of control, before crashing into the ground below. That reminded Jason what he was really there for. He shot downwards, targeting and destroying another WARPAC jet with his shoulder rockets as an afterthought. He imagined he would use his jets to slow down enough that he would gently touch down amidst the battle. As he approached the ground, he realised that that wouldn’t be the case, not without mashing his organs with the g-force. He pulled upwards sharply, skimming just a few metres above the ground. Jason was flying past individual firefights, too fast to react before he was way past them, and realised that though he could fight jets and fight soldiers, he couldn’t do both at the same time. He looped upwards, slowing down as he did so, and turned his main engine of at the top of his arc. He glided down only with his secondary jets on, landing in the middle of a firefight with a jarring impact. He was in the middle of a street, with shops on either side. Behind him, were Ares Berserkers, in front were Red Hammers.
Three Hammers were in a shop directly in front of him, and were seconds away from opening up with a bazooka. Jason lunged forward and to the side, firing up his secondary jets as he did so. He could run 60mph in the suit, but he could hit 80 if he hit the thrusters as he ran. Jason smiled as the bazooka shot whizzed by his head, knowing that the soldiers that fired it were super-humanly good shots. He ducked as they opened up with everything they had, and swung his left arm around in an arc, the machine gun roaring as it spat out bullets, cutting down the Hammers in the shop.
Another group of Hammers took notice of this, and turned their attention away from the Berserkers they were engaging, and brought an anti-tank rifle round to aim at Jason. He saw this just in time on his radar, and sent a white phosphorous rocket out to meet his attackers. They were obliterated in the harsh white glare of the missile, burned to nothing in seconds. As he look at the building he had just shot, he realised that the steady pinging noise he could hear was small arms fire impacting against his armour. Strictly speaking, he could have ignored the anti-tank rifle. That though made him smile as he realised the extent of power his suit gave him.
Jason Alywood spent the next 4 hours in an exhausting killing spree, and as the sun began to set on the battlefield, the banshee cries of the Ares Berserkers were cries of triumphant victory. The battle was not yet over, but was clearly in favour of the NATO forces. Jason had achieved his objective, and jumped in the back of a helicopter, on a flight back to London, the closest place with a lab secret and advanced enough to house the Prometheus armour.
16 January 1963. Alywood was preparing to leave for America, where he would be assigned to a Marine Core Battlegroup in south East Asia, to lead the fight-back in Korea against the PLA. His Boeing had just taken off, and was climbing into the sky. 14 seconds into the flight, one of the engines failed, set on fire, and finally detached from the plane as it exploded. The plane began to circle round, trying to land, as fighters were scrambled to combat the unknown threat. Jason burst into the cockpit. He was about to ask what was happening, when the pilot, then the co-pilot, slumped backwards into their seats. There were two neat holes in the cockpit screen, that were letting out air fast. Alywood saw two arrows protruding from the heads of the pilots, and realised what caused the two holes in the screen. Impossible, he thought, but he turned his though back to the present, and saw that the plane was in free fall. He grabbed the controls. He was unfamiliar with commercial aircraft, but he didn’t have a choice, he couldn’t just fly off and abandon soldiers on the plane.
There was a huge booming sound behind Jason, and the plane began to break apart and fall. A flaming arrow had just hit the fuel tank. Insane, though Jason, as he fired his jets and flew away from the falling wreckage. He swore to kill his attacker, as he saw the burnt remains of the soldiers in the plane impact on the airport.
He noticed a flickering on his radar, and jerked to the side just as an arrow flew past were his head had been less than seconds ago. His instincts, honed by years of fighting in countless black-ops operations, told him that whatever these arrows are, they could kill him, Prometheus armour or not. Jason realised the source of the arrows was just on the horizon, on top of a tower block in London.
He saw a man wearing a cloak, with long hair, a tunic, a bow, and a quiver. He had been briefed on the potential threats he faced, and recognised this one as Vali, and archer of great skill and a warrior of renown too. Jason assumed he would be as strong as Thor, but was more intent on revenge for the deaths of the soldiers on the Boeing and its crew.
Jason came to a halt and hovered above and the tower block. People shouted and pointed on the streets below, and Jason realised he would have to draw Vali away from the city. Vali was roughly a hundred metres away, well in range of his cannon. Jason lined up the shot and fired, but Vali rolled to the left just before he fired. Jason shot towards Vali, who stood up in time to receive an uppercut that hit with the force of a truck. Vali was flung upwards and back, and Jason chased after him. Vali and Jason collided in mid-air, with Jason wrapping his arms around Vali’s midriff like a rugby player.
Jason angles downwards, letting go of Vali, who speeds towards the ground at speed approaching mach 1.5. The dust cleared, and Vali appeared, lying at the bottom of a huge crater. Jason was sure the battle was over, and that Vali had been struck down by the impact.
Vali’s eyes opened, glowing green. Jason remembered the briefing, Vali was a being born of a Giant and Odin, neither of whom were close to being weak, for the sole purpose of revenge against Hoor. More drastic action was needed.
An ear-splitting scream, which Jason assumed to be a jet fighter, echoed across the battleground. It came from strange flying creature. It had 2 black, scaled legs, and two arms that were long and stretched like a bats. The thick skin between the fingers in the wings was a deep red, mirroring the beast’s eyes. Its neck arched like a reptilian swan, if swans had sharp spines pocking out above the spine along the length of the neck. Its head was beaked, and was covered in spikes. In its mouth, there was a tiny ember burning, like the ignition spark on a flamethrower. Its tale swung wildly through the air, and had a large spiked club on the end of it. It landed, and Vali climbed onto it, sitting on a saddle strapped to the point where the neck and body meet. Jason had no idea how he was controlling the creature, and was more concerned with what the creature is.
It was a Dragon. A genuine, fire breathing, man eating, flying dragon. And it was being flown by a god who could score a headshot with a bow and arrow against a pilot on a moving jet plane from 3 miles away. For the first time since he put on the suit, Jason Alywood was mortally afraid.
Jason rushed forward towards the dragon, aiming to knock Vali off and kill him with another ground impact. The dragon sent a stream of fire at Jason, who dodged it by with a roll to the side. He could see the skin on the underside of the dragon neck was softer than the skin on the rest of its body. The dragon opened its mouth to fire again as Jason approached it. Jason slowed down, suffering huge amounts of G’s to pull a U-turn as it passed by the dragon, narrowly avoiding another blast of fire, matching its speed and hiding underneath its stomach.
To Vali and the dragon, it seemed like Jason had slowed down as he approached them, and was incinerated by the dragon as it passed by. Jason moved upwards and grabbed onto the Dragons underbelly, which continued to fly, oblivious to the danger. Jason started firing the gun on his left arm, drawing a circle on the beast’s underbelly. The dragon began to thrash and writhe about, but Jason held on. The dragon entered and spread out his wings to stop suddenly, in an attempt to throw him off. Jason finished making the hole, and ripped of the skin covering it. He could see coils of organs and what looked like intestines. Poking out from what looked like kidneys, was a sac like organ, that deflated every time dragon breathed fire. He waited a few seconds for it to inflate again, and targeted his armour piercing and high explosive rockets at it. Vali’s upper body then appeared round the side of the dragon. He had climbed round it to stop Jason himself. Jason saw this and gave a little wave, before he let go and fell away, as he fired the missiles at the gas sac. The dragon was replaced by a satisfying explosion, out of which flew a red notched arrow. Jason fired his jets, but the arrow was much faster than the others, and hit him below the collar bone, penetrating the armour. It went through his body, and would have come out the other end if it weren’t for the armour on the back. Jason slowed down as he came to the landing, but the poison in the arrow was burning through him, and he lost consciousness 30 metre up. His jets were directly linked to his mind, and had no safeguard installed, so the cut out when he fell unconscious and his body plummeted to the ground. News crews had been watching the battle, as it was only a mile away from London, and the crowds parted for the ambulance that rushed to the fallen warrior.
Update 13. The beginning of the end.
Since the beginning of the War of Immortals, events had been happening too fast for all the implications of The Descent to be realised. Every available mind in NATO and WARPAC was agonising over the new tactics arising from having gods on yours and the enemies side and how to fight a conventional war that would never end in MAD.
But, hidden in a nondescript building, a secret Swiss bank, inside Zurich, a lay inside a vault, writhing in pain as a droplets of poison fall onto him from the ceiling. The guards outside are baffled by the vault, and have been hearing a steady dripping from it since it appeared on 11am 24 may 1962. The thought of the vault carried a strange primal dread to the guards, and they did their best to avoid it, until very recently. 5 days ago, they vault had begun drawing them towards it, in their dreams, in their homes, and on the toilet. Driven by this urge, they began to ask questions and talk about the vault, and decided to investigate it. They found there was no space in the building for it, but that it was there anyway. The building now had an extra vault added to it, which by all rights is occupying the same space as a laundrette next door. Attempts to measure the inside of the building proved futile, as the numbers on the tape measure seemed to blur, and the tape itself seemed to stretch and bend into the horizon as they watched it.
So, having exhausting all other options, the guards decide to disobey the rule about never opening a client’s vault, and on the 24 of January, 1963, they found the combination in their managers office, and approached the vault.
Three guards stood clustered around the vault, as the forth turned the mechanism back and forth. The fourth guard reached the end of the sequence, and there was a subtle ‘click’ noise that echoed in the tense silence of the corridor. Three seconds passed, none of the guards wanting to turn the wheel, mentally, it was a step to far, even if they had already broken the law, but also, they were afraid of what was inside the vault more than what awaited them inside a prison cell. The guard who had unlocked the vault reached forward tentatively, like a man putting his hand into a lions jaw. The thought of the vault had resounded in their nightmares since they first saw it, but what it contained was far worse than a nightmare. His hand touched the wheel. There was an imperceptible change in the air, like something breaking, something crucial. The dripping had stopped. The wheel began to turn, incredibly slowly, then faster, until it was a blur. There was a screeching noise of metal being torn, and the wheel shot away from the vault, smashing into the wall opposite. A man was hunched at the far end of the vault, standing amidst piles of fool’s gold and holding what seemed to be a dead snake. Around his feet there was a pile of broken chains.
His eyes flashed green, blinding the guards for an instant. Their vision cleared and he was gone. They turned to look at each other, frozen in fear at what they saw. Each individual guard saw those around him as various combinations of monsters, criminals and serial killers, and had an incredible urge to strike out and kill the monsters around him in self-defence. The guard in the centre attacked the guard in the middle of the circle, grabbing his neck and desperately punching him. They feel to the flaw, both clawing and bashing in fear of the perceived monster in front of them. The guard nearest the end of the corridor tried to make a run for it, but the other guard cut him down with his gun, thinking he was charging at him, before killing the others on the floor. He ran out, stopping to kill the slathering creature he saw in the manager’s room. The man who had resided in the vault was Loki, god of tricks, lies and illusions. And he was loose on Zurich.
It didn’t matter that Zurich wasn’t NATO or WARPAC, within minutes of Zurich descending into chaos, messages had been sent to both Asgard and Olympus, and within minutes, Hypnos, the Olympian god of sleep, Morpheus, the god of dreams, and from Asgard, Niorun, goddess of dreams. The three Hypnos puts Zurich to sleep, while Niorun and Morpheus cure their madness in their dreams. But it was too late for over 50,000 people.
A temporary truce is called between Asgard and NATO, Asgard and Olympus, and between Olympus and WARPAC, to allow the gods, who have a far greater resistance to Loki’s abilities than humans, to hunt him down. The war rages on between NATO and WARPAC, and soon, the battle will be re-joined by the gods. WARPAC still has the conventional advantage, though they have suffered more casualties from the Olympians than NATO has from Asgard. And of course, Jason Alywood and the Prometheus armour is not included in the ceasefire. Heidmall and Artemis are dispatched to hunt Loki. The first steps towards Ragnorak have been taken…
Update 14.
The ground rushed past Loki, all the details lost in a blur of movement and speed. His wings beat against the air, and his small, dark, crow eyes darted around, searching for any sign of his pursuers. On the horizon, Loki saw two chariots, one steel and gold, and made with fine metal work, the other made from steel and wood, and inlaid with intricate carvings. A winged horse pulled the gold chariot and its rider, Heracules. The other was ridden by Heidmall, and was pulled by a jet black horse with burning feet and glaring eyes. The two gods saw Loki, not fooled by his disguise as a crow. He looked like a crow, but… shifty.
The warriors spilt up, flanking Loki, Hiedmall on the left, Heracules on the right. Heidmall notched an arrow to his bow, and Heracules drew back his bow, drew aim on Loki, and fired. Loki dodged downwards, Hiedmall anticipated this, and fired his arrow below Loki, who flew into it. The arrow lodged in Loki’s wing, who writhed about in the air trying to get it loose. Loki’s beak opened and screamed, a scream more befitting of a larger creature, and began to glow.
Loki’s scream continued and the glow grew to hide him entirely. Recognition darted on the edge of Hiedmall’s mind, he was sure he knew what that scream, no, that roar, was. His eyes widened and he yelled across to Heracules: “Heracules be warned! Loki is trying to take the form of a Dragon!”
Heracules opened his mouth to reply, but was silenced when a spiked dragon tail swung towards his head, and he was forced to duck. Heracules popped up like a jack-in-the-box as the tail passed over his head, and slashed it with his sword. The light faded, and the full body of the Dragon was revealed. Both had heard stories of Vali’s fight with Jason Alywood, but the Dragon in front of them was much bigger than the one in Jason’s battle. It had the same bat-like wings, scaled swan neck and 4 legs, but was much, much bigger, the size of a large submarine at least, and had two twisted goats horns. Hiedmall drew his bow, an oak longbow, and fired at the dragons head. The arrow imbedded itself in the scales above Loki’s eye, but didn’t draw blood. A deep, booming sound resounded across the sky, emanating from a ship newly stationed on the Potomac River. Three shells shot by, narrowly missing Loki. While he was distracted, Hiedmall pulled a spear of his back, manoeuvred his chariot below Loki and threw the spear at his soft belly. It struck deep, drawing a trail of blood that was whipped away by the wind as it appeared. It wasn’t much, but it was a start. Loki swooped down towards Hiedmall, and swatted at him with a huge clawed foot. Heidmall jumped as the foot smashed the chariot into kindling, wrapping his arms around the leg, and held on for his life. The fire-footed horse turned around and kicked out at the dragons face, jerking it violently backwards, before fleeing a pillar of fire that burst from Loki’s mouth. Loki swung his head around, an unbroken stream of fire waving through the sky like a crimson ribbon. Heracules swooped down, dodging the stream of fire and stuck his sword up, dragging it across Loki’s under belly as he passed. Another boom noise echoed as the ship down on Potomac River fired. Two shells missed, but the third struck home, catching Loki next to his left wing stem. His left wing became sluggish, and he began to fall. Heracules flew past Hiedmall, who grabbed on to the chariot as he went past. Heidmall swung into the chariot and started firing arrow after arrow in quick succession at Loki, aiming at the wing stems. The city of Washington DC expanded to fill the land below them, and people ran and screamed, pointing at the figures in the sky.
Loki began to glow again, and started to shrink. 20 metres above the white house, the light cleared, revealing the Loki, flailing through the air. He smashed into the white house, landing somewhere near the oval office. Heracules landed in the hole created by Loki’s impact, and he and Hiedmall dismounted, racing off after him. Three secret service guards were trying to pull Kennedy from a pile of rubble, when Loki reached them. Loki picked up the closest agent and threw him at the others, before pulling Kennedy from the wreckage. Loki placed his hand on Kennedy’s forehead, and entered his mind. He raced through his memories, and found what he was searching for.
He saw a day when Kennedy was taking a tour of a new type of nuclear silo, and was told by a technician the location of other similar facilities. Loki released him, and let him fall to the floor. Loki could sense his children, Hel, Fenrir and Jormungandr. He reached down and picked up a suit case from a crushed military aide, and opened it. Inside, was a small console with an antenna protruding from it. He picked up a black book from the case and opened it. It listed the exact locations of the sites Kennedy had known. Loki selected the silos he knew, he heard Hiedmall and Heracules approaching, and chose three targets. The target were inside the silos themselves, causing them to explode inside them. Loki channelled that explosions through his link to his children to their prisons. The explosions, milliseconds after coming into existence, disappeared, leaving the silos unharmed.
One appeared and became a tiny artificial sun inside the San Andreas Fault in California, in the Carrizo Plane. The fireball cooled and died unnaturally quickly, falling into the fault. Clawed hands appeared over the side of the fault, pulling demonic forms behind them. Hel’s horde was free, underneath a sky of fire and radioactivity.
One appeared on top the Icelandic Glacier Snaefellsjokull. The incredible heat and pressure melted the ice, and a huge form moved, freed from his icy prison. Jormingandr writhes threw the air and water, spraying venomous clouds from his maw. His body was the length of several oil tankers, and was covered in jagged spikes, dripping foul poison into the waters.
The final bomb appeared outside Asgard, and was sucked down into the ground as it exploded, like a fiery drill. From the smoking crater burst Fenrir, shattered manacles around his feet, trailing broken chains.
Seconds later, Heracules burst into the room. Loki turned to face them, instead meeting the fist of Heracules. Blood and gristle fell to the floor. Stunned, Loki staggered backwards. Heracules advanced, raining blow after blown upon Loki. He was going to enjoy this. One punch knocked multiple teeth out of Loki’s mouth, cutting cheek flesh and Lip as well. Another punch caved in one side of Loki’s skull. Brain and skull shards covered Heracules’ hand. Both of Heracules’ hands came down with a crushing grip on Loki’s shoulders. Pulling Loki towards him Heracules’ devastating knee blow shattered Loki’s chest, ribs had pierced and sliced Loki’s muscle, skin and sinew alike. Multiple organs were also on display. Seizing Loki’s face Heracules hefted him into the air, then, bought him crashing back down. In the small crater caused by this act of Herculean violence lay Loki, his face a bloody pulp and his body a horrific mess. Heidmall now entered the room, hefting his war axe above his head, Heracules stepped aside, allowing Heidmall to bring his axe cleaving down, carving Loki clean in half in a violent splash of sanguine life essence.
Update 15. The Death of Los Angeles.
Carrizo Plain. 8pm may 25 1963
A ragged column of creatures extended like a vile snake across the Carrizo Plain. They continued to pour from the fault line in their hundreds, while those at the front surged forward, devouring everything in their path. Their path led to Los Angeles.
Outskirts of Los Angeles. 9am May 26 1963
2 million and half people are running. The streets were gridlocked with cars, and have been since reports of a swarm of creatures moving towards the city 13 hours ago. Large amounts of people, over half the city’s population, are still trapped inside. The richest were in the suburbs and have already left, but the majority of the population of the poorer areas like Compton and Watts county are stuck inside.
At the head of the army lope great wolves with jagged teeth and shaggy coats, the size of a bear and as powerful as one two. Above them fly creatures with the torso, wings and head of a bat, two hooked arms covered in matted black fur, shrivelled, tiny legs ending in large talons and a mouth that spews clouds of venomous acidic gas. Behind them, huge beasts like mammoths with a bears head charge forward. Finally, behind them, are the majority of the creatures.
They have human bodies, covered in blood red skin, have twisted horns on their heads and claws on their hands. They run twice as fast as a sprinting human and never rest. Their skin is 100 degrees farenhiet, and their blood burns upon contact with oxygen. Theirs eyes are hollow, with only black fire in their place. And still more of every demon in Hel’s army continues to surge forth from the fault, like water from a broken dam.
Watts County. Los Angeles 1pm May 26 1963
Burbank lay in flames. The creatures had pushed through it, killing hundreds and burning everything. They have trampled a path through it, smashing the rubble flat with the impacts of thousands of feet. They are advancing towards Watts county, the nearest, biggest concentration of life. The women and children and elderly are being evacuated, but they are not fast enough. The men are staying behind, organised and armed in gangs, gangs that were the downfall of Watts will now be the saviour of it children at the expense of its men.
