#marchailles

Kelnari, Marchailles

Balko-Garvari War

It was impossible to make it out of Marchailles without incident. After the pair of Balkos took a swim going across the Bour, the Capt. tried to keep distance from that frothy riverbeast. A’course that didn’t really help all that much. Trolley, as he came to be known, took a stray step on what was once a bustling trolley rail. He fell like a stack of bricks and that strange odor of ozone clung to the air, not even a cry of pain to give warning. The troop medic said he was lucky to be alive after those few thousand volts, though his leg was quite burned. A pair of Balkans drug him all of three days before he came too, fingers scorched black and mind fried.

By that third day the troop had made it to the flats that lay between them and the rally point of Delacroix. High Command had set it up while they dropped back into Barbuchaul’s vast haven. This hadn’t been Fohl's first time here, but three month prior he'd been chasing the Garvarvi all the way past Marchailles in the opposite direction. It had been flat, scarce, and dry when the troops rolled through, but not now. No, those few trickling streams now had turned to angry creeks cutting into the bare landscape. Those odd and numerous hills with the thin tall trees on them that many wondered over were now havens and isles. Water seeped from every pore, the savage rain was outpacing the whole force, never letting up, but to only give a constant misty drizzle. The fog and haze started to choke the land, High Command wouldn’t see a clear sun for the next few months. The land was turning into a murky marsh, and Fohl had to get out of it before the mud and the troop were underwater.

The hordes of dead tanks, carcasses of artillery, and husks of convoys soon became bastions in the quagmire. Fohl tromped on, marching not until sundown, but until someone found a mildly dry haven to. Sometimes the troop would go a whole day without such respite, wading and crawling to keep the pace. The Garvari hounded the invaders, sensing urgent weakness, seeing the crippled situation the army currently faced. At night, the horizon at Fohl's back was and endless lightshow as the big guns chased him down. He'd go sprawling face down into the mud with a plop when the came too close. It was better to eat muk than shrapnel.  When dawn came so did the rumbling waves of far-off explosions, as the armor of both sides faced off, and the guns able to see their targets in the light.

The troop's demoman blew himself up on a booby-trapped canoe. He spent a good half our trying to disarm it, before with a sudden surprised exclamation, flew a dozen feet upward and back. He didn’t have much left to dispose of, and the Gwarm from Verdunn had a canoe shard as long as a clip in his arm. Then the Balakana joined the injured ranks, when a co-gunner for the MG managed to break his leg. The Beartrap frog snapped shut with a terrific splash, and the Nova native to his credit killed the thing with a stray round as he tumbled into the puddle. The Dimeran Gwarm roared with laughter everytime he saw him limp after that, until the Tantian died.

His beasty was bigger than him, and had weapons to kill. That serpentine body and thin long jaws full of teeth didn’t go seen until the cry of pain, more surprise than anything. That gave way to a howl of horror and shock as the Lockjaw twisted what was left of his leg off, as a SMG burst tore it’s hindquarters asunder. Poor bastard bleed out just as the Garvi-Blako sawed through the hinge ligament of the jaw to release the limb. Dimerok shut up after that, and watched his step.

Kelnari, Marchailles

Balko-Garvari War

The rain never stopped.

It had started nary two weeks prior and had only grown in it’s tenacity. At first the sky let out from the heavens like some groaning behemoth awaking from a slumber. The sun was at that time still shining hard if rarely through the haze of ruin that the batteries brought down on the city. But what most thought to just be a short, if intense, deluge turned from a nuisance to a nemesis.

One of the Balka half-breeds simply looked up and smiled when it started, and his once stoic repose was now damn near cheerful. No one could be certain, and he wouldn’t dare admit, but the blood that mingled with his Balka was probably the very same blood they fought and spilled, or so the rumor was. He wasn’t exactly pedigree Garvi; by all accounts he was the queer line of Ki’angarv that this wretched land harbored.

Still, the rain fell.

The rain did little to calm Fohl’s nerve. The crippled sewers of Ki Marches, as the Garvi called it, failed to keep the flood at bay. This was worry enough, but know the enemy was finally pushing forward after weeks of what could only be explained as a bide for time. It was becoming ever clearer that the gambit had paid off, and now Marchailles was being overrun. Fohl’s troop was retreating, as all were. They should have done so sooner, and to higher ground, like the crazy Garvi told'm to.

