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Bloody Revelations     After poking and prodding at two comically useless and incompetent, yet eerily loyal and probably sleeper-programmed, fatass king-cultists, the most worthwhile information that could be gleaned without a direct plan, regards the occasionally mentioned and ominously named 'Tear Eaters'. They seem to be about the only important thing that even tangentially overlaps with the absolute nothing that is Gradafes.

    The two related kings give mostly worthless accounts, being unspecific, underwhelming, and clearly from the position of two foppish rulers dense enough to see the horrifying barbarian raiders that just happen to work for their totally-not-boss as 'political allies'. (Un)fortunately, the common agreement between the two appears to be that neither of them could possibly just walk right up to the Lover's storied Manse, even so close to the west, bang on the front doors and expect to be let in. Even if they are very very special. In fact, they're allowed nowhere near it, just like the Circus Moribund wasn't allowed anywhere near them.

    What's important is that the Tear Eaters --from the sounds of it, the only other significant group that can be solidly pinned as definitely working for the Lover-- can, and occasionally do. Despite their relatively small numbers as a tribe, they terrify most of the northern direction for the implicit backing of the Deathlord. The unique aspect of their tribe in particular is that they exist coterminously with their own dead, pillaging both Creation and the Underworld with the living and dead mixed into either side, seeing them as elders rather than ghosts and corpses.

    It's all very unpleasantly 'exotic', but the main point that they eventually muddle up to is that the young living Tear Eaters get special talismans to mark them as 'guests of the Lover' in the Underworld, so that aren't consumed by the first being they run into. The talismans provide a sort of diplomatic immunity (while racketeering and pillaging even), and a sort of magical kind too. Their best suggestion is to get some of them for yourselves, *then* try the front door.

    Given that they're nominally, big big quotation marks, 'allies' of the Kingdom of Gradafes, the two can at least direct the Elites to the nearest camp they know of passing through the region. Being about as warm as it ever gets this far north, it's about the right time to start finding less impermanent settlements where the grass will stay exposed for another month or two.
Bloody Revelations     Going by those directions finds a camp, alright. A ragged sprawl of yurts made of the hide and bones of elk and mammoths, gathered around small handfuls of dredged clay and timber huts. Hewn logs form a wall that surround a wonky perimeter of wherever barbarians decided to unpack their things, doing little more than keeping wild animals away from the supplies near the hundreds of smoking campfires. Even recent as it is, there are already piles of skulls by entrances, bones threaded into clattering windchimes, still-rotting corpses impaled on stakes and crosses, and the occasional embellishments of soulsteel hooks, chains, and profane markings daubed in blood.

    Even from afar, the place reeks. The smells of any kind of food or maintenance are largely drowned out by coppery blood, animal guts, too-strong alcohol, grime and sweat, and bitter, choking drug fumes. Once again, a place where the Lover's hand is indirectly felt is a surreal den of degeneracy, of an entirely new stripe.

    Where the Circus Moribund had been a fantastical and colourful dazzle of hedonistic and sinful pleasures, aweing and seducing the towns it peddles its exotic offers to, and Gradafes had been a surreal caricature of small town bliss tipped over into ignorant, pointless, self-satisfied existence little better than being a ghost already, the Tear Eater camp is an appalling horror show of reverence for bald-faced murderous thirst, material greed, naked lust, toxic overindulgence, and psychopathic power fantasy.

    With only the most cursory look, one finds tribesmen covered in morbid tattoos engaged in things like mixing organ-destroying quantities and combinations of intoxicants together and beating one another to death over drunken arguments while a crowd cheers, or perhaps lining up gaggles of fresh slaves as chips for games of chance, rolling bone dice to see which ones are property, which ones are food, which ones lose bodyparts, which ones are slaughter just for fun, which ones are dragged off into the tents, and which ones are thrown to the dogs, or the teeming masses of obedient zombies that appear to be their *actual* slaves.

    Piles of glittering and completely useless loot spark brawls over whose is larger, or are exchanged for embiggening gaggles of women raided from nearby towns. Warriors get bored and test their weapons out on whoever is within reach and lower ranked, sometimes chained down by their mates for the spectacle. There is nothing about it that isn't top to bottom deplorable in every fashion. They *live* the stories told of 'wild savages' meant to demonize them to civilization, and worse.