Watts County. Los Angeles 1:45pm May 26 1963.
The Army knows that if the demons can’t be stalled now, there will be no stopping them before they have destroyed Los Angeles and killed thousands. Troops are pouring in to the city and already the Air force fights for the air while artillery bombards the demons. But they need somewhere to anchor their position on, and they need more men. They have enough, but it is taking far too long to move them in while the population evacuates. The small groups of soldiers will be swept away without a pause in the ceaseless advance of the monsters. But an area with large numbers of trained and organised fighters and huge amounts of buildings to shelter in already exists. Watts County.
Watts County. Los Angeles 2:05pm May 26 1963.
Reinforcements pour into Watts, from gangs following the example of the Watts gangs, the LAPD, the first of the troops to have walked through the crowds to reach it, and large quantities of Special Forces, flown in by helicopter. Gang feuds, and hate of police/army/gang members has been put aside for the city.
Watts County. Los Angeles 2:17pm May 26 1963.
Jim Frye, age 23, was for once, happy to be in school. Mainly because inner city schools have thick concrete walls, and he was fighting for his life. He could see everything north of Watts burning from his position on the school roof. Next to him was a two other guys from his gang, and a fire team of marines that had been moved in by chopper.
Suddenly, a building across the street collapsed into a pile of rubble, replaced with a hulking mammoth-bear. The creature roared, spraying phlegm mixed with blood across the building. The Marines opened up, firing at its body.
Jim brought his pistol round and fired at the beast. Two shots slammed into its lower jaw, the third into its nose. Chunks of bone flew off the creature, but this only made it madder. It charged towards him, smashing through a block of concrete classroom without pausing.
Jim kept firing at its head, causing its steps to become jerky and un-coordinated. Jim popped in a new clip, and started firing again. He looked forward, and saw it was much closer. Too close.
Jim kept firing, fear freezing his legs, but not his hands. The beast was 3 metres from Jim, when he was thrown sideways, and landed hard on the ground. The beast smashed into the main body of the building, collapsing in the rubble. The weight on Jims chest disappeared, and hands gripped him, pulling him to his feet.
“What happened?”
One of the Marine spoke up. “I tackled you. Here’s a nade. We got to kill it before it gets up.” He said, before running over to the crater with the rest of his fire team.
Jim looked at the grenade in his hand, pulled of the pin and lobbed it at the crater. The beast stirred and shifted, waking from it head shot and concrete wall induced sleep. The Marine and the gangsters ducked behind a large shard of rubble, as a string of small powerful explosions went of around the monster. Three of the soldiers ran over to the edge of the building, and reassumed their lookout posts, while the others and the gangsters went to admire their handiwork. The creature lay still, huge raw chunks missing from it body. Its is smashed up, its front right leg lay a few metres away, and its organs spilled out across the ground.
“Nasty” Said one of the gangsters.
“No shit.” Spat the Marine who had tackled Jim
“GET OVER HERE, THE LITTLE DEMONS ARE ATTACKING” Yelled one of the Marines watching the street.
The creatures look like humans, but with blood red skin, sharp claws, sharp fangs, and in most cases, strips of blood and gore hanging down from their jaws. There were 13, running down the street towards them.
The men lined up along the roof, and started firing at the mass of creatures surging towards them. The creatures took 3-4 shots to down, and ran like a car. They kept dying, but the swarm seemed to be endless. They were seconds from reaching the walls, and the Marine were throwing the last of their grenades. Pain shot through Jim’s ankle, as a demonic hand grabbed him. It burned like fire, and searing lances of pain blazed up and down his leg. Jim points his gun downwards, screaming a banshee howl as he empties the last three bullets in the clip into the demons face, causing it to into the crowd of demons below.
To his left, one of the Marines gave a gleeful cry, as he stabbed a demon through the eye with his combat knife, and kicked the body off the knife and down the wall. To his right, another marine screamed in pain as he was pulled down and devoured, prompting the men to step back from the edge, as he pulled the pins on all his remaining grenades. The foundation of the wall rocked slightly with the impact, and the attack died down. There were only 5 demons left, 3 marines and 3 gangsters. The men attacked with renewed vigour, killing 4 with their knifes and guns, and crushing the last under a piece of rubble. A group of soldiers came running round the corner to help them, just as two Dire Wolves leapt onto the roof of a nearby flat. Jim looked up, and saw two figures moving fast in the sky, but thought nothing of it. After all, he had bigger problems right now…
Los Angeles 2:15pm Above LA.
Hel, the ruler of Niflheim, has many servants. The greatest and most powerful of those, is the Grey Demon (Take over Josh) (Me again)
The Demon surveyed the city below, from the burning wreckage, to the screaming, running masses and the desperate holding action in Watts. The best way to speed up the destruction and devouring of the city is to deploy the Deepest Monstrosities in the area called Watts, to overcome the human defences before a proper line can be established. The demon turned around to survey Midgard; it is still 10 hours until midnight and the 5 minute window that in which the Hel gate can be used to pass from Midgard to Niflhiem instead of the other way around.
Jason Alywood had been deployed to fight the Demon army, and had spotted a creature of unearthly origin above the city. He radioed in for permission to engage, got it, and charged.
The Demons vision exploded with black and red spots as a sledgehammer impact crashed into his skull. The ground and sky span round and the Grey Demon flailed about, trying to find purchase on his attackers metal skin. A huge thunderclap sounded out, as they passed the sound barrier, Jason arched downwards and let go, repeating the technique he had used against Vali mere days ago. The Demon rushed towards the ground, but began slowing down, before coming to a complete stop. Ominously, he began to move upwards towards Jason.
Jason was momentarily thrown by the Demons blatant superiority to Vali, an opponent he had barely overcome. But that was only for a second, before his training kicked in. Jason started firing his cannon and machine gun and the Demon, imbedding white chunks of phosphorous in its skin with every hit. White hot points of fire streaking into it did not slow it down, and it kept climbing towards him. Jason fired his missiles at the speeding creature, which dodged and weaved, avoiding most of them but staggering in the when two hit its body. Jason rushed downwards towards it, intending to use his height advantage to drive it into the ground. Seconds from impact, the creature reached out with its arm, and tendrils of grey shadow reached out toward Jason.
Jason dodged instinctively as the tendrils swept through the air he was seconds before. Jason flew backwards, facing the Demon and firing his cannon into it. The creature writhed in the air, shooting tendril out in all directions until it was at the centre of a swirling Maelstrom of ethereal shadows. Jason circled it, darting back and forth, taking advantage of the sluggish tentacles to shoot his cannon at the form in the centre.
The Grey Demon let loose a scream of rage and frustration, and charged towards Jason, its tentacles converging to for a solid wall of shadowy knife points. Jason anticipated this, and fires all his jets sideways, performing an Ariel sidestep against his hate blinded foe. He slams into the back of the abomination, using its own force to drive it downwards at mach 2. He changes course to avoid crashing into the city, and to avoid the dog fight between the Demonic Dragons and the Air force. He tries to angle towards the column of monsters leading to the city, but is forced to go further and further forward to avoid attacks by dragon. He spots an area where the swarms of bat like creatures and dragons do not cover, and flies towards it, aiming further downwards and tightening his hold on the Grey Demon. He looks at his landing sight, and realises it is the portal. It resembles a thin film of grey and purple energy swirling across the fault line.
Jason keeps flying downwards, his decision to hit the portal reinforced by the Demons increasingly frantic efforts to get free.
At the last possible second, he let go of the demon, which tried to slow itself down, but even its powers could not slow from Mach 3 to 0mph in 7 seconds. Jason climbed sharply upwards, flying away along the ground. The Demon hit the portal.
A sound like the rending of space itself emanated from the portal, as the energy that had been used to create the portal was released. The nuclear explosion blossomed outwards along the ground, the pressure wave flying across the earth like a wall of death. Jason turned his head, and stared in horror. A nuclear explosion was not the intended consequence of smashing the demon.
Jason’s skin began to itch and burn, as the pressure wave hit. Thankfully it was not travelling much fast than him, so he managed to keep control of his flight. Then a second wave hit, caused by the collapse of the portal, and Jason was flung forward at incredible speeds like a piece of paper in a tornado. He saw the ground rushing up at him, and then his vision died.
NBC news.
“…died of radiation poisoning, but the suit is undamaged, and shows no signs of being irradiated, meaning it can still be worn and used. The President has released an official statement announcing that the successor to Jason Alywood will be revealed tomorrow. There will also be a moment of silence during the suit’s passing over ceremony, in honour of this hero of Democracy.
The portal on the San Andreas Fault line has been closed, but the huge numbers of demonic creatures that came through the portal means that the fate of LA and the surrounding area still hangs in the balance. It is still unknown how severely pulling soldiers back from Europe to destroy the demons will affect the war, but military experts are cautiously optimistic, and say that they have enough strategic breathing room after a large Russian force was encircled and destroyed near Antwerp.”
“In other news, there have been numerous reports of ships being destroyed near Marseille. The NATO attack forces are making good progress, and have the Russians on the back foot, and are nearing Berlin. Outside of Germany, the front has mostly stabilised, but there have been reports of a massive Russian build up near…”
Update 16. The long night of Marseille
May 28 Marseille 1pm.
The Mediterranean was a clear blue, a calm expanse of water stretching across the horizon. Yachts and ferries cruised serenely across the water, gliding like dancers on a ballroom floor. The café’s and bars in the Old Port looked out across the ocean, flanked by two huge monoliths of stone and metal, Fort St Nicholas and Fort St Jean. The streets were filled with activity as 700,000 people went about their business.
The cruise ship ‘Any Port’ could see Marseille sprawling across the horizon, slowly growing bigger as it approached. As far as the passengers were concerned, all was well. Soon, they would dock at Marseille, spend a day and a night admiring the city, before getting back on the ship to head to Rome, and after that, the rest of the Med. But on the bridge, the crew was panicking. 40 seconds ago, they had received a warning from a NATO sub stationed in the port. It had detected a huge signature during a test of its sonar. The shape seemed to be sliding slowly across the sea bed towards the city. Originally the crew had thought that it was a malfunction, but after the shape twitched towards them and the sub violently rocked from the wave that a twitch had caused, the captain decided to send out a warning to surrounding vessels, just in case.
Half way through the warning, a huge crash followed by screaming and a rushing sound was heard in the sub, which was very shortly replaced with silence as the message cut out. Seconds later, the ship rocked back and forth, which the crew handwaved away by saying it was ‘the engine changing gear’ which luckily the passenger believed. It also helped that the crew announced that all drinks were free in the bar to distract them.
Despite the passengers being lulled into blissful ignorance and drunkenness, the Any Port began to make for the port at full speed. The water around the Any Port began to turn dark, as though they were being poisoned. The ship began to rock side to side as huge waves slammed into it from below.
Suddenly, all 81000 tons of the Any Port was thrown upward into the sky, held aloft by a giant pair of jaws. The jaws were followed out of the water by a huge, long body covered in glistening scales. Time seemed to stand still as it arced out of the water, before slamming the ship downwards into the water, with enough force to pulverise the ship into a fine powder. The huge impact threw up a wall of water, which rushed towards the city, turning ships into rubble and pulverising the seafront.
10,000 dead.
The size of the creature was insane. Biologically impossible. It had only shown a small part of its body, and any one with half a brain could see that it was linked to the Descent. This was definitely not a natural creature. Not when its full length was 6570 metres, the equivalent of 15 oil tankers back to back.
Across Europe, spare jet fighters were scrambled, and the Mediterranean fleet changed course to fight the creature. But Marseille was defenceless.
The creature reared its head above the thrashing waters. The sky turned dark at is spewed dark clouds of poison across the sky, which sunk to the ground, blanketing the waters in a thick poisonous fog, which ponderously rolled towards the city, like a curtain of death.
The cloud of poison hit the city, enveloping the rubble left by the wave. Firemen, Police, Soldiers and Paramedics, along with countless civilians were shrouded by the clouds as they tried to pull people from the wreckage.
15,000.
Marseille 1:15pm
Jorgmandr surged through the water, covering the distance between him and the city in seconds. At this point in time, the tallest skyscraper in the world was the Empire state building, at 381 metres. Jorgmandr reared its head, lifting its body out of the water. The bottom section of his snake-like body coiled up on the see flaw, and his body sawed 4000 metres above the water, dwarfing anything humanity could build.
The city froze, staring at this Lovecraftian monolith in the sky in front of them. A low, creaking sound, echoes across the city. It pulls its head backwards, like a cobra waiting to strike. Its head shot forward at 1.5 mach, a feat seemingly impossible for a creature of its (already impossible) size. People ran and screamed in absolute terror, as the moment of impact rapidly approached.
Jorgmandr slammed its armoured head into Fort St Nicholas. The shockwave spread out from the fort, carrying a wall of rubble in front of it, crushing everything it encountered.
300,500.
The shockwave began to slow down, but only after effecting 70% of Marseille, and destroying everything and everyone in 40% of the affected area.
Jorgmandr pulled its head out of the impact crater, poking its head out of the mushroom cloud the impact had thrown up. It reared up again, ready to deliver another devastating blow, but it stopped. It heard something, something besides screaming and burning. A high, loud screech. Getting louder every second.
Ideological hate could only go so far. Outside Archangelsk, the WARPAC was suffering a different Descent induced problem, as an army of Frost Giants bore down upon them. Both sides had called a temporary ceasefire and pledged to help each other with their immortal problems.
Jorgmandr found the source of the screeching. A Flight of 5 Mig-29’s shot past him, leaving a rash a of explosions across the back of his neck. Jorgmandr turned its head after the fighters, as a group of F105 Thunder Chiefs blasted the same spot of Mig’s had. Obviously, intelligence was not Jorgmandr’s strong point, as he once again tried to chase after the fighters, ignoring the new threat. Jorgmandr reared its head back, ready to lunge at the next target. If another group of jets attacked him from the front, they would be hit by a mach 1.5 skyscraper of scales and evil. But the jets were not as stupid as Jorgmandr, and the next assault came followed the same pattern. Jorgmandr glared at the Mig’s and Tigers as they reached the horizon. The Mig’s disappeared behind the horizon, and popped back into view, facing the Jorgmandr. 7 French Dassault III’s unleashed their rockets and cannons with a vengeance. Jorgamndr turned its head around, exposing the back of its neck to the Mig’s to attack the Mirages. But 6 of them were already far out of its reach. One, however, was from Marseille. He broke from the plan of attack. Instead of flying away to allow the Mig to repeat their attack and to then fly away, leaving the target open for the F105’s etc, the Mirage, callsign Lance 5, climbed upwards, then dived towards Jorgmandr. Jorgmandr blasted a cloud of poison from his jaw, as he lunged upwards to meet Lance 5. They met in mid-air, and Lance 5 disappeared into Jorgmandr’s mouth. Lance 5 had not fired all his rockets, and shot everything he had left into Jorgamandr crashed into the inside of its cavernous throat. The explosion caused by the rockets and the plane crash had a lot more effect than expected. Instead of dealing another small jab to Jorgmandr’s defences, the explosion ignited the poison. Explosions rippled through Jorgmandr’s throat and into the organ that created the poison. Jorgmandr flopped down to the sea, creating a huge tidal wave that swamped the rubble once known as Marsielle.
689,450.
No one celebrated. They waited.
The water rippled, then exploded outwards, as Jorgmandr burst out of the water, bleeding blood and wisps of gas from a point halfway down his body, presumably were his poison organ is, or was, located.
But Jorgmandr was still alive. It was the equivalent of a prize fighter being stabbed in the shoulder. He might die later, but he can still fight.
An group of RN frigates had arrived at the battle; the HMS Leander, HMS Ajax, HMS Dido, and the HMS Penelope. Each Frigate had 2 Seacat Surface to Air missile, 2 240mm guns, and two torpedo tubes. They all opened fire, tearing gashes in Jorgmandr’s wound. Jorgmandr thrashed around, sending out waves that rocked the frigates, but did not tip them. Jets swarmed around Jorgamdr’s head, coming from every air field in every country nearby, in a desperate attempt to stop Jorgmandr. Israeli Mirage IIIc’s, British Electric Lightnings, American F105 Thunder Chiefs and F106 Delta Dart, Soviet Mig-29’s, French Mirages and countless others.
Jorgmandr’s tail burst out of the water next to the Dido, which fired its anti-sub torpedoes at it, as it smashed down, chopping the Dido down the middle. The Frigates spread out but continue firing, and let lose their anti-sub torpedos, most of which hit at the submerged part of his wound, causing Jorgmandr to visibly writhe in pain.
The Leander moves to pick up the floating survivors of the Dido, and the Ajax and Penelope move between Jormandr and Leander. Jorgmandr’s tail slides across the water in an attempt to grab and eat the Leander, but the Ajax rammed into it at full speed, leaving a deep gash. The Penelope then attacked the on other side of the tail, leaving another gash, and nearly severing the thin tail segment from the body.
The tail flinched away into the air, leaving the Frigates surprisingly unharmed. As the tail thrashed in the air, a UH-1D flew past, blasting its payload into the exposed bone in the tail wound. The end part of Jorgmandr’s tail broke of and fell into the water.
The tail segment is much thinner than the rest of Jorgmandr’s body, but it is still the size of a long freight train. And it landed on the Ajax, crushing it. The order went out for the Frigates to retreat, which, after the survivors of the Ajax were picked up by the Penelope, was quickly obeyed.
At this point, it was revealed that Jorgmandr had significant healing capabilities, as, still bleeding from his tail and chest, and countless other smaller one inflicted by the fighter jets, he began to breathe the noxious gas again.
As the familiar rushing sound that forewarned Jorgmandr’s gas attack echoed across the battle field, there was a scraping, rasping noise. Jorgmandr was scraping his teeth together to make sparks.
Jorgmandr let loose a cloud of gas, that ignited into a huge cloud of fire as it left his mouth. A swathe of fighter jets were caught in the cloud and incinerated.
The jets pulled of and fled. The generals had realised now, that if it could kill jets and ships that quickly, there was no way they would be able to kill it before it killed them, even more so, as Jorgmandr had demonstrated a frightening healing capability.
The order was given.
An American sub in the Mediterranean loaded a single missile into a torpedo tube. The order was checked and re-checked. The captain took a key off a chain around his neck. The second in command opened a plastic guard over the key hole. The key was placed in its position. The weapon officer inputted the co-ordinates. The orders were checked a final time. The key was turned.
The missile streaked away from the sub, riding atop a pillar of fire towards its target. Jorgmandr turned his head, sniffing for another target, believing he had won the battle. His head turned towards Rome, but a solitary roaring sound distracted him. The missile collided with his head, the head that could survive a Mach 1.5 impact into a city and being repeatedly shot by jets and Frigates. The nuclear hell fire expanded into a ball of red death, covering his upper body and head in shrouds of fiery energy.
Slowly the flames subsided. But Jorgmandr still stood. The scales near the centre of the blast were red and raw, and his skull was visible in many places. His eyes were dead and shrivelled, and his skin was covered in hideous burn. But still he moved towards Rome. There was no hesitation. Silo’s across Europe opened up, and five nuclear Warheads streaked towards Jorgmandr. When the fires died, there was only a blackened skeleton, which sunk to the ocean floor.
Marseille was dead, along with dozens of pilots and sailors. Rome would lose 20% of its population when the atomic cloud hovered over it, and the cloud would then be pulled by the winds into Istanbul and then finally into the Black Sea. The Mediterranean would be sterile for years to come, as would the Black Sea. And the question everybody asked was not why, or how, but where? Where were the Olympians and Asgardians?
17 (Overview Update)
Imagine, the conflicts and tension caused by the question of which, if any, gods or god was real? Religious wars, Jihad, general hate and prejudice. No imagine if the question was not which are real, but what to do now 2 of the most ancient and least believed in pantheons are back and are?
