Jai'galaar

A LAAT gunship soared through the skies of Concord Dawn, having broken off from a mess of Clone Wars-era fightercraft and gunships. The single transport would find whatever official landing pad it could, then set down, off-loading Captain Dice, a Mandalorian from the forces of House Bralor, and an escort of five clone troopers. Quickly, they would ask to find Galaar Vhett.
The rest of the Victores' descending vehicles would perform long strafing runs, low-power bombings and high speed deployments, LAATs configured with side mounted turrets beaming down technobeasts covered squads of second company soldiers and the lauded Sixth Shock Troops of the Four-Hundred-Forty-Seventh Legion. Though a few support squads were still armed with DC-15s and other typical weapons, the bulk of these soldiers were equipped with net-launchers, flamethrowers, rotary turrets and rocket launchers. They'd get the attention of techno-beast packs and lure them towards kill-boxes, where immense firepower would blast, pound or scorch them into dust. It wasn't an easy job, they were still supernaturally tough and each of them brutalized any unfortunate clone lurer who wasn't quite fast enough, but it was more effective than not.

Joining the clones were Bralor warriors, armed with spears and polearms of shining beskar. These were soon impaled through the mid-sections and hearts of techno-beasts, having a modest competition with the clones they were getting to know over who had the most kills. Where a pack was too dense to engage, a Y-Wing passed overhead, and made the crowd much more manageable.
"This is Hardcap to Aiwha Squadron - circle the area, I want to find where these beasts are coming from," the corporal, in charge of the clones currently in battle, ordered. "If you find anything obvious, like an enemy factory, mark it for the Victores' tac-map too, don't wait to upload scans. I suspect the ship's gunners or the Y-Wing squadrons will thank you later."

In a war of attrition, the cybernetically animated corpses had the advantage, their chimeric forms soaking up damage that would have felled an ordinary organic being or droid. A brilliant flurry of cascading tibanna bolts would put one down, only for the nanogene spore infected its husk to replicate and replenish its wounds with mechanical growth, allowing them to rise again and continue fighting. When the technobeasts fell upon brave but frightened soldiers and sank their plague ridden teeth into living flesh, their enemies rose up to join their ranks, providing what felt like an endless stream of cyborg ghouls for the defenders of the city to contend with. Only those struck down by pure beskar suffered the 'true' death, the sacred iron anathema to the nanogene spore that spread the techno-virus. Where Mandalorian iron met infected steel, silver flames erupted and viral wounds refused to repair.

From the darkness of the woods, the Plague Knight watched the siege unfold and reconsidered his strategy as reinforcements arrived just in the nick of time to support the beleaguered settlement. Sparks spit from the rusting iron chin that kept Festerbile Bubonicus' rotting face from falling apart as the Sith iron clad sausage fingers of the Reaver stroked the plate considerately. Those jetpacks made the Mandalorians a difficult foe to contend with. They'd have to do something to even the playing field in their next attack, though for now he would have to make due with the forces currently provided to him. Right now the best option his abscess covered mind could come up with was to reveal his secret weapon and throw everything he had at one section of the wall, thus overwhelming the defenders with sheer numbers. Costly, but this assault had always been a distraction to begin with, a way to take the Mandalorian Assembly's T-visor hidden eyes off of what the Reaper Prime was really up to.

Plucking a grease covered comlink from the fat mouldering belt strapped around his plate armour skirt, the Plague Knight held the device in front of his jiggling jowls and hutt wide maw, cracked lips splitting to expose diseased yellow teeth more akin to jagged spurs of bone. His voice was a revolting wet gurgle, croaked up from his bubbling phlegm filled throat. Bring up the Techno-Wyrm and prepare to reinforce its approach to the wall. A trail of diseased spittle oozed from the corner of his lips as he spat into the comlink, then returned it to his waist and hefted a large flanged mace buzzing with millions of microscopic nanogene spores that swarmed over the surface of its Sith iron head, holding it in a barbed gauntlet single handedly in an impressive display of physical strength. The Plague Knight snapped the sinew reigns of the infected ubese thorn-back war dragon between his tree-trunk thick legs, leaning back slightly in the saddle as he swung his ruinous mace to the front. "FORWARDS!"

