Orkney Exodus of 2022
Orkney Exodus of 2022
| Date | 13 January 2022 |
| Location | North Sea, Norwegian Sea, Greenland |
| Death Toll | Around 400,000 + 2 Super Deaths |
| Damage | Obliteration of Nuuk; half of Iceland sunken into the sea |
| Context | Woodborough Gloucestershire Problem |
| Perpetrator | Nuck Chorris, Murdock mac Leod |
| Involved | C.H.E.S., Royal Danish Army, The Leafeaters |
The Orkney Exodus of 2022 is the name given to a series of events on 13 January 2022 in the aftermath of the Woodborough Gloucestershire Problem in -17.1i that culminated in the relocation of the Sultanate of North-East Orkney to Greenland, the forming of the Second Sultanate of Greater Orkney, the defeat of many high-ranking Leafeaters at the hands of C.H.E.S., the sinking of the western half of Iceland and death of the majority of its population, and the complete and utter obliteration of the Greenlandic capital of Nuuk.
Background
While Nuck Chorris was on holiday in -17.1i, a giant projection of Woodborough Gloucestershire suddenly appeared above the British Isles. At first, he thought it an attack by one of his many enemies. However, it would soon turn out that not only was he not threatened by the massive figure looming over the island, but he was, in fact, utterly unaffected by it, as the Problem was begat by Anility, which does not interact at all with Sterility.
Even after returning home, Nuck, however, remained disturbed; locking himself in the observation chamber of this castle, as he is wont to do when faced with a problem he cannot solve, and peering deeper and deeper into the cracks of the source of the island that had begun to form, he at length uncovered the true damage the incident in question had wrought upon the fabric of reality in -17.1i—though -17i seemed safe, for now.
Presently, he recalled C.H.E.S.’s upper echelon to his castle, worried that the same thing might happen in -17i, and began planning a long-term evacuation procedure. At length, he concluded that the answer to the question as to whether -17i was ‘safe’ could not be found in -17i. And so, Nuck emptied his 47th cup of tea of the day, set it down before him, stood up from his throne at the head of castle’s dining table, and ordered his butler to bring him the Perambulator.
This left everyone in attendance stunned: it was well known that, though Nuck had devised the vehicle in question himself, he had not once used it after completing his first test flight in 1892, for the simple reason that he had no use for it: his sterilty already allowed him to travel comfortably across the Imaginary Plane. Alas, this was no time for comfort, and the Perambulator would allow even him to travel much faster than without it.
So Long, Orkney
Before his departure on the Perambulator, Nuck left the rest of C.H.E.S. with orders: for the safety of the Sultanate of Orkney, his tea plantations, and the organisation as a whole, and last, but certainly not least, because he did not want to end up having to see Woodborough Gloucestershire’s face from out his window every morning, he ordered the immediate relocation of the whole of the peninsula of Deerness into the north of Greenland, right next to Grigory’s Abyme, with the intent of further fortifying their position and finding a way to exploit the energies lingering at the centre of the worst of all nadirs to facilitate their eventual true exodus.
09:30
CSM set out to Denmark, planning to use his connexions to the Danish royal family to persuade them to allow the peninsula’s relocation to Greenland. At the same time, Júlio Fenton-Awnthorpe, Tim McLeod, and Nuck’s butler, Santiago Petterson, were commencing preparations for the relocation of the now island, Nuck having severed its connexion to the rest of the Orkney Mainland before his departure on the evening before.
Tim’s daughter, Marilyn McLeod, was nowhere to be seen.
King Arthur set out to Greenland to secure the relocation site.
09:47
CSM arrived in Amalienborg, Copenhagen and began discussing the relocation with the Queen of Denmark over a cup of tea.
10:13
Police Scotland received a call from a concerned citizen about ‘a giant crater’ having appeared seemingly overnight on the island of Orkney. Upon hearing that the site of this mysterious event was the former isthmus of Deerness, an immediate evacuation order was issued for the whole of Orkney.
11:23
Having been held up by and subsequently dispatched a group of sterility pirates, King Arthur arrived at the relocation site and began flattening the surrounding area using Occam’s Razor and spatial compression.
