The Withered Land: Dragons and Marauders

Dragons and Marauders, Part Eleven

"Doing? Other than being targets, not much. Perhaps these Offworld invaders are a splinter group from the ranks of the Dread Xaozyeum," D'Spayr suggested, slyly redirecting Y'phree's attention from the impromptu gathering of the Knight and his associates away from the grounds of the Warlord's fortress sanctum. He used just enough of the actual truth to give his fictional misdirection the ring of authenticity. "Even though the Emperium long ago broke off all lawful diplomatic contact with them, beginning just after the end of the Great Revocation, we know that the alien upstarts have still maintained surreptitious and covert associations with the more militant anti-Emperium rebel groups here on Teshiwahur."

The Warlord stared askance at the Knight, one eyebrow raised quizzically, and he blinked several times rapidly, as he tried to process what D'Spayr had said.

"That's not possible, they were never real. Smoke and whispers, legendry, the stuff of paranoid nightmares. The height of that mythology is from many, many heliars past, from the days of my youth. There was never any historical proof such an organization ever existed," he said.

"They were real and they exist still," D'Spayr countered. "I know this for a fact. I have buried more than a few comrades who fell prey to their schemes. And no doubt you've heard the tale of the township of Meervandahl, on the outer edges of the Pang Xa'Omathra region... Nineteen hundred men, women and children cut down in a single night by relentless metal monsters, man-like automatons, the like of which no one had ever before seen."

"Meervandahl was buried in the Great Saltation Wave in Orbital Heliar 112, Post-Wound, following the First Continental Reconstruction," Y'phree recited. "It was officially declared a natural disaster by the Emperium's Scientific Ministry of Anomalous Calamities. It was a dust storm of enormous magnitude that destroyed the township, nothing more."

"Really? Has anyone truly believed that?" D'Spayr challenged. "Wasn't Meervandahl the seat of the old Extraplanetary Jurisprudence Magistracy following the Great Revocation? And didn't the Extraplanetary Magistracy investigate and outlaw the Dread Xaoszyeum, officially declaring it a threat to Emperium hegemonic security? The Pang Xa'Omathra region, and its sister territories up to the Peravendath coast, has always been a place where lawlessness, sedition and revolt have blossomed."

"Well, yes, but The Xaozyeum? Gods and Devils, I haven't heard mention of them to be an active agency of revolt in nearly a handful of full solar heliars," Y'phree said. "Last I knew, there was still a fat bounty on any information leading to the capture or killing of any member of the Xaozyeum. Even now, nearly six orbital heliars past his Reigning Primacy, the World-Father, His Imperialness Draggyn Han'Khainus-Galorketh, would be most interested in hearing any mention of those bloody-handed, barbaric Chaos-dogs. I stand corrected, Sir Knight, there may be a handle on this mess that we can use to our own advantage. So you think perhaps members of the rebel forces may have intended a rendezvous with those mutated hive-mind scum within our city's limits..."

"It would not be an impossibility," D'Spayr said, careful not to overplay his hand.

"I will bring the Grand Vizier in on this at the earliest opportunity," Y'phree stated purposefully. "Of all here in The City, Karliandras Dru'ell will be best able to assess whether or not there is Offworld influence in some conspiratorial plot at work here."

"And?"

Y'phree's countenance wrinkled into a grim mask of determination. "And so, to protect The City from any further threat of menacing alien incursion, I do believe it's time for us to actively perform our own investigation. We can't wait for the District Protectorate Services or the Territorial Security Magistrates to do their bureaucratic back-and-forth with what remains of the Emperium's ineffectual Central Homefront Security bureau. Besides, the Council of Free Territories has never trusted the Central Homefront."