RYE - The Great Reorganization

The Great Reorganization

--[X] Garrison Disbanding (Free) - 226 population redistributed

---[X] 15 pop each to Amamaniliztli, Tenqu'itzcal, Ocelotl, Illuxoni, Chuq'xla, Tekiutlan, Huilcatan, Xitzlak'patl, Pahkypx, Chiz'chaq (total: 150)

---[X] 12 pop to Qotlpetl

---[X] 11 pop to Yagoqua

---[X] 9 pop each to Kimilik, Tekuanzi, Tletl'notec, Muukhexla (total: 36)

---[X] 8 pop to Yenehectua

---[X] 5 pop to Itza

---[X] 4 pop to Xlanhuapec

--[X] Purge the Parasite (Garrison) - Teninhuan, Chakax, Krom'tli, 3 Actions

--[X] Purge the Parasite (city site east of Itza) - Kroq-Gar, 2 Actions

--[X] Purge the Parasite (city site east of Qotlpetl) - Tiktaq'to, 2 Actions

--[X] Divinatory Assistance - 27 slannpower (27 5th-gen), all cities plus the Garrison

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The heat of the day was blistering as it filtered down through gently shifting layers of leaf and vine and flower, painting the column of lizardmen with a dappled patina of light as they made their way through the jungle. The air was dripping with humidity, leaving thick, beady droplets on the glossy black plate of Saurus warriors. The lizardmen drank in the sweltering heat, their reptilian blood thrumming with energy as they pushed through the jungle, the moisture so palpable they almost swam through the air rather than walked.

Just behind the lead guard of the lizardmen column, a sharp contrast to the warm heat of the jungle expressed itself as what was to all appearances a miniature fog bank crept rapidly along the ground. The white mist was bracingly cool on the scales, and it rolled and bubbled in peculiar perturbations where it pushed into the warm jungle atmosphere. It was a completely alien presence on a blisteringly hot day of a Mochantian summer, and its churning opaque whiteness hid anything that might have been seen in its depths. The ground around it shook rhythmically, as if to suggest the stride of a massive creature, and yet no sound emerged from its hidden interior.

Krom’tli hummed as he walked, marching to the slow, sonorous tune of one of the eight hundred seventy-nine funerary dirges of Ayotzl. His ink-black eyes stared unblinkingly ahead and his massive feet strode with placid surety, no matter that the mist obscured anything more than a few centimeters in front of him. Blunt fingers tapped out an accompanying rhythm on the kroxigor priest’s long bone oar, his hands moving unconsciously, the tune arising from his lungs unbidden. The attention of Ayotzl’s Watcher was not on the march, nor the dirge, nor even the journey he was undertaking, the possibility of ambush or setback not entering into his mind. He had seen in slumber that he would be unmolested on the journey, and arrive at the Crawling Wall in time to heed the call of his deity. It was, at last, time for those soldiers who had been tasked with holding the massive line of fortifications to come home to the temple-cities proper. Time for Krom’tli to safeguard their lives from the eager hunger of the Ayacmanik, which had encroached much more heavily upon the Crawling Wall now that the pressure the greenskins had been exerting was taken off of the hive-souled creature. Time, at last, to once again meet Teninhuan, the ancient prophet of Sotek, Vengeance-Seeker, Deliverer of Ruin, and the spear to Ayotzl’s shield. The two priests had met only once before, in the service of their gods as the divine beasts first interacted. They had served different roles in the war against the Uax, and no opportunity for further commingling of their stories had arisen.

Now, however, there was not only opportunity but sanction. The twin gods of the lizardmen had been called to heel by ancient Chakax, that ancient Saurus bodyguard who had taken more lives than Sotek had fangs and saved those of his charges more times than Ayotzl bore scales. The divine beasts were as self-assured and authoritative as any god had the right to be, but they had bowed all the same to the direction of the steely-eyed Temple Guard who was their elder, and sent their emissaries to heed his will. This created no resentment in Krom’tli’s mind - it was only right that the gods of the lizardmen act in the service of their followers. Instead his thoughts bubbled like the mists which enclosed him, ideas of commingled rites and shared legends blooming in his mind as he imagined what he might be able to accomplish with Teninhuan once again by his side.

His steps quickened minutely. The garrison of the Crawling Wall had to be transferred, and the schedule of the slann accounted for neither mortal nor divine tardiness.