13:45
Preparations for the transport were complete.
14:42
Marilyn McLeod returned to the castle and joined the other Grand Masters for a cup of tea.
14:57
Santiago performed a final inspection of the area around the former peninsula to ensure the transport could proceed without any complications.
15:12
The transport commenced: using an apparatus designed by Nuck combined with a delayed activation of King Arthur’s ability, The Water is Me, and I am the Water, the whole of the isle of Deerness separated from the seabed, and, after completing a complicated manoeuvre east, north, and west again around the rest of Orkney, began moving north-west towards Greenland at a speed of 87.4 knots.
Ambush
15:57
Approximately 100 km off the coast of Orkney, Santiago saw something on the horizon approaching Deerness with incredible speed. Suddenly, the group was ambushed by high-ranking Leafeaters at a most unfortunate time.
Santiago, though a more than capable fighter, realised that he was out of his league and wasted no time, presently making for the castle’s storage room where Nuck deposits all but the most dangerous of his failed inventions.
Of the remaining C.H.E.S. members, Tim was the first to notice the commotion and engaged Leafeater General Miles Mac Nèill in close-quarters combat, opening the bout with a carefully prepared Occam’s Razor to the General’s face, which missed narrowly, lacerating his left ear. Miles retaliated with a tactical manoeuvre using his ability, Yorkshire Bong, to create a cloud of thick white smoke, causing Tim to momentarily lose his sense of vision.
Meanwhile, Júlio engaged Brigadier Todd Samley with a right hook, but Todd had anticipated that, dodged, and delivered a sterility-enhanced kick to Júlio’s back, sending him crashing down into one of the castle’s many towers. Marilyn issued a distress signal to King Arthur, and as she did so, was ambushed from behind by none other than Anastasia McLeod.
Tim, in response to his sudden loss of vision, executed a sterility leap 100m upwards to escape the smoke cloud; Miles attempted to intercept him, but Tim used his own momentum to crash into Miles left knee first, dislocating his jaw. He then threw a punch while at the same time compressing the space between his arm and the General’s face to one one-thousandth its original size, accelerating his fist to Mach 30, which the General blocked with his broad forehead, the resulting collision sending the both of them flying off in opposite directions.
Miles crashed into Todd, giving Júlio enough time to activate his ability, Seven Sick Stones, attempting to bury the two of them beneath 49 tonnes of solid granite. Miles tried to avoid the attack by temporarily converting all quarks in his body to antiquarks, thereby shifting himself into +17i, but still disoriented from blocking a 10,000 m/s punch with his forehead, he was a moment too late, and one of the stones was shifted with him, causing him to end up buried beneath 7 tonnes of rock in the North Sea of +17i.
Todd tried to retaliate, but was struck from above with a blow from Tim that caused the entire island to rumble, while Júlio threw another set of stones at him. The two were about to finish him off, when Júlio was struck from behind by a deafening explosion: Tim’s eyes widened in shock to see Marilyn standing behind him.
With the old Scotsman utterly stunned by his daughter’s apparent betrayal, Anastasia succeeded in ambushing him from behind, as she was wont to do, and began applying a quantum ice-lock to him. Tim resisted, but was unable to continue fighting as a result.
‘Now, we wait for the crab’, said Marilyn.
16:22
A disgruntled and visibly injured Miles returned to -17i and met up with the others.
16:26
Anastasia was about to finish quantum-icing Tim, when, suddenly, an iridescent gleam emanated from atop one of the walls of the castle: The four of them turned to find Santiago standing there, holding up what looked to be an unnatural blend of a barbed harpoon and bident, loaded into an oversized crossbow.
‘What kind of abomination did that damn “vizier” come up with this time’, yelled Miles, and attempted to throw off the butler’s aim using Yorkshire Bong, but what he failed to consider is that Santiago was holding a weapon devised by Nuck himself: there was no need for aim.
‘Nuck’s gonna kill me for this’, Santiago thought.
Thus, he pointed the crossbow into the general direction of the Leafeaters, and fired. The bident-harpoon soared through the air, rapidly picking up speed as it compressed the space in its path, folding it behind itself to accelerate like a hypothetical warp drive, and drawing in sterility from the surrounding land as it did so; a terrible sound like the roar of a charging animal emanated from within, growing louder and louder as it approached its unfortunate targets.
