NationStates

Kingdom of Kemet [Egyptian New Kingdom]
Shedet Sepat [Province of Crocodilopolis]
Outskirts of Shedet
3rd of Epip, 1455 BC [July 10]
Evening [10:55 PM EET]

It was simple, really.

Nobody was up at night. Nobody - except the Medjay, and those the Medjay were after, and even then, unless one or the other was out doing their job (such as a bandit or other such criminal has a job), even they would be asleep when the sun went down. Especially so when full twilight rolled in, which was about 10 minutes ago by Neferure‘s reconing, and she usually had a good sense of time.

Nakhte, the Phantom. He thought himself immune to the law. He and his men used clever and convincing disguises - makeup, clothing, the works - to sneak into temples buildings throughout Shedet and steal whatever slorry their fancy. It was minor things at first, but as the number of times they weren’t caught mounted, they got bolder. A jewel here, a bag of wheat tossed onto the ‘wrong’ donkey cart there. Small stuff, that no normal man would notice, and the average corrupt scribe would pass off as a miscalculation of a subordinate, whom they would summarily whack with the nearest object.

But the Medjay had eyes like Horus, and they managed to catch one of the Phantom’s thieves in the act. They got quite a lot of information out of him - where Nakhte ate, where his hideout was, when the guards woke and slept, when their shift changes were, how many there were. It was almost suspicious how much they got, so they sent someone to make sure it was accurate.

Information is the key to any successful sting, and the information proved true. So, here they were, at an ungodly hour, ten Medjay invading a sleeping camp of six bandits and two guards sleepily guarding the only door entry in or out of the compound.

They entered with ease, dropping down from a tree whose branches hung over the wall and landing silently behind a group of bushes. Hotep took the lead briefly as they spread out through the compound. The guards hadn’t even noticed yet.

The eight split up, each one heading for the bed of a different bandit except the last four - they would take care of the guards outside, two to a guard to better ensure no sound got out.

Simplicity in itself. Neferure was just walking out of the bedchamber of the man the informant had identified as ‘Ipuki the Fat’ - a more accurate name one would be hard to find - when things went straight down the throat of Ammut. Nakhte was silent as the tombs in life, but in death he was more than loud enough to alert all of Shedet to his demise.

Suddenly, there weren’t eight bandits in the camp, there were eighteen - and the Medjay were now evenly matched. Lamps were lit, shouts were heard, and arrows started flying as eighteen became twenty-eight, bandits pouring over the walls. Thirty eight? She didn’t bother counting when she was sure they were outnumbered.

A trap. Apep be cursed, they had fallen so easily for a trap. They should have used far more than mere whips on the informant. Neferure certainly would when they were done.

It didn’t matter - they were Medjay, and these were simple bandits - common rabble, with barely enough training to handle a pointed stick, let alone the khopesh or bow of Kemet’s guardians. She drew her bow, and with practiced motion ended the life of a man charging through the door. She kicked him aside, drew again, and fired at another coming down from the compound’s wall.

A scream behind her. She whirled around, kicked a spear aside, and drove her dagger into someone so wrapped in bandages she wasn’t sure if they were man or woman. It mattered not - they attacked a Medjay, death was a suitable punishment. She flicked the blood off it and drew her khopesh in the other hand.

She batted aside an attacker’s mace with the dagger, then chopped into his neck with the khopesh. It didn’t take it off, the man’s neck was much too thick for that, but he was down and that was the important part. His body dropped just in time to see the arrow coming straight for her chest. Already it was too close to move out of the way.

She closed her eyes, expecting to meet Anubis when she opened them again. She didn’t see the flash of light, that stopped the battle and left a lot of confused Egyptians behind.

---

United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland/Irish Republic
Province of Munster, County Cork, North Cork Constituency
Cork
April 22, 1921
3:33 AM GMT

It was a typically foggy April morning in southern Ireland that day, as a pair of lorries rolled out of a warehouse, each one loaded down with men and women ranging from the precipice of adulthood to the precipice of what most would consider elderly. Their clothes ran the gamut - simple farming clothes, working-class garb too dirty to tell what color it was (though it was probably green), all the way to the sort of thing one would be forgiven for thinking was a proper military uniform. One could only tell from close up, as with the headlights and taillights painted over, the only light came from the odd cigarette.

All of them had masks, and each and every one was armed, with everything from rifles to pistols and grenades to rocks. Some were there because of loved ones lost the past December, some even earlier than that. Some were there because their friends were involved. Some were there out of some sense of patriotic duty. Others, all of the above.

At the back of one lorry sat a boy, barely awake and no more than sixteen with a mess of black hair under an equally black newsboy cap and lumpy but free-moving shepherd’s clothes. He nervously handled a very unshort Lee-Enfield almost as tall as he was sitting. Next to him sat a young woman, on the near side of nineteen, in something more resembling a uniform and a gasmask with a hole-punched metal plate where the filter usually was, in which she had stuck a lit cigarette.

She was well aware of the irony.

“First time, kid?”

The boy let out a sheepish noise before nodding. The girl tapped out the ash from her cigarette and grinned beneath the mask.

“First time’s always hard like. Don’t worry, you’re in the Republican Army now, lad,” she said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “We’ll get ya home safe. Do your part, and ye’ll help someone else get home safe, too.”

He smiled a little at that. In the fog, there was no light but the cigarettes, but it was a wide enough smile even she could tell through her goggles. “What’s yer name, lad?”

“W-Willy Moore, miss-”

She raised an eyebrow, but that was one of the lesser reactions. The man across from them, a bear of a man as wide as he was tall and as hairy, too, let out a gruff sound before stepping into the conversation.

“You a Protestant, boy?”

“Y-ye-”

“Oh, shut up, Cormac,” she said. “Wolfe feckin’ Tone was a Protestant, if a Protestant wants to fight for Irish freedom, they can.”

A chorus of hear-hears resounded through the lorry, and the man known as Cormac glowered at the two of them. The woman grinned, and offered her hand to the boy.

“Emer O’Riordan. Don’t mind Cormac, he’s a thicko shitehawk who was too busy diggin’ for silver in South America to help everyone else his age dig for mines in Belgium.” Willy took her hand and shook it. After the Cormac incident, he opened up well enough - it was night and the drive was to be long through never-used dirt and moors throughout Cork, and the IRA at this point knew most moves the English made. Conversation turned to childhood, football, the experience of the older men in the War, and eventually to what had happened the previous December.

Emer crushed her cigarette and lit a new one, letting out a cloud of smoke that soon joined its watery brethren in the air.

“Right then, all this craic has been quite uplifting like, but if we’re to sit around on the damp ground waiting for the Auxies for a few hours, we may as well cheer ourselves up. Let’s have a little song, then - the air is damp and there’s no Auxies around, so it’s not like anyone but us will hear.”



Four hours later

Water must have gotten into the second bomb. That was the only logical explanation for it not going off. And it was logical, because Eren hadn’t made that one - that’s what I get for trusting someone else to make the explosives, she thought to herself as she ducked to avoid another round of Auxie fire.

Someone shouted to keep fecking firing in a Corkish accent, and another shouted not to surrender one inch to the rebels in an East Anglian one.

Bastards. English bastards, one of their lorries had been tossed onto its side, blocked the road, and smushed the front of the second, half their men were lying injured or dying, and they wouldn’t stop firing. They pushed into the Auxies, and they backed up, but they wouldn’t stop firing. Irish were on two of the three hills surrounding the lorries, with them now pushing the Auxies towards the third - the road around it was blocked off by their own lorries, and the Auxies certainly couldn’t go forward into the Irish guns.

Eren looked up for a moment and saw a group of men from her group, Cormac included, skirt around the Auxies to encircle them. She smiled beneath her mask as she returned to focusing on where she was fighting. Tough bastards they were, but they weren’t soldiers, and they weren’t stupid - if forced, they would most likely surrender. They had far more wounded comrades than she did.

Someone on the other hill shouted something in Gaelic too fast for her to understand, and they all charged, rifles up. Eren had fast legs, so she soon pulled ahead, and got an uninterrupted view of at least eleven Auxies lifting their rifles in a form of surrender.

All of them had rifles, and most of their pouches seemed to be laden with bullets. Good, this would be a reversal of fortune from the last few rai-

Emer didn’t even feel it when the second bomb went off without warning. Neither the Auxies nor the Republicans would notice a flash of blue in the browns and reds of the explosion, nor would they be surprised as to not find a shred of Emer O’Riordan left behind.

---

Islamic Republic of Afghanistan
Helmand Province, Lakshar Gah District
Near the Helmand River
October 22, 2018
0110 AFT

Night missions were rarely this nice, thought Claire Wagner as she popped the head of a Taliban grunt like an overripe melon with her rifle.

Sure, she was ‘only’ a Ranger, and the compound they were assaulting was probably only a regional warlord at best, not a hub on which the wheel of the self-called students in Afghanistan turned, but they had money, they had power, and normally they’d be able to hire some decent goons.

She racked the bolt, lazily scanning for another target. Some man with an AK trying to sneak around the back, not far from where most of the gunshots were coming from. Rangers didn’t use AKs, and he seemed to think the low wall he was hiding behind was cover enough from a sniper.

He was wrong. Rack the bolt. Next.

Left side, hiding between a dumpster and a wall of thin chicken wire. Not an easy shot, nor a fun one - the wire was at an angle, which he probably knew about. If it hit one wire, it’d bounce at an angle but probably still hit. More than that and the bullet would merely sting.

Inhale, exhale. Fire. The bullet bounced once, angling down and smashing into a rib instead of the skull. Not a killshot, but he was out of the fight for now. Reload. Move to a new position on her snipin’ hill, 25 yards to the left and about 10 yards further up the hill. Practically crawl along the ground, hide behind a bush. Next.

She could be on base watching Gridman. But no, the Taliban just had to stubbornly continue to hold onto areas of Afghanistan, and here she was punishing them for it. Two men both with AKs, behind a truck. One, the second one tried to fire at her, but he was using an AKM. Not known for accuracy at long range. Rack the bolt. Two.

Two men, behind a large canister with some fluid on the top. Sadly, gas canisters do not explode when shot, so she had to take the one out. Rack the bolt. Two. The second got caught in the leg, hit him in the head. Three. Reload. New position, 3 yards right 7 yards down. A tree provides ample shade if it was knocked down three days ago by a thunderbolt. Next.

The gunshots inside the building had quieted down now. It seemed like her fellow Rangers were finished inside. One last man, armed with an LMG and far too scrawny to be thinking of using it accurately. But hip fire in a building was more than capable of clearing a room.

Pull the trigger. A flash of light surrounds her that Claire barely notices. One-

---

Cair Core
??/??/????
??:?? ?M

The Portal Chamber in the depths of Cair Core was a great salon of marble and gold, whose fine statues and tapestries displayed centuries upon centuries of Coreland history. Queen Aether suspected that the room’s dignified legacy would have been soon overwhelmed by the grand summoning.

The portal, a circular gate to a starry beyond, shuddered. Sparks of sapphire and silver erupted from the magical runes carved on its rocky body, as the whole structure cracked dangerously. The noise of the Royal Guard battling the Necrogolem just outside the keep’s walls were drowned out by the booming sound of people, objects and a horse or two being plucked away from a faraway dimension, sent hurtling through the cosmos in a most uncomfortable way, ripped apart from their Earthly lives.

Most of them landed back or butt-first on the marble floor.

“Finnegan!” Queen Aether yelled in distress, glaring at her old, aging archmage’s grin as the various interdimensional travellers crashed violently on arrival. “You had told me they would walk through the gate, calmly and slowly, and here they are, getting injured before the battle has even started!”

Confusion.

Eren nearly drew her Webley but lowered it to look around at what was happening. Neferure’s eyes were still closed tight, only opening them after the wizened old man started talking.

The wizened old man stroked his white, mighty moustaches and chuckled. “Your Highness, as much as I am aware of your inexperience in matter of warfare, I cannot avoid to point out that your guests will witness much more pain than a mere fall in the coming days. Alas, the weird mana attunement of their homeland will do wonders to fix that.”

“Umph” Aether muttered, shoving away two castle guards who had been too eager to point their pikes at the multicoloured, varied crowd before them. Aether had seen them through the scrying orb of the archmages’ council, but was nonetheless surprised to find that the interdimensional hosts looked much like the various peoples of Creation. Well, the humans, at least.

“I am Queen Aether of the Corelands, first of my name. Brave warriors, you have been summoned just in time to escape your untimely demise. You all hail from the same plane of existence, albeit from different times and longitudes. My words may seem confused at first, but the winds of magic will translate them into a common tongue that all of my kingdom speaks. There is much to learn about my world and I am afraid I will not be capable of truly teaching you those, because an evil tyrant is sieging the last stronghold of my people.”

Great, more feckin’ royals, thought Eren, though she had enough manners to say nothing as she stood up, using her rifle to lift herself up.

Finnegan grinned. “I am her wiseman, or shaman, or archpriest, or spin doctor, according to your various cultures”. Aether raised a questioning brow at the words ‘spin doctor’.
“This man, my archmage Finnegan, is the greatest wizard to grace the Corelands. He summoned you to fight for my cause, and studied your cultures in-depth.”

Claire stood at attention, but with rifle at the ready.

Finnegan coughed. “Mostly.”

Neferure just stood.

Aether resumed. “I have called you forth to defend my kingdom and the entire world, Creation. You will have to stay here forever, for the Portal that brought you here unfortunately broke during your summoning and will take decades if not centuries to work properly again. I apologize for those you will have left behind in your world. I carefully selected men and women close to death, like you, to give you another chance in proving your heroism. Some of you are not warriors, but learned persons or great talkers. You will all have room in our war against the Deathless Emperor and his armies of darkness. I will grant you land, and permit you to marry into the kingdom to preserve your Earthly bloodlines. Unlike Creation’s mankind, your homeworld’s version of humanity is much more attuned to mana, which unlike in your world, flows freely across Creation, the life-breath of the world.”

A bloodied knight suddenly barged into the room, holding himself aloft with a sword broken at the midpoint. The young rider coughed up blood. “M-my Q-Queen, the G-Golem broke thr---”

Golem?

The feck’s a-

Words cut short as the ceiling of summon chamber was torn off by a giant, bony fist punching the dome-like cupola of the room off into the horizon, revealing the scene of an huge medieval battle ensuring across the grounds of a vast castle of white marble. Armored footmen engaged into melees with hordes of short, green-skinned hominids, while larger ogres chopped the heads of horses off with crude axes and rallied to the cry of a warhorn.