And the Descent did not, by any means replace religion with something new. True, most religions have taken a hit. Most of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, have had a roughly 20% fall in believers. There are less Hindus, but the numbers of Sikhs stayed the same, thanks to their belief that all religions are different paths to truth. The same holds true for Buddhists, who are now, along with Sikhs, seen as ‘neutral’ as they can co-exist with chariot-riding thunderbolt-throwing deities.
Unlike the majority of Christianity, and indeed, the Abrahamic religions as a whole, Catholicism had grown significantly since the events May 28 1963. Public opinion had slowly been turning in favour of the Olympians since the Descent, and acts of violence against Fawns and their businesses in had mostly died down. But after casualties began to mount on both sides as the war escalated, many, especially those who had lost a loved one in the fighting, began to blame the Olympians for the war. After all, without them and the Asgardians, MAD would still be in place, and war would have been impossible.
The Pope, whether he meant to or not, harnessed all those underlying emotions of inferiority and hate. The Pope turned Catholicism from a religion, into a figure head of hate against the Olympians. It is possible, that if he had made his declaration in different circumstances, it would not have created a self-sustaining wildfire of hate. But what-ifs and maybes are insubstantial, because as the rubble of Marseille burned, and as thousands were struck down by a cloud of radiation in Rome, the Pope lay on his bed, dying from radiation poisoning, he spoke.
On his death bed, he said “700,000 people, innocent men, women and children have been slaughtered in Marseille, day by day more die on the front line, and in the streets around me, people fall to the pavement, victims of an invisible poison. And what do we do to stop this? We have done nothing. We have allied ourselves with the Demons who reside in hedonistic luxury in Olympus while our cities burn and our men fight and die. Our enemies our not the soviets, are enemies are those who proclaimed themselves our allies. They forced as into a war we neither wanted, nor needed. They unleashed beasts onto us that have destroyed two cities and yet we give them land to live on and let them build their homes in our cities! I say this is the time to cast them out! Zeus is the violent, lustful young man and Odin is the scheming, oppressive lord in Satan’s mind. I call a new war against the Olympians and Asgardians, a war that will unite humanity against satan, before he manipulates us into destroying ourselves with this brutal war! I call a crusade to rid all peoples of humanity of this demonic scourge!”
As usual in this kind of situation (barring the Gods) the loudest minority became the face of the moderate majority. The fact that most Catholics did not engage in or harbour any thoughts of violence against the various OEMs (Olympian Ethnic Minorities) was forgotten by most media, and heralded a new era of stereotypes for Catholics. But the discrimination suffered by the majority of Catholics is trivial compared to the crimes committed by the extremist minority. All across the (free) world, there were attacks against fawns, the non-evil centaurs, tribes of human-like nature spirits, nymphs and any other OEM that chose to live in cities. Businesses were torched, houses were trashed, people were murdered, and, inexplicable, Protestant/Catholic violence in Ireland broke again. After the infamous (media named) ‘Goat Plaza’ massacre, where a square in Rome primarily occupied by fawn owned shops, was attacked by an armed mob. 13 Fawns were killed, 34 were injured, one human died while helping them to escape, and one rioter died when he was kicked in the head by a fawn. There were bright spots in the riots, as individuals throughout society sheltered people from the rioters, even as they spread across the globe. Originally, the riots began in Rome, and were fuelled by the Popes death-bed announcement, but very soon, anywhere with a xenophobia, or pent up hate for the OEM’s and sympathisers saw riots on their streets. The riots lasted from 3rd June to 19th June 1963. By the end of the riots, which spread from Rome to Naples and Venice, then to every city in France (except, and because of, Marseille), London, Edinburgh, all of the cities in the East and West coast of America and Tokyo in Japan, over 348 OEM’s were dead, along with 17 police officers, two national guardsmen and 24 protesters. Rome was the first and last city to riot, but France, for obvious reasons, was also hit very hard by the riots. But the June riots were definitely not the only, or most important social effects of the Descent.
The Amazon rainforest is significantly larger than most experts would suggest, as most companies pulled out after Stymphalian Birds began to attack and kill loggers with their metal beaks and feathers. Any large scale attempts to eliminate the birds was met with a hail of armour piercing arrows, fired by Hyperboreans. Agent orange was tested, but the crop dusters were quickly beset by the Stymphalian birds, which demonstrated their deadly ability to fire metallic feathers, shredding metal and pilot alike. Eventually it was decided committing genocide against the Hyperboreans and killing the Stymphalian birds was not worth the effort (and bad PR) to get some wood. The Hyperboreans now feature in many NATO black ops units, and hold a seat at the UN, which they use to annoy the Brazilians.
In a newly built skyscraper, built in a ‘neo-classical’ style, are the headquarters of a company called Olympian Sourcing headed by the Oracle. It owns the patent for various inventions, including the Wind Spirit Mega Blimp (a zeppelin filled by a hired wind spirit, that can have gondolas the size of an ocean liner), the WS Zeppelin Weapons Platform (a military version of the WSMB, which has multiple wind spirits, allowing for the blimps skin to be armoured like a bunker and for it to act as a way to land huge numbers of troops and material, as an aircraft carrier and as a platform for naval guns), various magical cures, including a medicine that caused all other pharmaceutical companies to go bust, the (highly expensive) Panacea. Which does exactly what the name suggests, curing any and all illness, along with disproving many theories about certain opinions or lifestyle choices being ‘diseases’.
When questioned about Thetans, Hades said he had never heard of them, much to the dismay of a certain Mr Hubbard.
And there is your social update, Reichenfaust!
18
A month has passed since the Jorgmandr ceasefire treaty timed out, on the 3rd of June. As the second hand passed midnight and the treaty became invalid, a huge force of WARPAC forces struck towards the Berlin, steam rolling through NATO defence lines, as they advanced under a strategic level rolling barrage of lighting and fire, provided by the Asgardians. A NATO forces fought desperate rear guard actions as they retreated the bulk of their forces to try and consolidate and stop the Soviet advance at defence line being set up outside Berlin. 5 miles east of Berlin, the world’s largest tank battle raged, and the skies burned as Jets clashed, and above, Zeus, Athena, Heracules, Artemis and Apollo fought Odin, Balder, Tyr, Heidmall and Ullr.
Hades followed the orders of Zeus, and led an army of soldiers, those who had been heroic enough to earn a place in Elysium, numbering 10,000, into battle. Amongst their ranks, were the Argonauts (baring Heracules), large numbers of Trojans and Achaeans from the battle of Troy, soldiers from the Battle of Marathon and men from the 7000 who fought at Thermopylae, along with heroes and warriors from countless battles in the realm of the Olympians. They fought as wraiths, a fury of ethereal limbs and weapons, as they unleashed the fury of lost lives and forgotten wars. They fought around the gods, against the host of Valhalla, as those yet-to die unleashed death from all the insidious weapons of humanity.
The day wore on, and the battle became reminiscent of the battle of the Somme; huge amounts of material being poured into a meat grinder as fast as possible. It was like a continuous train wreck, with the front being obliterated to make way for next carriage. The sun fell, like a tear shed by the heavens at the slaughter it witnessed. The Russians tried to flank the NATO positions, to try to gain some kind of advantage. Ullr disengaged from the Olympians after Artemis was wounded, to lead the flanking attack. Thomas Chambers, the replacement for Jason Alywood, in an up-armoured version of the Prometheus battle suit, the Ares battle suit, led the counter-attack. Ullr fought as NATO (primarily British and French) troops collided with WARPAC forces in a storm of fire and blood. Tom and Ullr scarred the land in their fury, dealing earth shattering blows in a berserker rage to match the fallen Ares, and with power to match the fallen Thor. The flanking attack ground to a halt, as the soldiers on both sides found themselves blocked by a strange storm front. Inside the storm Ullr and Chambers stopped fighting. The air around then hummed and shook with ancient power, as the earth far below them shattered. The land rose upwards, revealing a dark scar, running deep into earths heart. The scar in the earth grew brighter and brighter, shinning with the light of a thousand suns. Helios, the Titan of the sun emerged, wreathed in clothes of golden fire and carrying a spear of metal, forged from the core of a thunderbolt. Then arose Atlas, obviously neglecting his world carrying duties, who wore armour hewn from the very bedrock itself and whose helmet sparkled with the lightning of the stratosphere. And finally, undaunted by his run in with a multi-kiloton undersea nuclear explosion (see: part 11) rose Kronus. In his hand he held a sickle, and his robes were grey, tattered and plain and the bottom, but were embroided like the robes of a conquering hero at the top. His helmet was rusted and jagged at the bottom, but was a flawless silver gleam near the plume. The storm front collapsed, revealing the three towering figures that loomed across the horizon. They stood out like skyscrapers on the horizon, 1000 metre high beacons of terror. The battle stopped. Thousands of jaws fell agape. Kronus struck out, swatting Ullr and Chambers like flies. A decision was made. Zeus and Odin stopped fighting. Both knew who the three deities were, and both knew there was only one option. They spoke with their human allies, and the human forces regained purpose, as a the message relayed down the chain of command. ‘Kill the Titans. No human or god is your enemy.’
To be continued and concluded. In update 19. Also, I will appreciate any suggestions for my upcoming thread after this ‘The Second World War: 2 Nukes, Nazis and The Gods. It will feature the Egyptian gods, and an amalgamation of Gallic, Celtic, Zulu, Mesoamerican, and Bedouin gods.
19. The final Update.
Fenrir stalked through the snow and ice, his head waving slowly from side to side as he sniffed the air. Ahead, he could see the shining lights and towering spires of Asgard. He could smell warriors and lesser gods inside it, and he could smell the finely carved wood and cold steel. But he could not smell his fated combatants, the Asir. He raised his head from the ground, rearing to his full height, hundreds of metres into the sky, and tasted the air.
‘Yes… Through an infinity of snow, and a lesser plane of grass and forests. Past great dwellings, and under a setting sun. Fighting great beings in a scarred field of fire and death… and meat.’
He took off, bounding like the wind across mountains and over ice and grass. His footsteps shattered the earth, and people run from the sound of his footfalls. The battle loomed ahead.
He saw Odin, next to a man holding a writhing thunderbolt. He saw Ullr, lying in a crater next to a man made of metal. And he saw thousands upon thousands of humans. But they did not stare at Fenrir, a fact that baffled Fenrir, that he should be denied his rightful fear. And then he saw it, three towering figures, one hewn from the earth and sky, one glowing like the sun, and the other holding time in his sway.
The largest Titan, Kronus, turned to face Fenrir. Fenrir saw this as an insult, as though he was mocking him by commanding the fear of the mortals. He runs towards Kronus.
The air seemed to explode, as lances of fire shot from the human lines, stabbing into the skin of the Titans. Jets swooped and dived, like a swarm of hornets, spitting fire and metal at the Titans. Odin and Zeus attacked Atlas with a combination of Zeus’s Lightning and Odin’s might battle axe, as Fenrir pounced on Cronus. The ground shook as Cronus and Fenrir fell to the ground, locked in an embrace of death. Fenrir made deep gashes in Cronus’s skin with his jagged claws and jaws, as Cronus stabbed with his sickle, drawing blood and hitting bone. Helios ran towards a huge cluster of Russian tanks, blasting golden light from his staff, melting metal and vaporising the very air. High explosive and armour piercing rounds shot out, slamming into Helios. Ullr and Chambers pick themselves up out of the crater, Ullr got into his flying chariot, and they took off. Kronus managed to get his feet under Fenrir’s chest, and kicked upwards, sending him flying in the air. Kronus rolled to the side, stuck his hand out, holding his sickle out where Fenrir would fall. Fenrir fell down, and was impaled on the sickle. Fenrir roared in pain, and leaped at Kronus, yanking the sickle out of his hands as he leaps. Blinded by pain, Kronus relies on base instinct, and goes for the neck. His mighty jaws wrap around Kronus’s neck, crunching down as Kronus desperately tries to break free. Kronus grabs the sickle, and starts stabbing, again and again into Fenrirs chest. Suddenly, a loud snap is heard, and Kronus goes limp. Fenrir lifts his head, ripping Kronus’s head from his body. He then slumps to the ground as he succumbs to his wounds.
Ullr, Zeus, Odin and Chambers circle Atlas, blasting with various weapons. Atlas swats out at Zeus, who dodges. While Atlas is unbalanced by his lunge, Odin and Ullr slam into the small of his back, knocking him over. Jets and bombers begin strafing Atlas, sending chunks flying of his armour and spraying blood on the ground. Magni, Thor’s son dealt the killing blow, by picking up a cathedral sized chunk of his armour, and ramming it through his forehead.
Helios casts a bright light from his spear, that damages and disintegrates anything near it. He wields near his head, destroying dozens of planes as they try to attack him. But he forgets the ground, and soon tanks are firing round after round at him. He brings his spear down to strike them, but suddenly, NATO artillery opens up. Most of the shots miss, as they are trying to hit a relatively small target, the point of the spear. Unlike missiles, the artillery shells still work if they are damaged in flight, so they could run (fly) the gauntlet of energy. Eventually, a shot hits. Then another, and another. The air is filled with flying metal, and every second, a new shot hits the spear. Finally, there is a booming sound, as they spear point cracks, and releases an expanding cloud of fire, very much like a nuclear explosion, right next to Helios’s face. His body falls to the ground, as both armies beat a hasty retreat from the possibly radioactive ball of energy in the sky.
The sun sets, as the second sun, born from the death of a god, hangs in the sky. It revolves around the earth, in the opposite direction to the spin of the earth. It casts golden rays over the earth, from the relatively low height of 2000 metre in the sky, never burning nor irradiating the earth, only illuminating and remaining as a memorial to the war that ruined Europe, once again.
Curtains close, dissatisfied viewers leave, and go ‘meh’ as the advert for the much better written spin off, ‘The Second World War: 2 Nukes, Nazis and the Gods’ comes on screen. And that, is my first, finished TL. Thanks for reading.
Okay, as I asked for my old account (Jamusio EMP) to be deleted to wipe the slate clean and only post things I don't mind being sifted through (click here, Just to Clarify). So I have decided to compile all of the updates for my only finished TL and repost them under my new account. Be warned, the earlier ones are not as good or consistent in size, and I didn't know I had to press enter twice on word to have the effect of pressing it once on here, so the earlier posts are a bit wall-of-text ish.
Anyway, enjoy!
A bat flaps its wings, as it coasts through the void. It is alien. And the place it calls home, is space. It is an Alien Space Bat. It spies a blue and green marble hanging in the vast emptiness. Hundreds of versions, different possibilities lay over it in layers, many different on their own, many more bore the marks of its race, but this one it could see had yet to be... meddled in. And so, for the glorious purpose of Shit'N'Giggles, the ASB descended towards the world.
It uses its amazing powers to see into the minds of every being on the world, from the intellectual behemoths of the Dolphins, to the 2-dimensional minds of the Homo-Sapien, and realises two things. The people of this world say the date is 11am 24 May 1962 AD, and that the world is in turmoil. The idea that takes its fancy comes from the depths of mythology, an idea from 2 mostly forgotten and rarely believed pantheons. And then, it aligns both of them with the two opposing forces that control the world.
The steel citadel of Asgard appears next to the mouth of the Indigirka river in Siberia. It is lead by Odin. The major gods, are not invincible, but do posses amazing powers. Odin has amazing strength enough to fell a skyscraper, and is incredible durable, human forces would probably require a whole field army (by which I mean the formation) to be matched in destructive power. Odin can see everything in lands under his control from his throne Hlidskjalf and can travel anywhere in his lands instantaneously via his chariot. The second most powerful in the Norse gods, is Thor. He is stronger than Odin, commands the power of lightning, his weapon Mjolnir, which strength is measured in Mega-Tons, can make soldiers fearless and can give generals masterful, if aggressive, tactical ability. Thors son Magni is even more powerful than Thor. They align themselves with the Warsaw Pact.
Olympus, in the form of a sprawling city with shining walls appears spread across the flattened of top of Mount McKinley. They are led by a trio, Zeus, with control of weather in his area, at its head, Poseidon with the ability to move tectonic plates and control of any water, and finally Hades, who can instil great fear in his enemies and, at great effort, cause recently dead soldiers who were originally on his side to re-animate and continue fighting. They align with NATO.
The ASB makes Odin, Magni and Thor roughly as strong as Poseidon, Zeus and Hades. Both sides also bring along any demi-gods, heroes, mythical warriors, demons and beasts with them. From the outside, it would seem that the Agardians and their communist allies are more powerful, due to greater numbers human wise, and their total unification under Odin in their gods. But just like the Warsaw pacts seemed to be more powerful than NATO due to having more people and tanks and aircraft NATO, but was hiding poverty and weakness, so was the Agardians position precarious. As soon as they appeared next to Indigirka river, their enemies appeared in the north pole, and begun their constant assault. The Frost giants begin to wear away at the Asgardians, and the countdown to Ragnarok continues. And lastly, the numerous opposing sides both posses a deity that controls the weather, as such, mutually assured destruction will not be their to stop a war.
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I know that the language Zeus spoke first was modern Greek, but for some (obvious) reason, I can't get ancient greek on the translator. Next, we will have a convoy taking prisoners to a Siberian Gulag encounter Asgard.
Mount Mckinley 11:12am 1962 October 23
3 Mountain climbers scaled the flanks of Mount Mckinley, tired but determined. They looked up towards the peak, but it was obscured in a swirling mass of fog. Soon they entered the wall like mass of fog. They passed through it like it was a portal, one moment hanging in the blue sky, the sun near its zenith in the sky beating down on their back, the next, encased in a hazy half-light where alien shapes flickered on the corners of their vision. Blinded by the fog, they navigated by touch, hesitantly working their up the mountain. Suddenly there groping hands reached empty space, despite being only 3/4 up the mountain. The climbers clambered up, pulling themselves over the edge. As they stood up, they realised that the fog barrier was now behind them. As they gazed around, they saw that where the peak of the mountain had been, there was a huge tabletop plateau, and that beyond the fog barrier they had just climbed through, taking only 2 minutes, the peaks of the surrounding mountains were like thimbles on the infinitely distant ground. Then they looked forward. A huge wall, taller than the highest skyscrapers, gleaming with the brightest gold, and radiating a great strength beneath the gaudy outer covering. The wall stretched out to either horizons with a gentle curve, framing the infinite expanse of the sky. They could see a gate, with two, towering clear marble statues of a Woman on either side. She was holding a shield and a spear, and had an owl perching on her shoulder. Her shield was covered with strange symbols and words in hundreds of different languages, one of which was English, and said Athena.
The three climbers were called Kyle Shrew a 24 year old with dull ginger hair and broad shoulders, Daniel Wallace, a short 23 year old with blond hair and Theo Moor, a very tall 25 year old with jet black hair.
"Does that say Athena? Like, the Greek goddess Athena?" questioned Kyle
"Think so. That there" Theo pointed at a symbol on the shield "might be Mandarin."
"Well you both missed the real mind**** here. This is the second time we have climbed this, and it looks like the peak had been replaced with a mega sized Athens. And the mountains down there are a hell of a lot smaller than they should be. They should not look like thimbles."
"Calm down, the thin oxygen is probably just giving us something like a bad acid trip. Its just like that time when-" The door opened with a resounding groan, revealing a figure wreathed in glowing robes walking regally towards them. It, no, he, was flanked by two men, one with blue waving robes and a trident and dark brown skin, the other had a deathly pale face pulled taut around his skull, wearing a tattered grey robe that seemed to suck up the light light the maw of a black hole. More people came into view, a man in armour with a red gleaming sword, a shining golden man standing next to a woman who seemed to reflect every ray of moonlight from the dawn of the universe. The woman from the statue, another woman was next to her, an old crone with a plain earth stained dress, in sharp contrast to the radiance of the beautiful woman in rainbow robes next to her.
"Γεια σας θνητοί, εμείς είμαστε οι θεοί του Ολύμπου. Εμείς σημαίνει ότι καμία ζημιά." said the lead figure.
"That's Greek to me." said Kyle, without realising the amazingly obvious, world shatteringly face-palm inducing pun he had just crafted.