All of them, besides Miles, were disoriented because of the smoke cloud surrounding them. Miles himself closed his eyes and pointed his forehead directly at the projectile. Todd was still unconscious. Marilyn tried to get away from it as far as possible. Anastasia tried to think of a way to ambush it from behind, and completely forgot to brace herself for the impact as a result.
Tim and Júlio recognised the horrible bolt from when Nuck had showed it to them a few odd decades before: Nuck had always favoured ‘traditional’ weaponry over more modern inventions—from an aesthetic perspective, that is; not once has he actually used a weapon in his life, preferring hand-to-hand combat and sterility techniques. This harpoon, however, was his own attempt at a ‘gun’. Nuck being Nuck, he failed to understand, at every step, the essential design principles and purpose of a gun, and so, instead of an explosion propelling a projectile, he made a projectile that propelled itself, and then exploded. And because initial testing with conventional explosives left him dissatisfied, he replaced gunpowder with crystallised, compacted tea stems that would absorb sterility from anything they came in contact with, and additionally infused it with his own sterility in the process.
Familiar with the inner workings of the harpoon, the two of them charged at it, and just as they were about to collide with it, the space-folding properties of the harpoon moved the pair right behind it, safely out of harm’s way.
16:27
The bident-harpoon made contact with the ground of Deerness, narrowly missing Miles, and tore a hole right through the island, plummeting into the sea below where it detonated, and in so doing, the twisted genius of Nuck was revealed: In an instant, the crystallised point of the projectile turned into a fine powder that mixed with the water of the sea and the heat of the explosion to create tea—a horrible, vile tea made from the discarded parts of tea leaves and salt water.
The abominable concoction burst forth as though alive, crashing upwards through the island, directly where the Leafeaters stood, who, having thought the danger gone when the projectile passed them, were caught off guard and swallowed up by the tea. Miles, Todd, and Anastasia were trapped in the torrent, while Marilyn escaped narrowly.
16:28
At this very moment, to the utmost dismay of the Leafeaters, King Arthur arrived at the island, immediately using his ability, The Water is Me, and I am the Water, to compress the torrent of tea engulfing them to one one-hundredth its original size. Miles once again escaped by shifting himself into +17i, while Todd, who had just regained conciousness, finally managed to use his ability, Iced Tea Mixer, freezing all the tea around him to close to absolute zero and bursting out the side with a sterility leap before King Arthur managed to regain control over the tea. Anastasia failed to escape, suffering fourth-degree frostbite as a result and losing conciousness.
King Arthur then engaged Miles in battle, while Tim and Júlio charged Todd; Santiago entered the fray to dispense with Anastasia; Marilyn tried to attack him as he did so, but the butler pulled out another harpoon he had been hiding behind his back and impaled her with it; Marilyn screamed as it detonated with incredible force, her limp body falling slowly to the ground.
Júlio started bombarding Todd with rocks, but he kept evading them narrowly, rapidly closing the distance. Tim attempted to intercept, but Todd grabbed him and used his ability to freeze the joints in his right arm; he wound up a sterility-enhanced punch to shatter it, but this gave Tim, who was still weakened from nearly having been quantum iced, enough time use his ability, Wild Haggis, causing Todd to stumble backwards midair, directly in between two of Júlio’s rocks, and be buried once more, taking him out of commission for good.
Wary that the Leafeaters might have reinforcements that could come to their aid at any moment, King Arthur used his ability to gradually accelerate the Island to a speed of 3200 knots in the span of 3 and a half minutes. Miles attempted to confuse him with his ability, but the crustacean washed away his clouds with the saltwater tea. The irate General charged at him headfirst and managed to land a Mac-Nèill-style headbutt on King Arthur, which all but cracked his outer carapace.