Sitting atop a black throne carried by four great ogres, a maiden of the fairest hair, most frozen eyes and most wicked grin observed the battle from afar, motioning with glee as catapult projectiles coated in a vile, purple energy came crashing down the outer walls of the castle. The young woman shouted something shrill in a dark language at the huge shadow looming over the uncovered summon chamber.

Aether witnessed in horror as the bloodied knight was rendered into a grindy pulp of flesh and steel, before the grim visage of an oversized human face made of bones glared at the portal newcomers, roaring with a graveyard stench over their paltry forms. The giant grunted, took a thundering step back, and roared again. Gnoblars riding ponies and donkeys jumped out its mouth, landing in the vast chamber and yelling madly as the flailed their shivs around, surrounding the few guards, Aether, Finnegan and the newcomers.

“There’s no time to explain! Portal Heroes, strive forward!” Aether yelled.

Emer was the first to act, not bothering to think about the situation - best not to think about the situation, or how far from her beloved Ireland she was. With a yell, she drew a grenade and threw it into the bone golem’s face, grinning in satisfaction as it lodged between a pair of bones. The gnoblars still inside paused to look at it and laughed, which was the last thing they ever did as it exploded and took out an entire cheekbone.

Neferure looked at Claire, who looked at her back, shrugged, and charged forwards, swinging khopesh and dagger alike as she charged towards these green-skinned humanoids. She was a little surprised when the blades cut through them like the claws of Sekhmet instead of the simple bronze they were, but her mind was elsewhere.

Claire sighed. This was gonna be one hell of a bizarre adventure, that was for sure. She dashed behind the ruined Portal and rested her rifle on the stone. In such a target rich environment, she’d have to focus on high-value targets.

Emer started firing at the horde of gnoblar, racking the bolt with practiced speed as she focused on anything higher than her stomach - and kicking anything that wasn't. She didn't even notice she wasn't running out of ammunition, or that the gnoblar's weapons didn't seem to hurt as much as they should.

"Die! Die, bastards! Go to Hell, and tell Cromwell I sent ya when ye get there!"

An ogre bearing a warhorn would make a suitable target, he (it?) was clearly an officer of sorts, or at least a commander for the other ogres.

A .300 Winchester Magnum, the first to be fired in this world, penetrated his eye and bounced around the ogre’s thick skull, turning his brains to the consistency of mashed Jell-O. He dropped like a ton of bricks, crushing not a small number of gnoblars beneath his form.

Rack the bolt. Two.

Chair Core
?????

Chernov Mili Vitalievich, having been pulled from his meeting, is popped right inside a strange new realm. Well, not “popped” but more being violently thrown into this strange world. Fortunately, Chernov gained a few minor bruises at worse from the fall. Chernov gets himself up and stands, looking about the marble room.

“What the…” Chernov said in visible confusion. Chernov is shortly then greeted by others and a speech made by a young pointy-eared girl. Besides Chernov was another young girl (Emer), a more modernly dressed one - kitted with various forms of military gear. There were also many others who also appeared to be pulled from Earth.

This was truly strange. Why, how, but, and many question ran through the mind of the planner. The collective thinking of Chernov could to the conclusion of a question, a long one.

Before Chernov could ask a question, a wounded knight came and then warned about a golem. A few seconds later, the whole roof and more was torn apart by a golem being manned by small little green men. A mass battle was raging on before the eyes of Chernov.

At this point, questions could be asked later as Chernov ducked and took cover behind some cracked stone.

“Anyone got a firearm to spare?” Chernov yelled as loud as he could. The time for action has came and Chernov did not come ready. After-all, Chernov was a Soviet economic planner. It been years since he last fought - Chernov’s last war was the Russian Civil War.

---

---

"AAAARGH!"

BOOM!

A great boulder, the size of 5 men, was thrown off the cliff, the brown mass of solidified earth tumbling downward until it crashed into the canopy below. A figure stood on the edge of the cliff where the boulder had come from. A hulking man the figure was, standing well over 6 foot and built like an oak tree. A multitude of scars adorned his bare-chested body, his muscles visibly striated and taut. Sweat dripped down his skin, his eyes wide and his mouth curved into a snarl, his canines viciously sharp as if they were those of a wolf's rather than the man they belonged to.

"ARGH! GROG NAK NO PROVE HIMSELF!

He walked right up to another boulder and retracted his arm back before punching his bare-fist into the rock, eliciting blood from his hands.

GROG NAK NO AVENGE OOGA BOOGA!

He punched the boulder again, his blood streaming down his hand.

GROG NAK NO KILL UGLY CAVEMEN LIKE POPPA!

He kicked the boulder this time for his hand hurt.

GROG NAK SMALL MAN!"

He stumbled backward, his toes throbbing from kicking the boulder. Then he collapsed onto the dirt below, huffing and puffing from his tantrum. Grog Nak glanced around, making sure none of his fellow tribesmen were in sight. When he was certain that he was alone, he pressed his bloodied palm to his face. And cried.

It was not easy. Being the Alpha of your own tribe, being the head hunter, being the one everyone depended on for meat during winter...being a father. Grog Nak had many kids. More than his 10 fingers could count and every fellow caveman knew that if something numbered more than your ten fingers than it was an excessive amount already. And it wasn't even his fault!

All the pretty women kept coming into his hut at night, no matter how much he told them he wanted to snuggle alone with his mammoth blanket. But they wouldn't take no for an answer and Grog Nak was powerless for the women of the tribe were the ones who really provided the food. The women's jobs were more important than the men's and that made them very powerful within the tribe. And, since Grog Nak's father had saved the women, including his mother, and defeated the ugly cavemen's attack years ago, the tribe had never been threatened by another tribe. That didn't mean Grog Nak was no longer relevant, oh no. Grog Nak took care of disputes, knocked out troublemakers, lead the tribe's best hunters against gigantic mammoths, kept the saber tooth tigers away from the women and children and drove off other tribes by knocking out their chieftains in single combat. But, Grog Nak was just one important man against many important women, many women who wanted to share his mammoth wool blanket even if he didn't want to share his mammoth wool blanket!

Then there were his kids...

They pulled his hair, played with his hair, put beetles in his hair...it was horrible! Some of them even called him, 'Fat Daddy'! The biggest human in the tribe was being bullied by the smallest humans in the tribe! It doesn't work like that! Grog Nak was tired of it all and had tried to speak to the other men in the tribe of his troubles. But none of them would listen to his complaints. Instead, they told Grog Nak that he should feel lucky that he had so many wives and children and that he shouldn't mock them by reminding them how much more he was valued as a potential mate than them. So, basically, he had no friends in the tribe. Only demanding women, sons and daughters that bullied him and jealous men.

But, that didn't mean he had never had a friend before. No...he once had the greatest friend in the world...

Ooga Booga.

Grog Nak first met Ooga Booga when they were mere boys. Ooga Booga said he was the hardest puncher of the tribe's boys. Grog Nak said he was the hardest puncher of the tribe's boys. There was only one way to settle it. They punched the hell out of each other until their mothers pulled them apart and made them apologize to each other. And from that day onward, they had hung out with each other, both pleased to know that they had met their equal in strength. They played in the streams, in the forests, threw rocks at the birds and sometimes made faces at the girls. It was paradise. That was until the ugly cavemen came.

Grog Nak remembers that fateful day like it was yesterday. The hunters, the tribe's strongest men, had been out to hunt mammoths so there had not been many good men in the tribe when the attack came. The ugly cavemen, their foreheads and jaws bulging outwards, had charged out of the treeline toward their village. Though the ugly cavemen were shorter than the plains people, they were vicious. Grog Nak and Ooga Booga had been teenagers then and had attempted to defend their village. And it had been going well, the pair of them were the best rock throwers in the whole village and they threw their rocks in unison, hitting the heads of many ugly cavemen.

But then, Grog Nak had heard his mothers scream somewhere in the village. He parted with Ooga Booga, the 2 of them sharing a fist bump before Grog Nak rushed to save his mother. But Grog Nak's mother was in the clutches of the ugly cavemen's chieftain, the strongest of the ugly caveman clan. And, to Grog Nak's despair, he had lost, knocked to the ground by the swing of the chieftain's club. And just when the teenage Grog Nak had thought his mother was going to be taken from him, his father and the huntsmen returned to the village and in their fury, they slaughtered all the ugly cavemen including the chieftain.

Grog Nak had gone looking for Ooga Booga after the battle. He had called out for Ooga Booga for ages until he found Ooga Booga's mother. Kneeling in front of her son...

"WAAAAH!"

Grog Nak wailed and punched his face, attempting to stop his brain from thinking bad things. When his head was too hurt to think, Grog Nak let his arms go limp. He remained there until the sun began to set, sprawled out across the dirt ground. He stared up at the sky, his mouth agape.

"Grog Nak...Grog Nak bored...no man strong like Grog Nak...Grog Nak want hunt things bigger than mammoth..."

He raised a fist up to the heavens and roared, "GROG NAK WANT CHALLENGE! GIVE GROG NAK CHALLENGE! GIVE GROG NAK NOW!"

He didn't expect an answer. But an answer he got. A sudden bright light encapsulated his figure and the sky disappeared, only to be replaced by...something. Grog Nak had no idea what he was looking at but his attention was drawn to the voice of a little girl in front of him. He could...pick a few words from her speech but it was mostly gibberish in his ears. Queen? Kingdom? Emperor? He scratched his hair and picked his nose during her speech, wondering if he could chuck a shit there.

But then everything erupted into chaos.

Strange creatures flowed through into Portal Chamber. Things looking like ugly cavemen except with green skin charged through and Grog Nak witnessed slaughter play out between the creatures and the humans. It was like those ridiculous tales told by over-imaginative children except in real life.

“There’s no time to explain! Portal Heroes, strive forward!”

Grog Nak only understood one word: forward.

"YAAAAARGH!"

He bounded forward, roaring. A small green creature rushed towards him, only for its face to be crushed by a massive, sharp rock thrown by Grog Nak. Spear in hand, he bulldozed his way into a group of gnoblars surrounding a knight who had fallen from his horse. Swinging the weapon around, he slammed the rocky tip of the spear like a mace into the small creatures.

"DIE HUMAN!"

A great, wooden club came hurtling down at him. Grog Nak leaped to the side, feeling the tremble caused by the club smashing into the ground. He looked up to see a big, fat ogre. Grog Nak's face contorted into a face of fury. He was the biggest and strongest there was! Not this ugly monstrosity.

Rushing toward the ogre, Grog Nak evaded another slam of its club by rolling head-first into its flank. He extended his spear and swiped at the ogre's heels, causing it to lose balance. As it fell, Grog Nak ran into the creature with a powerful tackle. Pulling out another sharp rock from his slingshot pouch, he repeatedly pounded the rock into the ogre's face.

"GROG NAK ALPHA! YOU FAT! FAT NO ALPHA! GROG NAK SMASH!"

Paul Müller Altendorf
Amiens sector ~ 10:54, 5th of April 1918

---

“Muß i denn, muß i denn
Zum Städtele hinaus, Städtele hinaus
Und du mein Schatz bleibst hier!
Wenn i komm’, wenn i komm’
Wenn i wiederum komm’, wiederum komm’
Kehr’ ich ein mei Schatz bei dir!”

THUS SANG all the men of the company. Indeed, they hoped to go back to their loved ones: their families, their cities, their wifes. And Paul, Paul wanted to go back to Berlin — that queen among cities — to his workshop, to a rose-lipped girl with golden hair he had met during his short stay at the capital, and above all to his comfortable chair. They had been marching for days now, in their quest to strike down Amiens. Taking that railroad hub would cut the French and British armies in half like Moses had split the Red Sea and would provide the soldiers with a place to rest along with an ample supply of food and comforts. Bread, butter, milk, eggs, even tobacco and chocolate were said to await in the town's bountiful holds after the Kaiser’s finest would break through.
Whether these rumours had just been spread by the officers to keep the troops marching remained to be seen. What concerned Altendorf for now was reaching the front. Quartermaster General Lundendorff was taking his time to strike at the town only a few kilometers away, yet Altendorf and his fellow shock troopers still trusted him: was he not the victor whose prowess at the Liège was sung? Had he not led them to triumph at Tannenberg? Surely he could deal with rear-echelon rabble in disarray!

But it was not rear echelon rabble who intercepted his company.

It was widely known that in an effort to preserve their momentum, the spearheads had bypassed the many schwertpunkt in the Entente’s defensive lines, and the broken formations still in retreat were barely keeping pace. Nevertheless, Paul had never come to think that they would run into one of these retreating formations. A whole company. They too were surprised, but they had been defending, and had lugged their mortars and field guns with them. The shock troopers were travelling light, and brought only their packs and grenades. As to not slow them down, their heaviest weapons were the Nullachtfünfzehn.
They had to close the gap. They had to sweep in and break them before their gunners could load and fire. Thinking quickly, Paul loaded his Luger, put on its stock and urged his Hauptmann into action. The young Junker by the name of Peter blew his whistle.

Half a league, half a league, half a league onward. All in the Valley of Death, charged the half-hundred. ‘Forward, Sturm-Kompanie! Charge for the guns!’ he heard his Hauptmann say. And into the breech they thundered. Cannon to the right, left and front of them, turned and were loaded. Soon, the first grenades flew, and in the melee he shot dead a young man, and another, and another. ‘Twas such a shame, for he admired the Briton! Why should he take them away, right in the flower of their youth? But Fatherland and comrades came first. He asked the Lord for forgiveness.
The British soon broke and ran, leaving their heavy equipment behind. But Paul was not found among the dead nor living.