"Ah, sorry, we expected you to speak a different tongue. Can you understand this?"
"Crystal clear thanks"
"Good. I expect you have many questions, as do we. We are the gods of Olympus, as you have probably guessed."
The crone in brown let out a cackling laugh "Ahh Zeus, you young fool. The wheel of the universe is ever turning, just as the world turns from the sowing of fields to the reaping, and the fates have cut many threads since our last memories. This is not the same world, in fact, I wonder if something greater* than us created our memories of the old world, but truly, the strength of mortals has grown in our absence. I believe that were are lucky these people did not flee over the edge of the mountain at the sight of us, let alone recognise us. We will let you back to your land soon, but first, we must learn of your people, so we can show humanity more of us, and you must learn of us.
As the climbers and the Gods walked back into the bustling city, Zeus muttered under his breath "Dammit Dementer."
Indigirka River mouth. Siberia. USSR. 8pm.
The cold wind howled around the convoy, whisking away the black smoke belched out by the trucks engines. There are two truck in the centre of the convoy, crammed full of high risk political dissenters, flanked by smaller trucks with machine guns trained on the trucks. At the front of the convoy, and the back, are two more trucks, making tiny indentations of visibility in the writhing mass of the blizzard. One second, the storm was a maelstrom of chaotic movement, the next, the wind disappeared, leaving the falling snow to gentle waft to the ground. It was calm, but like the calm of a predator coiled to strike. Then, the blizzard exploded with movement, pieces of snow smashed together with whipcord speed, compressing and melding into golf ball hail stones. They smashed into the wheels of the trucks, piling up and clamping the wheels to the ground. The hail stones in the air pulled back to 5 metres from the convoy, forming into tendrils, circling and probing, but never passing that invisible 5 metre line. The storm wall parted at the front of the convoy, revealing a figure, wearing a sturdy, simple cloak. He held a gnarled wooden staff in his hand. He stood still, for seconds that seemed to stretch on to infinity. The a passenger wearing an officers uniform got out of the lead vehicle got out, holding his rifle and pointing it at the man.
"Hay, you, dumb-ass. What do you think you're doing, you ******* dumb-ass. Get out my way, or I might add you to the truck and put you in the Gulag with them." By now, the guns of the lead truck were trained on him, and 5 soldiers had their guns trained on him.
"I assume you are not a diplomat then. You will take me on your transport to your king. I will not permit you to leave other wise."
The officer burst into laughter, but his soldiers did not. They were looking fearfully at the tendrils of the storm, watching them reaching closer to the convoy, almost in anticipation. "**** Ohh, how I am afraid of incurring the wrath of the one eyed man with the stick. I bet that's how you lost your other eye, trying to catch a bullet with your stick. Come on. Take your best shot. You can harm me, and if you could, you would be killed by my men. If you survive your injuries, then you can spend the rest of your life in the frozen hell of the Gulag."
The old man pointed his stick at an individual hail stone, his eyes fixed unwavering on the officer. Then he swung his staff round with blinding speed, leaving it pointed at the officer. The ice ball swung round, guided by the staff. It slammed into the side of his head, cracking through his skull. His body went limp, held up by the hovering ice ball in his brain. Then the one eyed wanderer slammed his staff into the ground. The ice ball exploded, leaving his decapitated body to drop to the frozen ground.
The man spoke softly, but with a undeniable authority. "I am Odin One Eye of Asgard. You will take me to your king, or I will extract his location from you and leave you unarmed in the prisoner trucks."
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Vikings and commies aren't exactly going to meet without at least one person dying.
Washington DC. White house. 4pm October 26 1962
The skies of DC were grey and heavy with rain. The atmosphere outside the white house was electric, full of uncertainty and promise. The President had called a press meeting with only a days notice for the news agencies of the world to scramble their cynical, attentive forces.
The mob of journalists and reporters huddled around the eagle adorned podium. Kennedy stood tall at stand, aware but undisturbed by the presence of the cameras trained on him.
"We, as a nation, and our allies, are in hard times. Uncertain, changing times. Spy planes have recently photographed threatening images on Cuba. But today, I have good news for you, news that can offer more hope in these grim times. It may be hard for people to come to terms, some may even have their views of the universe changed or challenged, but I assure you, with my word as the President, that we are now stronger, than ever before. But actions speak louder than words, so a delegation of our new allies have come to speak to you today.
The grey skies flickered with light, then boomed, thunder and lighting shot out of the storm clouds, carefully avoiding causing harm to the city dwellers below. The clouds split at the top, revealing blue skies and light. From this gap, a glowing gold chariot sped towards the ground. Journalists began to scatter as the object approached, but seeing the calm look on the Presidents face, they stood firm, regaining their composure. In the last hundred metres of its descent, the golden object, no, the chariot, decelerated rapidly, deftly touching down with delicate grace of a hummingbird. A man, wreathed in gold and light, stepped down from the chariot and stood next to Kennedy.
"People of America. I am a Apollo, representative of the Olympian Gods to your nation. We believe, no, we guarantee, that we can offer you amazing gifts and abilities for you in your ongoing conflict with the Soviet Union. But today, this is not the time or place for troop counts and briefing. My people and our city, Olympus, have been transported to your mountain, Mount McKinley, without memory of the event. The ruling council of the city, is Zeus, Posideon, Hera, Apollo, Artemis, Dementer, Aphrodite, Athena, Dionysus, Areas, Hephaestus and Hermes. We are willing to assist you in your wars, join NATO, use are powers over the skies to block any nuclear attack against you, join the UN, in return, we want to have our control over Mount McKinley recognised, and any of our citizens are to be given joint citizen ship and freedom of movement between our nation and yours, and that any crime committed against one of our citizens by one of your people, from the lowly satyrs, nymphs and spirits, to the Olympian gods themselves, and even the abhorrent inhabitants of Hades, shall be given over to us, and treated under our laws." The mob of journalists exploded with questions, and Apollo, with the patience of a god, began to answer.
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I know this is not hugely action packed, but neither are press conferences. Even with gods.
Operation Stampede is the plan for the joint American/Olympian invasion of Cuba. The plan for operation Stampede involved two phases. It can only happen with the assistance of our allies the Olympians in the form of destroying anything in the sky fielded against us, and removing the threat of Nuclear retaliation from Russia. They will also provide precision, high power strikes against enemy forces, and Ares and Hercules will be accompanying marines on the ground in human form. Posideon will be providing support from the sea, and will be transporting our soldiers. Apollo, Zeus and Artemis will be providing Ariel support. Our military tacticians and Athena have told us that this will be excessive force, but for political and propaganda purposes, every thing short of nuclear BDZ and war crimes will be used to gain control over Cuba, and smoke out this Red hive near our lands.
Phase 1
First, the navy and Posideon will destroy any ships the Cubans field against us, and then will sail to Havana. There, they will begin obliterating enemy formations in range of the guns outside the city, leaving the city itself intact. Fighter aircraft accompanied by Apollo and Artemis will gain air supremacy, only risking engagement with the enemy when assisted by the Olympian escort. The Olympians have demonstrated that Apollo and Artemis can fire weapons (arrows) from they're chariots, at speeds much faster than missiles with extreme, seemingly infallible accuracy, and power greater than the a navel cannon. This capability, plus the ability of Zeus to 'disintegrate' SAM missiles, will give us a high chance of zero casualties in Ariel engagements. After air supremacy is gained, Air Strikes with the help of Apollo and Artemis will be conducted on troops in the city of Havana.
Phase 2
After half an hour of the bombardment, 10,000 marines will be landed in Havana, headed by Hercules. By this point, Apollo and Artemis will have destroyed most of the soldiers in the city, and air strikes will make reinforcements impossible, by destroying any troops or tanks nearing the city with low power tactical atomic devices Ares will lead a company of 225 Rangers to spearhead the advance.
References for troop counts will also be distributed with this sheet.
27 October. 1962 Havana.
Troop transports and tanks roared across the bridge of solid water between Florida and Havana, courtesy of Posideon. In the skies, various types of soviet MiGs fought American F-3s and F-4s. The Cuban planes were being swatted like flies by Apollo and Artemis, exploding in flairs of golden and silver light respectively. Ares and Hercules both ran at the front of their battle groups across the bridge of water, yelling war cries and waving their swords. In the distance, mushroom clouds could be seen from were reinforcements had been nuked, and columns of fire rose from the city where Zeus was blasting Cuban soldiers. The water bridge ended at the docks, and the soldiers had captured them with extreme speed. A group of Cuban soldiers, roughly 30, had set up a machine gun nest in the rubble on a street corner near the dock, hidden from Zeus by their insignificance. The Rangers were stealthily approaching them, but Ares just ran at the Cubans, waving his red sword above his head and holding his hoplite shield in front of him. Machine guns bullets streaked out to meet him, but they only seemed to inflict paper cuts on him. He jumped when he was 20m from them, sailing through the air in a way that was definitely not natural. He landed on the machine gun, and lunged with a blinding movement, decapitating the gunner. He dropped the sword and grabbed the man’s submachine gun. He arced the gun round, and bullets of explosive energy shot out, slaughtering the men in the nest with a single slow swing of the gun.
As the soldiers and tanks advanced into the city they found for every Cuban they captured or killed, 10 had be struck down by Apollo or Artemis. In the distance, storm clouds, charged with electricity, converged on the radiation spreading mushroom clouds that marked where the Cubans had tried to reinforce the city. All ready the mushroom clouds were being absorbed into the storm clouds Zeus had created, which then shot upwards, depositing the radioactive matter into space.*
Thanks to the assistance of the Olympians, the battle for Havana was over in a record time of 27 minutes, with the whole city surrendering unconditionally except for a few diehards. There were various military bases, and certain towns and villages, that did not surrender, so were subject to the ultimate terror weapon. In the centre of the military bases, which were in most cases frightening the surrounding settlements into siding with them, Hades was called into action. He created portals in them, out of which flowed Hell Hounds. They were not invincible against gunfire, but the shock of the skeletal, flaming night black hounds bounding out of dark swirling mists in huge numbers were enough. Hades simply waited until he could tell (by reading FEAR levels) that the soldiers would surrender, then issued an ultimatum. Unconditional surrender or unconditional death. Cuba had fallen in only 1 and a half hours of fighting.
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Just so you know, it will be very different when gods fight gods. Also, *The message there is that you can only escape the consequences of nukes by liberal use of noobish Haxor. Next, we will have a Norse god supported attack in Japan, which will reveal to America that Operation Norse is not just propaganda. Hint, it will be like this, but in reverse, as the Olympians will not be on guard there, though there will be the start of a battle for sea supremacy between Njord and Posideon.
Also, I bet I have made some huge mistake somewhere (the term Base Delta Zero being used in a briefing doesn't count) that will be on the scale of be being wrong about Cuba being real. I know Cuba is real, that is just an example of the scale of wrongness I shall probably reach. (Don't you interpret that!)
In this Update I will explore increasing impact that mythical monsters appearing in places that are fitting for them wreaking havoc. But the main part of this update will be the failed nuclear and then the build up to a ground retaliation in response to the total defeat at Cuba. Next update, I will do that ground attack.
1962 November 1st 41.21.56.58 North 175 26 56 West Over the Pacific.
The Lockheed A-12 with its one man crewglided gracefully through the skies, a blot of darkness against the featureless blue sky, and the cotton ball clouds below. It was flying from a secret air base in America to photograph key Warsaw Pact industrial and military facilities, before returning home, like an extremely well funded Peeping Tom. The pilot who had passed the rigorous training to be aloud to fly the was encased in solitude except for his radio, and consumed entirely by controlling and monitoring the plane, relying on technology and well-rehearsed actions. The radio flickered into life, and a hoarse, tired voice spoke out of it: "Hey Jim, this is command, we have detected a strange incredibly high up storm in your path. It was spotted by a cargo ship. Can you see anything. Over."
"Hang on a sec" he said, turning away from the dials to look out at the empty sky. "Nope. Nothin--- wait, sorry, something just, well, I'm looking out, and its completely black. As black as my blackbird."
The radio operator responded, his transmission suddenly full of crackling interference. "S--rry, co-ld -u- repe-t tha-, -- gett-ng - lot of i-ter-fe-ren-e fro- --u. O-er."
"Ok. My Blackbird is completely covered in clouds, and the altimeter is going haywire. Over."
The voice returned, suddenly free of interference. "Brilliant. We read you, and your interference has disappeared. Are you playing music? I can hear something from your side."
"No, but I can hear something. Its really, hypnotic, actually. I-I think I should land. Right now."
"Pilot, there is only water beneath you, you can't land. Return to base immediately. Check your Oxygen tanks, you are displaying symptoms of oxygen starvation. Are you light headed? Over."
"It sounds like singing... I'm not gonna land, I just want to, to see. And hear. See and Hear. See and Hear."
An edge of panic was in the radio operators voice, a crowd of operators, soldiers, technicians and officers now crowded around him, listening intently. "Jim, turn back now. Right now. Over"
"No. I can see a tiny island in the distance through the clouds. I can land there. Easy. Then I can See and Hear. The Sirens call to me. I must go."
"Come on man, its me, William. Don't do this. I don't know what's wrong with you, but you can't to this. If you try to land there, you will die. The plane wont fit. What about Susan? You just married her. What about your friends? Turn back, and we can all forget this. Please."
"I can see them, three women, with the heads of birds. Its so beautiful. An Eagle, a Vulture and a Raven. I can See and Hear. See and H------"
The radio operator closed his eyes and took of his earphones, shaking his head. The whispering crowd around him fell silent. Jimmy Sullivan would not be the last person to be claimed by unnatural creatures. He was a proud member of a NATO country, so he would go to Tartarus, the Asphodel Fields, or Elysium if he was lucky. If his loyalty had been to a Warsaw Pact nation, he would have gone to Nifhel, Hel or Vahlalla. But the fact remained, the world was now home to creatures that did not belong, and would only cause harm.
Cuba. November 1st 1962.
Cuban intelligence had managed to get various pieces of important information out to their allies, before they were found an killed by Hermes, who was aided by the general truth that 'It takes a spy to find a spy, and a thief God can find spies without trying.' The Soviet leadership was locked in fierce debate over how best to respond to the attack on their allies, but the balance was tipped in favour of retaliation when an incredible opportunity was revealed by (now dead) Cuban spies. Ares and Hercules, two of the key fighters in the Olympian force, were both in Havana. A soviet sub was sent to Cuba, with a deadly payload, and a deadly mission, to destroy Havana, with the aim of killing the soldiers there, but most importantly, killing Ares and Hercules.
A nuclear missile burst out from the water, fired by a Submarine just below the surface. It streaked towards Havana, 10 times faster than a jet fighter. And a hell of a lot slower than a thunderbolt. A storm cloud materialised out of empty sky in the path of the missile, and shot out a streak of blue lighting towards the missile. It exploded in the sky, but the complex system to cause the nuclear fission* was destroyed, an the explosion was only the rocket fuel detonating. With no wish to ignite a full nuclear war that might overwhelm Zeus, the attempt at destruction was ignored, except as an object of ridicule.
Anti Climax. But the following day, an attack was devised by the soviet leadership, an attack that would not be thwarted, and would give a devastating demonstration of the power of their new allies...
*I think.
Lighting lashed down on Tokyo, ships sunk in flames and fires spread from building to building, trapping and killing occupying soldiers and civilians alike. The Communists wanted to keep Tokyo intact, so fire were only aloud to spread in areas with opposing soldiers in, other wise the fires are stopped by air spirits. Njord and Posideon wrestled in the seas, their bodies the waters themselves, with their titanic battle spread across the waters around Japan. The devastating Maelstroms and colliding waves mauled Soviet and American ships alike, nearly killing the soviet troop transports before they turned away from the danger zone.
MiG 21 flew un-harried across Japan, their enemies pulled from the sky by baseball sized chunks of hail, bombing targets and generally slaughtering all opposition. Troops began dropping in from helicopters, bypassing the writhing sea, and started to claim Tokyo. Heidmall, Thor and Magni led Spetnaz units into the heart of the city, overwhelming the surviving forces with ease. As soon as news of this god supported attack reached Washington, Kennedy realised that their forces would die without god support just as the Cubans had, so he contacted Olympus. Athena appeared through the presidential portal, and spoke frankly to the President. She was a master of strategy and tactics, and concluded that by the time it would take to muster forces to be sent along with the gods to reinforce Japan, and to transport them, there would be no American controlled areas to land in. Sending the gods in on their own would be suicide, as the Norse Gods were backed up by enough mortal air, ground and sea forces, that they would easily be able to overcome the Olympians. To save his forces from complete obliteration, Kennedy was forced to surrender all American forces on Japan, after as many as possible were evacuated. 10% escaped. 30% were captured. 60% were dead.
Arkhangelsk. Oblast. USSR.
2nd November. 1962. 2am.
It was -45 outside, the coldest November in record, and the wind was howling like a screaming banshee to boot. The skies were black, and the streets were covered with half a metre of ice. Reports were coming in from sailors saying the sea was freezing over. This was insane, thought Dimitri Tarasov, the local head of the party, it might be an unusually cold day, but the seas freezing? The sailors will of course be reprimanded for being wreckers and fear spreaders. He turned to look out of his thick window, and saw only a spinning mass of blizzard. Then, the cold intensified, a wave of cold passed through him, chilling him to the bone. It only lasted a second, and there seemed to be no evidence the cold snap had even occurred. But then, Dimitri's eyes recovered from the shock, and focused on what he was seeing. All motion in the swirling blizzard was gone, the snow just hung there. Then it dropped, like a marionette with its strings cut. In the co-ordination centre of the building, phones began to ring, from the hospital, the dock, the barracks and everywhere else. But still, it was only a freak weather phenomenon. The messages from the Dockyard somehow seemed urgent enough to warrant Dimitri's direct attention.
"Hello. This is Dimitri Tarasov. Who am I speaking to?" He spoke with tight formality, his arrogance failing to fully cover his growing fear.
"T-this is Leonid Vasiliev. I am the official party representative for the dock. We are experiencing some problems-- muffled screaming cuts through --just send us some help from the barracks, I don't, I-- a huge booming crash is heard in the background, then human screaming, and the word Giants is heard over the screaming --We are being attacked, by, by something just, wait please,-- Leonid is talking to another person at the dock. "We've gotta run now! its coming towards us! no, I must call for help. Idiot, now one can help us." now he speaks with panic in his voice, and the sounds of rending metal and dying men nearly make him inaudible -- I am abandoning my post, to seek safety in the rest of the city. Call for help, and run. Run now or--" the phone line is replaced with static. Already Dimitri could hear the screams moving closer from the harbour.
