"They weren't zombies." Gabby replies to Darvin matter-of-factly, like that explained it. "We don't know when you were fighting the mages, but they did not seem to change characteristics during our battle." she adds.

"Clearly someone must destroy this Nxla. Although this one has a good point about the apparently impossibility of the task." she says.

I have no idea what or who you were fighting, he says to Gabriella then points off in the direction from which he and his companions had come, because our fight was several miles back thataway.

"We were fighting a dozen 'Soulless'. They are not zombies. They have none of the typical resistances, weaknesses, or aura of undead. Nor did anything about them change during the battle." Gabby tries to explain.

"Yeah, a beer would be great," he says to Kahlvyn.

"Fighting off these guys will require an army. We are just a small band of mercs looking for some jobs that offer pay. We have to eat you know."

He knows he is 'playing it', but keeping their 'cover' is always a good idea.

Well, we were tricked with a very realistic illusion of a tavern, captured, and almost sacrificed in front of an open Rift.  I was wondering we might have been dealing with Harvesters and Soulless ourselves.

"Harvesters are, for the most part, the same as any other wizard.  They have the same strengths and weaknesses of most traditional invokers.  It sounds like some of you here have run afoul of them.  That you survived with your souls intact says much of your abilities.  The ritual you describe would have removed your souls and sent them to Nxla.  Your bodies would have received a fragment of his essence and gone on to do his bidding as Soulless."

"This isn't going to be a conventional war.  We will not be able to overpower them as we did in the past.  They learned from their past defeat.  They have hired all kinds of mercenaries, co-opted the local garrisons into Soulless, and used our past tactics against us.  The defeat handed to our forces has convinced me that we cannot succeed as planned.  We need to change our tactics.  Find their sacrificial altars and destroy them.  Root out the Harvester cults.  Cut off their supply lines and make the mercs abandon them.  I will advise you and secure what resources I can, but I fear Psyscape has been compromised.  The totality of this defeat indicates this.  They were too well prepared."

Megs looks over at Kahl. This is straight up their ally, as it were, given what they are. However, Megs is unsure about getting involved in a war and raises an eyebrow at Kahl to see if he is up for it.

Darvin nods his head.  Then, maybe the smart thing to do is set them up to fight the Coalition whenever we can.  Larger units of CS troops.  Or even convince the Dead-Boys to help us.  Can we pit them against the Federation of Magic, too?

"Too dangerous." Carl shook his head at Darvin. "The CS will either want to claim and hold territory, turning whatever ground they gained into a zone of martial law - or they will just kill everything and salt the earth as they leave. So I would advise considering them a wild card for now unless you are okay with either outcome. Besides, who's making that bargain with them? I associate with mages and renegade 'borgs, so I'm off the table unless I can disguise myself AND be credible to them at the same time."

"Although..." He was thinking on Athena's words. "That they have mercenaries and have seized CS firebases is actually good for our supply situation. I think both sides will be fighting an asymmetrical war: we will be aiming for resources to use to fight with, same as Nxla. He just has a headstart, but unlike us, he can't draw too much attention to himself, or the game is just as over for him as it would be for anyone in Federal Territory who's britches get too big."

"I'll need all the information we can get on this entity, his known forces, his locations, the landscape around them...nothing is insignificant until I've analyzed it." He nodded to Darvin. "And you've got the right idea about getting allies. Just not the CS."

I could talk to them, he says with a shrug.  My parents were former CS soldiers who were pretty well respected in the Chi-town Burbs.  Their hotel was frequented by quite a few enlisted and officers.  They might not be looking for me....
The short man looks to the ground as he trails off, then looks back up.  My parents told me that there were a number of times in their missions that it came down to "The enemy of my enemy os my ally."
He then looks directly at Carl Petros.  For your information, I was involved in one of the worst battles of Net-Set, Dogboys, and Regular Infantry, against a "mutant menace" in the Burbs.  Six square blocks, including my parents' hotel, got razed to the ground.

"The politics game is dangerous," said Wire.  "Don't trust the CS to do what you'd expect or want.  It's better if we can cut off these fiends at the source-- small, mobile strikes that they can't react to in time."

"But how do we tell the difference between a Harvester and a regular ole spell caster, like Magistias here?" Kahlvyn asks Athena. "I'm not all that keen on taking the Coalition approach and killing every spell caster we come across. We have to have some means of detecting them, preferably at range or else your war goes from incredibly difficult to impossible."

"Fortunately, they are not hard to spot if you have any psychic ability.  Their evil nature gives them an unmistakable aura.  Don't let that fool you into thinking they are easy targets, because they are aware of this, too.  Most will have Soulless protectors with them.  Even if the controlling Harvester is killed, the Soulless will fight on.  Masterless, they will kill any living being within reach.  They are not completely mindless but will fall back on training and instinct if not under someone's control."

"Again bringing up psychic power." Carl put on a smirk and waved his bionic arm in a hello gesture to Athena. "Not all of us have those gifts, much less the holy or runic weapons you spoke so casually of."

Carl thought about the way they had been attacked. "But at least they don't retain that much of their training."

"Yes. They are tough, but clumsy." Gabby agrees with Carl's assessment. "

<yellow>"So we need to find some psychic powers, or holy or rune weapons. Anyone have any ideas where we can acquire those? I'd much rather take the fight to them after we have the proper weaponry."

Rod seems somewhat concerned these weapons would be so hard to come by. "I don't suppose just carving the proper runes will do?" He sounded doubtful.

Somehow I doubt it.  I don't exactly know anything about magic, but it couldn't be as simple as that.  He shrugs.  Besides, would anyone here know the runes needed?  I sure as Hell don't.

"Way out of my depth," said Jer.  "I do technology, and I do medicine, and that's about it."

Hey, Doc, Jarvin says as an aside, how are you at patching up super tough skin?

...Odd question, given that no one had been willing to tell him who was actually hurt here.

"I can probably manage something," Wire said.  "So is someone actually hurt around here?"

Darvin almost look sheepish.  I got burned when one of those mages who were tryin' to sacrifice us, hit me with a spell.  That woman on the flying disk healed a lot of it, but I've still got a bit of charring to my skin.

In reply to Man in Black (msg # 53):

Megistias says, "Most interesting. Pretty easy to tell who the bad guys are if they are in the center of a group of soulless I guess. Does detect evil work on the soulless?"

"Yes.  The fragment of Nxla will set that spell off nicely."  Athena waits a moment for any further questions before moving on.

"Now unless there are further questions, I think it is time to start planning an end to this menace.  Which of you is the leader of this group?"

In reply to Man in Black (msg # 63):

"That would be Carl I guess...not sure how the others feel about that." He gestured to himself and Gabby. "But's he's our CO." He shrugged his overlarge shoulders.

Well, I can lead a kitchen staff through a slammin' dinner rush, but that's about it, the diminutive man says.  I'm pretty sure they're totally different animals.