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The Change of Fate (REWRITE)2,149 words
The Meeting that went Wrong (Rewritten)4,388 words
The Road South (Rewritten)1,657 words
Finding the Engineer (Rewritten)4,089 words
Of Knowledge Shared (Rewritten)1,991 words
Of Progress and The Beginning (Rewritten)3,261 words
Contact and Ideas (Rewrite)2,660 words
The Prelude to a New Era (Rewriten)1,744 words
End of an Era (Rewritten)2,521 words
Interlude (Rewritten)2,001 words
The Build Up (Rewritten)1,499 words
The Powder Keg1,524 words
The Crystal Empire (Rewritten)2,206 words
Time Passes1,723 words
Rewrites complete!259 words
The Rising Moon2,013 words
Lunar Novus' Rise to Stage2,566 words
Meddling of Monsters2,661 words
The Prelude to War2,356 words
Building on the Moon2,111 words
Preparations for the Future1,876 words
Operation Barbarossa Pt.13,394 words
Planning on Reboot591 words

The Prelude to War

The high pitched whine of a charging energy weapon filled the night sky as a brilliant stream of blue-white energy sliced through the first two tanks with absurd ease before the energy faded away. Just as the last vestiges of the energy faded out into the night, the two stricken tanks were hit with a nearly invisible pulse of energy that seemed to pass through the vehicles and made one of the surviving crew simply keel over dead through a hatch he had been trying to get out of. In another part of the night battlefield, a bright burst of baleful yellow energy atomised infantry and tanks alike as absurdly accurate bursts from heavy machine guns tore down any other Griffon soldiers that survived the bursts of energy. The click-clack’ing sound of four mechanical legs was followed by the sounds of machine gun fire and the howls of the Onager Dunecrawler’s energy weapons sliced through the night sky as the Griffon garrison realized too late that they were being attacked on a scale that went past any other raids that would have occured.

These walking tanks were followed by the desert tan cloaked ‘Griffons’ that were wearing full gas masks that were hooked up to their armored bodies. Nearly as one, these ‘Rangers’ raised their rifles and aimed into the night as their enhanced eyesight picked out targets hidden by the darkness of night. One internal command and they fired as one. In the distance, there were ten brief flashes of electricity as ten Griffon guards perished from having their own bodies’ potential energy turned on them. These soldiers would march forwards, aim, and shoot at seemingly random intervals into the night.

These infantry were closely tailed by three different types of robots that marched ponderously firing their deadly payload endlessly into the fortress. The smallest of the trio stood eight foot tall and wielded a pair of heavy clamps for hands and wielded attached standard bolters on said arms while possessing a larger bolt cannon mounted over its right shoulder letting loose a hail of self-propelled mass-reactive shells capable tearing infantry armor to shreds in an instant. These ‘Castellax’ battle-automata shrugged off the autogun fire with little difficulty, but some were destroyed by the heavy tank weaponry; until their larger eleven foot tall ‘cousins’ stepped forward in their heavier armor and proceeded to bring both of its arms up to punch the offending tank by using their gravitational hammers mounted onto their forearms. As the ‘hammers’ impacted the front of the tank, the armor crumpled like paper and allowed the ‘Domitar’ battle-automata to use its claws to tear the armor away and released the deadly missile payload attached into its back into the broken front of the tank. As the tank exploded spectacularly, the largest of the three, standing nearly sixteen foot tall, punched its right arm forwards at the heavy iron gates and blew it straight open with its graviton ram. Just as the guards that were behind the gate looked startled at their multi-ton gate being punched open and dropped the ammunition boxes they had been carrying to grab their autoguns, but were immediately gunned down by the twin-linked heavy bolters attached to its left arm. As the smoke began to fade, a tank that had been moving to reinforce the gate fired its main cannon at the larger machine and could only gasp as their shell impacted a invisible barrier that didn’t even budge the mechanical giant as it aimed its right shoulder mounted heavy lascannon that fired its orange beam of laser-based destruction to spear the tank from front to rear cleanly. The ‘Thanatar’ Siege-automata strode forwards while sweeping its anti-infantry left to right, slaughtering all those who stood to combat the large machine.

Even as the rest of the fortress began to fall, the Thanatar siege-automata was thrown outside the gate with a mighty sound of metal slamming into metal. Two Knights, bearing the heraldry of a rose with a blade stabbing through the middle emerged from the gates and immediately got to gunning down what troops were far away and swung their chainswords at battle-automata that engaged them.