“Sha rain unt shan’t stoopa, haha!” the Garvi pitched from under his long hood to the huddled pack of Gwarms as they double-timed down a causeway. The slurred words seemed to fight their way from a confused tongue and a clenched jaw, as such was the Ki’angarv accent. He was right; the rain had not stopped and did not look to any time soon. Only one of the four Gwarms could swim, a stout fella from Rak, so the snickering cackle of the Garvi’s laugh did nothing for their spirit.

The rain kept pouring.

Kelnari, Marchailles

Balko-Garvari War

They had marched for days. In and out of wartorn shops and homes, under and over the ruins of business and culture, through the wreckage of a once bustling metro. But no longer. Now only the sounds of violence filled it’s streets, the smell of death lingering in nooks and crannies like a cruel shadow awaiting dusk. Blood had been spilled, and would continue to long after the march came to pass.

At least, that was Fohl’s assumption. The lowly opinion of a Gwarm Sgt. was not one that found kind ears in the mixed troop that he found himself in, as it were. He and four other Gwarmans made up his minority in the score of soldiers. The Scars made up half, a scarce ways more-so if one were to count the halfbreed and mutts the Balko forefathers had sired in some lapse in conviction or wisdom. A pair of Arcs eyed the dozen Balakana like one eyes the buzzard that circles above; with sour contempt and an ill-founded hatred neither you nor the carrion eater understands. A Tantian even was present, though a halfbreed Akvic/Tanta dulled about between the lone Pvt. and his duo of genetic haven, stuck between two sides of a coin that the majority did not much favor.

There was not much to talk about when huddled under what was once a parking deck. One of the Arcs was keeping sentry with a Balka, the Tantian forever fiddling with his radio that hadn’t picked up a decent signal since that nasty fall a week back. You could still see the limp, hidden in a measured gait as he loped from one burned husk and pile of rubble to another. Their Balkan slave master lay in the far back, huddled with a trio of the ranking party around what must be a map, no doubt finding more paths through the hellhole. Fohl didn’t mind, but the nagging pit in his stomach did. One of the Balks was eying him down, something that was never good.

“Hungry, aye? Why don’t you go round us up some provisions? You Gwarms can do that, right? Provisions, rations…food, ya know.” said the Balkan

It snuck under the dirty rag all those Scars wore, who used them as masks or shade when needed. The words were practically dripping in a mire of hate, and no love was lost between they, or their races. Fohl and the Balk both knew that any food was long gone, even before the dusk raid of the block to gather whatever was left. The proposition was not an order, but a thinly veiled insult. As such, when Fohl turned from his perch on a fallen column with not so much as a gesture to the Balk, the intent was clear.

“Oi! Smogdog, did you hear me, or are all of ya deaf? I said…”

“Och’ye, I ‘ears chu say. I says no Balakana, no.” gritted Fohl, the malice filling the air as the slur of the race past his lips.

And suddenly, the Balk was up and over the rubble, a knife in hand from some well hidden cache, wherein the Gwarm and his brawny frame grabbed a rebar rod from underfoot, a few pounds of rubble still attached. Few things in the Federation are willing to go toe to toe with a Balkan not intending to make friends, but then again few things can say they would consider provoking a Gwarm to the point of bad intentions. Luckily, a shuffle and a glint came from the hideyhole of the troop. The tall frame of a Balkan Cpt. and his bayoneted rifle atwix the two would be gladiators could be seen what little light the moon gave under cover. A stern glance sat the Gwarm down sure enough. A similar look, followed up with a nasty grip to the Scars collar and whispered words of no good made his opposite do the same. The Captain eyed them both before returning to the council in the rear, but not before the Balko with the knife threw a muttered remark his way.

“Yip yip, Gwarm, yip yip.”

"More water'n fallin' than Delacroix see past her gates and Garvi freetin 'round in the tens of thousands at a time. That be all Marchailles was. Excludin' the few million ghosts that haunt Ki Marches now, of course."

- War Duke Varsa on the Seige of Marchailles during Operation Stonewall,

City: Marchailles

Region: Cyaale Province

Planet: Kelnari