The military garrison of 500 soldiers and 12 tanks (tell me if that sort of number is stupid) had been rallied by their commanders, and were marching towards the dock. Reports had come that the sea had frozen all the way to the docks, but the only thing on the commanders minds was to quell the unexplained rioting. The fog hung thick in front of the armed column, the headlights on the jeeps cutting through 3 metres of fog, before stopping, like they had hit a wall of darkness. The column abruptly stopped as a building beyond the fog wall collapsed, the rubble just reaching far enough to tap gentle on the frontal armour on the lead tank. The tank commander poked his head out of his copula, looking around, as the soldiers fanned out. The fog gently, eerily rose upwards, revealing the dock to the soldiers. A looming humanoid figure, at least 15 metres tall stalked towards them through the rubble. Its body seemed to be made of hundreds of uneven boulders of ice, held together by clumps of hail stones, grinding and re-forming as it moved, like the gears on an insidious machine. The soldiers opened fire, blasting chunks out of it, as it reeled backwards in shock and pain from the heat and speed of the bullets. Golf ball sized chunks were cascading to the ground, just faster than it could re-grow them, and the tanks were blasting torso sized blocks of it. Shockingly fast for something so large and ungainly, it lurched towards the soldiers, blasting them with lethal hail as it approached. The hail stones pinged of the tank armour, leaving surprisingly deep dents. The bones they hit snapped and shattered under the onslaught, it was like a machine gun had been opened up on the soldiers. All the soldiers standing in the street were killed, but most had taken up positions in buildings when they started shooting. The guns continued to chip pieces of the giant, even as it grabbed the lead tank, swinging it round with the strength to pulverise the inhabitants, then throwing it at a building to the left, crushing the soldiers inside it. At this point, the rest of the unit Sh*t Brix. The Frost Giant shot its arm out in a huge lunge, reaching out at the second tank on the street. As the Giant crushed it, the tank discharged a high explosive round in its face, which ignited the fuel and ammo were crushed, causing the tank to explode. Despite this awesome spectacle, and half of the face of the giant being destroyed, it continued its rampage. An RPG hit it in the icy wound, causing it to stumble backwards. It shot out a hail of ice at the house the RPG had fired from. The concentrated blast shredded everything in the house, soldiers, bricks and all. Tank shots kept blasting the fallen giant, pinning it down. It raised its arm, and a clump of the hail stones flying above collided to form a car sized boulder, which then smashed downwards like a hammer onto the nearest tank. Then the ice chunk grew to form a temporary wall between the Giant and the tanks, letting it get up. The 10 remaining tanks blasted through the barrier, but the Frost Giant was gone. The tank at the back of the column was seized up and lifted into the air. The Frost Giant was deceptively fast, and had flanked them.Some of the soldiers were running, so the Frost Giant took the opportunity to crush them by throwing a tank at them, which then exploded#. The turrets struggled to traverse, as the Giant ran across their right flank, crushing the soldiers in the buildings, despite grenades, AK's and another RPG. When it reached the front of the column, and the tanks were just ready to fire on it, the Frost Giant jumped sideways, twisting sideways and crushing 4 tanks with a body slam. The resulting explosion, plus a volley from the other tanks as they spread around shattered the Frost Giant, but already more of them were moving towards them, and only 6 tanks an no infantry remained in the fight... Which then Exploded.
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#That is my new phrase.
Arkhangelsk just got Frost Gianted. That's not a word, but still. Correct me if I am wrong about how much the city would have in the way of soldiers. Also, hint, the city loses the fight. That was one just Frost Giant, and there are 13 who have reached the city.
It’s hard to say whether the event, now widely called the Descent of Gods, was a good thing for the world, or a bad thing. But even if the powers of the gods eliminate the threat of MAD and allow total war again, for the average westerner, the Descent was a good thing. Despite all the high minded implications of a world with gods, it has had much more basic effects. Thanks to Dementer, food is and never will be a problem again. Deserts are graced with un-explainable cool rain, turning their sand into fertile topsoil. Golden fields of wheat and rice and hops stretch into the horizon on what were once the most inhospitable and useless lands in the world. Pests and weeds no longer effect crops, which some say is too heavy handed an action by Dementer, resulting in significant drops in the numbers of animals that eat the pests, or that eat the crops themselves. Most people agree that having their weekly shop as cheap as a newspaper is worth a few dead ecologies, despite what the damned hippies might say.
Norse and Greek Paganism is on a worldwide rise, though the Abrahamic religions managed to ride the wave surprisingly well by throwing words around like Demons and Old Testament and End of Days. The Sikhs did the best out of the pre-Descent religions, thanks to the ‘All Religions are Different Paths to Truth’ meaning that Gods on earth don’t harm their credibility, even gods with different values.
The power of the Gods seems to be derived from a mix of Sc-Fi tech and pure magic, the latter of which has given a huge tech boost to the world. Nuclear Fusion is handled in satellite power stations, providing cheap and effective power to all. Wind spirits, paid with Olympian gold (more on that latter) fill huge blimps that carry converted Ocean Liners on grand tours around the world in the skies, at rates cheaper than a holiday for the average pre Descent family. Pebble Bed reactors power cars and planes, and are the primary competitors for Hydrogen fuel cell market.
There is significant tension in some areas between Gods and Mortals. No angry mob would try to kill a god, but semi magical races like Fawns are the new target for skinhead anger. The fact that creatures like Fawns are much longer lived than humans, and benefit from much better education, means that they are generally more qualified than humans, and some feared that they may form a new ruling class, taking top research, business and political jobs. Luckily, this scare was averted when it was discovered that Fawns, being part prey animal, were fundamentally different from humans. Descended from Hunters, Humans could deal with tasks involving concentration, repetition and patience, all of which are required to be a scientist, politician or business leader. Fawns cannot due to being half prey animal, and by human standards, Fawns are near ADHD.
After the events of Ragnorak, which coincided with the rise of the Titans, most of the human-god conflict died down. The idea of gods being separate from us, and the general feeling of inferiority that fuelled the tension, were dispelled when the same demons and monsters and giants that killed gods, killed us. Humans became brothers in arms with gods, and people saw all of the beings of Asgard and Olympus, from semi-magical fawns and nymphs, to full on immortals, like Zeus and Magni, as friends, neighbours and equals. It is speculated that the relations between humans and gods were on the path to war between gods and men, as the existents of gods had indirectly caused huge damage, as it allowed for a war between the Warsaw Pact and NATO without MAD to stop it. Now, without a common enemy, and with Ragnorak fading from public memory, tensions between gods and men are on the rise…
Part 8
Communist Cuba was annexed by the NATO/Olympian alliances.
In retaliation, American occupied Japan was conquered by the Warsaw/Norse alliance.
The opening shots had been fired, and only the sheer enormity of the war before them had kept it from escalating. But the stillness on the European front is like the water in bath about to overflow, held in place only by tension. It was only a matter of time.
Two days after the Soviet attack on Japan, Russian forces in East Berlin mounted a devastating attack, meeting fierce resistance from NATO troops. The NATO forces in West Berlin, numbering 15,000 at the start of the attack, are heavily outnumbered, facing an enemy of 40,000 men and cut off from the bulk of their forces. They are miles behind enemy lines; they fight fiercely nevertheless. Columns of tanks, supported by helicopters and Mechanized infantry clash with Soviet ground troops in the fields of Europe, dealing all the death modern technology can deal, as well as all the death that various magical creatures and gods can deal. Ares, having chosen a battalion worth of soldiers, drawn from the SAS, SOAR, US Army Rangers, and the Australian SAS, makes his way to Berlin via plane, protected by Wind Spirits loyal to Olympus. They intend to give the soldiers there a fighting chance to survive against the onslaught of the Warsaw Pact until more forces can reach them.
The sun rises over berlin, its crimson glow casting wild shadows over the arches and spires of the city. Below the towering buildings, both new and old, the streets are enveloped in war, echoing with the sounds of gunfire as soldiers fight and die for survival. Screams of dying men cut through the din of battle, only eclipsed by the sound of collapsing buildings and the harsh thunderclap of tanks.
At the start of the attack on Berlin, bombers and fighter flew in support of the attack troops, bombing the NATO troops un-harassed. Fighter planes were sent out to deal with them by NATO, which drew more reinforcements from the Warsaw pact. Soon the bulk of both sides air power was engaged above Berlin, and the skies above Berlin began to resemble a collision between two swarms of angry fireflies. The aerial battleground was streaked with trails from rockets and lit by the constant flashes of exploding planes, like a chaotic but purposeful fireworks show, were ownership of Europe’s skies, and thus its fate, will be decided.
On the outskirts of Berlin, a group of planes touch down, unloading tanks, jeeps and soldiers. A figure steps down from the ramp of the lead plane, restless, and eager for action. He holds a Hoplite shield in his left hand and a 50 calibre machine gun in his right. On his head is a red plumed helmet, and his chest armour bears the mark of a grinning skull. Red mist swirls around his body, and the bodies of his soldiers, giving them true aim, tireless limbs and limitless ammo. He is a walking war crime, the embodiment of berserker rage, the primal scream of a cornered man, the battle cry of a thousand soldiers, the red mist of rage, the burning fires of pillaged cities and the cry of the refugee. He is Ares, God of War.
Part 9
The Russian advance was slowly grinding through West Berlin thanks to superior numbers, having lost 25,000 men and killed 10000 only thanks to clever defensive tactics on NATO’s part, fighting street for street against the doomed defenders. Another line of defence was about to be broken, so the NATO troops pulled back, covered by heavy bombardment by air forces. They took up new positions in another line of fortified buildings and strongpoints, putting killing zones between themselves and the enemy, rather than being overrun in room to room fighting. This constant, ordered retreat was something they had repeated many times already, and the soldiers were tired, hungry and fighting for their lives, desperately reforming defensive lines rather than being cut of and eliminated. They were punching above their weight and making the enemy fight for every inch. And they were losing. Despite NATO advances, they were still far behind enemy lines, severely outnumbered and running low on every type of supply.
The Russian forces had noticed a pattern in their enemy’s movements, and were preparing to rush forward to capture the buildings in front of them, as they saw the tell-tail signs of another retreat. The constant retreats had forced the Russians to play by NATO commander’s rules, either charging through empty, sometimes mined building, or fighting pinned down by prepared strongpoints, trying to get through roads-turned-killing zones, at great cost to man and materiel. Not to mention the horrible effect on moral of knowing that every time you are about to break through and fight the enemy on fair terms or good un-fair terms, they disappear, forcing you to rush through possibly mined buildings, just to end up in a nearly identical situation, pinned down by strongpoints and snipers, once again.
The heavy guns in the enemy’s buildings had finally fallen silent, meaning the last of the enemy had retreated from their lines, and some of the enemies mortars and their jets had given a brief covering bombardment for the retreat. Somewhere, some of the Russians must have reached a strongpoint and were fighting in close quarters, forcing the NATO forces to retreat again. The Soviet commanders in the city had all reached this conclusion, accepting it as the only explanation, even though this time, none of them had radioed that they had broken through. Still, all the signs were there, and the enemy was silent, so the order was given. Russian troops rushed from their hiding places, ready to storm the deserted buildings once again. Half way across the killing zones, all across the defensive line, groups of Russian soldiers ran onto mines, as guns opened up on them from windows and balconies. It was a feint, no-one had broken through, and the NATO forces had led them straight into a trap. Hundreds of Russians lay dead, and their confidence was given another blow, as a grim, hoarse cheer rose from the buildings on the other side of the killing zone. Still, it was only another bump in the road to total victory. There was no way NATO would reach Berlin, let alone before the embattled troops in West Berlin were crushed. Of this, the Russian commanders were assured.
The Russians rushed back to their lines, taking heavy casualties from the trap they had sprung. And then, at the worst, or best possible time, depending who you are, Ares struck.
Ares struck behind the Russian forces in East Berlin, cutting through the supply lines and artillery, trapping groups of attacking soldiers between his men and the defending NATO troops. They swung round, stretching themselves thin as they drove forward behind the Russian troops, following the curve of the battle lines. Ares led at the front of this advance, obliterating buildings and letting his troops advance with incredible speed, driving all before them. Within 2 minutes of the attack, the Berserkers were a third of the way round the battle lines. Attacks were sent against them, but only 2nd line troops and support troops were left, everyone else was either miles away fighting NATO armies to the west, or trapped committed to fighting NATO troops in East Berlin. Those sparse attacks were slaughtered easily by the superhuman forces under Ares’s control, and were not repeated. 5 minutes after Ares attacked, his forces were half way round the city, and the Russian commanders realised that their shallow hope of defeating all the NATO troops in West Berlin then turning their huge numbers against the Berserkers was not going to come true. The Russian and NATO commanders watched speechless as the Ares Berserkers, deifying all military logic and fighting like demons, slaying dozens for every man they lost, came back round full circle . 90% of all Russian soldiers in Berlin were trapped in a thin strip of land between the Ares Berserkers and the NATO defences. Unknown to Ares, as soon as he appeared on the battle field, the soviet commanders, under the orders of a new directive, had called for reinforcements from Valhalla.
The battle was now a forgone conclusion, with surrender or death as the only two options. Russian troops were beginning to lay down arms, sometimes led by officers, sometimes by common sense. Soldiers on both sides were breathing sighs of relief, (or cries of rage in the case of the Ares Berserkers) knowing that at least they had survived, whether or not they had won. Men buried the dead, rested and counted losses. But the battle was not yet over. The superhuman attack of the Ares Berserkers would not be the only shock for the commanders this day.
Reinforcements arrived, a seemingly tiny number compared to the forces already in the fight, roughly a battalion worth of soldiers. They are led by Thor, God of Thunder. Commanded by him are a battalion of Spetnaz, their skin covered in blue arcs of lightning, and their bodies bursting with the power of Thor*…
*For the sake of the story and the plan of the ASB, imagine these guys are as powerful as the Ares Berserkers, and in nearly equal numbers.
Part 10
The remaining Russians who had not surrendered, roughly 60% of the total still living, numbered 6000 men. Their opponents inside West Berlin numbered 5000, and still had the advantage of their defences. The Russians withdrew from the areas under fire from the NATO strong points, and dug in. Neither side was confident enough to attack, so their fate hung on the upcoming battle between Ares and Thor. Thor’s battalion was called the Red Hammers by the soviet military, and had roughly the same powers as their counterparts in the Ares Berserkers. The Berserkers and the Hammers met a mile away from the battle lines in West Berlin. The best of the Warsaw Pact’s forces, infused with the power of Thor, now faced the best of NATO, empowered by the God of War. Both sides were tense and ready, like a predator coiled to pounce, or a storm ready to break. The skies above howled with the sounds of the air battle, while the superhuman soldiers waited amongst the rubble of houses and shops, the minds devoted to war and above the ideals that drove their sides, their humanity temporarily thrown aside in their service of Thor and Ares.
Ares felt joy as he saw the rubble of peace being trampled and used by the power of war. He smiled a dark grin, that held no humour or warmth, only a deep echo of primal fury. He was evil in most definitions of the word, and would kill any and all things necessary to achieve his goals. He could only feel joy when drenched in his foes blood and taking lives indiscriminately, the true definition of the Berserker. Unlike his brothers and sisters in Olympus, he did not at all fit well with his NATO allies. Thor was proud, and sought justice in all he saw and was an honourable warrior. He, like Ares, seemed to be a polar opposite to his side, only doing as he does because of loyalty to Odin. Thor saw Ares’s cruel smile as a taunt, and that was all that was needed. The air exploded with bullets, as both sides opened fire with extreme precision, firing shots that would have guaranteed death for all except soldiers with similar magically-endowed abilities.
Thor strode towards Ares, hammer swinging around his head and crackling with blue lightning. Ares brings his heavy calibre machine gun to bear of Thor, firing red bolts of energy instead of bullets, striking Thor in the chest and denting his armour. Thor stumbled backwards in surprise and pain, his eyes burning with intense anger. He lets go of his swinging hammer, which flies forward on the head of a lightning bolt, striking Ares in the chest. He flies 20 meters backwards, crashing into an empty shop front. Shelves of products lay scattered and broken around Ares’s unconscious form, Thor’s hammer lay heavily on his armour, and his head rested on a crushed can of beans. Thor did not see any humour in this as he picked his hammer up. He raised it above his head, preparing for a killing blow. Suddenly, Ares’s eyes shot open, burning red with anger. In a fluid motion, he raised his knees and kicked Thor full in the face with both legs, using the momentum to flip back onto his feet. He swung his shield round in a blinding movement, hitting Thor in the side of the head. Relentless, he lunged with his short hoplite sword at Thor’s head. He ducked, narrowly avoiding the point of the sword and pulled back his hammer in one movement, then drove it forward like a prize fighter’s punch into Ares’s gut, winding him. Ares narrowly avoids a Mjolnir to the head by a desperate dive to the side. He drops into a stance, his shield arm forward, sword arm held ready to stab, the edges of panic beginning to show on his face. Thor launches a bolt of lightning at Ares. Ares manages to pre-empt him, and raises his shield to deflect the bolt. Thor pulls his shield from his back, holding it in front of him as he advances, spinning his hammer above his head. Ares’s eyes dart around, looking for a way out, and spots a discarded artillery piece, just behind and to the left of Thor. Ares begins sprinting towards Thor, who assumes he is going to leap at him. Thor fires a bolt of lightning were he guesses Ares will be. He misses, when Ares jumps higher, and to the left, landing near the artillery piece and running to it. He picks it up, and swings it round towards Thor. He fires the loaded cannon. The cannon spits out an explosive shell, infused with Ares’s power. The blast sends Thor flying on a horizontal pillar of fire. Thor flies over the roofs of empty houses, collides with and shattering a church steeple, before coming to a stop under an ugly tower block. The tower block collapses on top of Thor, and Ares grins with vile joy. Ares turns his back on Thor, walking back to join the battle. From the rubble, there is a thunderclap and a blue flash of light. Mjlonir burst free of the rubble, cast by Thor’s last strength and flies towards Ares. The hammer collides with the back of Ares’s head, releasing all its godlike energy. An explosion of blue lightning bursts out, and Mjolnir momentarily resembled a Tesla Coil of epic proportions. The dense lightning obscured both Ares and Mjolnir, engulfing them in a ball of blue energy. Thick tendrils arcing off the ball, like a chaotic and magical fireworks display. The thunder subsided, and Ares’s steaming corpse dropped to the ground, like a puppet with its strings cut. Thor sighs with relief, before succumbing to his wounds, and dies amongst the rubble. Mjolnir shatters and breaks, and far of in Siberia, Odin’s heart misses a beat. The Ares Berserkers and the Red hammers continue to fight, and are, if anything, more powerful since the death of the entities empowering them. But the death of two men, even if they are gods, will never stop the tide of war. The gods have now tasted the bitterness of loss, and now, the hostility between the two pantheons can grow to rival the hostility between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. Zeus and Odin are no-longer fighting humans; they are now fighting each other.
The War between Gods has begun.
Part 11
The soviet sub glided silently through the freezing water of the Pacific, carrying a deadly payload of nuclear weapons. Most Submarines were grounded in their docks, because the pacific, and to a lesser extent, the Atlantic, was the battle ground of Njord and Poseidon. But this sub, was not staying home and safe, and was instead part of a very large gamble. The conflict between Njord and Poseidon was far too complex and alien for either side’s generals, or even most of the gods, to understand, but Njord had promised to divert Poseidon’s attention, and to give the sub a window of opportunity. The sub was currently over an Atlantic trench, and was hugging the seabed to avoid Poseidon’s forces that might blunder into it. But stray Kraken and sea demons were the least of their worries. Every man on board was resigned to death, and they were all ‘volunteers’ who would be rewarded by becoming ‘Heroes of Communism’ for their sacrifice. ICMB’s can be destroyed quickly and easily by both sides, but if a nuclear weapon reached its target without being detected, it would be unstoppable. So the plan was to have the sub surface just outside LA before detonating all its nuclear weapons, to destroy the city. They would be immediately noticed as soon as the surfaced, but by that point it would be too late to stop the explosion. All it cost was one sub, and they destroy one American city and any USNavy ships there. It was a trade off the Kremlin was willing to accept. The situation was as routine as it could be on a nuclear kamikaze ship, until something very distressing and confusing happened. Every clock stopped ticking, and the sailors on the ship felt as if the second they were in was stretching to infinity and nothingness and back again, never repeating and always in a loop of cause and effect through the ages. A great screeching, groaning sound was heard. Then the Sonar went insane, indicating a giant shape was reaching out of the trench towards them. The ship accelerated, but time stood still. The object, a hand, clamped around the sub, buckling the metal and setting off numerous warning lights. A voice boomed through the sub, a voice with no start or end, never beginning or ending.
It seemed to hold a weary contempt for everything as it spoke “I am Kronus, Lord of Time*. You are of no value or significance to time or the fates, your existence only clutters the seamless void of Time”
With that, the hand began to crush the sub, seemingly without even exerting itself. The captain of the ship stood bewildered next to the red button rigged to activate the subs nuclear payload. He pressed it, seeing no other option but to at least hurt this being that would try to kill him. The huge explosion billowed out from the sub, shredding the hand that held it. The Titan bellowed a time rending scream the echoed back and forth through eternity. Kronus fell back into the trench and then deeper, down into Tartarus. The Titan rising had been delayed, hut not stopped. And far of in Valhalla, Eric the Red and Sigmund the Dragon Slayer leave the golden halls at the front of band of heroes on a quest against the Frost Giants.