But the difference between the Imperium Knights and the Mechanicum Knights was the availability of their ion shields. Albeit making it more complicated to produce, it served its purpose to avoid direct damage against any form of fire. It did not take long for the Neutron Laser and the Eradication Beamer to target the two and promptly dumped their weapons at the knees of the war engines. As the two Knights were sent to the ground, two of the four ‘Domitar’ Battle-automata went to the machine’s cockpit in large strides and slammed their gravity hammers onto the cockpit hatch and tore the damaged hatches off with ruthless efficiency.

As the two war engines were internally destroyed by the missiles, Anastasia held a slim sight in her claws, looking at the battlefield below. Within her mind, she could hear the various cold reports of her Skitarii within her data link that allowed her to keep track of her war cohort in its entirety. But even as she wordlessly ordered her troops to gather and loot the fortress-outpost, she could only curse the loss of seventy percent of her automata including the massive Thantar. Her two Onager Dunecrawler were intact and she had only suffered minor injuries to her Rangers, only requiring further cybernetics for their missing arms and legs.

She sighed and jumped into her Knight-Castigator with a sigh as she typed a message onto one console. A reply arrived, allowing her to smile gratefully. Lord Greyclaw’s own War Cohort had completed his own raid with only the loss of one Castellax combat-automata. Out of her hundred twelve followers from the failed rebellion, only fifty seven remained during the three years of their ‘activation’ as the Griffon Mechanicum. Many had died leading early raids and some being unable to adapt to the neural data-links causing their minds to tear themselves apart. However, this led to Anastasia; who had proclaimed herself as the Arch Magos, allowed a pair of Griffons to lead a single War Cohort of small, yet incredibly advanced soldiers and equipment. They had the firepower, but lacked the numbers like before to fully carry out assaults as they had. So each Magos leading their War Cohorts slowly inched out capturing fortresses and their resources to bring back to their underground fortress now turned into a massive factory/fortress/bunker that had been built into the mountain that overlooked the sea and the super-massive bridge built by Anastasia’s father that connected the Imperium to the vast frozen wastes of Crystal City. While she no longer thought of the ponies as cannon fodder, she had nothing but contempt for the silly idealist nation that was Equestria. When she had heard that the more aggressive Luna had gone missing and the whispers of a new pony nation began to pop up by traders they ran into both naval and aerial ports, she could take a guess who was leading such a nation.

Anastasia Ravenwing was young, but no one could doubt her power as the leader of the Mechanicum. Not when she had heard that her father had been shocked into silence in his own throne room when her attacks using weapons he remembered from memories. She remembered hearing the top secret report from a planted listening device that his titan was nearing completion, but only seemed to lack proper amounts of metals to forge the massive armor plates and the slow development of the massive reactor that was to power the machine and its weapons. She had time to stop him, but right now; she lacked the sheer firepower needed after they had turned the ‘Imperial’ Palace into a massive fortress that was nigh impenetrable. In fact, this was brought to her attention as her closest advisor; Lord Greyclaw had asked if they should contact the Changelings for their assistance in dethroning the ‘Emperor’.

Many had jumped to object, but she had stopped to ponder. While she needed the assistance of these… memories to advance her technology, she wondered how the Changelings advanced so quickly. Closing the armored hatch to her Knight Titan, Anastasia ordered her Skitarii to pull back to where the Supply Corp was waiting for their haul. Another success, and more resources to convert into automata that made up the bulk of her overall forces.

They had the advantage in technology, but her father’s forces outnumbered hers by a massive magnitude of nearly 10,000 to one. That and while she had some aerial forces before, she now only had a single armored transport ship that could only fit two War Cohorts and that was without support equipment or extra ammunition.

(<(<(<(<(<(<(<()>)>)>)>)>)>)(<(<(<(<(<(<(<()>)>)>)>)>)>)(<(<(<(<(<(<(<()>)>)>)>)>)>)

“What did you say?” Anastasia’s voice was filled with disbelief as she heard the report being given to her by her informat.

“The Emperor is forming three army groups to finally attack Equestria.” The hooded informant said while drinking water from a flask. “Army Group North will hit Manehatten, Army Group Centre is striking Fillydelphia, and Army Group South is hitting Baltimare.”

“That’s nearly fourteen million troops not including tanks, Knights, artillery, and aerial assets.” Greyclaw grimaced as he tossed a bag of golden coins to the informat. “If you manage to get more information, I shall double the payment.” The informant merely nodded and disappeared quickly as he left the hotel room Anastasia had rented under a false name.

“You were supposed to lead Army Group Centre, weren’t you; Lord Greyclaw.” Anastasia said with a sense of finality. “You know what they fielded at the time and how many they could now… Tell me, what are the chances of Equestria even slowing them down?”