    They ignore the small legion of zombies as expendable and obedient labour. It seems nobody does any work. There are no tanners curing hides, butchers carving meat, fletchers making arrows or craftsmen fashioning spears. It's an ocean of sweaty, drugged up, testosterone-fueled psychopaths with nothing else to do. Finding 'special cultural talismans' in that looks . . .
Haguro Haguro wants to understand. Ever since turning into an Abyssal and back with that newfound understanding of her own nature, attacking and killing someone just because they're on the other side isn't quite so appealing despite being easier to accept. If she's going to kill someone, understanding why she's doing it makes things easier.

Looking at the bloodshed and the sheer depravity on display before her today, it's rather easy to want to just kill the lot of them and be done with it. Alas, with the goal of finding something, turning the place into a parking lot isn't going to help them much despite being her preferred solution today.

"Does anyone have ideas on how we're going to fid these things?" Haguro murmurs as she peers over the crest of a hill with a pair of binoculars in hand, sweeping across the camp slowly to try and see if any necklaces or other large trinkets that look too out of place are being worn by whoever happens be in a straight line from her position on the hill. "If we can identify them, we can clear out the surrounding area more quickly and be rid of... This."

A disgusted scoff escapes the Cruiser. Somehow, though, it doesn't sound like that disgust is being aimed entirely at the Tear Eaters. "Or perhaps... If it's magical, can someone detect it that way?"
Azure Armature "I was going to suggest area saturation with a deadly toxin, followed by Lezard's soul-controlling Processes to draw together the mindful dead." Armature offers, from her partially-deployed Optical Camouflage. The net effect is that her scarf, as well as most of her bindings have a 'green screen' effect where they are see-"through" (to the space behind her), while she still is visibly present.

"But their number and degeneracy would most likely render a chemical attack merely debilitating. Instead, my operational plan is thus:"

'Blue' gestures at the encampment from where the party is gathered. "The Captains can erect a cordon-barricade with their talents, rapidly cornering the party, while those of our number with highly potent saturation attacks create overlapping fields of fire. Primary objectives are simply securing enough talismans for passage."

"Secondary through tertiary objectives, as well as my proposed 'best case': 'they all die'."
Staren     Staren has seldom wanted to just nuke a place as much as this. But, they have a mission to undertake. It's nice that Azure Armature wants to kill them all too. "We don't need their ghosts. We need their talismans. ...But if we killed them all and it made a shadowland, then we could find the ones that are in the underworld and thus must be wearing the talismans..."

    Staren sighs. "As convenient as it'd be to just use a really big bomb, since we're here we could also kill just the tear eaters and set free the slaves... the tear eaters must have their own way of getting to the Underworld, though, so we might want to find out what it is. Or there's in-between options. Like freeing as many slaves as we can THEN blowing it up. If that looks impractical, though, I'm willing to consider the slaves as mercy killings. At least these tear eaters don't seem to be necromancers..." So, the slaves' ghosts probably won't be forced into servitude as well.
Midway     Soaring over the Tear Eaters encampment is a nondescript white sphere. The line marking where its shape can open is lined with jagged teeth, an unpleasant mouth which it keeps closed. It banks gently, maintaining a healthy and safe altitude while surveying the encampment from the air.

    This device belongs to the party's newest and most unlikely member.

    The ghastly pale skin and white dress blend in with the arctic conditions perfectly. The Princess of Progress, Midway, only stands out by the black accessories on her hands and around her neck. Eyes closed, she focuses her senses through the aircraft she commands.

    "Their numbers are significant," An eye opens, a narrow slit that burns with crimson light from within, "Killing these humans will satisfy me. However, it must not be indescriminate. As strong as my urge to do so may be." A hand unfolds and she fixes her gaze upon those corroded black reinforcement strits and the cruel black talons, "Stand by while I examine my findings."
Starbound Flotilla     George grits his teeth a little. "Yeesh." He mutters. "Looking a little more Biteblade's speed. Yeah, I'm a fan of that. We can pick it out of the pool of blood, y'know? Plus, these guys look like they'll have a pretty good time of it. If we're going all out though, I don't got the firepower to do it on my own. Gotta bring in the whole fleet. Gimmie the time for it. I know the right angle."