✠

He had not felt the bite or bullet nor steel. Where was he? It was not his trench, nor his barracks: those were of concrete and brick, respectively. He rose up, carefully looking around. A host of figures were strewn about him in uncomfortable positions. A few had already risen, and most of them looked like warriors of the past or of... the future? Was this heaven? Was this Valhalla (God forbid that pagan concept was true!)
Much to his curious mind’s relief a figure — undoubtedly a Junker herself — welcomed them. The Kaiserin explained that she had summoned them to fight for her land, and by the decor it seemed that he had landed straight into a child’s færie tale! Surely it was a dream, or rather, a nightmare most terrible.
A bloody knight entered the room unceremoniously, and shortly thereafter a creature most foul tore the roof of the chamber off. He shouldered his Luger carbine and squeezed the trigger. As his adrenaline started pumping, the recoil confirmed his suspicions: it was no dream. It was reality. The round tore a messy hole into the head of an assailant. He kept on firing, the reliable Parabellum piercing through armor and shattering bone until its magazine was drained. Paul, taking a few steps back, joined in with the future soldier and drew an impact-fused grenade from his left bag. Unscrewing its cap and pulling the porcelain bead had never felt so slow in his life. His body leaned backwards, and his arm flung the Stielhandgranate, just as it had many times before, at the aberration looking over him.

St Margarets Bay, Dover, Great Britain
15th June, 1889 C.E.
10:47 AM



"I'm not sure this is going to work."

The White Cliffs, the granite walls of Britain. Overlooking the perfidious Franks across the Channel, Dover's picturesque cliffs were, in many ways, only slightly marred by the perpetually dank weather that plagues the British Isles. It was here that Channel flyers have attempted the treacherous crossing, marking their place in history for the tormenting journey to or from the continent. But how many do it in their own works? Only one man was bold, or stupid, to try.

Strapping in a screw-like contraption to an admittedly absent audience, self-made inventor Rupert was preparing for one such daring attempt. Of course, 'self-made' was as good a title as 'self-proclaimed', with an abysmal failure rate that could very well put him in a hearse at any point. But Rupert was beyond caring for such trifling issues as 'safety'. Progress waits for no man, and he was going to surge ahead of the pack.

"You worry too much, Arthur," Rupert chimed, putting on his goggles as he strapped on his contraption, "mark my words, high-speed vertical flight will take the world by storm. Maybe in a few years or so when I get this to the factories, but you get the idea. Besides, I already tested it out. It gets off the ground, and it can sustain itself for... ehh... a fair bit of time."

"It barely got off the ground for a few seconds," Arthur screamed in panic, his short, well-kept hair starting to become frazzled in the cloudy weather, "and you plunged headlong into a tree! You're diving straight into the Channel, Rupert! You won't even get far enough to hit the water!"

"Enough nay-saying, Arthur," snapped the ever-confident engineer, waving off his concerns, "progress waits for no man! If I hit the rocks, so be it. It's not like the creditors can shake down a corpse!"

A wide grimace forming on the buddy's face, Arthur could not think of anything more substantive to dissuade him. He knew Rupert since elementary school. That confounding phrase spouted by their science teacher had been glued to the boy's mind like a bad plague, and he was long tired of hearing him say that. Now, however, it threatened to kill him for real, and he had no idea how to dissuade him."

"There 'e is," a loud, boisterous voice yelled in the distance in anger, as a pack of dock workers and 'nice men' in bowler hats appeared over the horizon. That was the last straw. Rupert was taking the plunge.

"Welp, it was nice knowing you, Arthur," Rupert blurted rapidly, his initial enthusiasm giving way to desperation, "I'll see you in Calais, maybe. I'll see you eventually."

With that, the manic, heavily-indebted inventor pedaled, in an unnaturally fast pace powered by pure adrenaline. Driving the giant corkscrew of his Da Vinci-esque gyro, the lad was pushing straight for the edge, the intense 'motivation' provided by his new audience forcing him beyond his otherwise scrawny limits. Hundred yards... fifty... twenty-five... Before long, he could hear the gasps of awe from his rear, as a faint shadow was cast under him. He was off the ground, and off the cliff.

"Bloody hell," he blurted, looking down at the white sands and azure seas below him, "I did it?"

It was the last thing he saw, as the view below him immediately tipped before him. Rupert did not even have time to scream, covering his face as he braced for an inevitable mangling of flesh and bone...

Cair Core
Like Bloody Hell If I Know When


Frozen on the spot with his arms, the hapless pilot found himself seated on the marble floor of the chamber, body unscathed as his personal effects laid strewn all over him. He was sure it was going to be pretty painful, unless it was too quick for him to feel anything. But he was sure showing up in god-knows-where with a very sore arse laid very low on the list of expectations at a moment of death. Opening his eyes, he found himself amidst the company of a menagerie of very strange people. Some familiar, albeit old and deserving of a spot in the museum. Others are... even less so.

"I-I'm alive? Dead? In between," he questioned, checking himself for injuries in bewilderment. Glancing at the caveman in the bunch, the stressed lad went, "no, I'm definitely dead. Deader than dead, I'm in purgatory."

Rupudska wrote:

“I am Queen Aether of the Corelands, first of my name. Brave warriors, you have been summoned just in time to escape your untimely demise. You all hail from the same plane of existence, albeit from different times and longitudes. My words may seem confused at first, but the winds of magic will translate them into a common tongue that all of my kingdom speaks. There is much to learn about my world and I am afraid I will not be capable of truly teaching you those, because an evil tyrant is sieging the last stronghold of my people.”

Finnegan grinned. “I am her wiseman, or shaman, or archpriest, or spin doctor, according to your various cultures”. Aether raised a questioning brow at the words ‘spin doctor’.
“This man, my archmage Finnegan, is the greatest wizard to grace the Corelands. He summoned you to fight for my cause, and studied your cultures in-depth. Mostly.”

Aether resumed. “I have called you forth to defend my kingdom and the entire world, Creation. You will have to stay here forever, for the Portal that brought you here unfortunately broke during your summoning and will take decades if not centuries to work properly again. I apologize for those you will have left behind in your world. I carefully selected men and women close to death, like you, to give you another chance in proving your heroism. Some of you are not warriors, but learned persons or great talkers. You will all have room in our war against the Deathless Emperor and his armies of darkness. I will grant you land, and permit you to marry into the kingdom to preserve your Earthly bloodlines. Unlike Creation’s mankind, your homeworld’s version of humanity is much more attuned to mana, which unlike in your world, flows freely across Creation, the life-breath of the world.”

Rupert... did not catch any of it. Having been deluged with information that was pretty much incomprehensible to him, the startled lad had no way of answering. Sure, lordship seemed nice and appealing, but the prospect of being trapped in an alien, fantasy world for the rest of his natural life was undoubtedly not as much. Then again, there were those 'nice men' in bowler hats back at Dover, who, as he surmised, must be picking through the wrecks of his machine for his mangled corpse to dismember.

"I... uhh-" Rupert blurted, trying to get a query in. There were many questions for him to ask, a lot of which were monetary in nature. However, before he could get a word in, the word of a bloodied knight cut him short, as the Deathless' dark army smashed into the compound. Ducking on the floor with his arms clutching his suitcase, the hapless inventor was quick to realize his conundrum. He was hauled in to fight, period, and despite clear assurances that this was by no means an accident. And he could not fight.

"You're insane," he screamed at the Arthurian characters in abject horror, "'it's ok if you're not warriors'? Then what are those!? What do you think I use!? Steam-powered polyboloi!? I mean, it's a nice idea, but not if we get squashed by ogres first-"

Without warning, Rupert felt a tug on his jacket as he was dragged behind the circle of fighters now engaging the hideous enemies. Hauling him through was a tanned, Mediterranean man, with bronzed skin and jet-black hair, almost of Raj make. His strange white garb certainly added to the illusion, almost like the Empire men who ran the distant colonies there. Pulling him behind the pillar, the strange pulled out his bow, ready to fire upon the menacing ogre.

"A nice idea," the stranger declared, his words somehow intelligible to Rupert, if with a strangely Indian accent, "but we don't have time to make siege weapons right now. Stay under cover until we repel the monsters."

"Wait, did you just-" Rupert blurted, slightly overwhelmed by the sudden turn. At this point, he was not sure what was more shocking, the fact that he got dragged into some children's book lore, or the fact that someone dressed like some Rajput entertainer actually understood what a polybolos was.

---

Asuras. Of all the things the strangers of this world ask him to fight, it had to be asuras. Far from the barbarians of Galatia or hillmen and jungle tribes within the untamed sections of Ashoka's realm, it had to be demons. There were many things Menander had to digest from the Queen's brief discussion. The idea of being ripped from his plane of existence, the idea of bringing together so many people of vastly different worlds and times, and the idea of protecting this world's only bastion of light from evil. But Menander disliked being forced into pitched battle for multiple reasons. One was the lack of choice, and the other, the consequences.

Of course, the invaders trying to massacre them had already made that first worry moot.

Aiming for the ogre's head, the calm archer let loose a shot straight in its eye, the resulting blood, pain and blindness intended to disorientate the creature. It was like fighting elephants, of which it has few counters. Driving it into a panic and into its own ranks was one method, and from the frustration consuming it as it smashed to bits its own panicking grunts, it appeared to have worked.

"Vile witch," he cursed, his thoughts on the white-haired harlot siccing her spawns upon them, "you're making it too fun for me..."

Surveying his ranks, Menander was a bit disturbed at the disproportionate balance of troops. Too many of his fellow travellers were skirmishers. Powerful skirmishers with repeating weapons, sure, but skirmishers, nonetheless. Without more swords to balance the ranks out, the entire group could risk being overwhelmed. And that was discounting unarmed folk like the siege engineer (Rupert). Their ranks were just too organized by the breach. They were going to lose.

"Archers and cannoneers, get behind cover and form ranks on the flanks," he heard a woman shout, "swords, stay at the center! Don't let the enemy close the distance! Let the skirmishers pick them off. Anyone who can't fight, stay behind with the queen!"

Looking over his shoulder was a peach-skinned peltast, seemingly of Far Eastern descent, was yelling orders at the strangers instinctively, likely sensing the deteriorating situation as well. But from the primitive's rogue actions, he admittedly had low hopes of any of them listening, much less to a woman. Still, it was worth a try, moving over to the thrower as she hurled one of her javelins through a small demon's gut. If he could get a clear shot...

"Miss," he spoke to the girl, "that white-haired witch is controlling the demons. If we take her out, her hordes would panic and rout in an instant."

"I know," she said, "but she's not stupid either. Those beasts are ringing around her like human shields. It'll be hard to get a clear shot."

"Then we'll thin the ranks," Menander suggested, "you ever fought elephants?"

"Elephants," went the woman, a smile forming on her face, "I rode one."

Blinking in surprise, the archer replied gleefully, "then you'll know what drives elephants berserk."

Pointed to the panicking ogre he had blinded earlier, the Asiatic nodded in agreement as Menander quickly joined ranks with the nearest sharpshooter around. In hindsight, he should have asked for her name. Hopefully, she could survive the battle to tell him later.

"Shooters, aim for the ogre's heads," she called out to the other heroes, "either take them down outright or blind them! Drive them into the enemy ranks!"

Hopefully, enough will listen to the young woman. By her own admittance, Võ Hoàng Yến was probably in way over her head trying to command strangers on tactics. She would have to remember to apologize later, if they live to see the end.

"I wish I had one of those," she whispered, observing the strange repeating hand cannons at work. If she had one of those, she would probably be able to worry less about reloading her own.

Krystyn Mierzywojski
Vienna, September 11, 1683

With his brothers and compatriots, Krystyn will charge in full Hussar armor, the wind will cause his wings to make sounds that would scare away horses. The Ottomans were sieging the city of Vienna for long enough, "HUZZAH!" All of the Winged Hussars started to charge, dust rising from their horse's hooves, none of them were afraid of the Turks.

The wind blew in his face, as they were getting closer to Ottoman ranks, 40 meters, 30 meters, they fired some of the hussars fallen but the charge was still going on 20 meters, 10, 5, 2, Turkish spears were set up high but it didn't help them, the Winged Hussars tore through enemy ranks. An unstoppable force, might of Poland and Lithuania crashing down on the men before Krystyn, he cut down 4 or 5 when he saw a brave Turk standing before him, pointing his musket at the Hussar, smoke.

Krystyn Mierzywojski
Cair Core, who knows

Was he dead, why was his horse with him, why he had his armor, is this hell. All of those questions went through Krystyn mind when a female person started speaking, strangely he understood her. Krystyn looked around him, other people were here, most of them were dressed strangely. A giant beast crashed through the entrance, yes this was Hell, and he needed to fight once again.

"Hop! Hop! Koniku, musisz mnie poniesc do jeszcze nowych bitew, uciekaj, abys przezyl do tego czasu"

Krystyn's horse ran to the end of the hall, Krystyn for his part drew a saber and started to slash at the small green men chopping heads of left and right.

Olaf Svarlsson
Tavern in Constantinople, June 11, 989

He and his two friends went into the tavern not bothering to even take off their armor nor to leave their weapons in the armory, they sat near one of the tables and ordered a beer, it went on for hours until Olaf was lying under the table being blackout drunk, it was a weird state, suddenly he didn't feel as if he was still there and the feeling of being drunk disappeared.

Olaf Svarlsson
Cair Core, who knows

He was dead? he heard of people that drunk so much they died, he definitely wasn't drunk now. A female person started to speak, she was young very young, why would they listen to her. Suddenly a army crashed to the room they were in, Olaf knew too well how this is going to end, he was in such situations from the age of 18, it was just another day of slashing at whatever came near, and so he started to swing his Dane Axe at whatever came near him, carving a small circle around him. He suddenly heard someone shout, he strangely understood the shout but not it's meaning

"What is a firearm for Thor's sake! This is no time to use magic!"

Master Sergeant Rebecca "Maiden" Shields
Special Forces Operator Detachment - Delta
Advanced Force Operations Team "Outlaw"
Afghanistan, Baghlan Province
October, 2018

"Aw fuck!"

"How many of them are there?!"

"I don't know, just keep up the fire!"

"They're getting close!"

Bullets whizzed and kicked up all around as Rebecca swapped magazines from her Mk.18 and popped out of the window to engage more Taliban fighters. The plan had been simple: Get in, kill a guy, and get out. The problem was that despite the simplicity of the mission, the Taliban had managed to rally a response to cut off the escape route for the Delta team that had been sent in. Now the sniper-spotter pair found themselves holed up in a lone mudhut, engaged in a fight for their lives. Rebecca had known the risks, but this wasn't entirely how she pictured her future to go. She tried the radio again to contact HQ back at Bagram.

"Warlord, Warlord, this is Maiden. We are in heavy contact, what's the status of that air support, over?"

"Maiden, this is Warlord. Bird's are still fueling up. It'll be ten mikes."

Ten minutes? They weren't gonna last ten seconds! And she knew it.

"What'd they say?" Her sniper asked.