---

It had been some time, by his youthful standards - a handful of decades, perhaps - since Mahultep of the Fifth Spawning had spent any time examining the creatures that populated the jungles of his people’s new home. A paltry amount, barely even enough to be worth considering, according to the reckoning of most slann, and yet to him the wait had seemed great indeed. Time had been eaten up in great chunks, first by the Communion’s efforts to slay the Mind Fog, then by the war against the Uax, and the revelations of the Relic Priests regarding the origins of the fungal creatures, and now the unfolding affair with Isendral, each demanding time and effort lest their neglect bring ruin upon the lizardmen and spell an end to the Great Plan.

Mahultep had no regret for abandoning his studies in favor of these matters of import. He knew his role as well as any other, and his tangential interests were just that - to be indulged when there was opportunity, and put aside when there was need.

All the same, it was gratifying to have the time to watch the jungles of Mochantia once again.

The Sublime Communion had thought over the matter of redistributing the population of the massive garrison that had earned the name of the Crawling Wall with as much solemnity and seriousness as they debated any other topic - that is to say, extensively - and determined that the operation warranted slann supervision. The creatures that some among the mage-lords still called the Ayacmanik, and others referred to by the Eltharin name ‘Rangdan’, had not had sufficient motive, opportunity, or simply breathing room to make a serious attempt at capturing a lizardman host for almost a century. Now, however, the constant pressure that the Uax had exerted upon them had vanished with all the suddenness of a flame being snuffed out. Without their puppeted bodies constantly being cut down in droves by guffawing orks, the Ayacmanik were slowly but steadily creeping back into the jungles around the lizardmen’s cities, and neither the parasites nor the Children of the Old Ones had forgotten the Ayacmanik’s deep, gnawing hunger for the fire of thought that existed within the lizardmen’s minds.

Of course, the Ayacmanik had suffered greatly at the hands of the Uax. Billions of their bodies had been slain by greenskin bullets, thousands of miles of jungle stampeded into mulch, nest complexes rivaling the size of temple-cities had been shattered and broken. The Mochantian jungle was resilient and fast-healing, already having reclaimed nearly all of the territory lost to the Uax, but there was no denying the fact that a large part of the Ayacmanik’s strength had been spent fighting the green tide. It could perhaps be some time before the Ayacmanik grew hungry enough to mount a full-on assault on one of the lizardmen’s settlements, but if they were presented an opportunity, they would pounce upon it just as surely as any predator would. And there would be no greater opportunity than when millions of lizardmen were sent through the Mochantian wilds, outside of their fortifications where it would be a simple matter for one or two to simply go missing.

Mahultep joined his mind with a score and more of his brethren, aiming the force at their combined thoughts at the infinitely large array of potential futures that could be discerned by peering through the shifting currents of the Immaterium. It was a storm of probability without width or breadth or end, a gargantuan mass of variables that rippled in, over, and around each other like hyperdimensional currents of wind. Each potential outcome influenced an infinite amount of others, and so too did those in turn. All were connected in a tangle of probabilities so dense and complex that they were nigh-impossible to distinguish from each other.

Twenty-seven slann rumbled in unison, the outlines of a fiendishly intricate calculation seeping out through their voices. Where the winds of the future were ever in motion, always melding between one outcome and the next, this spell was a fixed thing of sharp and bleeding angles, a thicket of shining blades that dictated with merciless precision what it would permit to occur. The math cleaved through the tangled paths of potential with an infinitum of quick, precise cuts, and many eternities worth of time fell away, the futures of all things save for those involving the lizardmen fell away. This too was far too vast a catalogue of events to ever possibly review, and so the equation of the slann slashed down again and again, each time paring the vast sea of futures down by orders of infinitude.

The vision of the toad-mages became ever so slightly clearer with each incision, the dross of impossible outcomes falling away from their searching minds. Slowly but surely, they began to see flickers of the events they were searching for, flashes of possibility that indicated what they would have to guard against. Possible ambushes of innumerable quantity and variety flashed across their shared minds, the last moments of the ill-fated lizardmen in the visions occurring in ways that were universally swift and ruthlessly efficient. The slann saw skinks dragged underwater by snapping jaws while crossing a river, saurus snared by swarms of diving beasts concealed in showers of falling debris, kroxigor that were blinded by venomous spit and herded into earthen pits while their companions were distracted. The jungle reached out and grabbed the lizardmen not with blind force, but with the sheer persistence of waves lapping at the shoreline, failing a thousand times for each attempt that even came close to succeeding.