Now in close quarters, Arthur attacked with his six legs at once, with Miles managing to deflect two each with both of his arms, and the remaining two with his forehead. He then performed a forward somersault, his right leg cutting through the air like the blade of a falling guillotine, which Arthur blocked with one of his claws. Taken aback by his opponent’s proficiency in melee combat, Miles had completely forgotten about the water that was slowly but steadily closing in on them; when he noticed it, it was too late: using his ability once more, King Arthur commanded the water around them. All at once, countless jets of pressurised water shot forth from the torrent surrounding them; the General knew he could not block them all, so he attempted to evade, but realised too late that he had fallen into Arthur’s trap: his claws were holding Miles fast in place.
And so, the aged General closed his eyes and waited for the finishing blow, when, sudden, a deafening voice broke through the roiling tide: ‘Disperse’. And so, King Arthur’s fears had come true.
Murdock mac Leod had come.
16:33
Using his ability, Fās Nefāstum (‘Profane Dictate’), he commanded the water to disperse, and disperse, it did. King Arthur attempted to retaliate, but another word from the Leafeater Grand Marshal and Commander-in-chief sent the crustacean flying off the island at incredible speed, until he crashed into the Greenlandic capital of Nuuk, the impact levelling the city and killing everyone inside. Arthur was left unconscious as a result, and the island ground to a halt.
An enraged Júlio sent a barrage of rocks flying into Murdock’s direction, but he caught them with his bare hands and threw them back at him. Tim leapt at him and prepared to attack Murdock with Wild Haggis, but he simply let it happen, and in an instant, reflected his ability back at him, obliterating Tim’s right lower leg and sending him plummetting to the ground. With most of C.H.E.S.’s elite out of commmission, Murdock, ever petty, proceeded to mock them:
‘I should like to thank you for this stupid, stupid plan of yours. I mean, really, moving the entire island; only that moron of a “vizier” could have come up with this... But most of all, I should like to thank my granddaughter for being loyal to the end.’
Tim had been wondering how the Leafeaters had caught wind of the relocation. He cursed his ignorance of his daughter’s betrayal and charged at Murdock once more, screaming at the top of his lungs, but between his exhaustion and crippled right leg, the Marshal easily evaded him, and delivered a devastating blow to his head. Júlio sent volley after volley of stones at him, but it was to no avail, and moments later, he was taken out by a Compressed Punch from Murdock.
16:34
The shadowy figure of Mudock mac Leod loomed over the now dilapidated ruins of Castle Orkney. King Arthur had crashed into a town and was unconscious; Júlio was badly injured, and Tim was missing a leg and had suffered a collapsed lung. Santiago, too, was injured when he took out Marilyn, and besides, he wouldn’t have been much help in a fight against someone like Murdock either way. There was CSM, but he was still in Denmark, and seeing as he never arrived on time, they certainly couldn’t count on him for help. Eustace, who had been here this entire time, was hiding in the cellar, and a few other C.H.E.S. masters were present as well, but they, too, could not hope to compete with this opponent.
And so, Murdock laughed. At last, C.H.E.S. had fallen, at last—
‘Fell for it, ya boggin’ roaster.’
Murdock froze. He knew this voice all too well. And as a hollow ringing like the tolling of a death knell reverberated across the island, he slowly turned around to face his fate. Hovering in the air above him, riding the Perambulator, Nuck had returned.
Amidst the rubble, a nigh-unconscious Tim started laughing uncontrollably, ‘hahahaha, oh you’re done for, now, daddie dear!’
Battle of the Founders
Murdock weighed his options: he could engage Nuck, but he was doubtful he could beat him without a plan; he could try and run, but Nuck was faster than him, doubly so on the Perambulator; he could try and negotiate, but that ship had sailed 200 years before; he could simply surrender, but he knew that wouldn’t lessen the beating he’d get from Nuck. Thus, Murdock ma Leod resolved to engage Nuck in battle.
‘Begone!’ he screamed, attempting to push Nuck away like he had Arthur, but as the shockwave put forth by his attack hit Nuck, it simply bounced off without moving the Scotsman so much as a millimetre. At length, Nuck dismounted the Perambulator and sent it back to its storage chamber.
Murdock let out a grunt and prepared to attack again. Nuck simply stood in the air above him, waiting—until he spotted the giant hole in the island, that is. ‘Ya bastard’, he yelled, ‘what have ya done to my island?’ and charged.