"Ten minutes! Keep shooting!"

"More targets!"

"I know!"

Rebecca had always kept strict control over her weapon, but she was beginning to think that now was almost a good time for her to flip the rock n roll switch to full-auto.

"What about indirect?!"

"They're too close! They'll kill us too!"

She barely got the words out of her mouth before the sound of an AK rattled off a lot closer than she liked. She turned and saw a Taliban fighter peeking up through a window she hadn't seen before, and in two seconds he was down below it with a few more holes to bleed out from.

"Tenor, you good?"

No response as she kept pegging other fighters with bullets.

"Tenor!"

Rebecca chucked a frag out her doorway that she designated as her lane before skirting around to the other side of the hut.

"Oh shit...Perry!"

She grabbed her sniper's body from the wall it was slumped against. Tenor, Sergeant First Class Jacob Perry, had a fatal head wound courtesy of a 7.62x39 round. Rebecca, without thinking, returned fire to keep the Taliban fighters from getting too cocky before dragging him into a room where she could only see one way in.

"Warlord! Where the fuck's that air?!"

"Still five mikes out, Maiden."

Rebecca's heart sank as she heard shouting get closer. It'd only be a matter of time now, and she knew it. She looked down at Perry's dead body and then...everything felt dark inside her. The feeling of accepting the fact that she wasn't going to get out of this alive. Well, maybe they'd take her prisoner, but it was unlikely she'd live to see a rescue.

"Warlord, this is Maiden. Windfall, windfall, windfall. Tenor is down and I don't have enough bullets for all the guys outside."

"Confirm Windfall, Maiden. Are you sure?"

"Warlord, I don't want my last day on Earth spent being filmed as I get beheaded by a bunch of muji's. I'm not gonna make it out of here, so let me take some with me."

There was a brief silence.

"Maiden, this is Warlord Actual. Are you sure there is no other way?"

"Sir, I'm half spent and alone in a mudhut. Only a matter of time til they get the balls to rush me. Get Hammer on the line."

"Roger Maiden, you are go for Hammer."

"Hammer, this is Maiden! Fire mission grid: Alpha Golf 2 5 7 1 5! Send it!"

"Maiden, this is Hammer. Shots going out. Keep your head down."

Rebecca felt a tear well up in her eye as her time alive had just been drastically called short. She looked down at Perry's dead body next to her and sighed before keying the radio again.

"Warlord, this is Maiden..."

"Go, Maiden."

"Warlord...tell....tell my mom...tell her I'm sorry...I tried...SHIT!"

Rebecca whipped her Mk.18 up as a shadow entered the doorway, and promptly filled it with rounds.

"Maiden?"

"Contact!"

She heard the first 155mm shell impacted outside as she dropped another militant.

"Maiden are you there?"

"Sir, it's been an honor to be part of the world's finest fighting force! Thank you!"

She keyed the mic off and stood up straight in the hut's room, which apparently was the bathroom.

"COME GET ME YOU MOTHER FUCKERS! COME ON!"

The next thing she knew, there was a bright blue light and a strong pull at her back just as another 155 shell came down through the hut.

Cair Core

Disc 1, Track 1 - Into the Fire
To say it was cutting close would've been generous. Another millisecond and Rebecca would've been unrecognizable, even to her own mother. To say it was was out of the frying pan would've been even more generous. She slammed onto her stomach, having took a tumble through space/time, and felt the wind get knocked out of her. She slowly picked herself up, but not before painting the floor red by hocking up blood onto it. She knocked her helmet with her first before getting up to a knee. She swayed a bit, but there was talk. Talk of...something. Rebecca wasn't paying too much attention. She was trying to get her bearings straight fast, and fast she needed as the whole room practically erupted into chaos. Shots, explosions, incoming hostiles, it was all happening fast and she was already in the mode.

"Contact front!" She moved through a rush of people and adrenaline and grabbed some poor guy speaking English with a heavy Russian accent who asked for a weapon. She shoved him to one side of the room and went with him, her body moving between him and the...whatever the hell was trying to ruin their day. She emptied her magazine before dropping her rifle and turning to him. She drew the 1911 she had out of her holster and pulled his hand out before shoving the pistol into it.

"Nine rounds! Make it count!"

There was way too much going on. She didn't even had time to wipe the blood from her chin as she put a new magazine in and hit her BAD lever to quickly engage the bolt release on the weapon, which resulted in a satisfying sound of the bolt carrier slamming forward and chambering a fresh round. She went to a knee to stabilize herself and put pressure on her panel to activate the laser sight to make precise, quick shots. Shoot, move on, shoot, move on, come back if the other target still isn't down and plug him again, move on to a fresh target. She was a trained machine and despite being banged up, she still moved like one. She still killed like one, too. And for a brief moment, something possessed her to take the suppressor off her rifle and stow it in her dump pouch. It may have had something to do with the slight color change from all the heat being put through it, but she went loud now and there was still a lot of work to do.

Hauptmann Klaus Adler
Castle Itter, Austria
May 5th, 1945

Schloss Itter. A Medieval Castle in the middle of the Austrian Forests, it hadn't seen combat in over 419 years, passing from owner to owner in various states of both disuse and other uses. But that changed today, as gunfire and artillery fire roared across and around the long-standing fortress. Here men of the German Waffen SS 17th Panzergrenadier Division charged towards the battlements with fury. One SS Man ducked down at a piece of wall. He had fought, from the Fields of France to the Cities of Russia, he had killed and charged for the glory of a pure Fatherland. Ducking out of cover, he screamed "Verräter!" to fire upon the enemy and their traitor allies...

Well, he would've, if not for the 7.92×57mm Mauser round that went through his skull. Upon the battlements, a man wearing the camouflage uniform of the Deutsche Wehrmacht aimed down the scope of a now smoking Kar98k. "I prefer 'Realistic Patriot,' thank you very much," he said as he reloaded the bolt. Klaus Adler, Heir to House Adler, Hauptmann of the Deutsche Heer, former Fallschirmjäger and Brandenburger, a survivor of Crete and Stalingrad, winner of the Iron Cross and Knight's Cross, did not think this was how his day would be going. Sure, he took aim and popped the brains of another SS soldier, he killed plenty of SS Men; but he didn't expect to do it on the battlements of a Medieval Castle in Austria, a group of SS blow up in a mess of gore as a grenade is shot out from one of their hands, fighting alongside Amerikaner of all people.

His thoughts were interrupted as a man wearing civilian clothing jumped into cover beside him, wielding a Kar98k. "Monsieur Adler!" the man shouted over the gunfire. Oh yes, and blutige Franzosen. "Monsieur Gangl tells you get Panzierfuaust!" The Frenchmen said in broken German. "Well look at that Klaus!" the Heer soldier beside him said, "Taking orders from a Frenchman! Oh, how the mighty have fallen!"

"Up yours, Dietrich! And maybe something other than a vegetable this time!" Klaus shouted, as he quickly ran out of cover into the Castle, his Kar98k in his hands while his STG-44 was strapped to his shoulder. He soon arrived in the hall where he had left his Panzerfaust 150 (he had been lucky to find this beauty after raiding a SS supply depot) strapped to the rest of his marching kit. He put down his rifle as he attempted to undo the strap: and found much difficulty doing so. "Come on, COME ON!" Klaus angrily muttered as he attempted to take out the Panzerfaust. "Ah, fick it," he angrily exclaimed as he strapped the bag, along with the panzerfaust on it, to his right shoulder and ran off, picking up his scoped Kar98k along the way. Arriving at the battlements, Dietrich looked at him with incredulity. "You brought your ficking marching kit?" he exclaimed, before laughing.

Klaus glared at him, his face contorted into mock anger and his eyes full of humour. "It's not my fault! Next time you should tell Heinz to not strap it on so tight!" Klaus replied heatedly before it turned into a smile as he took out one of the many boxes of chocolate from his pack (don't ask how many there are, there's a lot), "Besides, how else am I going to motivate myself to beat back these bastarde?" Dietrich laughed even more, as Klaus started to join in before something caught his eye. He saw as the 88 mm gun the SS had in the distance start to rotate to his right. And then, looking to his right, saw a group of American soldiers manning the temporary sandbag battlements they had set up. Thinking on instinct Klaus, dropping the box of chocolates, stood up and ran towards them, all his gear still strapped to him, hearing a vague "Klaus!" behind him.

As he approached, several SS fired in his direction, as bullets pinged around him. Expertly switching out from his Kar98k to his STG-44, he fired upon the SS, several taking cover while several more were gunned down, as he continued running. "HEY! LOOK OUT!" Klaus screamed towards the Americans as he ran towards them gesturing to the 88 mm. The Americans, at first looking at him funny, turned to the direction he was gesturing and several eyes widened as they saw the 88 mm turning towards them. Most of the Americans immediately bolted however one of them, a seemingly young one, just stood there, seemingly frozen with fear and shock. Swearing, Klaus got to the young American pulled and almost threw him out of the way, as he heard a distant boom. Barely a second later, his view was filled with a bright light, though he surprisingly didn't feel any pain. As the light engulfed him, his last thoughts were along the lines of "Oh Scheiße, I dropped my chocolate,"

When the explosion cleared, seemingly nothing remained of Hauptmann Klaus Adler. He would later be officially buried at a Bundeswehr Military Ceremony, his casket containing the box of chocolate he had dropped that day. "That ficker loved his chocolate," Bundeswehr Leutenant Dietrich said to the media, "He'd probably want some in Heaven,"

Caire Core, ???
??? ???, ???
At first, Klaus felt like he was drifting, it was bright (unbearably so) but for some reason, he felt he could go to sleep. For the shortest of time, since a long time, he had felt at peace. Well, that was until he was practically thrown with great force and landed on a cold stone floor. "Scheiße," Klaus moaned, "Was zur Hölle was that?" When he came to his senses he found himself in a strange room, filled with many strange individuals of various states of clothing. He swore he saw a Roman or something in that crowd. But his attention was then turned to the woman in front of them and her entourage supposedly. He listened as she spoke of how they were brought to this new world from their points of death, and how she had summoned them to beat back some sort of evil armies or some other Scheiße.

"This...was definitely not how I imagined by day going," Klaus thought, before suddenly a bloodied knight barged in, blubbered off about some sort of golem, before suddenly a ficking giant hand broke through the ceiling and crushed the poor ficker. "Verdammt!" Klaus exclaimed, as creatures straight from The Hobbit appeared and chaos ensued. Klaus immediately dismounted the Panzerfaust from his pack and kneeled, taking aim at the Golem. "Meet anti-tank warhead mutter ficker!" Klaus shouted as he pressed on the ignition and the warhead was launched with a large pow as smoke erupted from the Panzerfaust's back as it discharged. And he watched as the warhead...flew like a bloody rocket, smoke trailing from behind the warhead as it flew in a straight line towards the golem. "That doesn't make ficking sense!" Klaus said to himself. Soon the warhead made contact with a resounding BOOM, as the golem seemed to roar in pain as a gaping wound on its side appeared, making it stumble around. Despite his initial confusion, Klaus soon laughed loudly like a giddy child filled with delight.

Klaus took out a warhead from his sack and managed to install it into the Panzerfaust's front, before several Goblin-like creatures (gnoblars) charged at him. Acting quickly, Klaus dropped the Panzerfaust and grabbed his STG-44, gunning down several of the beasts with precise bursts. He felt as another charged from behind him and dodged the initial strike, as one of the gnoblars attempted to gut him with a knife. Dodging several more times, looking for the opportune moment, Klaus tripped the Gnoblar and got behind it, putting the STG-44 in front of its neck and pulling back. The Gnoblar thrashed about, gasping for air as the cold metal of the STG-44 pushed against its neck for a few seconds, as suddenly Klaus jerked it back, breaking its neck. As Klaus stood back up, grabbing the Panzerfaust and strapping it back in place, he heard as one of the others, an Asian woman wearing leather armour, shouting for shooters to 'aim for the ogre's heads'.

Not the one to refuse advice, Klaus aimed for one of the ogre's and fired two precision shots, both entering its eye. The ogre, blinded, thrashed about and went berserk on the gnoblars. As he continued to fire around him, he found himself bumping into one of his fellow 'Heroes' who wore one of the only things he found familiar: an Imperial German WWI uniform. "Gott sei Dank I'm not the only one who speaks German here," Klaus thought to himself as he continued to fire. "So where did you come from?" Klaus said to his fellow countryman, "Me? An Austrian Castle, I think I got blown up,"

Alejandro Pedro San Juan | Intramuros, Manila, February 24, 1945

"Putangina! These Japanese just don't know when to fucking surrender!" Pedro yelled to nobody in particular as his outfit, a mixed unit of Filipino guerrillas and American soldiers, repelled another one of those feared banzai charges. They were inside the massive stone walls of Intramuros, the last bastion of the Japanese devils who, 4 years ago, had invaded Pedro's homeland and destroyed everything he had. Fighting for the city of Manila, the capital of the Philippines, had been devastating, with heavy casualties on both sides. Day after day, night after night, the Americans pounded the Japanese positions with artillery and tank fire and followed it up with daring assaults of man and machine, but the Japs stood firm and fought to their last, making the Allies pay for every inch with sweat and blood. For almost a month the Allies had fought, and progress had been made, but in exchange almost a thousand had paid the price of freedom with their lives, and many more with limb and flesh.

Pedro could stand it no longer. He wanted the war to end already, for his country, and himself, had suffered long enough already. He wanted peace to return, not just for himself, but for his countrymen. And now here, in this foxhole inside Intramuros, he waited for the final battle to begin. The banzai charge, he though, was in response to this planned assault. The Americans were supposed to begin it today, this time hopefully convincing the Japs to surrender.

Moments later, the sounds of guns firing could be heard. Perhaps this was the start of the assault, another American artillery barrage? But unluckily for the earnest group, the fire came not from behind, but from the front. "Jap artillery! Take cover!" was the last thing Pedro had heard, for the next moment a massive explosion ripped apart the position he and his comrades were hiding in. The Japs had fired a lucky shot; the entire outfit was wiped out. However, when the medics came later to treat those who had survived, they noticed one thing: Pedro was missing.

