Massacre at Rivercairn
Content Warning: Graphic description of victims of a battle
The battle, or as it has been colloquially come to be known, massacre at Rivercairn was a skirmish that took place between the people of Rivercairn, a small logging settlement in the forest west of Glarithia and the machine marauders of the Somatic Collective.
It was, in purest terms, a bloodbath that left the small logging village bereft of life.
Onset
The first signs the denizens of Rivercairn got of the approaching threat was the earth-shuddering footfalls of the gigantic Disassemblers, humongous war-machines of the Somatic Collective that house the minds of tens, if not hundreds, of S'aue inimical to organic life. As these brass titans towered over the treeline of the forest, from between those trees emerged warriors of the collective, intent on the utter obliteration of every living being in Rivercairn.Those who were outside at the time did not have the time to flee indoors and were forced to stand their ground, with fatal consequences.
Battle
To call what happened at Rivercairn a battle is to disrespect the memory of the people who lived there. The village, populated by sixty-five people, had no defenses to speak of, not even a single guardsman. The men took up their felling axes and handsaws to wage a doomed defense against the death-machines that bore into the village. Most were cut down in the opening clash, and those who survived longer only did so due to the sadistic tendencies of their automaton adversaries. The women and children hid inside, but this was only a momentary reprieve as the diabolic S'aue burst through the walls and doors of the wood cabins with terrifying ease.It took merely an hour or so for sixtyfive lives to be extinguished, after which the Disassemblers strode through the village, bathing the area in fire and destroying most of the buildings. When all was said and done, only the sounds of crackling fire consuming the cabins, rushing water from the nearby river and the songs of birds blissfully oblivious to the tragedy that had taken place could be heard.
Aftermath
When reports of sightings of Disassemblers reached Glarithia, the parliament quickly made the decision to send an investigative detachment of guardsmen to verify the veracity of these sightings. These guards noticed the smoke rising from the ruins of Rivercairn even before they entered the forest at the outskirts of Glarithia's borders. Due to this, a message was sent to the Telothian Legion for backup before they would make for Rivercairn. This took two whole days, during which the embers of Rivercairn cooled and the plume of smoke rising from the woods disappeared.Still, the men had orders to investigate, so they made their way towards Rivercairn. Long before they even saw the destruction that had been wrought on the small settlement, the wind carried the stench of rotting and burned flesh. Gagging, the soldiers strode into the village and beheld what could only be described to be a scene from the Nightmare itself.
Viscera and entrails decorated the ground and porches, haphazardly strewn about ruptured and bloated corpses. The interiors of the cabins were so utterly defaced with gore that most of the men could only take a glimpse inside before they had to vomit.
The destruction and senseless loss of life was of such magnitude that many of the soldiers simply sat in mortified silence as their more resilient comrades got on with the grim task of collecting the remains of the dead. Even family pets, such as cats and dogs had not been spared the insane wrath of the machine-men, their lifeless remains found amidst those of their owners.
When word of the massacre reached the S'aue Empire, the Board of Directors released a statement in which the Empire vowed to do everything in its power to visit this atrocity back to the Somatic Collective tenfold. To show that this was not mere lip-service, the S'aue Empire converted no less than five of their oil flotillas to the express purpose of hunting down the forces of the Collective, a feat that came with no insignificant economic cost to the Empire.
Start Date
82 RE, fifteenth day of 3rd Rotation
Ending Date
82 RE, the evening of the same day
Belligerents
People of Rivercairn
Somatic Collective
Strength
The village housed only foresters and their families, totaling sixty-five people with no military presence to speak of
Two Disassemblers and at least thirty S'aue of the collective
Casualties
Total extermination
None
Objectives
Survival
Eradication of the people of Rivercairn
by Midjourney
Comments