Part 12
I admit, the first part of this update is very detailed and long, and isn’t entirely necessary, I went on a bit of a ramble about schematics. The best part is the second part, with the suit in action for the first time. Anyway…
Deus ex Machina
15 January 1963
Since the Descent of The Gods, Earth, many questions had arisen. Most, were very mundane, like ‘why can’t you make it good weather all the time?’ and ‘Can you get my wife out of Hades?’ but some questions were more imaginative. Those questions got the government funding and became projects in R&D. One of these clandestine blank check projects was to play an important role in world war three, (or as it is more commonly known, The War of Immortals). That project, was Project Tin Can Man.
The scientist who came up with the idea had brother in the Army. His brother had seen Heracules fighting in a battle, and told his scientist brother why he thought they were so effective. Heracules were as tough as multiple layers of tank armour, something that a good artillery shot could deal with. And he was as fast as a jet fighter, again, something humans can shoot down. And finally, Heracules wielded the power of 3-4 artillery pieces, which, obviously, is less than the power human forces can bring to bear. He said, the defining factor, was Heracules, and Thor and Ares and Magni etc didn’t have unimaginable amounts of power, it was the combination of the power, resilience and speed together that made them so hard to kill. Without any one of those three factors, they would be worth surprisingly little.
Attacks against them must be lucky, because they are so fast, concentrated, because they are so tough, and in huge numbers, because the attackers can be dealt with very quickly. This means it is incredibly hard to kill them, as huge amounts of force must be constantly ready to be diverted to attack them, and must be ready to suffer huge casualties when they do, which is nearly impossible if you are facing a force that is both conventional forces and gods.
The solution, was either to outnumber the enemy nearly 10-1, something NATO could not do, or to have more gods than the enemy. They had to create something with the abilities of a god. With 1963 tech.
The scientist took this (lengthy) observation to Project Tin Can Man’s Think Tank. They decided to keep the weapon humanoid, modelling it after a knights armour. The main problems they had, were the motors on the joints were far, far too big and required huge amounts of fuel to be carried, and even then, there would not be nearly enough armour to survive the punishment a god would dish out.
They had reached a dead end, when they were contacted by Hephaestus, who had shown an interest in this novel idea. He showed them how to craft metals, at great cost, from alloys that were unimaginably rare, even for the Smith God, that could seemingly break the hack of physics. Even the most efficient motors they made were too big for the joints, and lost a large portion of their energy to friction. Motors made from these metals, would require only tiny amounts of input energy, and produce energy in amounts orders of magnitude greater than what was put in. The ingredients for this metal are, sadly, vanishingly rare, so worldwide free energy is not going to be the result of this amazing metal.
Fuel still needed to be carried, as energy created by Exotic Motors, as they are called, can’t be sent back in to the machine and multiplied again, meaning Exotic Motors are not a perpetual motion machine.
The motors on the joints are linked into the pilot’s brain, and are in effect, ‘possessed’ by the pilot, once again thanks to magic, causing them to move just as the pilot’s body would. They are rectangular, half an inch high, 2 inches wide, 4 inches long. Each one provides 750 horsepower, and an incredible headache for any scientist or engineer. The armour is only 2 inches thick, and even is less on the joints, but is another case of mechanical realities being solved by magical handwavium, because it is heavily enchanted, giving it the equivalent strength of a main battle tanks armour. The enchanted armour is another quality the suit has that is impractically expensive to add to conventional forces.
The weapons are a machine gun on the left arm, capable of firing heavy calibre explosive rounds and is primarily anti-infantry. On the right arm, is a specially made anti-armour rifle, that thanks to the magical nature of its bullets and its sheer power, can penetrate tank armour. This is primarily to use as a weapons against Asgardians. Finally, there is a nacelle of rockets on both shoulders, linked to the inbuilt radar system, which is linked to the pilots mind. Except from the rockets, all the ammunition in the suit, is just energy, and is provided by the enchanted nature of the weapons systems. For extra versatility, the bullets and rockets can be given various effects at the will of the pilot, ie smoke, explosive, phosphorous etc. Of course, with the power available to the pilot and the durability of the suit, it was argued that weapons were unnecessary, as opponents could just be punched to death.
The suit could run at remarkable speeds, but flight was always a requirement. This was achieved by having a heavily insulated (magic again) jet engine on the back of the suit, along with two smaller secondary engines for manoeuvring. The manoeuvring jets are suspended behind the body on two metre long struts, protruding from the shoulder blades, slightly upwards and at a right angle to each other.
The suit itself is called Prometheus. Its first battle will be as the new head of the Ares Berserkers, and it is hoped to turn the tide of their battle in Berlin against the Red Hammers.
Deus Ex Machina Part 2.
Jason Alywood was overwhelmed with two emotions. Pride, at being chosen to pilot the Prometheus, and fear, for the upcoming battle. He had served 3 years in the SAS, and had been selected for the joint British-French-American project because of his mastery of dogfights, fist fights, and gun fights.
The wind roared around his helmet as he stood looking through the bomb bay door of the b-52 Stratofortress. He could see muzzel flashes from the troops below. The normal NATO and WARPAC troops were in a stalemate in their dug in positions, waiting for the outcome of the battle between the post-human forces to determine their fate. Near the superhuman battleground, Jason could see a swirling mass of blood red clouds, marking the place were Thor and Ares had killed each other.
A light turned on in the bomb bay, indicating they were over the drop zone. Jason jumped out of the plane, falling like a stone. With a thought, he activated the jets on the suit, and began to pull up. In his mind, he could ‘see’ what the radar detected, and realised a Mig-29 was bearing down on him. Mentally he scolded himself, he had pulled up to early and had flown into the battle above Berlin. He was amazed that the battle for air superiority was still on-going, surely they would have run out of planes by know? He spun in the air as a burst of cannon fire pierced the sky around him, turning onto his back to face the fighter. He raised his right arm, firing the cannon on it at the plane’s cockpit. Even the best pilot under optimal circumstances is shooting in the dark when their shooting unguided rounds at a target moving as fast as they are. The bullet clipped the wing, but was still powerful enough to knock of the end of the wing, destabilising the fighter.
The MIG spun threw the air, out of control, before crashing into the ground below. That reminded Jason what he was really there for. He shot downwards, targeting and destroying another WARPAC jet with his shoulder rockets as an afterthought. He imagined he would use his jets to slow down enough that he would gently touch down amidst the battle. As he approached the ground, he realised that that wouldn’t be the case, not without mashing his organs with the g-force. He pulled upwards sharply, skimming just a few metres above the ground. Jason was flying past individual firefights, too fast to react before he was way past them, and realised that though he could fight jets and fight soldiers, he couldn’t do both at the same time. He looped upwards, slowing down as he did so, and turned his main engine of at the top of his arc. He glided down only with his secondary jets on, landing in the middle of a firefight with a jarring impact. He was in the middle of a street, with shops on either side. Behind him, were Ares Berserkers, in front were Red Hammers.
Three Hammers were in a shop directly in front of him, and were seconds away from opening up with a bazooka. Jason lunged forward and to the side, firing up his secondary jets as he did so. He could run 60mph in the suit, but he could hit 80 if he hit the thrusters as he ran. Jason smiled as the bazooka shot whizzed by his head, knowing that the soldiers that fired it were super-humanly good shots. He ducked as they opened up with everything they had, and swung his left arm around in an arc, the machine gun roaring as it spat out bullets, cutting down the Hammers in the shop.
Another group of Hammers took notice of this, and turned their attention away from the Berserkers they were engaging, and brought an anti-tank rifle round to aim at Jason. He saw this just in time on his radar, and sent a white phosphorous rocket out to meet his attackers. They were obliterated in the harsh white glare of the missile, burned to nothing in seconds. As he look at the building he had just shot, he realised that the steady pinging noise he could hear was small arms fire impacting against his armour. Strictly speaking, he could have ignored the anti-tank rifle. That though made him smile as he realised the extent of power his suit gave him.
Jason Alywood spent the next 4 hours in an exhausting killing spree, and as the sun began to set on the battlefield, the banshee cries of the Ares Berserkers were cries of triumphant victory. The battle was not yet over, but was clearly in favour of the NATO forces. Jason had achieved his objective, and jumped in the back of a helicopter, on a flight back to London, the closest place with a lab secret and advanced enough to house the Prometheus armour.
16 January 1963. Alywood was preparing to leave for America, where he would be assigned to a Marine Core Battlegroup in south East Asia, to lead the fight-back in Korea against the PLA. His Boeing had just taken off, and was climbing into the sky. 14 seconds into the flight, one of the engines failed, set on fire, and finally detached from the plane as it exploded. The plane began to circle round, trying to land, as fighters were scrambled to combat the unknown threat. Jason burst into the cockpit. He was about to ask what was happening, when the pilot, then the co-pilot, slumped backwards into their seats. There were two neat holes in the cockpit screen, that were letting out air fast. Alywood saw two arrows protruding from the heads of the pilots, and realised what caused the two holes in the screen. Impossible, he thought, but he turned his though back to the present, and saw that the plane was in free fall. He grabbed the controls. He was unfamiliar with commercial aircraft, but he didn’t have a choice, he couldn’t just fly off and abandon soldiers on the plane.
There was a huge booming sound behind Jason, and the plane began to break apart and fall. A flaming arrow had just hit the fuel tank. Insane, though Jason, as he fired his jets and flew away from the falling wreckage. He swore to kill his attacker, as he saw the burnt remains of the soldiers in the plane impact on the airport.
He noticed a flickering on his radar, and jerked to the side just as an arrow flew past were his head had been less than seconds ago. His instincts, honed by years of fighting in countless black-ops operations, told him that whatever these arrows are, they could kill him, Prometheus armour or not. Jason realised the source of the arrows was just on the horizon, on top of a tower block in London.
He saw a man wearing a cloak, with long hair, a tunic, a bow, and a quiver. He had been briefed on the potential threats he faced, and recognised this one as Vali, and archer of great skill and a warrior of renown too. Jason assumed he would be as strong as Thor, but was more intent on revenge for the deaths of the soldiers on the Boeing and its crew.
Jason came to a halt and hovered above and the tower block. People shouted and pointed on the streets below, and Jason realised he would have to draw Vali away from the city. Vali was roughly a hundred metres away, well in range of his cannon. Jason lined up the shot and fired, but Vali rolled to the left just before he fired. Jason shot towards Vali, who stood up in time to receive an uppercut that hit with the force of a truck. Vali was flung upwards and back, and Jason chased after him. Vali and Jason collided in mid-air, with Jason wrapping his arms around Vali’s midriff like a rugby player.
Jason angles downwards, letting go of Vali, who speeds towards the ground at speed approaching mach 1.5. The dust cleared, and Vali appeared, lying at the bottom of a huge crater. Jason was sure the battle was over, and that Vali had been struck down by the impact.
Vali’s eyes opened, glowing green. Jason remembered the briefing, Vali was a being born of a Giant and Odin, neither of whom were close to being weak, for the sole purpose of revenge against Hoor. More drastic action was needed.
An ear-splitting scream, which Jason assumed to be a jet fighter, echoed across the battleground. It came from strange flying creature. It had 2 black, scaled legs, and two arms that were long and stretched like a bats. The thick skin between the fingers in the wings was a deep red, mirroring the beast’s eyes. Its neck arched like a reptilian swan, if swans had sharp spines pocking out above the spine along the length of the neck. Its head was beaked, and was covered in spikes. In its mouth, there was a tiny ember burning, like the ignition spark on a flamethrower. Its tale swung wildly through the air, and had a large spiked club on the end of it. It landed, and Vali climbed onto it, sitting on a saddle strapped to the point where the neck and body meet. Jason had no idea how he was controlling the creature, and was more concerned with what the creature is.
It was a Dragon. A genuine, fire breathing, man eating, flying dragon. And it was being flown by a god who could score a headshot with a bow and arrow against a pilot on a moving jet plane from 3 miles away. For the first time since he put on the suit, Jason Alywood was mortally afraid.
Jason rushed forward towards the dragon, aiming to knock Vali off and kill him with another ground impact. The dragon sent a stream of fire at Jason, who dodged it by with a roll to the side. He could see the skin on the underside of the dragon neck was softer than the skin on the rest of its body. The dragon opened its mouth to fire again as Jason approached it. Jason slowed down, suffering huge amounts of G’s to pull a U-turn as it passed by the dragon, narrowly avoiding another blast of fire, matching its speed and hiding underneath its stomach.
To Vali and the dragon, it seemed like Jason had slowed down as he approached them, and was incinerated by the dragon as it passed by. Jason moved upwards and grabbed onto the Dragons underbelly, which continued to fly, oblivious to the danger. Jason started firing the gun on his left arm, drawing a circle on the beast’s underbelly. The dragon began to thrash and writhe about, but Jason held on. The dragon entered and spread out his wings to stop suddenly, in an attempt to throw him off. Jason finished making the hole, and ripped of the skin covering it. He could see coils of organs and what looked like intestines. Poking out from what looked like kidneys, was a sac like organ, that deflated every time dragon breathed fire. He waited a few seconds for it to inflate again, and targeted his armour piercing and high explosive rockets at it. Vali’s upper body then appeared round the side of the dragon. He had climbed round it to stop Jason himself. Jason saw this and gave a little wave, before he let go and fell away, as he fired the missiles at the gas sac. The dragon was replaced by a satisfying explosion, out of which flew a red notched arrow. Jason fired his jets, but the arrow was much faster than the others, and hit him below the collar bone, penetrating the armour. It went through his body, and would have come out the other end if it weren’t for the armour on the back. Jason slowed down as he came to the landing, but the poison in the arrow was burning through him, and he lost consciousness 30 metre up. His jets were directly linked to his mind, and had no safeguard installed, so the cut out when he fell unconscious and his body plummeted to the ground. News crews had been watching the battle, as it was only a mile away from London, and the crowds parted for the ambulance that rushed to the fallen warrior.
Update 13. The beginning of the end.
Since the beginning of the War of Immortals, events had been happening too fast for all the implications of The Descent to be realised. Every available mind in NATO and WARPAC was agonising over the new tactics arising from having gods on yours and the enemies side and how to fight a conventional war that would never end in MAD.
But, hidden in a nondescript building, a secret Swiss bank, inside Zurich, a lay inside a vault, writhing in pain as a droplets of poison fall onto him from the ceiling. The guards outside are baffled by the vault, and have been hearing a steady dripping from it since it appeared on 11am 24 may 1962. The thought of the vault carried a strange primal dread to the guards, and they did their best to avoid it, until very recently. 5 days ago, they vault had begun drawing them towards it, in their dreams, in their homes, and on the toilet. Driven by this urge, they began to ask questions and talk about the vault, and decided to investigate it. They found there was no space in the building for it, but that it was there anyway. The building now had an extra vault added to it, which by all rights is occupying the same space as a laundrette next door. Attempts to measure the inside of the building proved futile, as the numbers on the tape measure seemed to blur, and the tape itself seemed to stretch and bend into the horizon as they watched it.
So, having exhausting all other options, the guards decide to disobey the rule about never opening a client’s vault, and on the 24 of January, 1963, they found the combination in their managers office, and approached the vault.
Three guards stood clustered around the vault, as the forth turned the mechanism back and forth. The fourth guard reached the end of the sequence, and there was a subtle ‘click’ noise that echoed in the tense silence of the corridor. Three seconds passed, none of the guards wanting to turn the wheel, mentally, it was a step to far, even if they had already broken the law, but also, they were afraid of what was inside the vault more than what awaited them inside a prison cell. The guard who had unlocked the vault reached forward tentatively, like a man putting his hand into a lions jaw. The thought of the vault had resounded in their nightmares since they first saw it, but what it contained was far worse than a nightmare. His hand touched the wheel. There was an imperceptible change in the air, like something breaking, something crucial. The dripping had stopped. The wheel began to turn, incredibly slowly, then faster, until it was a blur. There was a screeching noise of metal being torn, and the wheel shot away from the vault, smashing into the wall opposite. A man was hunched at the far end of the vault, standing amidst piles of fool’s gold and holding what seemed to be a dead snake. Around his feet there was a pile of broken chains.
His eyes flashed green, blinding the guards for an instant. Their vision cleared and he was gone. They turned to look at each other, frozen in fear at what they saw. Each individual guard saw those around him as various combinations of monsters, criminals and serial killers, and had an incredible urge to strike out and kill the monsters around him in self-defence. The guard in the centre attacked the guard in the middle of the circle, grabbing his neck and desperately punching him. They feel to the flaw, both clawing and bashing in fear of the perceived monster in front of them. The guard nearest the end of the corridor tried to make a run for it, but the other guard cut him down with his gun, thinking he was charging at him, before killing the others on the floor. He ran out, stopping to kill the slathering creature he saw in the manager’s room. The man who had resided in the vault was Loki, god of tricks, lies and illusions. And he was loose on Zurich.
It didn’t matter that Zurich wasn’t NATO or WARPAC, within minutes of Zurich descending into chaos, messages had been sent to both Asgard and Olympus, and within minutes, Hypnos, the Olympian god of sleep, Morpheus, the god of dreams, and from Asgard, Niorun, goddess of dreams. The three Hypnos puts Zurich to sleep, while Niorun and Morpheus cure their madness in their dreams. But it was too late for over 50,000 people.
A temporary truce is called between Asgard and NATO, Asgard and Olympus, and between Olympus and WARPAC, to allow the gods, who have a far greater resistance to Loki’s abilities than humans, to hunt him down. The war rages on between NATO and WARPAC, and soon, the battle will be re-joined by the gods. WARPAC still has the conventional advantage, though they have suffered more casualties from the Olympians than NATO has from Asgard. And of course, Jason Alywood and the Prometheus armour is not included in the ceasefire. Heidmall and Artemis are dispatched to hunt Loki. The first steps towards Ragnorak have been taken…
Update 14.
The ground rushed past Loki, all the details lost in a blur of movement and speed. His wings beat against the air, and his small, dark, crow eyes darted around, searching for any sign of his pursuers. On the horizon, Loki saw two chariots, one steel and gold, and made with fine metal work, the other made from steel and wood, and inlaid with intricate carvings. A winged horse pulled the gold chariot and its rider, Heracules. The other was ridden by Heidmall, and was pulled by a jet black horse with burning feet and glaring eyes. The two gods saw Loki, not fooled by his disguise as a crow. He looked like a crow, but… shifty.
The warriors spilt up, flanking Loki, Hiedmall on the left, Heracules on the right. Heidmall notched an arrow to his bow, and Heracules drew back his bow, drew aim on Loki, and fired. Loki dodged downwards, Hiedmall anticipated this, and fired his arrow below Loki, who flew into it. The arrow lodged in Loki’s wing, who writhed about in the air trying to get it loose. Loki’s beak opened and screamed, a scream more befitting of a larger creature, and began to glow.
Loki’s scream continued and the glow grew to hide him entirely. Recognition darted on the edge of Hiedmall’s mind, he was sure he knew what that scream, no, that roar, was. His eyes widened and he yelled across to Heracules: “Heracules be warned! Loki is trying to take the form of a Dragon!”
