The Wellows rush to their armory and grab as much as they can carry; very nearly depleting their entire arsenal. Yanil nails boards to the bathroom door frame to make a makeshift gunnery nest. She docks spare belt boxes beside the door and jury-rigs a turret for her LMG. Trez races downstairs and turns over the den's furniture to make cover. He checks his automatic rifle magazines, shotgun shell drums and .46s before strapping them to his plate carrier. They wait in breath-strainingly stressful silence as the invaders' leader announces herself, demanding the Wellows step outside to die with the same dignity they granted her father. Shortly before the 4th Hour strikes, the Ampra Ethir strike. Their raid commences with a crack of the storm door's hinges and a powerful kick that splinters the front door. The battle begins with Trez Wellow drawing the first three bloods with a single, clean shot from his Troubleshooter. The thunderous clamor of the shot gives away his position, but Trez readies his rifle to give away some bullets too. Yanil Wellow quickly finishes pinning up a slitted kevlar blanket, sticking the barrel of her LMG out to rain hell on the trespassers coming in the front. Yanil showed their guests some hospitality, granting swift death to the fools that rushed in. After dispensing quite a few casualties, Yanil feels a change in the airflow behind her. She rips her handgun from its holster and fires several shots to drop two enemies. The windows on the west and north walls of the den shatter as they're breached. Trez drops his rifle and throws his combat shotgun up onto a sofa, lodging the deck between the shotgun's drum magazine and ringed foregrip. Trez blindly peppers the room before making a narrow escape into the kitchen. Yanil ties off the machine gun's trigger to keep it firing as she grabs a chlorine bomb. She quickly straps a respirator muzzle around her snout before slamming the bomb down from the bathroom window. She pistol whips one of the raiders as they try to climb up the side, sending them down into a sickly green cloud. The gas violently exudes from the canister bomb with a serpentine hiss that is soon overpowered by the strained gags and heaving below. She gets right back to her post, but sees them setting up ladders on the porch roof: from there they breach the windows to the upstairs hallway. Trez fires back into the den as he navigates the kitchen. A shot rips through his left elbow from the dinning room behind him. Trez drops his shotgun from the pain of the blast, but spins with the momentum it gave him to spin around, drop low, and quickly draw and fire Troubleshooter through the gunman's head. He wills his left arm up to help him calibrate Troubleshooter as he hides between the cabinets. Yanil runs through her second box of ammo, down to the third and final box as she fires to intimidate the gangsters taking cover on the porch roof. She laments the clicking of the trigger after the final suppressive shots ignited the dim hallway for so long. Yanil slips out of the bathroom's side door, into the master bedroom where two brutes failed to train their muzzles. An octet of gunshots trace Yanil before she brings them down with center-mass blasts. Trez finishes his calibrations as gangsters file into the kitchen. He lifts Troubleshooter up over the counter and, preceded by a friendly ding, Troubleshooter lets a pair of shots fire. Trez screams as the force of the double-shot snaps his wrist, but the sacrifice pays off with a septendecuple kill. The gunfire and stomping come to an abrupt end. Yanil makes her way downstairs to see if Trez is okay, having polished off the last one waiting on the porch roof. Trez wraps his good arm around her to hold her close, panting heavily as he thanks her for the cover. Trez watches over her shoulder as a familiar face stares at him with a defiant rage as blood pours from its maw. Another bloody day, another dead leader.

In this one I obliterate the hardest boss in gaming history, fumble around in the dark, and slay Bone Daddy