"Floran like thessse guysss."
"Yeah, figured you would. Wanna kill 'em too?"
"Very yesss!"
"Little bit of bloodthirst on the wire here. Want me to amp it up?"
"That was the plan."
"Staren is right. Get the slaves out of the way as much as possible. Pavo, provoke. Biteblade, engage. We will settle this the proper way."

    Not all of the Flotilla are heading out here today. But a couple are, once Midway has finished her examinations and calculation. Albert, George, and Pavo work tenuously together on a strange arrangement of things. They're calling in a few smaller ships, bulky cargo transports, weird ring-shaped ships that drop massive columns and posts that slam hard into the ground and bury there, beginning to project growing electrified and hard-light fields to deter leaving, and also to give the area the Mood of a fight arena.

    And above, Pavo calls out. Her ship projects massive holographic golden wings, and thin light-feathers drift down. "TEAR EATERS! Welcome! Welcome to your big chance to prove who you are! To show what you're made of! You alone are strong enough to be chosen! I am Pavo, the greatest God in all the worlds, and I'm looking for the strongest Tear Eater there is! I know what you're like, I know how much you're /craving/ that glory, and murder, and /loot/! So here it is! The big day to end all big days! Get those slaves out of the way -- trust me! You won't want 'em getting any chance to touch what's coming next!"

    A bomb bay in the ship above opens. Pavo drops the worst bomb that anyone has ever dropped into the Tear Eater camp, courtesy of George, at wherever Midway might be able to find a good, important spot to drop a good, important bomb; it needs to be somewhere very, very visible, where the site of impact can be seen from every direction. He has fast-crafted a pumpkin-sized chunk of incredibly well-polished synthetic diamond, which may crash through a yurt. "For the strongest! Nobody leaves until the strongest claims his prize, cowards gotta /watch/ at least!" Pavo declares in her booming, divine tone.

    Biteblade deploys atop one of the electro-fence posts. She's armored up in her durawood and bone armor, with her bow and daggers, ready to try to dive into assassinations on anyone who messes with what they're trying to do. Albert, George, and Pavo beam together into Pavo's ship, a medium-size atmospheric-operations gunship intending to strike more conventionally if the scheme doesn't work.
Bloody Revelations     Midway's aerial recon puts the camp itself into a more top-down tactical relief, elucidating that the general structure appears to be that the cluster of semi-permanent dwellings (in that they'll last until winter and then be in pieces by spring) which are basic enough to have feasibly been erected by zombies, river clay, and random tree bits, are 'the place' that the rest of the tribe dropped their packs around and set up camp on the spot. The further one goes away from that cluster, the smaller, thinner, and more ragged the yurts become, until they're basically just lean-tos, probably indicating lower levels of status trailing further from the head of the nomadic convoy.

    From the air, it isn't possible to see inside the hard buildings, because they're the only things they bothered to daub up and weatherproof, though they are absolutely festooned with decorative dead bits and markings. A bonfire in the making outside and its surrounding pots and drums makes it look as if there was going to be some sort of ritual there later in the day, probably at sundown.

    Then Pavo does a Pavo and drops a diamond bigger than a bowling ball into some unlucky savage's yurt, who scrambles out in confusion away from whatever just crashed through his roof, with his bruised slave woman sneaking out the back while nobody is looking at anything but the diamond. These people aren't complicated. It's questionable how 'people' they really are. How much is human and how much is animalistic catharsis --like how much of Gradafes was made of people and how much was numbing narrative pastich, and how many members of the circus were really people compared to how much they weee the Character.