Heracules opened his mouth to reply, but was silenced when a spiked dragon tail swung towards his head, and he was forced to duck. Heracules popped up like a jack-in-the-box as the tail passed over his head, and slashed it with his sword. The light faded, and the full body of the Dragon was revealed. Both had heard stories of Vali’s fight with Jason Alywood, but the Dragon in front of them was much bigger than the one in Jason’s battle. It had the same bat-like wings, scaled swan neck and 4 legs, but was much, much bigger, the size of a large submarine at least, and had two twisted goats horns. Hiedmall drew his bow, an oak longbow, and fired at the dragons head. The arrow imbedded itself in the scales above Loki’s eye, but didn’t draw blood. A deep, booming sound resounded across the sky, emanating from a ship newly stationed on the Potomac River. Three shells shot by, narrowly missing Loki. While he was distracted, Hiedmall pulled a spear of his back, manoeuvred his chariot below Loki and threw the spear at his soft belly. It struck deep, drawing a trail of blood that was whipped away by the wind as it appeared. It wasn’t much, but it was a start. Loki swooped down towards Hiedmall, and swatted at him with a huge clawed foot. Heidmall jumped as the foot smashed the chariot into kindling, wrapping his arms around the leg, and held on for his life. The fire-footed horse turned around and kicked out at the dragons face, jerking it violently backwards, before fleeing a pillar of fire that burst from Loki’s mouth. Loki swung his head around, an unbroken stream of fire waving through the sky like a crimson ribbon. Heracules swooped down, dodging the stream of fire and stuck his sword up, dragging it across Loki’s under belly as he passed. Another boom noise echoed as the ship down on Potomac River fired. Two shells missed, but the third struck home, catching Loki next to his left wing stem. His left wing became sluggish, and he began to fall. Heracules flew past Hiedmall, who grabbed on to the chariot as he went past. Heidmall swung into the chariot and started firing arrow after arrow in quick succession at Loki, aiming at the wing stems. The city of Washington DC expanded to fill the land below them, and people ran and screamed, pointing at the figures in the sky.
Loki began to glow again, and started to shrink. 20 metres above the white house, the light cleared, revealing the Loki, flailing through the air. He smashed into the white house, landing somewhere near the oval office. Heracules landed in the hole created by Loki’s impact, and he and Hiedmall dismounted, racing off after him. Three secret service guards were trying to pull Kennedy from a pile of rubble, when Loki reached them. Loki picked up the closest agent and threw him at the others, before pulling Kennedy from the wreckage. Loki placed his hand on Kennedy’s forehead, and entered his mind. He raced through his memories, and found what he was searching for.
He saw a day when Kennedy was taking a tour of a new type of nuclear silo, and was told by a technician the location of other similar facilities. Loki released him, and let him fall to the floor. Loki could sense his children, Hel, Fenrir and Jormungandr. He reached down and picked up a suit case from a crushed military aide, and opened it. Inside, was a small console with an antenna protruding from it. He picked up a black book from the case and opened it. It listed the exact locations of the sites Kennedy had known. Loki selected the silos he knew, he heard Hiedmall and Heracules approaching, and chose three targets. The target were inside the silos themselves, causing them to explode inside them. Loki channelled that explosions through his link to his children to their prisons. The explosions, milliseconds after coming into existence, disappeared, leaving the silos unharmed.
One appeared and became a tiny artificial sun inside the San Andreas Fault in California, in the Carrizo Plane. The fireball cooled and died unnaturally quickly, falling into the fault. Clawed hands appeared over the side of the fault, pulling demonic forms behind them. Hel’s horde was free, underneath a sky of fire and radioactivity.
One appeared on top the Icelandic Glacier Snaefellsjokull. The incredible heat and pressure melted the ice, and a huge form moved, freed from his icy prison. Jormingandr writhes threw the air and water, spraying venomous clouds from his maw. His body was the length of several oil tankers, and was covered in jagged spikes, dripping foul poison into the waters.
The final bomb appeared outside Asgard, and was sucked down into the ground as it exploded, like a fiery drill. From the smoking crater burst Fenrir, shattered manacles around his feet, trailing broken chains.
Seconds later, Heracules burst into the room. Loki turned to face them, instead meeting the fist of Heracules. Blood and gristle fell to the floor. Stunned, Loki staggered backwards. Heracules advanced, raining blow after blown upon Loki. He was going to enjoy this. One punch knocked multiple teeth out of Loki’s mouth, cutting cheek flesh and Lip as well. Another punch caved in one side of Loki’s skull. Brain and skull shards covered Heracules’ hand. Both of Heracules’ hands came down with a crushing grip on Loki’s shoulders. Pulling Loki towards him Heracules’ devastating knee blow shattered Loki’s chest, ribs had pierced and sliced Loki’s muscle, skin and sinew alike. Multiple organs were also on display. Seizing Loki’s face Heracules hefted him into the air, then, bought him crashing back down. In the small crater caused by this act of Herculean violence lay Loki, his face a bloody pulp and his body a horrific mess. Heidmall now entered the room, hefting his war axe above his head, Heracules stepped aside, allowing Heidmall to bring his axe cleaving down, carving Loki clean in half in a violent splash of sanguine life essence.
Update 15. The Death of Los Angeles.
Carrizo Plain. 8pm may 25 1963
A ragged column of creatures extended like a vile snake across the Carrizo Plain. They continued to pour from the fault line in their hundreds, while those at the front surged forward, devouring everything in their path. Their path led to Los Angeles.
Outskirts of Los Angeles. 9am May 26 1963
2 million and half people are running. The streets were gridlocked with cars, and have been since reports of a swarm of creatures moving towards the city 13 hours ago. Large amounts of people, over half the city’s population, are still trapped inside. The richest were in the suburbs and have already left, but the majority of the population of the poorer areas like Compton and Watts county are stuck inside.
At the head of the army lope great wolves with jagged teeth and shaggy coats, the size of a bear and as powerful as one two. Above them fly creatures with the torso, wings and head of a bat, two hooked arms covered in matted black fur, shrivelled, tiny legs ending in large talons and a mouth that spews clouds of venomous acidic gas. Behind them, huge beasts like mammoths with a bears head charge forward. Finally, behind them, are the majority of the creatures.
They have human bodies, covered in blood red skin, have twisted horns on their heads and claws on their hands. They run twice as fast as a sprinting human and never rest. Their skin is 100 degrees farenhiet, and their blood burns upon contact with oxygen. Theirs eyes are hollow, with only black fire in their place. And still more of every demon in Hel’s army continues to surge forth from the fault, like water from a broken dam.
Watts County. Los Angeles 1pm May 26 1963
Burbank lay in flames. The creatures had pushed through it, killing hundreds and burning everything. They have trampled a path through it, smashing the rubble flat with the impacts of thousands of feet. They are advancing towards Watts county, the nearest, biggest concentration of life. The women and children and elderly are being evacuated, but they are not fast enough. The men are staying behind, organised and armed in gangs, gangs that were the downfall of Watts will now be the saviour of it children at the expense of its men.
Watts County. Los Angeles 1:45pm May 26 1963.
The Army knows that if the demons can’t be stalled now, there will be no stopping them before they have destroyed Los Angeles and killed thousands. Troops are pouring in to the city and already the Air force fights for the air while artillery bombards the demons. But they need somewhere to anchor their position on, and they need more men. They have enough, but it is taking far too long to move them in while the population evacuates. The small groups of soldiers will be swept away without a pause in the ceaseless advance of the monsters. But an area with large numbers of trained and organised fighters and huge amounts of buildings to shelter in already exists. Watts County.
Watts County. Los Angeles 2:05pm May 26 1963.
Reinforcements pour into Watts, from gangs following the example of the Watts gangs, the LAPD, the first of the troops to have walked through the crowds to reach it, and large quantities of Special Forces, flown in by helicopter. Gang feuds, and hate of police/army/gang members has been put aside for the city.
Watts County. Los Angeles 2:17pm May 26 1963.
Jim Frye, age 23, was for once, happy to be in school. Mainly because inner city schools have thick concrete walls, and he was fighting for his life. He could see everything north of Watts burning from his position on the school roof. Next to him was a two other guys from his gang, and a fire team of marines that had been moved in by chopper.
Suddenly, a building across the street collapsed into a pile of rubble, replaced with a hulking mammoth-bear. The creature roared, spraying phlegm mixed with blood across the building. The Marines opened up, firing at its body.
Jim brought his pistol round and fired at the beast. Two shots slammed into its lower jaw, the third into its nose. Chunks of bone flew off the creature, but this only made it madder. It charged towards him, smashing through a block of concrete classroom without pausing.
Jim kept firing at its head, causing its steps to become jerky and un-coordinated. Jim popped in a new clip, and started firing again. He looked forward, and saw it was much closer. Too close.
Jim kept firing, fear freezing his legs, but not his hands. The beast was 3 metres from Jim, when he was thrown sideways, and landed hard on the ground. The beast smashed into the main body of the building, collapsing in the rubble. The weight on Jims chest disappeared, and hands gripped him, pulling him to his feet.
“What happened?”
One of the Marine spoke up. “I tackled you. Here’s a nade. We got to kill it before it gets up.” He said, before running over to the crater with the rest of his fire team.
Jim looked at the grenade in his hand, pulled of the pin and lobbed it at the crater. The beast stirred and shifted, waking from it head shot and concrete wall induced sleep. The Marine and the gangsters ducked behind a large shard of rubble, as a string of small powerful explosions went of around the monster. Three of the soldiers ran over to the edge of the building, and reassumed their lookout posts, while the others and the gangsters went to admire their handiwork. The creature lay still, huge raw chunks missing from it body. Its is smashed up, its front right leg lay a few metres away, and its organs spilled out across the ground.
“Nasty” Said one of the gangsters.
“No shit.” Spat the Marine who had tackled Jim
“GET OVER HERE, THE LITTLE DEMONS ARE ATTACKING” Yelled one of the Marines watching the street.
The creatures look like humans, but with blood red skin, sharp claws, sharp fangs, and in most cases, strips of blood and gore hanging down from their jaws. There were 13, running down the street towards them.
The men lined up along the roof, and started firing at the mass of creatures surging towards them. The creatures took 3-4 shots to down, and ran like a car. They kept dying, but the swarm seemed to be endless. They were seconds from reaching the walls, and the Marine were throwing the last of their grenades. Pain shot through Jim’s ankle, as a demonic hand grabbed him. It burned like fire, and searing lances of pain blazed up and down his leg. Jim points his gun downwards, screaming a banshee howl as he empties the last three bullets in the clip into the demons face, causing it to into the crowd of demons below.
To his left, one of the Marines gave a gleeful cry, as he stabbed a demon through the eye with his combat knife, and kicked the body off the knife and down the wall. To his right, another marine screamed in pain as he was pulled down and devoured, prompting the men to step back from the edge, as he pulled the pins on all his remaining grenades. The foundation of the wall rocked slightly with the impact, and the attack died down. There were only 5 demons left, 3 marines and 3 gangsters. The men attacked with renewed vigour, killing 4 with their knifes and guns, and crushing the last under a piece of rubble. A group of soldiers came running round the corner to help them, just as two Dire Wolves leapt onto the roof of a nearby flat. Jim looked up, and saw two figures moving fast in the sky, but thought nothing of it. After all, he had bigger problems right now…
Los Angeles 2:15pm Above LA.
Hel, the ruler of Niflheim, has many servants. The greatest and most powerful of those, is the Grey Demon (Take over Josh) (Me again)
The Demon surveyed the city below, from the burning wreckage, to the screaming, running masses and the desperate holding action in Watts. The best way to speed up the destruction and devouring of the city is to deploy the Deepest Monstrosities in the area called Watts, to overcome the human defences before a proper line can be established. The demon turned around to survey Midgard; it is still 10 hours until midnight and the 5 minute window that in which the Hel gate can be used to pass from Midgard to Niflhiem instead of the other way around.
Jason Alywood had been deployed to fight the Demon army, and had spotted a creature of unearthly origin above the city. He radioed in for permission to engage, got it, and charged.
The Demons vision exploded with black and red spots as a sledgehammer impact crashed into his skull. The ground and sky span round and the Grey Demon flailed about, trying to find purchase on his attackers metal skin. A huge thunderclap sounded out, as they passed the sound barrier, Jason arched downwards and let go, repeating the technique he had used against Vali mere days ago. The Demon rushed towards the ground, but began slowing down, before coming to a complete stop. Ominously, he began to move upwards towards Jason.
Jason was momentarily thrown by the Demons blatant superiority to Vali, an opponent he had barely overcome. But that was only for a second, before his training kicked in. Jason started firing his cannon and machine gun and the Demon, imbedding white chunks of phosphorous in its skin with every hit. White hot points of fire streaking into it did not slow it down, and it kept climbing towards him. Jason fired his missiles at the speeding creature, which dodged and weaved, avoiding most of them but staggering in the when two hit its body. Jason rushed downwards towards it, intending to use his height advantage to drive it into the ground. Seconds from impact, the creature reached out with its arm, and tendrils of grey shadow reached out toward Jason.
Jason dodged instinctively as the tendrils swept through the air he was seconds before. Jason flew backwards, facing the Demon and firing his cannon into it. The creature writhed in the air, shooting tendril out in all directions until it was at the centre of a swirling Maelstrom of ethereal shadows. Jason circled it, darting back and forth, taking advantage of the sluggish tentacles to shoot his cannon at the form in the centre.
The Grey Demon let loose a scream of rage and frustration, and charged towards Jason, its tentacles converging to for a solid wall of shadowy knife points. Jason anticipated this, and fires all his jets sideways, performing an Ariel sidestep against his hate blinded foe. He slams into the back of the abomination, using its own force to drive it downwards at mach 2. He changes course to avoid crashing into the city, and to avoid the dog fight between the Demonic Dragons and the Air force. He tries to angle towards the column of monsters leading to the city, but is forced to go further and further forward to avoid attacks by dragon. He spots an area where the swarms of bat like creatures and dragons do not cover, and flies towards it, aiming further downwards and tightening his hold on the Grey Demon. He looks at his landing sight, and realises it is the portal. It resembles a thin film of grey and purple energy swirling across the fault line.
Jason keeps flying downwards, his decision to hit the portal reinforced by the Demons increasingly frantic efforts to get free.
At the last possible second, he let go of the demon, which tried to slow itself down, but even its powers could not slow from Mach 3 to 0mph in 7 seconds. Jason climbed sharply upwards, flying away along the ground. The Demon hit the portal.
A sound like the rending of space itself emanated from the portal, as the energy that had been used to create the portal was released. The nuclear explosion blossomed outwards along the ground, the pressure wave flying across the earth like a wall of death. Jason turned his head, and stared in horror. A nuclear explosion was not the intended consequence of smashing the demon.
Jason’s skin began to itch and burn, as the pressure wave hit. Thankfully it was not travelling much fast than him, so he managed to keep control of his flight. Then a second wave hit, caused by the collapse of the portal, and Jason was flung forward at incredible speeds like a piece of paper in a tornado. He saw the ground rushing up at him, and then his vision died.
NBC news.
“…died of radiation poisoning, but the suit is undamaged, and shows no signs of being irradiated, meaning it can still be worn and used. The President has released an official statement announcing that the successor to Jason Alywood will be revealed tomorrow. There will also be a moment of silence during the suit’s passing over ceremony, in honour of this hero of Democracy.
The portal on the San Andreas Fault line has been closed, but the huge numbers of demonic creatures that came through the portal means that the fate of LA and the surrounding area still hangs in the balance. It is still unknown how severely pulling soldiers back from Europe to destroy the demons will affect the war, but military experts are cautiously optimistic, and say that they have enough strategic breathing room after a large Russian force was encircled and destroyed near Antwerp.”
“In other news, there have been numerous reports of ships being destroyed near Marseille. The NATO attack forces are making good progress, and have the Russians on the back foot, and are nearing Berlin. Outside of Germany, the front has mostly stabilised, but there have been reports of a massive Russian build up near…”
Update 16. The long night of Marseille
May 28 Marseille 1pm.
The Mediterranean was a clear blue, a calm expanse of water stretching across the horizon. Yachts and ferries cruised serenely across the water, gliding like dancers on a ballroom floor. The café’s and bars in the Old Port looked out across the ocean, flanked by two huge monoliths of stone and metal, Fort St Nicholas and Fort St Jean. The streets were filled with activity as 700,000 people went about their business.
The cruise ship ‘Any Port’ could see Marseille sprawling across the horizon, slowly growing bigger as it approached. As far as the passengers were concerned, all was well. Soon, they would dock at Marseille, spend a day and a night admiring the city, before getting back on the ship to head to Rome, and after that, the rest of the Med. But on the bridge, the crew was panicking. 40 seconds ago, they had received a warning from a NATO sub stationed in the port. It had detected a huge signature during a test of its sonar. The shape seemed to be sliding slowly across the sea bed towards the city. Originally the crew had thought that it was a malfunction, but after the shape twitched towards them and the sub violently rocked from the wave that a twitch had caused, the captain decided to send out a warning to surrounding vessels, just in case.
Half way through the warning, a huge crash followed by screaming and a rushing sound was heard in the sub, which was very shortly replaced with silence as the message cut out. Seconds later, the ship rocked back and forth, which the crew handwaved away by saying it was ‘the engine changing gear’ which luckily the passenger believed. It also helped that the crew announced that all drinks were free in the bar to distract them.
Despite the passengers being lulled into blissful ignorance and drunkenness, the Any Port began to make for the port at full speed. The water around the Any Port began to turn dark, as though they were being poisoned. The ship began to rock side to side as huge waves slammed into it from below.
Suddenly, all 81000 tons of the Any Port was thrown upward into the sky, held aloft by a giant pair of jaws. The jaws were followed out of the water by a huge, long body covered in glistening scales. Time seemed to stand still as it arced out of the water, before slamming the ship downwards into the water, with enough force to pulverise the ship into a fine powder. The huge impact threw up a wall of water, which rushed towards the city, turning ships into rubble and pulverising the seafront.
10,000 dead.
The size of the creature was insane. Biologically impossible. It had only shown a small part of its body, and any one with half a brain could see that it was linked to the Descent. This was definitely not a natural creature. Not when its full length was 6570 metres, the equivalent of 15 oil tankers back to back.
Across Europe, spare jet fighters were scrambled, and the Mediterranean fleet changed course to fight the creature. But Marseille was defenceless.
The creature reared its head above the thrashing waters. The sky turned dark at is spewed dark clouds of poison across the sky, which sunk to the ground, blanketing the waters in a thick poisonous fog, which ponderously rolled towards the city, like a curtain of death.
The cloud of poison hit the city, enveloping the rubble left by the wave. Firemen, Police, Soldiers and Paramedics, along with countless civilians were shrouded by the clouds as they tried to pull people from the wreckage.
15,000.
Marseille 1:15pm
Jorgmandr surged through the water, covering the distance between him and the city in seconds. At this point in time, the tallest skyscraper in the world was the Empire state building, at 381 metres. Jorgmandr reared its head, lifting its body out of the water. The bottom section of his snake-like body coiled up on the see flaw, and his body sawed 4000 metres above the water, dwarfing anything humanity could build.
The city froze, staring at this Lovecraftian monolith in the sky in front of them. A low, creaking sound, echoes across the city. It pulls its head backwards, like a cobra waiting to strike. Its head shot forward at 1.5 mach, a feat seemingly impossible for a creature of its (already impossible) size. People ran and screamed in absolute terror, as the moment of impact rapidly approached.
Jorgmandr slammed its armoured head into Fort St Nicholas. The shockwave spread out from the fort, carrying a wall of rubble in front of it, crushing everything it encountered.
300,500.
The shockwave began to slow down, but only after effecting 70% of Marseille, and destroying everything and everyone in 40% of the affected area.
Jorgmandr pulled its head out of the impact crater, poking its head out of the mushroom cloud the impact had thrown up. It reared up again, ready to deliver another devastating blow, but it stopped. It heard something, something besides screaming and burning. A high, loud screech. Getting louder every second.
Ideological hate could only go so far. Outside Archangelsk, the WARPAC was suffering a different Descent induced problem, as an army of Frost Giants bore down upon them. Both sides had called a temporary ceasefire and pledged to help each other with their immortal problems.