Alejandro Pedro San Juan | Cair Core

Am I dead? Am I in heaven? Finding himself lifted up by a shining white light from where he had been bombed moments ago, Pedro was convinced he was dead. After all, what reason could there be for a white light to transport him anywhere, if he was not dead? He didn't believe in magic, or fantasy, or superstition. However, he did believe in heaven, so he was thoroughly convinced he was on his way to be judged by Saint Peter. Closing his eyes, Pedro awaited his arrival on the Gates of Heaven, where he planned to confess his sins and beg God to allow him to see his family again. But apparently, it was not to be.

Instead of finding himself in front of St. Peter, Pedro found himself landing painfully on his ass instead, having been thrown into a chamber with several other people. Pedro immediately noticed that many of them were wearing peculiar clothing, some appeared to be wearing clothes out of a medieval period piece, while others wore strange clothing that appeared to be futuristic.

In front of him was a woman who was dressed as if she was royalty, and actually introduced herself as a Queen. Intrigued, Pedro listened closely to her speech, and was surprised to learn that he instead had reincarnated into some strange world instead of being taken to Heaven. Thinking that perhaps this was his punishment from God for his sins, Pedro decided to pray to God for forgiveness. However, just before he could, chaos erupted. Strange creatures had appeared, looking like something out of Philippine mythology. Frightened, Pedro immediately raised his M3 Grease Gun and began to fire at the duwende (gnoblins). He didn't even notice that his gun wasn't running out of ammunition, as his only priority now was to kill the creatures. Seeing the kapre (golem) that had suddenly appeared, Pedro then began to fire onto that, sending 7 rounds a second into the monster, the bullets shredding parts of it to pieces. At the same time, he began backing up, aiming to consolidate his position with the other "heroes" that had been sent here as well.

Yelling at no one in particular, Pedro shouted:

"Putangina, what kind of fucked up hell have I been sent to?"

Chair Core
?????

Having been pulled aside by a modern operator (Rebecca), Chernov is quickly given a 1911 Colt from her holster. Chernov nodded to the lightly bloodied woman, taking the 1911 in hand, trying to gain a good grip on it. Rebecca shortly goes off, using her bolt-action to deliver freedom. Her equipment seemed to be wholly more advanced as Chernov could see, but further observations can be made later after this.

After a few moments of Chernov practicing his posture and aim in his little corner, the Russia rushes forward to front-line cover - overseeing the battlefield. The 1911 was a fine gun. He seen many American officers carry a Colt. Everything was more smoother in the 1911, far more better than its russian counterparts like the Nagant M1895 or the Tokarev pistol.

While Rebecca did state that there was only 8 rounds left in the magazine, Chernov observed Emer’s Lee–Enfield to have a larger capacity for rounds beyond 5 rounds. Chernov rises his head above and aims, shooting gnoblars and orges alike. Essentially, that was it. Shooting small little green people and then the occasional bigger green boys. Without needing to resupply for ammo because of the local magical bullshit - Chernov was free to murder all about.

"So, how goes everything? Eh? It's not everyday you get propelled to a battlefield of fantasy," Chernov yelled to everyone, popping off his rounds into the field. " Chernov notices Pedro having been dropped into this world. "We'll explain later but just keeping shoot at the small little green people and the bigger green people. Don't worry about your ammo supply, just keep shooting."

Chernov points up the massive bone-giant. "Watch out for that too."

"Anyone wants to do some introduction while we're at? My name is Chernov Mili Vitalievich, senior executive of the Soviet Planning Committee." Chkernov yells as to ensure that his voice is heard as Chernov pelts various orges and gnoblars with 45. ACP bullets from the Colt.

"Also, thank to whoever that was that gave me this pistol."

Paul Müller Altendorf
Cair Core ~ Day time, ????

---

Tʜᴇ ɢʀᴇɴᴀᴅᴇ sailed gracefully through the air, tracing an elegant curve. It striked the bone carapace of the beast, immediately exploding and fracturing a large amount of bone, flinging white fragments into the riding monsters. He unscrewed the cap on a second grenade and threw it at the cavity caused by the previous explosive. It took off another chunk of osseous matter, yet the monster seemed unhindered! Then, hot smoke, akin to a furnace's breath, filled his surroundings as a dart went flying past, ripping off a limb off the white aberration. It seemed like someone had a portable rocket, and in the confusion he bumped into the chemical archer: a compatriot with a crude looking tube and an uniform more advanced than his. He was polite enough to attempt an introduction.
"I come from Amiens, 1918," he replied to the man, "Have people in your times forgotten that rockets leave trails?"

[Tab=80[[/tab]Altendorf heard the click as the toggle-lock pistol ran dry again. He only had one last magazine, and holstered his sidearm. The local forges would probably not offer Parabellum patronen, and his companion had saved his life many times in the French. His bayonet, unsheathed, was affixed to the end of his loaded carbine, and was soon driven into the chest of a fiend which had sneaked past the front in the chaos of the melee. Crimson blood tainted the short blade, and another goblin rushed forward in a pitiful attempt to slay him. He fired from the hip at point blank range, and the foul creature felt it's vital organs being punctured. An order from across the room was shouted, and Paul, accustomed to heeding the orders of his officers, forwarded it.
“Blades to the center!" he yelled through his throat, "Rifles, stay behind! Shoot the ogres!”

Ah! How it felt to live and fight again, to have blood pumping through his veins and sweat rolling down his neck! The constant peppering of discharging firearms now reigned supreme, drowning and dominating the din of battle. Gunpowder smoke drifted among the combattants on the cramped marble building whose pure white had been tainted by the crimson blood of his enemies. Paul locked the chamber with a turn of his bolt, and set about to add his Mauser to the orchestra of guns. Another warrior, an armoured ogre, came crashing down from his steed as he was felled by lead. A gnoblar was bitten by the blast of his rifle, and another by the tumbling bullet that had pierced his comrade. The shocktrooper reached into his ammunition pouch and found one charger more than expected, though in this battle it was not his duty to think about the strange happenings. He dexterously inserted the charger, stripping away the thun metal strip as he slammed the bolt handle forward and took aim, focusing on the riders that threatened them in the cramped spaces.

Clement Green
Turuturu-Mokai Redoubt
New Zealand

The gunshot rang out, jolting Clement awake and instinctively sending him reaching for the pistol by his side. Movement in the blurry corner of his vision sent his hand jerking before a british voice called something out and his vision cleared enough for the red jacket to come into focus. Lowering his weapon he staggered out of the thin bed and fumbled for his uniform. More shots were barking into the darkened skies now, more than Clement cared to count. Whatever this was, it was serious.

He swore to himself as he dragged his uniform on, snatching up the sabre before following his batman out into the central corridor of the redoubt. Their position was poor, to put it lightly - low ground, decrepit defences and most likely superior enemy forces - and he held no illusions about the supposed superiority of the british infantryman here. Tītokowaru had managed to train up a force of savages Clement would have respected, had it not been for their underhandedness. Which would be an issue, since this particular display of underhandedness was probably going to get him killed.

Still a little unsteady and bleary-eyed, he made his way at a wobbling run towards the sound of gunshots still splitting the air open. A left turn, a pause, before bursting through the door and out into the first line of defences. The warm air slithered into his lungs, muggy and moist, carrying with it the smell of viscera and the metallic tang of blood as his eyes landed on the half-dozen redcoats lying slumped on the ground. Their attire blended seamlessly into the slowly expanding lake of blood, only differentiated by the soft starlight glimmering serenely in reflection. Of the attackers there was no sign.

The world seemed to swim before Clement as he grabbed his companion and dragged him to the floor. A loud crack was answered with a matching spray of stone from behind them, fragments clipping his neck and eliciting a sharp hiss. The soldier said something, alarm evident in their voice, but Clement was already moving, scrambling out of the way of the thick blade which sank deep into the hard earth. He managed to squirm around, eyes scanning up a thickly muscled body before the savage wrenched his blade from the ground with a single, fluid motion. Clods of orange earth fell like hail before being joined by steel and iron in a single, glittering arc. Clement could see it moving, could see it headed towards his head, but his body was moving as in tar and the lazy motion of the blade was inexorable. He had time to close his eyes, and start a prayer, before his world when white, then black.

---

Clement Greene
Cair Core
Corelands

The clash of metal on metal jolted Clement awake, registering after a moment's confused worry that he was falling. He barely managed to open his eyes before the cold stone floor hit him with a heavy thud. Half-dazed he reflexively shrunk away from the blade still arcing through his mind, hands snapping up to protect himself with revolver in tow. His spine arched, dragging him into a half-upright position before he flinched away again, this time from a horse's screaming outside. Somewhere in the back of his mind he felt something not quite right with the soundscape...a moment later he realised there weren't any gunshots. Were his men out of ammunition? How long had he been...where had he been?

Voices, accented but speaking almost-understandable English, nearby. His eyes flicked up, glancing from a slip of a girl to a far older man grinning down at him. They seemed civilised enough, but their accents weren't something he could pin down - maybe somewhere from Asia? Still this added another to his growing list of questions - where was he? And how had he arrived here? What purpose was there behind this? And, as his eyes made their way from the two figures in front of him to those around him, he added a fourth one - who were his apparent companions? Not one worse the colours of a group he knew, yet all seemed armed - many with what were certainly firearms of some description though their makes were alien to him. Many still were armed with little more than swords or spears, and one seemed to be little more than a savage with muscles enough to tear open a cannon.

Of all the things to join their group, Clement was unsure how the arrival of brightly-coloured pikemen, of all things, managed to send surprise curling around his spine. It did nevertheless, before the girl began speaking with an authority and bearing which sent Clement's spirits sinking like a lead weight in his stomach. A noble. Of course that was his luck. Had he been appointed to serve with some foreign power? It seemed unlikely - the last thing he remembered was his impending death, and he felt that there would be some intervening time between one and the other.

Still, he felt more certainty with it than with the explanation the young noble and her grinning companion provided - sorcery which could reach across realms was something a mind addled on the leaf of the cannabis plant would concoct, and that theory would explain his transposed location perfectly well. And the idea that they had been all but press ganged, brought into this world simply to fight and die for this young queen's realm was...arrogant. He had no idea if he'd been expecting anything else, but even still it galled him a little. With a small sigh Clement hauled himself to his feet and prepared to point this out.

Then things moved rapidly.

A young soldier appeared, dead on his feet, clad in dented and battered armour in the knightly style of centuries past and warned of a breach in their walls - a wonderful sign of their position, he was certain - before some ungodly force ripped the very roof from the room. The face matched its entrance - a vast skeleton, reanimated by some fell science (or sorcery, he conceded silently) and staring down at them with rictus grin. Around them was a vast melee, knots of soldiers doing their best to hold out against a vast sea of green-skinned savages dotted by horrifyingly corpulent towers of rolling flesh wielding weapons the size of a man. In the distance a woman reclined upon an ornate sedan chair held aloft by four of these creatures - vaster by far than their already mountainous kin - apparently directing the fire of a battery of catapults hurling some noxious purple concoction towards them. It took Clement mere moments to form his own opinion on the state of the battle.

This opinion was solidified when the bloodied soldier was liquidated, rendered into a fine paste studded with boneshards - the paste immediately reforming into a daemonic visage which leered at them before issuing forth a steady stream of the green-skinned savages. The creatures - which Clement now realised were relatively diminutive, scrawny things with the character of particularly malevolent children - scampered towards the group with delight gleaming in their eyes. For some reason that set a fire inside Clement's heart, and (along with his second kick of adrenaline in as many minutes) sent his gun-hand snapping up and a green-skin collapsing in a spray of blood. All across the makeshift front, the savages were collapsing from rifle-fire even as the looming skeleton lost a cheekbone to a well-placed grenado.

The rifles behind him were getting set up and Clement stepped back almost by instinct, positioning himself out of their line of fire as they began to fall. Wherever - or whenever, he supposed - these people were from, some of them seemed to be operating handheld gatling cannon. The field of fire was utterly lethal, and a thick mat of the dead and dying was rapidly forming. Even the positions where the rifles couldn't fire - those where their allies had charged into a thick melee - were accruing their own geography of slaughter, some of them penetrating deep into the swarm of savages.

Clement stayed where he was, flicking out his revolver's loading chamber and sliding a bullet back. The rifles were lethal, yes, but he knew from personal experience how easily they could be suppressed in close-quarters, and if the fields of fire faltered their small front could collapse perfectly quickly. Which meant he was playing interception, to keep them focused on pushing up towards the enemy general and removing her from play. His left hand brushed the pouch at his waist for a moment. Thirty-five bullets. Hopefully his allies had the ammunition to sustain this as well.

One of the greenskins broke from the killing wall, weapon high, and promptly went down with a bullet through its hip. A second greenskin's eyes focused on Clement at that, being brought low by the strangely effete man in the blotchy overalls momentarily. A second bullet from the soldier put the creature out of its misery almost instantly, as Clement shifted his focus to the hulking savage from earlier - sitting astride one of the corpulent monstrosities and smashing its face in with a rock. Two shots toppled greeskins looking to flank him, even as an ivory rain began to fall from the vast creature looming above suffering a withering barrage of bullets and what looked like a red-tail of all things.

They were advancing now, the momentum shifting. One step; two shots. One step; one shot. Reload. One step. One step. One shot. Two steps. Another step. A knot of the savages broke through and Clement pumped his four remaining shots into them before dropping the pistol and drawing his sabre in one fluid motion, two of the greenskins setting themselves upon him. He parried one high, his blade sinking deep into the cudgel, while stepping smartly to the side to clear the line of fire from the rifles to the second greenskin. Shifting his focus once more, he took another step back to avoid a second cudgel-swing before his blade darted across the intervening space to explode from the savage's back. A half-step let him pivot around the corpse, a third greenskin's dagger sinking into its companion's torso moments before the dead was kicked into the living. Flicking the blade to clean it, Clement took two steps forwards and plunged his sword down into the struggling savage's neck. Blood gushed and it went still. Clement licked his lips, a small smile crossing them. They tasted of iron.

He took another step forwards, watching the savages melt before their inexorable advance, feeling the heady flow of battle as it eddied around him. His revolver bumped, empty, against his chest as he saw the next knot of savages barrelling towards him. He shifted his stance to meet them, sabre raised in guard and greeting. Maybe this world wouldn't be so bad after all.

---

---

"GROG SMASH!"

Picking up the club of the ogre whose brains he'd bashed in, Grog Nak swung the weapon around, slamming it into mobs of gnoblars around him. The weapon, though it was a massive thing, was being wielded by the ancient Homo Sapien with ease. The ogre's club felt like a thick stick for Grog Nak and he guffawed as he smashed in the brains of green-skins.