    It seems like not one single person --at least nobody with nothing to do, which is everyone visible-- has anything to ask. Not one eyebrow is raised about Pavo. Not one question is put forward. None of them look to the Battle Royale fence. Like some sick, edgy, hyperviolent cartoon, they react to it unanimously with a deafening wave of roars and screams, all rushing to the prize, crawling over each other like rats, hacking and tearing at their tribesmen with hatchets and hooks and swords, staving skulls in with cooking pots and tearing jugulars with their teeth. A human pile quickly forms around the chosen yurt, quickly collapsing it and leaving a mound of wreckage to sift through, which nobody can effectively accomplish as the site becomes a blood-soaked brawl.
Haguro Haguro seems somewhat relieved that just about all of her allies today are on the same page, if not the same paragraph about killing most/all of these people. She does feel a twinge of... Something or another when even Midway is on board with the whole thing, but she'll have time to sort through those confusing emotions after sifting through the bloodbath that Pavo and George initiate in the form of battle royale over a giant shiny rock.

"That... Certainly makes things easier, yes." Haguro observes with a cautious optimism in her voice as she checks her turrets to make sure they're loaded with explosives, then aims high to start bombarding the human pile with shells from above. No sense making it easier for them to see where she's firing at them from, after all, although the hill Haguro is on isn't exactly one that's covered in brush or anything like that.

Hell, there's loud booms coming from her turrets each time she launches exploding death on the savages. She's not too concerned with anyone coming her way, though, as her focus is on thinning out their numbers at their most concentrated points.
Staren     Wow, that actually worked. And here Staren was thinking he'd have to go get mad science explosives and blow a hole into the Underworld.

    Staren lets the others handle the area attacks; He has missiles but he prefers to conserve them, although he's not afraid to use them if an unexpected group of enemies calls for them. Instead, he sets to the task of mowing down the horde. It's not a matter of just blasting them repeatedly with beam cannons because /those take multiple seconds to recharge after each shot/. They can't kill people fast enough! Since the tear eaters seem to just be humans, Staren gets out one of his SMGs and just fires quick bursts at them, interspersed with firing beams at the tougher zombies or any humans too full of drugs to go down to the bullets.
Midway     The scout plane banks away when larger aircraft rumble into the vicinity. When these are determined to be of allied nature, the Abyssal aircraft banks once more, settling into a circling pattern and continuing to observe the carnage unfolding below.

    Midway's eyes close for a moment. When she at last steps forward from the team's hiding place, they open, glowing scarlet, "Disembarking."

    In the descent into the encampment, she crosses a frozen stream. Not an issue for anyone. Not an issue for Midway either. However, the ice cracks behind her, her steps uninterrupted. It erupts, and the Princess' enormous parasite hauls out of ice-cold water to float behind her. Mismatched teeth bare in a roar that combines screeching metal with some unidentified beast.

    As that maw yawns open, a cloud of white spheres pour forth into the air. Teeth, wings, and weapons. Abyssal attack aircraft.

    The Princess' approach is steady. A mere walk. Like a killer in a slasher film, nothing hurries or slows her pace. It is the growing swarm of fighters she sends into that savage bloodbath, strafing the mob with machinegun fire.

    A distinct absence of bombs, though. Is she only using fighters? Well, it was already discussed not to overuse explosives, after all.
Starbound Flotilla "Holy shit, that worked?"
"Harharhar, nice! Now go get it back."
"But it's artifi--"
"It's expensive. So go /get it back/."
"Aw. Talismans first at least?"
"Talismans first, /then/ get me back my diamond."
"Okayyyyy."

    Biteblade's keeen eyes peer around for anyone looking too close to fencing, but there's not anyone. They keep an eye out for anyone looking a little too wise, canny, or savvy, and use the sensors of the ships above to map out the arcs they need. She loves this, and before all this is done, she's undoubtedly going to be diving into the fray.

    But right now, George is beaming down. He's going to be doing what he does best, which is immediately armoring up in a hardsuit and running where explosions were just a moment ago. He dashes in! Rushing as fast as he can, he checks around, seeking out... well, what is he seeking out? 'What you think of when you think of talisman'? He looks for older corpses, and any consistent differences between them and much, much younger ones. He does his best to look unthreatening, and to mostly stick to where people will be dead or at worst disoriented by bomb shocks; coordinating with the bomber really helps there.