His voice carried across the night, harkening the forces of ruin under the diseased banner of the Reaper Prime, the Sith Virologist Belisarius Vilebroth. The very ground began to shake as something massive moved through the forest, hidden just beneath the tall canopy of trees that prevented Jai'galaar's defenders from intercepting the technobeast horde before it drew near. Emerging from the edge of the woods was a huge mechanical construct of industry, with churning drill teeth that snarled and a carcinogenic exhaust belching engine that growled as heavy tracks tore up the ground, bulldozing anything it didn't shred apart. Originally an abandoned Groundborer the Grave Wardens had found on the edge of civilized space, the Plague forces claimed the vehicle and gave it new life, infecting its circuits with the same nano-virus that transformed regular sentient beings into mindless drones. The barbaric circular drill teeth started to spin hazardously as the monstrous construction vehicle rolled towards the thick city walls, joined by a envigored mass of the cybernetically enhanced undead that rushed the eastern side of the settlement, pouring out of the forest in a flood of diseased cyborgs.

Festerbile made an appearance, astride his menacing cyborg reptilian mount, following behind the Groundborer as it rumbled towards the wall. Riding higher than the mechanical mutants marching around him, the morbidly obese knight stood out, his very presence exuding a sickly malaise that offended the senses of anyone with the Force.

Vera and her squad had been doing there best to harass and delay the advancing horde, looked on in horror as the massive machine of death and destruction lumbered from the trees. The young Mandalorian woman was the first of her number to steel her nerves and turned to her comrades. They were outside the walls, and closest to the mighty mechanical monstrosity, so their duty was clear: Stop it before it can breach the cities walls, or die trying.

Mandalorians! Rally! And follow me! was the command she shouted into her helmets comm system, shaking the other seven commandos out of their own shock and fear. It would take the last of their jet pack's fuel to reach the back of the best, but that was where they were heading. Flying over the horde of horrendous hybrids, they came to land, some rougher than others on the back of the advancing mech-beast. But they soon found they were not the only ones hitching a ride on it's back. It seemed that, either as a means of protecting this alpha abomination, that a number of smaller techno-beasts had stowed away on the creature. And so a brand new fight began. The eight brave, or foolish, commandos once more did battle with the swarm of machine and flesh. This time though, it was close quarters, were the machines had the advantage. Though their armor was a great boon, it still didn't save the first two of her men who fell, gaps in their armor found by the blades of the ravenous automatons. Vera's own shot gun rang out over the din of battle as she loosed shell after shell into the advancing monsters while one of her squadmates tried to find some sort of weak point they could exploit, but it was not going well...

Across the surface of the gargantuan 'Techno-Wyrm', armour-plate hatches slid open, venting long clouds of luminous green trihexalon gas in an expanding defense screen. From these weeping openings the foul minions of the Reaper Prime emerged, their hideously altered forms exposed to the night sky overhead, backlight by the star-speckled tapestry of space. Each was no more than a meter in height, with a distended paunch of a belly that pulsated as the miniature reactor inside churned and created new nanogene-spore, filling the cybernetic goblins growing stomach to the verge of bursting. Brothlings, they were called, suicidal carriers and spreaders of the techno-virus. Former Xamsters from the fungal world of Xagobah, their world had been preyed upon by the plague forces of Xeraxus and transformed into half-mechanical weapons. Hundreds of the small squealing techno-trolls scurried out of the openings on two short legs, stumbling over one another as they clambered across the moving Grounderborer with rust-rimed claws and feet like clinging cybernetic parasites. Many lost their footing and fell over the sides, pouring off the Techno-Wyrm's backside by the dozens, only to explode when they struck the ground in outward erupting showers of nano-gene spore that coated the protective armour of defenders caught out in the open.