"GROG NAK LIKE THIS BIG STICK! AND BIG STICK LIKE GROG NAK TOO!"

It was a match made in heaven and together, the pair, caveman with his club, wreaked havoc against the fantastical enemy. Another ogre came running toward Grog Nak, its club raised. Grog Nak saw the creature charging him but instead of pulling back, he counter-charged. The 2 specimens, both built and angry, came within mere meters from each other and both swung their clubs...

CRUNCH!

Grog Nak's club had broken the ogre's club into pieces. But it too was broken in the process, the kinetic force of the collision between the 2 identical weapons causing its destruction. Fortunately, Grog Nak was still armed with his spear in the other hand whereas the ogre was unarmed. Despite its lack of weaponry, the ogre roared and threw a punch at Grog Nak.

Now, a reasonable man or woman would have evaded the punch by the big creature and utilized his possession of weaponry to quickly end the fight. However, Grog Nak was no ordinary man, he was Humanity's first Alpha male!

Pivoting his upper torso, Grog Nak met the ogre's punch with his own!

CRACK!

"AAAAARGH!"

The ogre stumbled backward, clutching its limp hand. The blink of an eye later, its skull was pierced by the tip of Grog Nak's spear and it collapsed onto the ground, no longer alive. Seeing the death of his foe, Grog Nak beat his chest and roared so loud that his deep, guttural voice ricocheted off the chamber's ceiling.

"GROG NAK STRONG! GROG NAK BIG! GROG NAK GROG NAK!"

He strode up to the ogre's corpse and pulled his spear out of its head, grotesque squishy noises resulting from it. Before he could even look back up, a powerful force pushed him off the monster's corpse and caused him to skid across the chamber's floor. Grog Nak spun his head around in anger and was met with the sight of a group of a dozen gnoblars riding great, armored ponies and wielding spears.

He was surrounded.

He smiled and retrieved his slingshot.

"GROG NAK NO SCARED! GREEN-SKINS SMALLER THAN ME CHILDREN! HAHAHAHA! COME AT GROG NAK, UGLIES!"

Provoked, the gnoblar riders leaped at Grog Nak. With a roar, Grog Nak shot rocks into a couple of the riders, the sharp projectiles penetrating their foreheads and causing them to fall off their mounts onto the ground, motionless. Yet, Grog Nak quickly found himself forced to back up against a pillar by the creatures, his body getting stabbed at by the gnoblars. The ancient Alpha began swinging his spear around to repel the gnoblars, gnashing his teeth at the creatures. He was caught in a tough situation...his back literally up against the wall...but that didn't mean the greatest male Homo Sapien of all time was just going to cry for mercy like a bumbling Neanderthal!

"GROG NAK IS MAN! GROG NAK FIGHT LIKE MAN! GROG NAK NO DIE BY GREEN KIDDIES! GRAAAR!"

Krystyn Mierzywojski
Cair Core, who knows

Krystyn has killed many Gnoblars and Ogres so far but the mere amount of them caused him to be slowly pushed into the other direction than he would want. A big Ogre charged at him when the creature swung its club Krystyn avoided it and before the creature was able to attack a second time it's left eye was pierced by a stab from Krystyn's saber thus ending the creatures life. He was forced near ( about 40-30 meters ) two people dressed very strangely firing strange weaponry, it was no musket Krystyn ever saw, they weren't reloading ( I'm talking about Paul and Klaus ), while defending against Gnoblars little swords he shouted to them

"Dobrzy Pani, czy nie pomoglibyscie mi z tymi czortami, o tymi malymi"
( translation "Good Sir's would you help me with those little devils, the little ones" )

Krystyn hoped they understood him, and would come to help

Olaf Svarlsson
Cair Core, who knows

Ooaf was chopping at Ogres and Gnoblars left and right with his Dane Axe when he heard a shout, a man, he seemed helpless, but maybe Olaf! Yes Olaf will do it! Olaf started to run towards the man that was being stabbed at and while the riders were distracted killed about 3 before they turned to him. They started to circle around Olaf trying to stab at him while not being killed by the angry Vikings Dane Axe, it was just 5 of them that were left to circle around him. Not for long, Olaf managed to put out 2 more before the three last started to retreat, Olaf shouted

"Come back and fight me you little goblins!"

Claire

Idiot meathead caveman - clearly - charged into battle. Angry Irishwoman seemed more focused on golem, others focused on dealing with goblins. Irishwoman threw pipe bomb at the Gravelord, taking out a sizable chunk of ribcage. She let off another cheer, before turning her attention back to anything taller than a goblin.

Reload. Toss empty magazine aside, suspected I wouldn't need it much longer. Surprised when sound of rolling bullets comes from it. Momentarily turn head. Hold the fuck up - 'empty' magazine filled with bullets.

Odd. Magical. Useful.

Egyptian continued focusing on anything within range, focusing on goblins and mounted goblins. Weapons clearly bronze, but cut through far better than bronze has any right of doing. Likely magic - along with blast power of Irishwoman's grenade; IEDs can have very wide variety in explosive power so who knows. Load. Rack bolt. Notice ogre sneaking up on meathead caveman.

One. Bullet strikes ear, penetrates skull easily, taking it off. That was more powerful than the first few rounds. Interesting - new magic affecting gun, or gun getting used to magic already affecting it? File thought for later. Rack bolt. Locate new target. New objective -

"Anyone with good rifle aim, keep the big ones from sneaking up on Grognak."

Hopefully he would draw aggro enough that the other ogres would focus on him - making them easy targets. Unless ogres Shrek-like, likely to be dumb as their volume in bricks. New target located. Jumps slightly to clear unseen object on ground - bullet hits upper chest instead of head. Sternum clearly destroyed, not a kill shot but good enough.

Modwenna MacAilig
Cair Core

---

A grunt escaped from the woman’s mouth as she rose a blade to stop a powerful downward strike from above. Shifting her legs and footing to better take the powerful strike, the warrior stared down the larger ogre with a determined glare: the blood of a few of the monster’s kin already having made the ground slick at her feet. Feeling the heavy weight of the beast snarling above her, his spittle flying disgustingly into her face, Modwenna was momentarily surprised at how easy it was for her single arm to withstand the force behind the blow. Grimacing, she brushed aside any hesitation as she plunged her second sword deep into the ogre’s exposed gut. Sliding between bone, she felt the soft, vulnerable tissue of his gut give way to the sharpened steel of her blade. The creature’s eyes widened as the light behind them quickly faded - its ferocious shouts reduced to silence as the Pict quickly withdrew her weapon and allowed the hefty body to slide to the floor. Given a brief moment of respite from the heat of battle, Modwenna glanced around to try and take stock of her situation. Feeling her chest moving up and down as she breathed heavily from the sudden, rapid physical exertion, she nevertheless found herself shocked by the strange, indescribable scenes playing out around her.

“There’s no time to explain! Portal Heroes, strive forward!” The commanding tone behind the youthful, delicate voice caused Modwenna to bristle in irritation. Shooting the self-important fae a scowl, the bloodied warrior felt that the entitled noble had no right to claim authority in their given situation. She was clearly no warrior and likely had little knowledge in matters of war: a clear difference between her and many of the other figures that Modwenna suddenly found herself thrust alongside. About to give the other woman a piece of her mind by telling her exactly how much she cared for her titles, Modwenna’s attention was once again stolen away by a cacophony of high pitched shrieks.

Turning towards its source, the warrior was given just enough time to parry a hasty swing from one of the more numerous runts before she was once again pushed onto the back foot. Swinging her blades with a calm and determined precision, Modwenna allowed herself to take a few deliberate steps back in order to absorb the rabid attacks from the cohort of goblars that lay into her. Clearly unprepared to have their initial momentum rebuffed so easily, a few of the beasts let out surprised cries as they stumbled forwards. Over-eager to engage with the stern human, the goblars to the rear continued to push on their comrades, causing those in front to be forced into the brutal killzone demarcated by the reach of Modwenna’s swords. But the beasts kept the Pict on her toes simply by sheer force of overwhelming numbers.

“Archers and cannoneers, get behind cover and form ranks on the flanks," Modwenna had just decapitated yet another of the seemingly endless tide when she heard the strange, foreign-accented voice over the din of battle. Sparing a quick sideways glance, she saw a strange, olive-skinned woman confidently yelling out commands in an effort to gain control of the frantic melee. “Swords, stay at the center! Don't let the enemy close the distance! Let the skirmishers pick them off. Anyone who can't fight, stay behind with the queen!"

Modwenna scoffed, rolling her eyes as the stranger tried to impose order on the chaos. She was right, of course. Any daft idiot could recognise the gross imbalance in their numbers, but calling for her and the other melee-oriented fighters to pick up the slack was far easier for a woman in the rear to say than do. “Oh aye? That sounds like a grand idea!” She called back, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “I’m just a wee bit busy -” a momentary interruption as another goblar met its end, “ - at the moment!”

As one of the creatures lost its footing in the melee - falling forward and onto the floor - Modwenna didn’t give it the opportunity to recover from its mistake. Taking a firm step forward, she let out a cry as she slammed a foot down hard onto the beast’s skull, feeling bone and grey-matter giving way under her step. The brutal display of force seemed to give the other beasts some pause, and provided Modwenna the advantage she needed to press forward with the attack. Soon, the goblar assault devolved into a rout as Caledonian steel sliced through limb, bone and muscle with merciless abandon.

Satisfied as she saw the few surviving creatures skittering back to their own lines, Modwenna finally allowed herself to take a breath when she noticed that a trio of goblars had managed to skirt around the thin line of close-up fighters and were closing in on one of the figures in the rear. The woman’s eyes narrowed on the man seeking refuge behind a shattered pillar, his strange attire clearly unsuited for the hectic brawl that had exploded around him. Clutching his head and with his eyes firmly pressed shut, the man seemed to be trying to cower away from the fighting and was clearly unaware of the impending danger. Sighing in exasperation as she turned away from the thick of the fighting, Modwenna pulled back one of her arms before she hurled a sword with practiced ease towards the goblars. The weapon flew a few spare inches away from where the man sought cover before embedding itself into one of his attackers’ chests, sending the small creature flying backwards dead.

Its two surviving fellows seemed surprised by the unexpected ranged attack and looked up in unison to see the ferocious vissage of Modwenna roaring at the top of her lungs with both of her hands firmly clasping around her one remaining blade. Already mid-charge, the unprepared goblars could only open their mouths in surprise before the warrior was upon them. Swinging one of her legs forward into one of the creatures’ small chins, Modwenna heard its neck crack from the impact as it collapsed. It was only a second before its one remaining fellow joined it: a swung sword and a severed head made sure of that. Standing in the grisly remains of her enemies, Modwenna turned to glare at the man who still huddled behind his pillar. Her eyes scanned him methodically, trying to assess how capable he was at protecting himself. After a moment, the striking woman seemed to be disappointed in her conclusions although she initially kept them to herself.

“Is that your weapon?” She stated bluntly, gesturing towards the inventor’s suitcase with a bloody sword. Her thick, almost-scottish accent was easily recognisable even if she paid it no mind. It quickly became obvious to her by the hint of panic in the man’s voice and his apparent inexperience in the face of battle that even if the strange box he cradled in his arms was a weapon, it wasn’t one that he could use. Rolling her eyes, Modwenna flipped one of her swords around before she deftly caught it by its red-stained tip. Extending out an arm, she offered the hilt towards Rupert.

“Take it and try not to get in anyone’s way. We have enough to worry about without someone like you stumbling into trouble.” And with that, she turned to look at the foreign woman who had been yelling instructions earlier. “You sounded like you had some ideas before. What do you need me to do?”

November 8th, 2012, 6:58
Dubai, UAE

Max lazily gazed at his phone, checking a news site with a bored expression on his face. It had been a good couple of days; he had gotten to fly his favorite commercial liner, saw the Middle East's most modern and affluent city, and as of 10 minutes ago, had his 30th birthday. And shortly, he would get to fly the A340 back home, all in another day's worth of good work.

"Bzz! Bzz!" His phone vibrated as two texts arrived, one from his mother, and one from...a certain, lovely lady named Kira. He smiled softly, thinking of her face, as he read the messages, both of them wishing him a happy birthday. That was another nice addition to his morning. Everything was going so well! Almost strangely well, even.

"Honk!" The taxi driver sounded his horn at another driver. There was still plenty of time before he had to be there, but the taxi driver sped like their lives depended on it. It was a little scary, but Max didn't mind too much - it was never an issue being too early to something. He turned back to his phone, slowly typing out a couple of responses Oh yes! That reminded him - he needed to place reservations at the Lithuanian restaurant tonight. It was a nice, quaint, family-run restaurant, not exactly a typical date site, but the food was good and he liked the atmosphere.

"Love yo-" Without warning, it all happened.

A car's horn blared.
Brakes screeched.
Metal collided with metal.
Max felt himself thrown out of his seat.
A white, soothing light enveloped everything.

In the blink of an eye, two crumpled, smoking wrecks, barely recognizable as being automobiles, appeared on one of the highways leading to Dubai's gargantuan airport. Of Mr. Max Newport, age 30, nothing remained.

??????
Cair Core

BAM! With a resounding thud, Max landed on the cold, hard floor, back first.

"Aghh!" He let out a yelp of pain, opening his eyes on reflex. He saw a sprawling, palatial room, constructed of marble and gold, and decorated with all sorts of jeweled icons and designs. Standing above him was a young girl and an old man, both dressed up like they were in the medieval times. Tilting his head slightly, he saw a bunch of other men and women sprawled out around the room. They were clothed in outfits from a dizzying span of times and occupations, and many of them were carrying weapons to boot.

This was definitely not the taxi cab he had been in. Where was he? He realized that something had happened - a car accident? - but he wasn't mangled up, and no burning wreckage and asphalt was in sight. Maybe this was the afterlife?

He slowly stood up to face these people, putting on a dazed, polite smile, his head spinning like a top. Corelands? Magic? Heroes? Creation? What? His head hurt, utterly confused by what was happening, and overloaded with so much information. He rubbed his forehead, trying to process it all. "Wai - CRACK!"