    "Alright, younger, older, younger, older... come on, come on. I knew I should have done more Find The Difference pictures on the kids' menus!! Argh!!" He says tensely. He's gotta find the source of this stuff probably, in order to really get a good hit of the immunity. Which means looking for the talismans, and then looking for whichever fancy craftsman is keeping their head low enough but still likely theming their yurt after the same things as the talisman. But, you know, yanking them off of bodies if he can find them is a good option too!
Azure Armature Azure Armature's cloaking takes her body fully, disappearing as Pavo drops the gem. The bombardment is tremendous cover for a heat mirage. The objectives are updated in the Alchemical's head.

Primary: Secure the Talisman.
Secondary: Eradicate the Tear Eaters. Secure Pavo's Gem.
Tertiary: Free the Slaves (for Staren).

It is a sensible order. Resources and portable portions of adamant supercede the value of chattel slaves.

The lumpen are ever an ill lot.

Like a shimmering FMV sequence, George's quest through the throng of violence and outskirts of massacre is rolled out in a carpet of ghoulish red. As Tear Eaters rise up to see a Poor Old Man rummaging about, they are adroitly tossed back bodily into the center of the body-pile or smashed with a fountain of detritus into the ground by the escorting shimmer, jewelry and bobs being swept away shortly after the chokeslams stop. Moving together, the pair provide less of a problem for their ally's targeting, and of course...

It means Azure gets to physically and directly beat the piss and choke out these degenerates, which is a small pleasure that is currently within mission scope.
Bloody Revelations     Being a giant human clusterfuck currently swarming on top of each other like a horde of rats, except both nastier and far more violent, trampling over their own dying, the barbarians out in the open are popgun targets for Haguro. They don't have an ounce of the sense that even the most violent and psychotic *real* barbarian tribes do. They have no self-preservation instinct at all. They have dubious awareness of *reality* by the looks of it, as they just keep pressing through the thumping explosions that scatter body parts hundreds of meters into the air and shower the survivors with warm gore even as they run right through the craters.

    Staren finds that the zombies are actually completely harmless to him. Most of them just look kind of sad, in that withered frost-mummy kind of way, though quite a few of them also bear the exact same tattoos as the Tear Eaters, faded with age and rot. His SMG tears through the crowd well enough. His targets are big muscular warriors with iron guts, but even those that come at him and swing axes and furniture over his head like wrestling chairs can't actually physically overpower him, mostly presenting an obstacle in the way that snarling tribals smother him in their own grappling bodies, roaring spittle onto his optics and trying to drag him down to uselessly prevent him from getting the diamond. It's a tedious walk.

    When Midway arrives, the situation is immediately less pretty. None of the hulking brutes caked in blood and grime seem to have an interest in the diamond where she appears, instead ignoring her as a rival and knocking each other out to have *her*. By the time the symbiote appears, the ones 'smart' enough to hesitate are already concussed and bleeding, and the rest are too close to stop, and they're torn through live rows of wheat before the scythe. They have absolutely no way of effectively mounting an anti-air attack. Some of them have bows of course, but half the archers are dead, and the rest are busy fighting. Forming orderly chevrons of attack aircraft and combing the ground with fire presents an impassable barrier. Midway can walk through fields of steaming ground beef at a jog. It also does a perfectly good job of blowing Staren's immediate crowd to pieces.
Bloody Revelations     It is, altogether, not safe. It is the opposite of safe. The slaves that were lucky enough to not be chained to anything have long fleg the bombardment site, and only the most distractible barbarians have bothered to go after them with the rock worth a small kingdom in front of them. Those that were seem to have collectively put their efforts into uprooting and dragging away posts. Out of the rest, some remain huddled in their now-abandoned yurts with their hands over their ears hoping to wait it out, others remain frozen around abandoned tables and pits, and others wildly make a break for it too. An unfortunate inevitability is that some of them are cut down or crushed in the melee, and others by stray shrapnel and bullets, but it does make for a two way rush of crowds for George to mingle into.