A swarm of chittering and screeching Brothlings rushed towards Vera and her seven commando comrades, pushing each other out of the way as they jockeyed for position at the head of the pack, only for that first one to have its belly blasted open by the Mandalorian in whites shotgun, spraying its diseased kin with blood, bile, diseased tissue, and no small amount of scrap metal. Those immediately behind the blasted open Brothling paused, but only for a moment as whatever malicious hive-mind compelled the cyborgs inevitably drove them forwards. On two short stubby legs they waded through their dead in a relentless tide, gaining an inch for every dozen of their own slain, their numbers seemingly endless despite the impossibility of that. One particularly fiendish cyber-goblin with a long filthy tongue that hung loosely out of the metal snout that had replaced the creature's original beak giggled maniacally as it squirmed its way across the gore and putrescent fluid covered backside of the giant animated vehicle, working its way through and under the growing piles of its cyber-kins corpses as it got closer to the female warrior leading the group of eight. Leering with a mismatched pair of eyes from beneath a burst open fellow Brothling, one dead and the other replaced with the red lens of a photo-receptor, the altered Xamster bided its time. It waited until Vera expended her last shot and began to reload, then it sprung its attack.


Tossing aside the dead technobeast atop it, the Brothling leapt to its feet and charged towards Vera Fett, splaying its short stubby arms wide as it threw itself at her left leg and attempted to wrap its diseased fingers around the limb in a malicious bear-hug.

Meanwhile the Groundborer beneath their feet shuddered and rumbled as it began to weather a storm of blaster and laser rounds directed at it from the wall. The angry barrel of a hover-tank spewed smoke in between shots as it left glowing welts and patches of carbon scored soot across its surface, though little seemed to penetrate the thick armour the ancient animated vehicle possessed; however, the same could not be said for the smaller less well armoured horde of techno-beasts marching alongside it. Several were immolated by those blasts, swallowing completely by blinding light and heat, leaving only pairs of bodiless legs steaming in the cool night air. In truth those endless hordes were far from endless, but the Reaper Prime's agent on Concord Dawn wasn't holding back anything in reserve, throwing every single cyborg he had at the walls of Jai'galaar. It was a calculated risk. If they could take the city, they would have more than enough materials needed to replenish their numbers, as every defender was a potential future technobeast. As the Techno-Wyrm's malevolent maw of terrifying teeth spun around, they began to disrupt the air, creating a suctioning effect that pulled practically anything caught in front of it into its gnashing and grinding mechanical mouth. Even downed technobeasts and unclaimed bodies of the city's defenders were swallowed up off the ground, ground down into paste, and were repurposed as biomatter the diabolical construct used as fuel or to repair its damaged organic parts.



Below and behind the monstrous metal weapon of doom and disease, was the ruinous leader of the plague forces assaulting Concord Dawn, one of the ignoble and wicked Plague Reavers of Runnelsore Keep of far off Xeraxus. Astride his infected ubese thorn-back war dragon, Festerbile Bubonicus towered over the technobeast masses marching around him, which would have been the case even if he were marching on foot alongside them. He had been with the Reaper Prime since the beginning, long before they had been cursed with this mouldering affliction, and had remained loyal long after. While others of his brethren might look on their decaying bodies with despair or disgust, the Reaver saw it for the boon it was, despite how hideous he and the others had all become. His body was a towering eight foot mass of morbidly obese flesh and thick armour plate that barely contained his gore speckled girth. Pallid grey skin covered rolls of fat that bulged beneath his helmet and breastplate, spilling over the sides in vein strewn and slime covered tissue that added to the grime dripping down his noxious plate armour, oozing over the diseased scales of the bipedal reptilian monster he rode. In fact, the air around the gargantuan Knight flickered and popped with strange distortions that would have set off the Geiger-counter in any Mandalorian bucket near it, as the armour the foetid warrior wore was heavily radioactive. Putrid wafts of steam spilled from pockets in his plate as his rotting body quite literally stewed inside of it.