Before he could even get a word in, all hell broke loose in the chamber. Bizarre, savage creatures engaged armored knights in a brutal battle unfolding before their eyes. "Portal Heroes, strive forward!” the girl had cried; many of the others did just that, rushing to attack the creatures without hesitation. But as for Max? Max was a pilot, not a fighter - the last time he'd been in a fight was back in high school - and he didn't even understand what was happening yet. Nah, for him, it'd be better to seek cover.

Still off balance though, he only took a step forward before he tripped and fell down. "Ouch!" He shouted, sprawled out on the floor once more.

One of the small green creatures took notice. Snarling, it dashed towards him, clearly out for blood.

"Oh, damn." Grimacing, his teeth clenched, Max glanced around for something - anything! - that he could use, as he scuttled away from the rapidly approaching enemy. His hand grasped a large, jagged chunk of marble that had fallen from the ceiling. It wasn't a weapon, but it would work, he just needed it to get close...

It was almost on him. Now!

Fueled by adrenaline and powered by sheer terror, Max pitched the debris with more might than he ever thought he had, aiming for the thing's head.

And, with a meaty "thud!" and a drop of blood, it connected. The creature fell back, motionless, quite obviously dead. Max breathed in deeply, trying not to hyperventilate. If this actually was the afterlife, then there was really only one name it could really have...

Hell.

My body went through the table in the middle of the ring. Pain shot up through my body as my back hit the mat and splinters by the aftermath of the suplex. I had faith in my opponent, Rampage Tyson, to not completely manhandle me. Tyson was a big man, much bigger than me and had lot more strength, thing is he wasn't as experienced. The reason why Tyson was allowed to do it was because he was a rising star in the HWWA and became the first number one contender for the championship I had to defend.

I liked Tyson myself, the man was a father of two and a former factory worker. The only reason why he joined was because his factory got outsourced to Mexico, which seems to be the case these days. He needed money and college was too expensive nowadays so he decided to become a wrestler. Well "decide" is a bit misleading, more like pressured by his kids to become a wrestler. Thing is his kids like hardcore wrestling, his family got in free as they saw their dad perform for hundreds of people as a face.

As of right now, we both were on edge as the entire steel cage was aflame and my own fear drowned out the thousands of people cheering at the spectacle. I got up from the small rubble and stand tall against the 6"2, 235lbs man. He tried to keep his kayfabe but there was a bit of worry on his face as got back in our clinch and started to pretend to struggle against one another's strength.

"Hey, are you alright?" He whispered to me," it's getting a bit toasty around here."

It took me a second but I started to rapidly shake my head in agreement. I didn't want to say anything because I might break character. This isn't the first time we had been in a fiery steel cage match. We had practiced this for about a week but I still was still afraid of the whole match. I told my dad about it but that talk came by the time we were sold out. I had to do it, not because my dad told me to,but because it was for the fans.

Hence why we both are a true "Hell in a Cell" match.

I got snapped back into reality as Tyson took my arm and Irish whip me towards a turnbuckle. I hit the cushioning with my side but I heard something I didn't want to hear. That sound was metal groaning and that was never good. I gave a quick glance and saw that the cage itself was connected to the ring itself. It was a bad move itself but knowing that the cage was made of refurbished scrap metal and low-cost construction. Still, we have to work with what we got.

Tyson tried to charge me but I quickly dodged rolled out of the way as I heard another, longer groan from the metal. Tyson looked at me and I gave him a gesture to keep going as we can't break Kayfabe and we were almost done. He hesitantly continued as he tried to come after me and I got a steel trash can and threw it at him. He got it and I dropped kicked through the trash can and managed to knock Tyson down.

I had to work fast and end the match so I grabbed the championship belt and climbed on the turnbuckle and felt that it was time to do some no name high flyer special move. I held the title belt and held it over my head to get the crowd ready as I jumped off and had the title belt close to my chest, ready to slam into Tyson and finish this with a three count.

Suddenly, time seemed to slow down to a crawl. At first I thought it was the adrenaline slowing my perception down. However that wasn't the case. The crowd itself was deafened as I couldn't hear any of them. The heat seemed to fade away and wind started to twist and suck into some sort of vortex in front of my very eyes. I saw that space and air, everything seemed to bend in front of me as a light, a blinding light that opened up in what seemed like the night sky and I fell through.



I saw nothing but stars, galaxies, and even entire universes. I saw things that no other scientist could actually dream of but all that lasted for a second. The last thing I known, I was dropped on some stone flooring with me and the title belt being the only two things coming from the portal on my end. I slowly got up, feeling the best I had ever been in a long time. When I stood up I realized I was in my casual clothes, my jeans and grey t-shirt. The title belt slid across the floor and I grabbed it but felt some weird energy connect to me and zap me. I dropped the belt as some queen and man who looked like a fantasy wizard spell out a lot of exposition.

It...it was too much to say the least.

All I know was that I was basically isaki'd. I was sent into fantasyland by some queen in order to save their world. Something that I thought was only in fanfiction and Japanese media happened to me. I'm not even a soldier or in high school for it even worked. Yet the thing is that bothered me was one of the requirements that this Portal needed to grab a person into this world.

Someone had to be close to death.

Thing is I wasn't close to death, I couldn't have. That damn thing taken me when I was in the air in the match. I had to think, think what would cause me to be picked up by this Portal, caused me to be indicated as a near death applicant. What would cause the Portal to cause me to be a hero?

My thoughts were broken as the chaos came. A horde of fantasy goblins riding donkeys and ponies with Ogres leading them came. A giant zombie punched the roof before even that and it got hit by a grenade. This was too much. I never been in war, I never had to do it. This wasn't a dream as people were firing bullets from different weapons, a caveman and viking charging into the fray and I ducked into some rubble where I found a young guy in some rugged farmers clothing with only a shield and a leather cap look at me.

He was just as scared as I was. That look of a young teen shoved into something that he only know that it was sudden doom. I gave a look at my title belt. The one thing that I had connected to my home and maybe the source of power in this world. I had many, many questions and the only way I'll get answers is to defend the people of this world.

I put on the belt around my waist and was engulf with a flash of light and a howl that was like from a wolf. The light faded and I was transformed into my alter ego, Mad Wolf Duncan. I felt different though, I felt stronger and more healthier than I ever did. I put my hands to my face and my teeth were jagged and my didn't feel like a humans at all. It reminded me of wolf teeth, like the ones I tried to put on but fail to do so. I didn't have time to see what was different about me as a squad of goblins surrounded me and the kid's hiding place.

"Hey kid," I said in my Duncan voice," I'll take the heat and you make a dash for the other heroes. I have a date with the 50ft zombie over there."

He just gave me a nod and I got smirked to the goblins.

"Listen you little green bastards!" I pointed to the goblins,"the name's Mad Wolf Duncan and I'm the Champion of Hardcore! You think your going to take me down than you don't know who you dealing with!"

I ran into them, spearing into one goblin off of his armored pony and picked him up by the legs. I then started to spin him around, using him as a weapon to smack goblin and mount alike before I threw him away like trash. I didn't realized how strong I was as I just beat through a squad of pony riding goblins. My attention got to a Ogre pointing in my direction, saying something strange to me. I didn't want to sit around and having to fight some reject Shrek so I thought of a new, very stupid and funny idea.

I punched a mule in the head in order to knock it out and began my trick. I tuck my hands on the mule's ribs and stomach, give just enough balance for me to dead lift the mule over my head and put it on my shoulders. The ogre that was charging at me abruptly stopped as he saw a human smaller than him had just lift a mule, but he didn't see nothing yet!

"Hey! Gotta a present for ya!" I gave a couple steps and flung the mule at the ogre.

It hit him square in the face and chest, causing him to slide and tumble with the mule waking up and not being able to stand. It was a good show but I had to make a run for a door or something that can get me to the giant zombie. I looked around and saw the kid going through one and I dashed towards it, faster than I ever did. I had to be just as fast as some of those goblins and a couple ogres was coming after me and I had to open the doors and push the kid out of the way as I slammed the door and hold it against the metal that was chopping away at the door.

"Kid do you understand me?" I just saw him nod,"is there a tower or something high I can climb?"

It took him a second to think,"Kid!"

"I don't know!"

Well it seems I going to have to wing it. Just when I thought that the door bust open and pushed me back as an ogre was still standing. I tried to see where the kid went and he was no where to be found. At this point I didn't care as I started to make a mad dash to go get outside the interior and found myself outside and on the wall. From this vantage point I could see the horde of greenskins and undead pushing their way through the knights and garrisons. From here I saw the necrogolem, this giant zombie mesh that punched a hole through the castle and broke through the city's walls.

I started to climb on the roof of the castle, not trying to go any further up than need to and found myself at the very hole where the golem punched a hole through it. I saw the head of the golem and saw the damage that one soldier did to it in the on the left cheek and that it's arm was blown off. It turned it's head towards me and I smiled as I started my run towards it. As I jumped, it roared at me a powerful roar but it did itself no good.

I lined up my target in midair and straightened my legs to perform a dropkick that aimed straight into it's eye. For a second, I thought it would swat me like a fly, that it would simply dodge out of the way. Hell I didn't even know what I was thinking doing this. I saw my life flash before my eyes but there's one thing that hit me was that I felt goop and other nastiness as I connected my hit, being sunk inside the eye of the golem.

I went straight through the socket and crashed through the cavity wall. I tumbled and rolled into a bony wall several times as the golem must've been reeling from the pain. It felt like I was in a tire being tossed and turned as the golem stopped moving so drastically and I could finally stand. It felt like I shrunk myself and went into the human body, but my the greenskins coming my way reminded me what it was.

I cracked my knuckles and charged at them. If I'm going to live and die in this world than let's make it hardcore!

---

---

Grog Nak saw another crazy fella help him. That made him happy. Brother Homo Sapiens were his friends!

"GROG NAK LIKE THIS WORLD! KILL UGLIES WITH BROTHER MAN! YAAARGH!"

Empowered by his belief that all humans around him were friends and not enemy, Grog Nak charged head-first into the swarm of gnoblars and ogres with no regard for his safety. He head-butted a gnoblar, the momentum of his charge and strength of his head causing the small creature to fly backward and slam its kinsmen.

Grog Nak began deliberately swinging his spear, using the reach it provided to carve an opening within the frontlines of the enemy, making a beeline right for the bone golem. Whenever a gnoblar jumped at him, bypassing the reach of his spear, Grog Nak would pull out a big rock from his rock pouch and bash its brains behind before throwing the corpse back where it came from with one hand. They tried throwing projectiles at Grog Nak but Grog Nak simply bore the brunt of their attacks with his steel-like muscles, their spears and arrows causing him to bleed but not stopping his advance at all.

His boisterous, audacious attack quickly drew the attention of multiple ogres and the big creatures closed the distance toward him, their clubs swinging and their mouths drooling.

Cair Core
Like Bloody Hell If I Know When

"OH! OH GOD," the hapless pencil-pusher screamed incredulously as the putrid ooze of gnoblar blood splattered over him. Somehow, getting his jaws punched in with brass knuckles now sounded very appealing by comparison, as he cowered helplessly at the carnage. Amidst it all, some Pictish wild woman came forward to finish off his attackers. This was all too much for him to take. He really did took the dive to hell.

“Is that your weapon," the painted tribeswoman questioned, raising the tip of her reddened sword at his suitcase. Rupert could barely speak at all, his usual incredulous banter still backlogged in his throat. It apparently did not take long for her to guess not, as she offered her own blade. On hindsight, the clerk could have refused flat out, or blasted the woman for mistaking him for some gladiator. But the melee had made a mess of his thoughts, grasping the hilt with trembled hands like a daft peasant.

“Take it and try not to get in anyone’s way. We have enough to worry about without someone like you stumbling into trouble.”

"I... I'll do my best," was all he blurted, still dumbfounded by his state of affairs. He could not wield a sword to save his life. Hell, he could not even wield a knife. But it was better than nothing, owing to the dire circumstances around him.

Approached by the Celt, Yen herself was trying to fend off the hordes of gnoblars trying to swarm her. Cleaving into the skull of one, she could almost feel it sinking all the down, bisecting her opponent in half. The bodies around her were stacking far more than she could count, and yet she was still hardly winded. However, she hardly had any time to consider why, with far more important issues at hand.

"We need to take out that witch," she told Modwenna, cleaving through another gnoblar like butter, "we just need a clear shot at her while she has her attention elsewhere. I don't think she'll make it easy, though. I've never fought sorcerers before, so I've no idea what spells she can put up to protect herself. If not, we can take out her heavy troops first. If we can blast away the legs of that bone giant, it should collapse and break their morale. It's better than grinding through endless hordes of imps. A few explosives should do it. I'd use mine, but my fuses don't light on its own like some of our folks' could, and I can't light them while they're swarming me."

Jiangxi-Fujian Soviet Republic

The brilliant silvery rays of light loomed on apon the small band of twenty men. Moving along the forest in relative silence what seemed like a platoon. Their former commanding officer former chairman of the communist central military committee had doomed the rear guard defense action to fail from the start. Having not learned his lesson the first time he still conducted his battles in the same way as before, and others paid the price. Instead of a lieutenant leading, there was a captain. That captain felt no hate for the nationalist soldiers and officers that had killed many of his men. He remembered the opening words at the academy and doubt many of the other officers in the nationalists' army heard as young men. The word Camaraderie still played in his mind but where had that gone? The irony of the situation was that he was fighting those that he had once called brother back in the academy.

He was Liu Bao Rui a revolutionary or at least what he believed himself to be. The platoon was what once made up his squad of 50 men, and among those several had served in his original platoon. " Comrade Zhu remember the opening days of our revolution. The red banners flying everywhere?" He hadn't expected an answer and the man he was speaking to understood that. He had served with the captain since the day he had first transferred over to the city of Nanchang. They had survived the failed retreat at Guangzhou and once more they will survive away from the main communist force. Both of the men had been promoted after linking up with the party in Jiangxi.

The young captain was forced out of his brooding when one of the scouts returned and immediately went to report his findings. The scout snapped a brief salute at him before speaking "Shang Wei there are no sightings of nationalist troops ahead." Sighing with relief, he would return the salute the scout and ask him to return to the column.

Once again they would march in relative silence but the farther they edged towards the village that they had planned on arriving at the louder they became. The noise would attract attention to them feared the captain, so he forced his men to march in silence once more. He needed order among his soldiers if he wanted them to follow his commands and it was the will of the group that had kept them alive for so long.