    Just like Staren, he's identified as part of the battle royale, and straight away menaces by ranks of burly and blood-soaked frothing heathens, laughing, screaming, bellowing, and uttering unintelligible gibberish as they charge him as the nearest thing that looks thief-y. None of them are remotely lucid enough, between adrenaline and narcotics, to notice an invisible tactical operator. They can barely see their extremely visible and loud compatriots behind all the sweaty bleeding bodies. They pay absolutely no attention when one of their kin gurgles blood through the hole left by his jaw being punched clear off, or when one sprouts an arm-sized hole through his abdomen, or when one 'slips' and turns into a bucket of red in a crater that was totally there before.

    George, in his frenzied search, finds 'older corpses', in the most monkey's paw way imaginable. Charging through the melee, he finds the only Tear Eaters keeping any distance are a gaggle of elders clearly too withered to be participating, themselves festooned in morbid trinkets, halfway into the process of some sacrificial offering ritual to an eight foot tall, frozen and mummified cadaver propped up like a statue, arms crossed over its chest, decorated head to toe like it is its own pharaoh's sarcophagus. When George enters, he gets a look at a circle of what amounts to the tribe's weedy teens (i.e. jocks with the least tattoos and teen facial hair) waiting outside the ritual area, and then the decorated corpse flicks open its frozen eyelids, fixing him with twin green points of fire, utters ear-splitting screeches of incomprehensible hate in a language he doesn't understand.

    At that, even the confused young men grab their weapons and suicidally throw themselves on him, while the elders --shamans or necromancers or both-- begin chanting.
Midway     A pretty lady has become a Pretty Scary Lady pretty rapidly. Midway's stride remains steady, unhurried, unslowed. A ceaseless and inevitable advance. Her Parasite's mouth closes, then opens again with a rumble. More attack aircraft emerge, while others dive back in to re-arm. Surrounded by gore, the Abyssal Princess rears up to her full height, taking in the crimson surroundings and those still living in her vicinity.

    Her gaze shifts towards George's location. The radio transmission is clear. And due to her scout plane, she is keenly aware of his precise location. Fighters swirling around her break away, crossing the encampment. A rapid response. The undeniable strength of aircraft who now swoop in strafing runs against the elder Undead around the wayward Starbounder.

    It is clear Midway sees this as no problem, as her gaze turns back to the barbarian savages who still linger before her. Only now her eyes are wide, the glowing crimson centers forming perfect soul-piercing circles. Her walk continues, a hand raising to brandish those talons. As fingers flex, metal pops along those support struts lining the back of her hand.
Staren     Staren applies shocks to those who get close enough to touch him. Those that press on even so get gunned down by abyssal air support. That's handy! When Staren sees chained up slaves, he starts approaching to pull up posts, but then George calls for help. He blasts a couple of posts with the beam cannons and heads for George's signal.

    They're doing a magic ritual. "Get them away from the casters!" he shouts at George, and leaves the well-armored man to deal with the teens while he focuses on shooting the mages, trying to kill them before they can finish casting whatever this is.
Haguro They're not even trying. As Haguro rains down that explosive death, she notices that they're not really... Noticing. Or trying to avoid it at all. It's worrying, but not enough to stop the Cruiser from launching explosives even on a moral level or anything like that.

Something inside of her is also mildly disgusted that it doesn't even feel satisfying.

Eventually, her targets finally shift, and it becomes necessary to replace her explosives with metal shards and garbage that make up her anti-air ammunition. Blowing up the talismans won't do, so Haguro moves in to regroup with George, Staren, and even Midway. She fires into clusters of the Tear Eaters and zombies and... Well, she's not even sure what she's firing at now.

It's just bodies with no real self-preservation. Still, they need to be cleared out, and she's in as good of a position as anyone else to fire metallic slag at those sorcerors as well.
Azure Armature Baubles and bobs. Useless.
People who can't take a punch. Useless.

George's instincts... Decidedly useful, and of great value. The path of George and his Invisible Murder Operator friend goes EXTREMELY MOLESTED (as opposed to unmolested), in that every single moron who steps up to the plate strikes out with extreme prejudice. Heads literally roll and men get shivved as they approach, and George has a clear shot at the awful ancestor. He's face to face with WEEDY TEENAGERS and OLD PEOPLE and also probably some sort of SUPER UNDEAD.