Lyrin closes the door and locks up as she enters her and Ashe's small apartment. Life's hard when you've got no one else to live it with, but it sure feels more painful when that person ain't there when you need them. She drops her denim jacket off on the chair on her way to the kitchen area. She runs her claws through her short bobbed furstyle as she stretches, sighing. She takes a dusty glass from a cabinet's upper shelf and pulls the half-empty box of wine so its nozzle is just over the counter. She stares at the rippling cabernet image of her apathetically drawn lips as she fills the glass to the brim. The overflow flows over the glass: wine stains Lyrin's black sneakers and creates a sticky film over the outside of the glass. She carefully lifts the glass up to her lips and drinks half the portion in one slow sip. Lyrin's eyes and canid ears dart to the front door as the lock clicks open and the tarnished brass knob rolls. She sets the glass down, slipping out of her sticky shoes to greet her heart. Ashe smiles when she sees Lyrin's royal blue eyes, but it falls into a sympathetic frown as she notices Lyrin wearing a similar shape. Ashe pushes a boot back to shut the door as she kneels down to bring Lyrin into her strong arms. Lyrin constricts her tighter than Ashe would ever dare try. The kud'kalish lady holds Lyrin's head to her shoulder as the kitol wept, unleashing the salty product of unspoken anxiety into her beloved's neck. Lyrin's body trembles as Ashe softly shushes her, pulling Lyrin closer to the warmth of her moderato heartbeat. After a deep-felt hug, Ashe apologizes for her late-running shifts, promising once more that it'll only be a month longer. The 100 days of waiting were killing Lyrin, though; she begs Ashe to just call out sick or skip work altogether. Ashe won't budge though, but not without a weak whimper in her voice as she tells Lyrin that the bills need paying. Lyrin had done her best to help where she could, but the best she could do after working the poles for so long was the occasional odd job. With the length of her rap sheet, not even a dive bar would take her in. To everyone but Ashe, Lyrin was nothing but a junkie prostitute. 15 years just don't compare to the immortality of ink. Ashe says she knows she can't offer much time, but any time she's got she'll give to Lyrin without a second thought. Ashe dumps the rest of the wine glass into the sink before getting close to Lyrin again. She kneels down and leans forward, pressing her lips to Lyrin's and leaving her a tender smooch. A quivering smile appears on Lyrin's blushing face as she wraps her arms around Ashe's neck. Ashe pulls back after a kiss that lasts a small eternity. Ashe locks up and suggests they get some sleep. The two lay together on a sheetless king-sized mattress with only each other and a rough quilt to keep them warm. Lyrin curled up, facing away from Ashe as Ashe held her close under her arms. Ashe put a leg up over Lyrin, her muscular leg flexing to act as a shield for her smaller partner. Lyrin pressed herself back more into Ashe's defenses as she closed her eyes. Life's hard when you've got no one else to live it with, and it sure feels more blessed when that person's there when you need them.

The Forest of Vel encompasses all land west of the Fsipfosprösgen Mountains and north of the Uudau Tundra. The region is infamous for the Curse of Zveigrun, a divine punishment from Bāa Dē̋gū for invading the land of Amrizu. Legend has it that, during Zveigrun Vel’s invasion of the northeastern continent that would become Amrizu, she would have the forest cleaved section by section to make way for her legion’s march. The death wails of these trees, the children of Bāa Dē̋gū, woke Bāa Dē̋gū from eons of slumber. Bāa Dē̋gū flew into hysteria at the sight of her children’s corpses, her mournful tears of rage cascading from the sky to create a monsoon henceforth unseen. Where rain had fallen upon dirt, a child of Bāa Dē̋gū had risen. Zveigrun Vel and her legion were forced to retreat as coniferous spires impaled those under which they grew. Seeing the fleeing army, Bāa Dē̋gū found that her thrust for vengeance had not yet been slaked. Bāa Dē̋gū tore the peninsula the legion had used as a beachhead from its place on Amrizu. The landmass followed the fleeing ships across the ocean to western Skviprekvy, becoming the island of Vel’s Bane. With no tears left to shed, Bāa Dē̋gū ordered her children to shake what tears remained from their leaves. The brumal winds carried the tears north and east, at last completing Bāa Dē̋gū’s plan. Those that did not die from the rising trees were transformed by their pollen. All of Zveigrun Vel’s legion, including Zveigrun herself, were transformed into semi-feral beasts. Guardians of Bāa Dē̋gū’s new brood. They had become a new breed of the very people they invaded Amrizu to subjugate. Vel’s legion was exiled by the ruling faction of Skviprekvy, the Order of the Six Arms of Skvipre. The forest of Vel was forced to secede from Skviprekvy, making it the first nation on Skviprekvy to operate independent of Skvipre’s theocracy. The Curse of Vel terrified the people of Skviprekvy, scaring them away from the region and the entire continent of Amrizu for centuries. Strongholds and outposts were built in most passes along the Skvipric side of the Fsipfosprösgen Mountains to ensure the denizens of the Vel Forest wouldn’t invade to spread what was perceived as a plague. Even after research found that the pollen was the culprit and was rendered inert after several decades, the people of Vel were treated as outcasts by Skvipric society. Isolation from their parent nation and growing connections to their elder kin in Amrizu led to Vel developing a language that joined Amrizuric and Skvipric. The Velan culture is similarly an amalgam of Amrizuric and Skvipric influence, taking on styles akin to that of Earth’s mid-1st Millennium Slavic Balkan cultures. Before the Wrath of Vezra, most of the Velans desired to reclaim their Skvipric heritage but the ages of independence they enjoyed and prejudice they suffered had soured their taste for their ancestors’ children. While they maintained good relations with the Kingdom of the Sehbs, even that relationship was tumultuous. Few Sehbs were allowed to interact with Velan communities and even fewer with the leaders of Vel. Vel was already inhospitable to outsiders, but it was particularly dangerous in the season of Rosan; for the wilting pines of Bāa Dē̋gū’s children would pad the forest floor, working with the early snowfall to render the stalking steps of her guardians inaudible. Never visit Vel in Rosan.