Then came the rumbling on the street. It was confusing as the village had no motor vehicles nor an amount of livestock or people to cause that noise. However, the rumbling grew louder, and the image of trucks would enter his vision. It was surely not theirs as all of their motor vehicles would have been destroyed or left at the Soviet Republic. The closer the column of trucks came, the longer it became. They would eventually come close enough to spot the nationalist flag flying on every truck. Liu Bao Rui would yell at his men to run back to the hills and hide, but it seemed that he had issued it too late. One of the drivers had noticed the flag they were flying and immediately stopped the column and reported it to the troops in the back. The familiar sounds of gunfire filled the air and once again they would have to fight. This time it was 20 against at least a few hundred men. "Zhong Wei (1st Lieutenant) Zhu and Shao Wei (Second Lieutenant) Ming take your combined force of 15 men and leave this area. Leave your heavy weaponry, and grenades behind. Those that are staying with me pick up those grenades and weapons." Before the others left Bao Rui would pull over Zhong Wei Zhu and give him a hug. "Zhong Wei Zhu, I want you to carry my journal to Shanxi and when we liberate all of China, please return it to my family. Now go, comrade. I promise we shall meet in another life." With no time remaining, he would pick up his rifle and grenades before finding a natural barrier.

He would adjust his sights to the correct distance before opening fire. A burst of light in the dark night and soon after a thud could be heard. It seemed as he had hit someone although who it was and where he didn't know. He would fire into the night again slowly letting his eyes to adjust to the darkness. He would reload after he spent the 5 rounds in his clip. He would cock open the rifle and load in the new clip and he would repeat that process. One by one, his comrades would be shot. First to go was the man on his right. He hadn't learned his name yet as they had only interacted for a week or so. Then the one of his left and finally all that was left was him and another man. During the firefight, he was wounded by a bullet that had hit him on his right arm. Now blood flowed freely from the wound. Noticing the whimpering of the person beside him Bao Rui noticed how young he really was. The boy was no older than 16 and looked like he belonged in a school rather than a battlefield. He would crawl up next to him and attempt to calm him down "Comrade, do not fear death. It will be fast and you won't feel much pain. Being captured is worse for you will be tortured. Now come get closer, we shall die together." Pulling the boy closer to him he pulled out one of his type 23 grenades and waited. When a nationalist party finally stumbled across them he pulled the string. This is a fine way as any to go he thought.

Caire Core
Unknown place
Bao Rui felt peaceful in the dim space. Wait he thought why is he feeling peaceful wasn't there no feeling in death, but then again he had never died before. How can you die more than once? Well at least he could rest now, the past few months had been rough for him. The brief moment of peace was stripped from him when he felt a stinging pain on his tail bone. As he cracked his eyes, he was startled to find out that he was no longer in the middle of the hills and forests that he had blown himself up in. The floor was cold and made of stone and the roof was domed. The building was similar to what the cathedrals had looked like back in China, but instead of Jesus Christ and God, there were other symbols on there.

The strangest thing, however, was the sound of fighting. Looking around he saw what he would assume as European knights and other strange medieval people fighting strange little green things. It did, however, comfort him when he saw that he wasn't the only one carrying a gun and uniform from his previous world. There were some that looked as they came from this era itself while others he assumed came from far off in the future.

When he noticed somone more specifically a girl yell for those with good aim to help protect Grognak he pulled out his rifle and shot one of the green things. He assumed that Grognak was the giant one that looked as he came from an era even older than the knights.

"Comrades, can someone explain to me what is happening? Why are there people that look like they are from hundreds of years ago while others are carrying guns." Wait could they understand him? He hadn't noticed earlier but, how could he understand her? She didn't look Chinese nor did she look like she was Russian.

Was this magic? That thought had made him afraid. Wasn't magic supposed to be something that parents told their kids to frighten them or to use it for entertainment? If it was magic then what could it do. Did it help enhance his body or weapons in any way?

He would shove that thought away later as he began to open fire once more on the little green things. They were easy to pick off, but it seemed as there were endless. When one fell, another took his place in line. If only they had some heavier weaponry like a light machine gun. He could throw in his grenades, but he wanted to save them for bigger creatures, but when they started swarming him he pulled on the igniter and threw it out into the horde. He watched as the blast kill several of the little green things. That allowed him time to reload and shoot once again. This was easier than fighting the nationalists he finally decided. At least these creatures didn't have rifles or other guns to shoot back at you.

"Loading!"

Rebecca dropped the magazine out of her Mk.18 while her hand pulled a fresh one out of her vest. She heard the magazine clatter against the floor only once, but didn't stop to see it had been returned to her plate carrier's mag pouch. She stood up as goblins and ogre's funneled in. Well, that wasn't going to work out well for anyone. The flow needed to be cut, so she gave them something to worry about. Slinging her rifle over her shoulder; Rebecca pulled at the side of her rucksack to free her M79 from its straps. The velcro tore and she pulled it up and into her shoulder. In one swift motion, she had the breech open as she retrieved a 40mm High-Explosive Dual-Purpose round from her belt and fed it into the launcher. She took a quick dash to get around everyone already in the melee and took a knee as she made sure to disengage the safety and ensure the latch had the barrel secure.

"Get clear!"

BOONF

The target was the doorway into the room, which should've been past the minimum arming distance of the 40mm round. She watched as the round detonated, and soon after limbs of the small little goblin creatures were sent flying in all directions. Well, that would hopefully make them think twice about rushing in like that again. She returned the M79 to her pack for now before taking her rifle up again and putting more fire down the doorway and any other creatures that got cocky enough to try to run through it.

Modwenna MacAilig
Cair Core

---

Now one sword down, Modwenna watched as the other woman effortlessly dispatched a wave of goblars that attempted to swarm her. She could only manage to articulate the basic outlines of a plan before another tide of the beasts would sweep over them, but the foreign warrior spoke quickly at clearly. Frowning, Modwenna’s gaze followed Yen’s to fall upon the distant figure lounging on the outskirts of the battle. Feeling a sense of revulsion at the sight of their enemy so cock-sure at her own success, while cowardly avoiding the heart of the battle, Modwenna’s grip tightened on her blade.

“Aye, can’t say that I’ve had much experience against them myself.” She muttered, knowing that there was no way for them to cover the distance to the enemy commander while in the midst of this chaos. But that was when the foreigner proposed using her ‘explosives’ as a solution.

Raising an eyebrow, Modwenna considered the idea for a moment before slowly nodding in agreement. She had no reason to doubt that this woman was capable of doing what she proposed, and had little to lose by trusting her. Grinning at the prospect of actually making some headway in the raging battle, Modwenna deftly twirled her sword in her hand before gripping it firmly in preparation for rejoining the fray.

“Alright, so I just need to give you a bit of space then?” She said, looking up just as a titanic roar accompanied the figure of a man leaping into the skeletal giant’s eye of all places. “And I think that we could probably work up some kind of distraction to deal with the sorcerer later.” Pausing for a second, Modwenna flashed her ally a grin. “Though I want to be close enough to see that fecking smirk wiped off her face.” With that, the Pict glanced around quickly to see another of their party’s melee fighters finishing off a few of the beasts nearby.

“Hey, Blue!” Modwenna called out above the din of battle. “When you’re all done with that lot, help me hold them off over here!”

Before she received a response from the man, but after making sure that he heard her, the Pict let out a battle cry as she charged once again into the enemy lines that were approaching Yen. Cutting down a goblar, Modwenna immediately found herself having to pivot to block the blade of an ogre that had born down upon her. As the sound of metal clashing against rung by her ears, she focused on her own small part of the battle, hoping that the other woman would be able to deliver on her end of the bargain.

Clement Greene
Cair Core
Corelands

Ebb and flow, ebb and flow. Clement took another step forwards, pistol jumping from one target to the next as they collapsed mid-rush. One made it to him, blood spraying as the point of a thin blade exploded from its back. Sagging, the long-knife slipping from its fingers, the savage fell to the ground with a heavy thud. Blood and viscera slid slowly down the central ridge of the blade, glinting evilly in the red light suffusing the room before dripping off in thick clumps. A quick flick of the blade sent the worst of it spattering over the ground.

Somewhere up ahead, in the midst of the roiling see of savages, the hulking primitive was trading blows with one of the corpulent beasts, screaming his glee as a club shattered against his own weapon before pummelling the squalid creature and being flung away by a mounted Gnoblar. Elsewhere, some manner of man-beast leapt towards the skeleton looming above them, swallowed up an vanishing into the darkness of its empty eye-socket. A detonation shredded the doorway through which the savages were pouring, smearing the walls with blood and viscera.

A voice in a thick Scottish accent cut through the clamour of battle and the deafening roar of rifle-fire, calling him over, and he half-turned to see two women - one oriental in appearance and cutting into the swarming savages with a back-curved sword and one wild-looking and wielding a single straight-blade. It had been the latter who had called to him and he moved slowly over to her side, covering her flank and keeping the asian one protected as much as possible, sword out and on-guard as the wild-woman fought with one of the vast, shambling piles of fat which still anchored the savages horde.

For a moment he half-turned to ask what their plan was, before a knot of the smaller savages pressed towards him and he readied himself to meet them. The first came at him with a small wooden club, swinging it in wild arcs while its too associates pressed his flanks with long-knives. Clement took two steps back in time with the club's swings, then stepped in and sliced the savage's forearm open. It staggered back as Clement twisted to one side, one savage's knife tearing past him while the second grazed his rib. Gritting his teeth at the burning pain in his side he spun, sabre flashing and spilling blood from shoulder to hip as the offending foe fell bodily to the gore-soaked floor. Catching himself, Clement turned once more and extended his arm fully to catch the last savage full in the chest as it charged towards him. Dragging his blade free, he flicked it clean on the floor and turned once again as the ground quivered.

The vile beast approaching him leered evilly, a wave of noxious breath washing over Clement as the creature bared rows of blackened and jagged teeth in a vast maw. A mace easily the size of a man was clutched in one massive paw, slung over the shoulder before being slammed down into the ground with terrifying speed. The stonework of the floor cracked, shrapnel peppering Clement's face, and he recoiled instinctively as a thunderous shriek of rage sent gales of noxious fumes whipping his face.

The mace was moving again, and he was barely able to duck back in time to avoid it. Eddies of air kissed his face as he pressed uncomfortably close to the lady he was supposed to protect, digging his feet into the ground as his foe struggled to regain balance and darting up and into their reach to sink his sword to the hilt in the thick, flabby folds of the creature's overflowing stomach. Thick ichor welled up around the wound before a stubby leg jerked up, slamming into his torso and sending him reeling back with spots flashing across his vision. The ground was pitching steadily underneath his feet as he brought his sword back up into a basic guard once again, finding himself back where he'd started.

The creature also took a step back, inspecting its wound for a moment before returning its focus to Clement. A terse snort was his only warning of it intentions before it swung again, mace transcribing a glittering arc which he barely managed to sidestep, shattering another flagstone on its crushing impact. Shrapnel exploded again, catching him easily and sending sheets of blood gushing down the side of his face. Again, he stepped in close and this time he drove his blade through the savage's forearm, exploding from the other side a thick spray of ichor as the beast screamed in pain. It convulsed, arms flailing madly, and Clement found himself thrown from his feet and sent tumbling across the hard floor until he ended in a crumpled heap and slowly pushed himself up to one knee.

The good news, he noted blearily through the throbbing pain consuming his body, was that the creature was most certainly focused on him now. One arm hanging limply by its side, still leaking rivulets of black ichor, its beady eyes were affixed to him as it strode forwards, reaching out for him with its surviving paw. It neared, close enough that its fetid breath washed over him once again, and as its fingers brushed up against him Clement reversed his grip on his sword and drove its blade through the palm of its hand in a single, fluid movement. Again it screamed, rearing back as he reached shakily for the revolver hanging around his neck and fumbling bullets into it one at a time.

A clatter of metal on stone saw his blade skittering across the floor towards him, coming to a stop at his feet as the creature opposite him snarled and curled a fist. Ichor dripped down its knuckles, and it was shaking wildly. Reaching up with his good hand, Clement paused for a moment to aim before his foe's throat exploded into red ruin. Ichor sprayed, some of it catching Clement to add to his already bloodstained appearance, before the body toppled to the ground, a look of gormless surprise etched into its face.

Stooping down to the ground, Clement picked up his blade and held it shakily out in front of him. The battle raged on. He was going to have to continue to fight.

[Liu Bao Rui
Cair Core
Breath in, and breath out. Bao Rui told himself as he steadied his rifle and aimed his sights at the never-ending horde. His ammo supply was dwindling and the horde seemed as large as he had fired first shot into the mess of the beasts and monsters. His arms ached from holding his rifles up for so long and he noticed that occasionally his arms would shake. Click another clip was spent and was soon to be replaced and spent bullet casings were scattered about him.

Ahead of him was a massive man that traded blows with the larger monsters. He noticed the grunts and shouts of joy every time he smashed in the head of another creature. A monster was what he thought when he saw the primitive human withstand the shots of several arrows and spears directly leaping at the hulking beast made of bones. Why did he have to land in a world filled with crazy suicidal people instead of civilized or at the very least sane humans? Then came a thundering sound that shook the very walls of the building. Seeing the smear of blood and body parts he had only assumed that a highly explosive weapon had gone off inside of the building.

Someone spoke with a thick accent which made their words seem weird to his ears. Someone their voice was able to overcome the roars of the rifles in the distance firing and the grunts and sounds made by the horde. Searching for the source of the voice he saw three of his fellow travelers. Two of them were wielding swords, and ironically they were both of the female genders. The man wielded both a pistol and a sword. He too was skilled in the art of sword fighting as he continued to dispatch the small creatures with ease. Then came a larger creature and it seemed far more dangerous than the smaller ones yet the man still was able to cut it down.

He picked up his weapons, and hurried over to the location of the man, for he seemed tired. The shaking of the sword was a sign, although it could have been shaking for another reason. "Comrade, are you alright? Do you need assistance in any form?" From the side of his eyes, he saw one of the small creatures creeping closer he fired his pistol at it.

"If you don't mind me asking comrade, what are you three doing? The main force is not located near here and it is easy to become surrounded." He was worried about the well being of these three people. It was easy to see that every person that survives for a prolonged amount of time will be benificial. No matter how skilled thse three may seem they would grow fatigued, fatigue causes mistakes, and it is mistakes that causes deaths. After using another two clips he would attach his bayonet and follow the two women and the man.