Jorgmandr found the source of the screeching. A Flight of 5 Mig-29’s shot past him, leaving a rash a of explosions across the back of his neck. Jorgmandr turned its head after the fighters, as a group of F105 Thunder Chiefs blasted the same spot of Mig’s had. Obviously, intelligence was not Jorgmandr’s strong point, as he once again tried to chase after the fighters, ignoring the new threat. Jorgmandr reared its head back, ready to lunge at the next target. If another group of jets attacked him from the front, they would be hit by a mach 1.5 skyscraper of scales and evil. But the jets were not as stupid as Jorgmandr, and the next assault came followed the same pattern. Jorgmandr glared at the Mig’s and Tigers as they reached the horizon. The Mig’s disappeared behind the horizon, and popped back into view, facing the Jorgmandr. 7 French Dassault III’s unleashed their rockets and cannons with a vengeance. Jorgamndr turned its head around, exposing the back of its neck to the Mig’s to attack the Mirages. But 6 of them were already far out of its reach. One, however, was from Marseille. He broke from the plan of attack. Instead of flying away to allow the Mig to repeat their attack and to then fly away, leaving the target open for the F105’s etc, the Mirage, callsign Lance 5, climbed upwards, then dived towards Jorgmandr. Jorgmandr blasted a cloud of poison from his jaw, as he lunged upwards to meet Lance 5. They met in mid-air, and Lance 5 disappeared into Jorgmandr’s mouth. Lance 5 had not fired all his rockets, and shot everything he had left into Jorgamandr crashed into the inside of its cavernous throat. The explosion caused by the rockets and the plane crash had a lot more effect than expected. Instead of dealing another small jab to Jorgmandr’s defences, the explosion ignited the poison. Explosions rippled through Jorgmandr’s throat and into the organ that created the poison. Jorgmandr flopped down to the sea, creating a huge tidal wave that swamped the rubble once known as Marsielle.
689,450.
No one celebrated. They waited.
The water rippled, then exploded outwards, as Jorgmandr burst out of the water, bleeding blood and wisps of gas from a point halfway down his body, presumably were his poison organ is, or was, located.
But Jorgmandr was still alive. It was the equivalent of a prize fighter being stabbed in the shoulder. He might die later, but he can still fight.
An group of RN frigates had arrived at the battle; the HMS Leander, HMS Ajax, HMS Dido, and the HMS Penelope. Each Frigate had 2 Seacat Surface to Air missile, 2 240mm guns, and two torpedo tubes. They all opened fire, tearing gashes in Jorgmandr’s wound. Jorgmandr thrashed around, sending out waves that rocked the frigates, but did not tip them. Jets swarmed around Jorgamdr’s head, coming from every air field in every country nearby, in a desperate attempt to stop Jorgmandr. Israeli Mirage IIIc’s, British Electric Lightnings, American F105 Thunder Chiefs and F106 Delta Dart, Soviet Mig-29’s, French Mirages and countless others.
Jorgmandr’s tail burst out of the water next to the Dido, which fired its anti-sub torpedoes at it, as it smashed down, chopping the Dido down the middle. The Frigates spread out but continue firing, and let lose their anti-sub torpedos, most of which hit at the submerged part of his wound, causing Jorgmandr to visibly writhe in pain.
The Leander moves to pick up the floating survivors of the Dido, and the Ajax and Penelope move between Jormandr and Leander. Jorgmandr’s tail slides across the water in an attempt to grab and eat the Leander, but the Ajax rammed into it at full speed, leaving a deep gash. The Penelope then attacked the on other side of the tail, leaving another gash, and nearly severing the thin tail segment from the body.
The tail flinched away into the air, leaving the Frigates surprisingly unharmed. As the tail thrashed in the air, a UH-1D flew past, blasting its payload into the exposed bone in the tail wound. The end part of Jorgmandr’s tail broke of and fell into the water.
The tail segment is much thinner than the rest of Jorgmandr’s body, but it is still the size of a long freight train. And it landed on the Ajax, crushing it. The order went out for the Frigates to retreat, which, after the survivors of the Ajax were picked up by the Penelope, was quickly obeyed.
At this point, it was revealed that Jorgmandr had significant healing capabilities, as, still bleeding from his tail and chest, and countless other smaller one inflicted by the fighter jets, he began to breathe the noxious gas again.
As the familiar rushing sound that forewarned Jorgmandr’s gas attack echoed across the battle field, there was a scraping, rasping noise. Jorgmandr was scraping his teeth together to make sparks.
Jorgmandr let loose a cloud of gas, that ignited into a huge cloud of fire as it left his mouth. A swathe of fighter jets were caught in the cloud and incinerated.
The jets pulled of and fled. The generals had realised now, that if it could kill jets and ships that quickly, there was no way they would be able to kill it before it killed them, even more so, as Jorgmandr had demonstrated a frightening healing capability.
The order was given.
An American sub in the Mediterranean loaded a single missile into a torpedo tube. The order was checked and re-checked. The captain took a key off a chain around his neck. The second in command opened a plastic guard over the key hole. The key was placed in its position. The weapon officer inputted the co-ordinates. The orders were checked a final time. The key was turned.
The missile streaked away from the sub, riding atop a pillar of fire towards its target. Jorgmandr turned his head, sniffing for another target, believing he had won the battle. His head turned towards Rome, but a solitary roaring sound distracted him. The missile collided with his head, the head that could survive a Mach 1.5 impact into a city and being repeatedly shot by jets and Frigates. The nuclear hell fire expanded into a ball of red death, covering his upper body and head in shrouds of fiery energy.
Slowly the flames subsided. But Jorgmandr still stood. The scales near the centre of the blast were red and raw, and his skull was visible in many places. His eyes were dead and shrivelled, and his skin was covered in hideous burn. But still he moved towards Rome. There was no hesitation. Silo’s across Europe opened up, and five nuclear Warheads streaked towards Jorgmandr. When the fires died, there was only a blackened skeleton, which sunk to the ocean floor.
Marseille was dead, along with dozens of pilots and sailors. Rome would lose 20% of its population when the atomic cloud hovered over it, and the cloud would then be pulled by the winds into Istanbul and then finally into the Black Sea. The Mediterranean would be sterile for years to come, as would the Black Sea. And the question everybody asked was not why, or how, but where? Where were the Olympians and Asgardians?
17 (Overview Update)
Imagine, the conflicts and tension caused by the question of which, if any, gods or god was real? Religious wars, Jihad, general hate and prejudice. No imagine if the question was not which are real, but what to do now 2 of the most ancient and least believed in pantheons are back and are?
And the Descent did not, by any means replace religion with something new. True, most religions have taken a hit. Most of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, have had a roughly 20% fall in believers. There are less Hindus, but the numbers of Sikhs stayed the same, thanks to their belief that all religions are different paths to truth. The same holds true for Buddhists, who are now, along with Sikhs, seen as ‘neutral’ as they can co-exist with chariot-riding thunderbolt-throwing deities.
Unlike the majority of Christianity, and indeed, the Abrahamic religions as a whole, Catholicism had grown significantly since the events May 28 1963. Public opinion had slowly been turning in favour of the Olympians since the Descent, and acts of violence against Fawns and their businesses in had mostly died down. But after casualties began to mount on both sides as the war escalated, many, especially those who had lost a loved one in the fighting, began to blame the Olympians for the war. After all, without them and the Asgardians, MAD would still be in place, and war would have been impossible.
The Pope, whether he meant to or not, harnessed all those underlying emotions of inferiority and hate. The Pope turned Catholicism from a religion, into a figure head of hate against the Olympians. It is possible, that if he had made his declaration in different circumstances, it would not have created a self-sustaining wildfire of hate. But what-ifs and maybes are insubstantial, because as the rubble of Marseille burned, and as thousands were struck down by a cloud of radiation in Rome, the Pope lay on his bed, dying from radiation poisoning, he spoke.
On his death bed, he said “700,000 people, innocent men, women and children have been slaughtered in Marseille, day by day more die on the front line, and in the streets around me, people fall to the pavement, victims of an invisible poison. And what do we do to stop this? We have done nothing. We have allied ourselves with the Demons who reside in hedonistic luxury in Olympus while our cities burn and our men fight and die. Our enemies our not the soviets, are enemies are those who proclaimed themselves our allies. They forced as into a war we neither wanted, nor needed. They unleashed beasts onto us that have destroyed two cities and yet we give them land to live on and let them build their homes in our cities! I say this is the time to cast them out! Zeus is the violent, lustful young man and Odin is the scheming, oppressive lord in Satan’s mind. I call a new war against the Olympians and Asgardians, a war that will unite humanity against satan, before he manipulates us into destroying ourselves with this brutal war! I call a crusade to rid all peoples of humanity of this demonic scourge!”
As usual in this kind of situation (barring the Gods) the loudest minority became the face of the moderate majority. The fact that most Catholics did not engage in or harbour any thoughts of violence against the various OEMs (Olympian Ethnic Minorities) was forgotten by most media, and heralded a new era of stereotypes for Catholics. But the discrimination suffered by the majority of Catholics is trivial compared to the crimes committed by the extremist minority. All across the (free) world, there were attacks against fawns, the non-evil centaurs, tribes of human-like nature spirits, nymphs and any other OEM that chose to live in cities. Businesses were torched, houses were trashed, people were murdered, and, inexplicable, Protestant/Catholic violence in Ireland broke again. After the infamous (media named) ‘Goat Plaza’ massacre, where a square in Rome primarily occupied by fawn owned shops, was attacked by an armed mob. 13 Fawns were killed, 34 were injured, one human died while helping them to escape, and one rioter died when he was kicked in the head by a fawn. There were bright spots in the riots, as individuals throughout society sheltered people from the rioters, even as they spread across the globe. Originally, the riots began in Rome, and were fuelled by the Popes death-bed announcement, but very soon, anywhere with a xenophobia, or pent up hate for the OEM’s and sympathisers saw riots on their streets. The riots lasted from 3rd June to 19th June 1963. By the end of the riots, which spread from Rome to Naples and Venice, then to every city in France (except, and because of, Marseille), London, Edinburgh, all of the cities in the East and West coast of America and Tokyo in Japan, over 348 OEM’s were dead, along with 17 police officers, two national guardsmen and 24 protesters. Rome was the first and last city to riot, but France, for obvious reasons, was also hit very hard by the riots. But the June riots were definitely not the only, or most important social effects of the Descent.
The Amazon rainforest is significantly larger than most experts would suggest, as most companies pulled out after Stymphalian Birds began to attack and kill loggers with their metal beaks and feathers. Any large scale attempts to eliminate the birds was met with a hail of armour piercing arrows, fired by Hyperboreans. Agent orange was tested, but the crop dusters were quickly beset by the Stymphalian birds, which demonstrated their deadly ability to fire metallic feathers, shredding metal and pilot alike. Eventually it was decided committing genocide against the Hyperboreans and killing the Stymphalian birds was not worth the effort (and bad PR) to get some wood. The Hyperboreans now feature in many NATO black ops units, and hold a seat at the UN, which they use to annoy the Brazilians.
In a newly built skyscraper, built in a ‘neo-classical’ style, are the headquarters of a company called Olympian Sourcing headed by the Oracle. It owns the patent for various inventions, including the Wind Spirit Mega Blimp (a zeppelin filled by a hired wind spirit, that can have gondolas the size of an ocean liner), the WS Zeppelin Weapons Platform (a military version of the WSMB, which has multiple wind spirits, allowing for the blimps skin to be armoured like a bunker and for it to act as a way to land huge numbers of troops and material, as an aircraft carrier and as a platform for naval guns), various magical cures, including a medicine that caused all other pharmaceutical companies to go bust, the (highly expensive) Panacea. Which does exactly what the name suggests, curing any and all illness, along with disproving many theories about certain opinions or lifestyle choices being ‘diseases’.
When questioned about Thetans, Hades said he had never heard of them, much to the dismay of a certain Mr Hubbard.
And there is your social update, Reichenfaust!
18
A month has passed since the Jorgmandr ceasefire treaty timed out, on the 3rd of June. As the second hand passed midnight and the treaty became invalid, a huge force of WARPAC forces struck towards the Berlin, steam rolling through NATO defence lines, as they advanced under a strategic level rolling barrage of lighting and fire, provided by the Asgardians. A NATO forces fought desperate rear guard actions as they retreated the bulk of their forces to try and consolidate and stop the Soviet advance at defence line being set up outside Berlin. 5 miles east of Berlin, the world’s largest tank battle raged, and the skies burned as Jets clashed, and above, Zeus, Athena, Heracules, Artemis and Apollo fought Odin, Balder, Tyr, Heidmall and Ullr.
Hades followed the orders of Zeus, and led an army of soldiers, those who had been heroic enough to earn a place in Elysium, numbering 10,000, into battle. Amongst their ranks, were the Argonauts (baring Heracules), large numbers of Trojans and Achaeans from the battle of Troy, soldiers from the Battle of Marathon and men from the 7000 who fought at Thermopylae, along with heroes and warriors from countless battles in the realm of the Olympians. They fought as wraiths, a fury of ethereal limbs and weapons, as they unleashed the fury of lost lives and forgotten wars. They fought around the gods, against the host of Valhalla, as those yet-to die unleashed death from all the insidious weapons of humanity.
The day wore on, and the battle became reminiscent of the battle of the Somme; huge amounts of material being poured into a meat grinder as fast as possible. It was like a continuous train wreck, with the front being obliterated to make way for next carriage. The sun fell, like a tear shed by the heavens at the slaughter it witnessed. The Russians tried to flank the NATO positions, to try to gain some kind of advantage. Ullr disengaged from the Olympians after Artemis was wounded, to lead the flanking attack. Thomas Chambers, the replacement for Jason Alywood, in an up-armoured version of the Prometheus battle suit, the Ares battle suit, led the counter-attack. Ullr fought as NATO (primarily British and French) troops collided with WARPAC forces in a storm of fire and blood. Tom and Ullr scarred the land in their fury, dealing earth shattering blows in a berserker rage to match the fallen Ares, and with power to match the fallen Thor. The flanking attack ground to a halt, as the soldiers on both sides found themselves blocked by a strange storm front. Inside the storm Ullr and Chambers stopped fighting. The air around then hummed and shook with ancient power, as the earth far below them shattered. The land rose upwards, revealing a dark scar, running deep into earths heart. The scar in the earth grew brighter and brighter, shinning with the light of a thousand suns. Helios, the Titan of the sun emerged, wreathed in clothes of golden fire and carrying a spear of metal, forged from the core of a thunderbolt. Then arose Atlas, obviously neglecting his world carrying duties, who wore armour hewn from the very bedrock itself and whose helmet sparkled with the lightning of the stratosphere. And finally, undaunted by his run in with a multi-kiloton undersea nuclear explosion (see: part 11) rose Kronus. In his hand he held a sickle, and his robes were grey, tattered and plain and the bottom, but were embroided like the robes of a conquering hero at the top. His helmet was rusted and jagged at the bottom, but was a flawless silver gleam near the plume. The storm front collapsed, revealing the three towering figures that loomed across the horizon. They stood out like skyscrapers on the horizon, 1000 metre high beacons of terror. The battle stopped. Thousands of jaws fell agape. Kronus struck out, swatting Ullr and Chambers like flies. A decision was made. Zeus and Odin stopped fighting. Both knew who the three deities were, and both knew there was only one option. They spoke with their human allies, and the human forces regained purpose, as a the message relayed down the chain of command. ‘Kill the Titans. No human or god is your enemy.’
To be continued and concluded. In update 19. Also, I will appreciate any suggestions for my upcoming thread after this ‘The Second World War: 2 Nukes, Nazis and The Gods. It will feature the Egyptian gods, and an amalgamation of Gallic, Celtic, Zulu, Mesoamerican, and Bedouin gods.
19. The final Update.
Fenrir stalked through the snow and ice, his head waving slowly from side to side as he sniffed the air. Ahead, he could see the shining lights and towering spires of Asgard. He could smell warriors and lesser gods inside it, and he could smell the finely carved wood and cold steel. But he could not smell his fated combatants, the Asir. He raised his head from the ground, rearing to his full height, hundreds of metres into the sky, and tasted the air.
‘Yes… Through an infinity of snow, and a lesser plane of grass and forests. Past great dwellings, and under a setting sun. Fighting great beings in a scarred field of fire and death… and meat.’
He took off, bounding like the wind across mountains and over ice and grass. His footsteps shattered the earth, and people run from the sound of his footfalls. The battle loomed ahead.
He saw Odin, next to a man holding a writhing thunderbolt. He saw Ullr, lying in a crater next to a man made of metal. And he saw thousands upon thousands of humans. But they did not stare at Fenrir, a fact that baffled Fenrir, that he should be denied his rightful fear. And then he saw it, three towering figures, one hewn from the earth and sky, one glowing like the sun, and the other holding time in his sway.
The largest Titan, Kronus, turned to face Fenrir. Fenrir saw this as an insult, as though he was mocking him by commanding the fear of the mortals. He runs towards Kronus.
The air seemed to explode, as lances of fire shot from the human lines, stabbing into the skin of the Titans. Jets swooped and dived, like a swarm of hornets, spitting fire and metal at the Titans. Odin and Zeus attacked Atlas with a combination of Zeus’s Lightning and Odin’s might battle axe, as Fenrir pounced on Cronus. The ground shook as Cronus and Fenrir fell to the ground, locked in an embrace of death. Fenrir made deep gashes in Cronus’s skin with his jagged claws and jaws, as Cronus stabbed with his sickle, drawing blood and hitting bone. Helios ran towards a huge cluster of Russian tanks, blasting golden light from his staff, melting metal and vaporising the very air. High explosive and armour piercing rounds shot out, slamming into Helios. Ullr and Chambers pick themselves up out of the crater, Ullr got into his flying chariot, and they took off. Kronus managed to get his feet under Fenrir’s chest, and kicked upwards, sending him flying in the air. Kronus rolled to the side, stuck his hand out, holding his sickle out where Fenrir would fall. Fenrir fell down, and was impaled on the sickle. Fenrir roared in pain, and leaped at Kronus, yanking the sickle out of his hands as he leaps. Blinded by pain, Kronus relies on base instinct, and goes for the neck. His mighty jaws wrap around Kronus’s neck, crunching down as Kronus desperately tries to break free. Kronus grabs the sickle, and starts stabbing, again and again into Fenrirs chest. Suddenly, a loud snap is heard, and Kronus goes limp. Fenrir lifts his head, ripping Kronus’s head from his body. He then slumps to the ground as he succumbs to his wounds.
Ullr, Zeus, Odin and Chambers circle Atlas, blasting with various weapons. Atlas swats out at Zeus, who dodges. While Atlas is unbalanced by his lunge, Odin and Ullr slam into the small of his back, knocking him over. Jets and bombers begin strafing Atlas, sending chunks flying of his armour and spraying blood on the ground. Magni, Thor’s son dealt the killing blow, by picking up a cathedral sized chunk of his armour, and ramming it through his forehead.
Helios casts a bright light from his spear, that damages and disintegrates anything near it. He wields near his head, destroying dozens of planes as they try to attack him. But he forgets the ground, and soon tanks are firing round after round at him. He brings his spear down to strike them, but suddenly, NATO artillery opens up. Most of the shots miss, as they are trying to hit a relatively small target, the point of the spear. Unlike missiles, the artillery shells still work if they are damaged in flight, so they could run (fly) the gauntlet of energy. Eventually, a shot hits. Then another, and another. The air is filled with flying metal, and every second, a new shot hits the spear. Finally, there is a booming sound, as they spear point cracks, and releases an expanding cloud of fire, very much like a nuclear explosion, right next to Helios’s face. His body falls to the ground, as both armies beat a hasty retreat from the possibly radioactive ball of energy in the sky.
The sun sets, as the second sun, born from the death of a god, hangs in the sky. It revolves around the earth, in the opposite direction to the spin of the earth. It casts golden rays over the earth, from the relatively low height of 2000 metre in the sky, never burning nor irradiating the earth, only illuminating and remaining as a memorial to the war that ruined Europe, once again.
Curtains close, dissatisfied viewers leave, and go ‘meh’ as the advert for the much better written spin off, ‘The Second World War: 2 Nukes, Nazis and the Gods’ comes on screen. And that, is my first, finished TL. Thanks for reading.