And also, standing on a shimmering platform of hard light, is Azure Armature, placing her gloved right hand atop the terrifying Zombie Ancestor's crown chakra.

"You have the power of passage through the gates of the Lover."

Her hand flashes and a steam of math-particles billows forth as she DOWNLOADS A GHOST. "Now I have your power."
Starbound Flotilla     George is /very very good/ in certain contexts. Most of them don't involve core forces of the enemies focusing on him! "Gaaaaah! No no no no!" He shouts. "Time out! Time out!!" The skirmish is fast, but only because it ends with George fleeing. He can judo one or two of the attackers, smash one or two with his fancy batons, before they overpower him by numbers and he has to start resorting to electrified gauntlets in frustrated undramatic wrassling.

    He shoves one young warrior's head up with a heel, pushes another way with a zapping palm, and jets back with his microthrusters. "Okay, okay! Backing off! Blue, you got this? I need--!" He has to heave and kick hard with his heel to slam the most immediate intruder into the line of fire of Midway, Staren, and Haguro's copious incoming support fire, and then he /dashes/!

    "Hey! Hey!! Yeah, yeah, it's me! I'm the diamond guy, old-timer! Come send all your kiddos at me!" He's running to... grapple onto the hovering ship above the diamond. To swiiiing above it! And land on the other side. So that the younger warriors with a little more presence of mind -- even if it's someone else's mind -- will be drawn into the fray and clear off of killing him like he barely avoided.
Bloody Revelations     Given the sheer amount of carnage over the space of fifteen minutes, Staren will probably get his initial wish. This camp will be a tiny shadowland a few years from now alright. Before someone could get done cooking a simple dinner, there are only small straggling handfuls of barbarians too engaged in exhaustedly beating each other to bits to have run into the line of fire yet, and lucky shellshocked survivors staggering drunkly towards the prize with bloody weapons in hand.

    The screeching of the ice mummy lich thing in the hut intensifies in volume for several seconds after the break in, the dim points in its withered eye sockets starting to become flickering green flames, oozing horrendous, maddening taint into the room while the ambient energies charge up with the shamans' collectively sped up spellcasting. A second later, the roof tears off from above, causing a hail of splinters and a fog of pulverized wood and clay dust to cave in on the room. Heavy calibre machine gun bullets rip through the room in a hundred different places, obliterating most of the ritual area and splattering several of the initiates with low initiative scores.

    Somehow, the bullets glance from the corpse's head, jerking it back and forth with meaty thwacks without causing much damage, seemingly enraging it further. For some reason, the frail-looking corpse would need Midway's cannons or bombs to really get rid of. When Staren bursts in and guns down all the senior spiritualist leaders like a prohibition hitman/bad SWAT call, however, it turns out that it appears to have . . . no real way of fighting back. It's not a zombie. It's more like a living corpse statue half-embedded in ice, decorated like a shrine. It seemingly can't get up and move, or do much of anything except gibber insanely in a language that hurts one's head to listen to.

    George bursts out of the hut already with the rest of the younger wannabe barbarians in hot pursuit, either oblivious to what was just happening, or hoping to prove their worth and gain prestige in killing the intruder. They're picked off like skittles by Haguro's gunfire, blowing them away in George's trail, and riddling the hut with an extra helping of shrapnel. He ducks and weaves between the roving groups of ultraviolent last men standing, looking to continually slake their bloodlust even after such a disaster, tasing and throwing them deftly, until he reaches the diamond, where the last gaggle crowds around the bottom as if he were standing on a car in a zombie film, easily blown to bits.

    Azure Armature gets right up to the Great Dead, well up in its hateful, insane, screaming, undead face and all the bad candy it emanates. She touches it- and completely gets away with it. There's literally nothing it can do to stop her. Nobody needs to read books or interrogate elders or spy on anyone or match records to tribal talismans. She just . . . has the dark fluid from the sarcophagus now.
Staren     Staren guns down the mages and... nothing happens.