The Ayacmanik needed to succeed only once, however. In every possible future the slann saw, the uni-souled hivemind was turned back again and again, their ambushes defeated by superior lizardmen firepower, even their stealthiest abductions thwarted, their captives freed or granted the embrace of Ayotzl. A hundred thousand times in a hundred thousand forms, the Ayacmanik failed, and was unable to take hold of lizardmen flesh. All times, save for one.

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Teninhuan was many things. A masterful tactician honed by centuries of continuous battle. A fervent preacher with an unbreakable connection to the god he had helped to birth. An emissary from the divine, one of the few among the lizardmen who could claim unquestioned mastery of a certain expertise, something even the slann did not know.

The Prophet of Sotek knew better than any other what it was like to die.

No other, not the wisest and eldest of the slann, nor the most inquisitive of all the skink priests, nor even his own counterpart Krom’tli, who belonged to a death god, had felt what it was like to cross the veil so many times as he. Teninhuan had felt the end of his flesh come upon him an uncountable number of times since that first taste of death, long, long ago in cursed Chaqua. It had been a scratch upon his ankle that had done him in - a minuscule nick that had festered and boiled with a foul skaven pox. Teninhuan had died in agony, with unspent rage burning in his heart, an unspoken oath of vengeance upon his tongue. Since that day, he had died by blade and fire and fang, in collapsing buildings and fierce melees and at the apex of the serpent god’s most potent rituals. Always he had died in Sotek’s service, and always he had been reborn, until the process of shedding his mortality was little different than a snake shedding its skin.

All this was to say that he had developed enough of an understanding of death to hold something of an appreciation for one that was well-crafted. He had even, on rare occasions across the centuries, entertained thoughts of what he might like his ultimate end to be like, if the time ever came where his service to Sotek required a sacrifice that he would not be able to return from. It would have to be skaven, of course - he had been born to fight the ratmen, and it was only right that he should die by them. Teninhuan harbored dreams of finding the festering warren the skaven had originated from, marching upon it with vast armies of devoted bersekers, and devouring his own heart in order to bring Sotek into the material world through the medium of his flesh. Such a summoning would let the Deliverer run rampant for long enough to eradicate the ratmen from every crevice they could possible have crawled into. That, he thought, would be a good way to die.

It was for these reasons that, as Teninhuan’s nerves filled with ice and his straining muscles seized up, as his breathing stilled and his mind began to fade, the prophet of Sotek was overcome with dissatisfaction as death approached him. This was not an ending he could sing of.

The ambush had come upon the lizardmen war party with the characteristic cunning and precision that all Ayacmanik hunts showed. Teninhuan and a mass of newblood skink converts, returning from a bloody baptism ceremony in the deep jungle, were gifted no warning before the ground simply fell away from under their feet. The lizardmen plunged into a mass of tunnels bored beneath the surface of the earth, and swiftly found themselves surrounded by swarms of crawling, chitinous things that moved in uncanny unison. The devotees of Sotek bared their fangs and roared in holy fury, charging against the numberless swarm of creatures with burning venom pumping through their hearts. With Teninhuan at their head, the lizardmen cut an appalling swathe through the Ayacmanik, the berserk fury of the serpent god enabling even these skink initiates to grapple with creatures thrice their size. Pale white worms with hundreds of wriggling probosces covered with sticky neurotoxin, undulating tubes of sponge-like material that glistened with digestive juices and inverted themselves to move forward, blocky creatures of slick black fur and massive, hooked claws of metal, all and more were brought low by the knives and fury of Sotek’s faithful.

It had not been enough. The Ayacmanik were simply too many, their home ground too prepared to be overcome by an isolated force of zealots, no matter how devoted they were. One by one the warriors of Sotek were brought down by swarms of bodies that pinned and immobilized them, suffering mortal wounds in order to hold the lizardmen down while black grubs burrowed into their flesh. Their fellows granted the felled warriors the mercy of Sotek’s fangs, denying their bodies to the Ayacmanik, but the hive-soul was relentless, and eventually only Teninhuan was left, fighting alone against a mind the size of a continent.

A blow to the back brought him down, the sharp proboscis of some antediluvian creature of the deep chasms piercing into his spine and depositing a squirming mass of Ayacmanik directly into his central nervous system. The Prophet of Sotek spasmed as the grubs seized control over his motor functions, fighting with inevitably decreasing strength as his ability to move his body slipped away. Such was the end of the Prophet of Sotek, vanished into a nameless underground tunnel, with no great deed enabled by his sacrifice, no victory bought with his life.