Festerbile raised his large flanged mace, Rotbringer, hefting it in his gauntlet encased right hand. The millions of microscopic nanogene-spore coating the offensive maul's head made it seem as though it were swarmed by insectile gnats, scattering and reforming every time he swept the ruinous weapon through the air. With his other hand he tugged on the sinewy reigns of his mount, turning the snarling saurian cybernetic creature in place, to bring a pair of blaster cannons fused to its chest to bare on a group of charging warriors in a lethal spray of searing hot laser. The diseased war dragons feet crunched over the steaming corpses that remained, stamping them into the dirt and mud of the no-mans land outside the city walls. Heinous laughter bubbled up from the Plague Reaver's throat in a wet gurgle, causing filthy flecks of pus to spray from the mouth grill of the tall helmet he wore, made taller by a jutting pair of antlers decoratively rising from above its brow guard. He dragged a bloated and black tongue across his bleeding lips, savouring the slaughter as though it were the sweetest vintage of wine.

"Lay down your arms and accept the Reaper Prime's gift! I, Festerbile Bubonicus, the Great Sloth of the Boiling Marshes of Sulphuria, will gladly accept your surrender." He bellowed, his voice projected and carried across the battlefield by a thousand technobeast speakers. He twirled his fiendish mace around in his grip, then pulled hard on the reigns of his mount, causing the cyborg war dragon to rear up and shriek. As it lowered, Festerbile swung his virulent crozius forwards, directing it towards the walls of Jai'galaar. "Or face me, and meet your demise that much sooner. Bahahahahaha!"

Captain Dice watched with horror from a section of Vhett's battlements as the techno-wyrm burst out from the ground, a lengthy war machine just as diseased and mutated as the infantry following its charge on Jai'galaar's fortifications. With the beast still some kilometers away as it made its terrible approach, the clone captain considered his options. He could order his seemingly uncontested air assets to run strafing and bombing runs along its top, or he could have some of his precious few AT-TE heavy walkers deployed quickly behind the defenses, and hope their mass-driver cannons could put the wyrm down.

No, none of that would be enough. This army was unconventional, durable beyond what should be physically possible. His soldiers were armed for heavy pest control more than they were a shooting war, with net-launchers, flamethrowers, and Mandalorian spearmen and other beskar-armed warriors to put down wounded techno-beasts like a hunter would a wounded catch.
His ground forces were able to become unconventional in response, but his heavy weaponry remained all too basic. Blasters and bombs couldn't do this alone, and if he didn't have unconventionality to rely upon, then he'd have to hope extremity could fulfill the same.

"Mako!" he opened his comm-unit, to the acting captain of his ship. "Pass word to Cushnip on comms, broadcast on secure Mandalorian frequencies and our own. Clear a kilometer radius of the wyrm. Give them a minute-thirty before opening fire with three - read me, three - heavy turbolaser turrets. Do not allow spread to go beyond a kilometer, I will not have us destroy Jai'galaar."
Even as Dice spoke, Mako had passed word to Cushnip. By the time he finished, the warning was already issued.

[WARNING TO ALL MANDALORIAN AND CLONE FORCES - REACH A SAFE ZONE AT LEAST ONE KILOMETER AWAY FROM THE TECHNO-WYRM]

"Order passed, captain."
"Thank you, navigator."
"One more thing, captain. Acklay's back - with a small Jedi flotilla in tow. Apparently, the mission was a success."
Dice allowed himself a smile. "One step closer to rebuilding our home, then. Let's hope the Jedi are as we remember them."

The captain finally closed on Galaar's location, having borrowed Fionnuala's jet-pack to reach him in a timely and immediate manner. While it meant Fionnuala wouldn't be able to join them in the discussion, it did mean Dice could finally catch up to the Mandalorian commander. "Legate Vhett!" the foreign captain called out, as the Mandalorian hover-tank rose and fired, the near-deafening noise creating a break in his words. "You've got to make sure nothing is close to that damn wyrm! In fifty seconds every inch a klick out from that thing is going to be blasted from orbit!"
He neglected to mention the Jedi, at least until Galaar was already doing as requested. No need to muddy things up yet, as he saw.