    Well, that was kind of the point, wasn't it? He turns to check on George but it looks like he's handled it with Haguro's help. He turns to Azure. "You're sure that's it? Hmm..." He'll scan the people in the hut for any gear with essence in it and take that before walking out... and then running from hut to hut at highway speed as he checks that all slaves are out. May as well, there's no huge rush to raze the town.
Midway     The Azure Armature announces that they have obtained the required keys to the figurative castle. Midway lifts her gaze to the sky. With a sticky noise, she wrenches her hand from the vacated skull of one of her attackers and then rises to her feet. Those hands are raised, held out to either side, her eyes perfectly circular, aglow with that maddening crimson.

    "Hmhmhm..." First her right hand slashes down to the left. A metallic sound rings out, as an airstrip erupts from her parasite. Her left hand follows suit, slashing down and right as a second airfield bursts free. Talons hooked, she raises one hand, those two airfields lifting into position.

    New Abyssal aircraft begin launching. Heavier, bigger spheres with proportionally more teeth, carrying heavy payloads under their orb-like bodies. Bombers, launching in swarms and swelling up to their standard combat size as they ascend.

    The air, abuzz with Abyssal fighters, soon grows even more crowded with these larger, heavier attackers. Although true to her word, the Princess of Progress does not initiate bombing operations immediately. She will assemble the squadron in its entirety, which buys the rest of the party time to finish what they're after.

    As much as her instinct is to just go in immediately, it's important to maintain this tenuous alliance. At least for now.
Haguro With the objective secured and the Tear Eaters in various states of dead or maimed, it's time to make their exit! Hearing Midway's exit strategy, the Cruiser shifts gears once more. After gunning down a few more of the barbarians harassing George, she starts poking her head into those yurts that haven't been turned into smoldering piles of junk. Should there be any slaves hiding inside, she directs them to escape along with giving them instructions to 'find Luthe'.

At least that can help her feel a little better about herself. She doesn't bother trying to carry anyone out, though, instead focusing most of her energy on gunning down the stragglers trying to keep her allies from leaving in a timely manner.
Azure Armature Azure Armature's right hand comes off the Great Undead Pharoah Man, and the limb glows with a sinister and cold light, leaking digital green ectoplasm that drips into fizzling nonexistance in the air inches below.

Runes play across Armature's eyes, as Staren action rolls in and guns down all the mages. It's clean. Efficient. A symphony of mission objectives being checked off.

Staren and Haguro go to handle their slaves. The Abyssal Princess (the difference between her and Bloody Revelation is largely lost on Armature, who by and large thinks there is some caste of pale soulsteel clad 'but also battleship cannons and seaplanes' kicking about) and her fleet of saturation bombers prepare to cleanse the land.

The datastream is blinked away. "I am sure. I will be able to leverage this access key when the time is right - my preliminary analysis is complete. While the weapon data may not be stored long-term, I believe I will be able to affect entry for us for the plannable future."

With that, and with the threat of bombings (that she specifically told to go ahead whenever), Armature winks out of existance in a puff of math and a muted pop, quitting the field with her delicious liquid from the dark sarcophagus leaking out of her arm.
Starbound Flotilla     George is still swinging! He forgot that you also have to land. "AaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaa okay going backwards nooooooowwwwww!" He shouts. He sees and hears that the others have what they need. That's good enough for him! Thank goodness. Now he has to get that gem back. Which mostly involves swinging back to it where it's fallen at the yurt it smashed, and trying to DYNAMIC ENTRY into those few lucky survivors remaining. "AAAAAAAAAAAA!! Everyone look in this direction!"

    He has a flashbang with the pin pulled. He... crams it. Into a slot in the diamond. He put it right there! And it goes off with precise refraction, laser-blasting around him to try to sear away anything about to cleave his head off while he gets a good grip! "Pull me up pull me up pull me up!" He shouts, wrapping one arm around the thing and calling for the ship he's grappled on to pull up!

    Hopefully, he'll survive, and get on out of there! Looks like there's thankfully not too much to oppose him as he drifts away like he's holding onto some kind of weird balloon.