Nuck soared throught the air like a lightning bolt: one moment he was there, the next, his foot had already made contact with Murdock’s face. The Leafeater Marshal yelped as a Sterility-enhanced roundhouse kick sent him flying off the island at Mach 10.
Murdock flew all the way to Iceland, and across it; he tried to regain his momentum, using Occam’s Razor to cut his speed in half, but as he did so, Nuck had already caught up to him and hit him with another roundhouse kick from above, sending Murdock plummeting into the sea.
This time, however, the Leafeater was prepared, and managed to regain control over himself long enough to throw a Compressed Punch at Nuck, which he blocked with Occam’s Razor. Murdock clenched his teeth and began devising a plan. What he needed more than anything was time. And so, he used his ability to copy Arthur’s—though it was but a cheap imitation—and commanded the ocean water to rise up against Nuck, but he promptly beat it back down with a compressed punch of his own, which briefly caused a magnitude 1.7 earthquake that was felt all the way to Denmark.
Murdock was chanting without pause; normally, a single word was enough for him, but what he had in mind required far more. When another compressed punch of Nuck’s put the water to rest for good, this time causing a magnitude 2.1 earthquake, Murdock, just in time, finished his chant.
Sudden, the earth shook again; the entire populace of Iceland let out a collective scream as a force comparable to a magnitude 11.3 earthquake rent the island asunder, splitting it in half North to South. Murdock grinned as the western half of Iceland was turned airborne, becoming a hypersonic projectile that shot towards Nuck at incredible speed.
For but a moment, Nuck contemplated on how to deal with the reverse meteorite. He briefly considered using his ability, Up is Where I say it is, to erase it entirely, but the quantum repercussions of such an act would grant Super Death to the entire population of western Iceland—of course, all of them had already died the moment the island became hypersonic, but Nuck preferred to keep it at that.
Instead, Nuck decided to do something far simpler: a formerly gleeful Murdock now looked on in horror as Nuck simply lifted his right arm in front of him, and with not so much of a hint of strain, he caught Iceland, the island nearly crumbling as he did so. ‘Murdock’, he yelled, ‘a present’, and threw Iceland back at Murdock, accelerating it to the same velocity as before.
Murdock prepared himself. He unleashed several compressed punches at the giant mass of rock and began screaming ‘break apart’ at the top of his lungs, and while the island started cracking, it was still holding together. When he saw that his actions were to no avail, he ceased his attempts and pivoted to cutting the island in two using Occam’s Razor, in which he succeeded right before it would have hit him: Iceland split in half once more, the halves soaring past Murdock right into the ocean, creating what would later be known as the Great North-Atlantic Tsunami of 2022.
‘Out of foul tricks now, Murdock?’ asked Nuck. Murdock said nothing, and just glared at him angrily. ‘Very well’, said Nuck, ‘I’ll teach ya what happens if ya put ’oles in my sultanate’. With that, Nuck charged, executing a move some like to call the Hammer of God: after closing the distance with a sterlity leap, he wound up a roundhouse kick before compressing the space between his leg and Murdock—as Tim had done to Miles before, except much more strongly. In so doing, his leg’s speed accelerated to an integer percentile of c, the speed of light. Nuck reinforced his body with sterility to counteract the relativistic effects of his attack, and hit Murdock squarely in the chest.
The latter had put all of his strength into blocking Nuck’s kick—else that would have been the end of him. And yet, the impact shattered half the bones in his body and sent him to the ocean floor in a fraction of a millisecond. Moreover, a shockwave of kinetic energy was unleashed, which could be felt all the way to the Gambia.
It was then that a dazed Murdock realised for good that he could not fight Nuck straight-on anymore. Gone were the days of when they nearly fought to a draw over the leadership of C.H.E.S., a fight that Nuck won, but was badly injured in. Too great had the gap between them grown: while Nuck had continued to improve, obstinate Murdock never managed to escape the confines of his ability.
As Nuck wound up a second one, Murdock, with the last of his strength, retreated into +17i. Nuck could have followed him, but he was more concerned about King Arthur and the situation on Orkney, so he resolved to head there instead. And so, the Battle of the Founders had come to an end—for now.