“Slow them down?” Greyclaw sighed as he placed his hand on his head. “Ana, when I inspected Army Group Centre nearly five years ago, they were split into four individual armies, two possessing two tank corps and two army corps, while the other two were one tank corp, one infantry corp then by reserves that also serve as primary logistics corp. ” He took out a bottle of clear alcohol from the room refrigerator and drank straight from the bottle. “Each tank corps is led by three to five Knights and nearly two to three Warglaives each knight. This is then followed by nearly one hundred and ten tanks followed by their support elements. The Army Corps is made up of nearly 30,000 troops along with their support elements. Add the new aerial battleships and battlecruisers, then they can wipe out the newly formed Equestrian Legions within hours.”

“A legion only has around six thousand at maximum, don’t they…” Anastasia closed her eyes to imagine the carnage. “How fast do you think Equestria will fall?”

The Mechanicum Knight took another long drink of the bottle and chuckled darkly. “If the Generals wish to play with their food? Twelve to eighteen months.”

“And if they don’t?” Anastasia could guess the time frame, but she wanted to hear it from a former General.

“Six to seven months for them to take over the entirety of Equestria.” She could only sigh. With such massive differences in numbers and technology, it couldn’t even be called a war. “What about their new Golems? I heard that they could shrug off cannon fire.”

“Princess. You know the answer to that.” Greyclaw laughed mirthlessly. “Those slow ponderous things can’t even perform a decent ranged attack. Our airborne infantry can engage their pegasi at extreme ranges where the pegasi use their magic-muskets that dub as a spear.” Another swig of the drink and he continued. “Their unicorns don’t have ‘standard’ magical spells that can penetrate tank armor, if you don’t count individual spells. And when they attempt their ‘Powerful’ group spells, you can bet your crowns that they’ll be dozens of the largest guns immediately firing upon them.”

“And with no proper armor, artillery, and defenses to stop my father’s forces effectively; I guess we can only trust them to cause enough trouble for us to strike deeper and deeper into the Imperium.” She sighed as she could ‘see’ out the eyes of her Rangers that were hidden amongst the nearby forest peering into the city they were in. No activity from the local garrison of the police force yet. “Do you think his machine is ready yet?”

Tossing the bottle into the trash, Greyclaw snarled at the question. “I hope it is not, but he has had nearly three years. Even if our eavesdropping is accurate, he would have the armor done by now. The reactor housing is done from what I had read, but the rest? We most likely won’t know until it is too late.”

Anastasia closed her eyes fully to rest and thought about the rapid changes in the world. Whether it was good or bad, it would involve her intricately whether she wanted it or nor. But with the impending collapse of Equestria, she had to remain focused.

A binary message pinged her mind from their headquarters and she snapped her eyes open at the message.

“Greyclaw.” Her voice was firm and filled with worry. “HQ just reported that they spotted massive movements by rail bearing no signs indicating their cargo, but scans showed hundreds of tanks and infantry.”

“Well then, that would most likely be Army Group North. Centre will probably attack Manehatten and South would attack Baltimare…” He let out a dark chuckle as he grabbed his thick jacket. “Looks like the informant was given was what grunts were told. While not surprised, this changes things.”

“How so?” Anastasia inquired as she grabbed her own jacket and bags to leave.

“That means your father is moving more troops to his palace. By moving an Army Group by land means that those airships were redirected for a reason.” The elder Griffon smiled darkly as he looked at a faded pin that was on the collar of his jacket. “Either he’s done, or he is close to completion.”

Oh. Anastasia blinked at that. That was not good.

Author's Note:

Welp.

I was told about the rapid advancement of technology to be far too fast and was bad pacing.

I agree with him. It is the sort of buildup that I should have avoided. But I really didn't think that Luna would wait to build up and would accelerate her nation's military build up.

Now the Griffon Princess' build up is far more unrealistic, but you have to note that the Griffon Imperium has the capability of producing the tools of the Adeptus Mechanicus, but as I stated in this chapter; it can't challenge the wider military might of the Imperium without losing what technological might they possess. As to why the Emperor doesn't have his own energy weapons that are not on his 'project' is due to the fact that he's only seen portions of memories and grasp the 'easiest' to mass produce without needing the more rarer resources to produce seeing as he needs it for his 'project'.

But I do apologize if it seems too fast. To me, as someone who enjoys writing as a hobby, it feels like a natural thing for those desperate enough would advance their technology at an insane pace.

...Rant over. Whew.

Next arc is returning back to Patina and her division's activities. Also who can see some historical references in this chapter?

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