Teninhuan’s thoughts seethed. This fate is ignominious! He boiled with vehemence as the last of his strength slipped away. I refuse to accept it. Sotek! Heed me now, before my life slips its final coil. This is no fitting end for an incarnation of your emissary. Grant me your fury, that I may rain glory upon thy name! So did Teninhuan call for vengeance.

As His prophet’s final vestiges of life slipped away, Sotek answered.

Underneath the writhing mound of Ayacmanik hosts that had buried him, Teninhuan’s body began to bulge and thrash, shedding his scales at an unnaturally rapid pace. His skin split and fell away, revealing newer, bigger scales beneath, and so too did those, and those in turn, dozens of times over. Teninhuan grew bigger each time, going from a large skink to a kroxigor-sized hulk to a beast the size of an Ayotlbotl, his jaws shining with snapping fangs the size of tree branches. The hiss that gusted from his cavernous maw set the tunnels rattling, and he moved with fearsome speed that belied his unnatural bulk, tearing apart the swarm of Ayacmanik in front of him in a handful of heartbeats. He raced through the tunnels at velocities more easily compared to flying vehicles than any living creature, tearing apart concentrations of host bodies that the Ayacmanik frantically threw together in front of him. Nothing they put before Teninhuan impeded him even a little, for he was driven by Sotek’s holy fury and the knowledge that he would be needed by his fellows, and soon. In his ears thundered the fading heartbeats of several cultists who had been spirited away by the Ayacmanik, to be hidden in some faraway den until the assimilation process of the grubs could properly be completed.

Soon, the lizardmen would face a sapient oversoul. Soon, they would -

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The slann relaxed their collective thoughts, allowing the projected future to break down and melt back into the morass of the Warp. It was the only one they had found in which the Ayacmanik had enjoyed unmitigated success, and would be a simple matter to preempt. There had, however, been several other potentials where, although any lizardmen that were abducted were invariably retrieved or destroyed before it was too late, many of the abductee’s spawn-kin were slain in the process of ensuring the parasite did not obtain a viable host. These outcomes, if left alone, would not turn for the worst, but they could very well be improved. After some discussion, the assembled toad mages set out to do just that.

Orders came down from their pyramids, commands that were at times bizarre and nonsensical to those without the benefit of mathematically-derived precognition. The slann commanded that certain creches of lizardmen be reassigned from one city to the next at specific times, or for patrols to be concentrated at a precise set of coordinates. The names of various lizardmen, ranging at random from unassigned spawnlings to the eldest of experts, were called into private audiences with a mage-lord. None who were summoned could remember the contents of the meeting itself, and yet all of them later experienced close encounters with the Ayacmanik, scenarios where they were sure to have been captured save for a set of inexplicable actions they suddenly carried out without conscious realization, only coming back to themselves once they were safe and sound. In other cases, the slann intervened more directly, preemptively dispersing burgeoning Ayacmanik ambushes before they could be sprung, using their telekinesis to prevent the hive-soul’s traps from functioning, or telepathically warning their servants of the dangers they would soon face. The hand of the slann was everywhere, acting in ways direct and obscure to keep their kin safe.

Shortly before he was due to lead a cohort of fresh inductees into their doomed initiation, Teninhuan was struck by a series of intense visions of the future. Sotek filled his soul with the knowledge of the defeat he would have suffered, and the voice of the Deliverer rasped in his ear, whispering the ways he might circumvent such a fate. The Prophet listened, and his teeth glittered like bloody diamonds as he began planning a meticulous counter-ambush. Sotek had decreed that several of the Ayacmanik hosts were to be captured alive, that the serpent god might sense their collective heartbeat, and he was in no mind to disappoint his patron.

Garrison relocation successfully executed without Ayacmanik abductions, thanks to a combination of directed purges and slann divination! Ayacmanik population changes for the turn are detailed below:

Qotlpetl, Amamaniliztli, Tletl’notec, Muukhexla, Aztlan, Kimilik: Move to Small

Yenehectua, Chalkaro, Ocelotl, Chiz’chaq, Xitzlak’patl, Mekhinyx'kal: Move to Moderate

Illuxoni, Chuq’xla, Huilcatlan, Bucqxhalf, Glaz’vyaal, Pahkypxi: Move to Large