[RK19] Meanwhile, in the M.O.J....
Posted: Thu Jan 17, 2019 3:20 pm
Doctor Zymeski frowned as his picto-scry began to ding. "Why does that always happen when I'm about to make my lunch?" Shoving his pizza into the toaster oven, he grabbed his can of Dew and walked over to his desk. "Yes, yes, I'm coming!" Sitting down, he swiped a pair of fingers across the crystalline screen in a certain pattern, bringing the image into focus. "Zymeski here. Oh, Agents L and M! I haven't heard from you in a while! How are things down on Julian progressing?"
Picking up his soda, he popped the top and took a long swig as his agents reported in. Technomagery was a fairly advanced science to members of the Menagerie's Observational Jurists, and the only kind of long-range communication that still worked down to the surface of the planet now that the Nega-Blok Trix's warp portal had corrupted the timeline and forced the surface back to late-Renaissance tech levels.
"Things aren't going well at all," Agent M replied. "The time we have long dreaded has come to pass! The Yelpilz are building pylons faster than we can knock them down!"
Zymeski took another sip from his Dew and frowned. "Well, that isn't good. How bad is it?"
"Pretty bad, Magus," Agent L blurted sternly. "At this rate, they'll have a full portal open by the end of the year, if not sooner. We need to start evacuation plans for all the lesser races down here."
Setting his can of Dew down, Zymeski shook his head and reached for a book.
Flipping through the pages, he came to the entry he needed. "I'm afraid that is no longer possible. There will be no evacuation. Due to other events happening in the multiverse, protocol dictates that we must declare Exterminatus on the planet."
"What?" Agent M appeared in the pict viewer, a look of shock on her face. "We can't just abandon these people! They've been serving in our military for centuries! They trust us to support them in this kind of emergency!"
"Cannot be done," the Magus replied, slamming the book shut. "What do you know about the Brootalz?"
"Brootalz?" M glanced over at L and shrugged. "They were some big warmongering faction back during the time of the Imperium. What about them?"
"They're back. We have already been forced to initiate decimation on our orc and goblinoid allies, for fear that they might join them. Trust me when I say there will be NO evacuation, for them, or for you. The Menagerie thanks you for your services over the years. Know that your families will... well, to be honest, we're prepping for a massive invasion, so they'll likely be dead soon anyway. You've got a week before we destroy the planet. Goodbye, and good luck."
That said, the Doctor cut the transmission and wiped the datafile from his Magicore Computational Machine. "Guess I better go order that Exterminatus Protocol." Just then, the oven dinged. "After my lunch," he added with a smile.
Down on the surface, hidden in a cavern away from prying eyes, Agents M and L looked at each other nervously. "What does he mean, they can't risk the orcs joining the Brootalz?" she asked L. Grimacing, Agent L sighed. "The orcs are the remnants of the last Brootalz invasion. The Imperium under Emperor Julian beat them back, managed to force them to retreat, and the captives were imprisoned down here on the planet." "Okay, that makes sense. Only, what do we do now?"
Agent L frowned and considered their options. "I think there's only one thing we can do. Consult the Oracle.
A week later, members of the Menagerie's Observational Jurists (the real name of the MOJ, but everyone called it the Menagerie of Julian anyway) met in council as they prepared to enact Exterminatus on the planet below. Everything had been going according to plan, with one unusual exception. In the week since Exterminatus was declared, many of the Agents and Adventurers on the planet below had stopped communicating with the Jurists. Whole areas of the planet were suddenly devoid of the different non-Legonian races that had been imprisoned below on the surface. But with less than a week until destruction, nobody paid it any thought. Seconds before it was destroyed, the Nega-Blok Trix emerged from the completed hell portal, pylons throughout the planet crackling with Negablok energy and surveyed her new world.
Then she looked up, saw the planet-killer ship Exterminatus Protocol and swore. She dove back into the portal just as the massive planet-killed ship fired. Soon, planet Julian was no more, just a crumbling pile of rocks spreading through the system as a new asteroid belt with the occasional almost-unkillable Yelpilz clinging to a rock in zero-gravity...