Preamble:
This is my entry for @Motowhed 's collab offer Open collab offer
I decided to run with it with my steam punk fluffy setting.
But it is set in an alternate time line, you will see why as the story goes along
Heads up though, there is fluffy on human violence.
Humans die because of fluffies, if you object to that, now is the time to turn away.
Stil with me ?
Good
This is also a Steam fluffy story and you know what that means
Cameo’s !
New Orleans Stands Part 1
New Orleans is under siege.
How it happened nobody knows, they were just there at the outskirts of the town.
On the precipice of light and dark, like they have been waiting for a signal.
When suddenly they surged forward, a herd of the likes the city has never seen before, rivaling the titantic buffalo herds of yore that have been decimated.
But these are not buffalos, that at least would have been understandable.
No these are fluffies.
But somehow, that just makes them more terrifying, a masss of multi colored fluffy bodies in all shapes and sizes,every kind is represented, surging forward.
A herd reaching the width and breath of the horizon and far beyond hundreds of thousands, possibly millions of fluffies moving as one.
The ground shudders under their hooves.
What they want nobody knows.
They are terrifyingly silent, their eyes are empty and dead.
It’s like their tiny minds have been seized by some powerful entity, that’s now sending them forth as one singular being.
But the intent is clear.
Some people speculate that they are in fact the living undead fluffies, vomited out by hell because there is no more room for them.
And now they have returned to the land of the living, to extract revenge.
However that sort of thing will have to wait when the attack is over, and anybody is left to ask questions.
Let alone answer them.
The first hours of the attack were the most terrible.
People were entirely surprised as the silent hoard of hell bent fluffies, surged forward using their own mass and momentum to destabilize buildings and crash through walls and windows.
People have suffocated in a seeming never ending sea of fluffies marching forward
The Motowhed steam machine supply shop, has been trashed, the Fluffysomething pet store has been raided in silence.
It’s entire stock carried on to the streets.
The first hours were the worst, but somehow the citizens of New Orleans managed to rally themselves.
They took to the roofs to plink away at the steadying trampling herd, with whatever weapons they have at hand revolvers, hand guns, shotguns or took to the skies.
The Occulus Come And See blimps, took to the skies and have been instrumental in saving many, many lives.
Even though the Ryou, the Whalertom, the Cecona and the Lothmar are loaded to capacity.
The captains push their ships to the extreme, and beyond if they can.
The mighty steam machines scream in protest,while the main boilers groan under the strain.
Some of them glow red hot.
The air is filled with the sounds and smells of super heated metal.
Once in a while, a ivet dislodges itself and buries itself in a wall, 20 feet opposite.
Scalding hot steam shoots out any opening it can while the crew desperately struggle to keep the engines from tearing themselves apart
But this struggle is nothing, compared to the battle raging outside.
The titanic herd has trampled through most of New Orleans, causing countless deaths and millions, if not billions in property damage.
But one section of the city, has remained able to resist the herd though it’s not for want of a lack of trying.
The French quarter has been walled in by a herd of silent fluffies ,whom are trying to push their way through the ancient fortress walls build around the quarter.
And here is where New Orleans makes it last stand, as the air ships limp through the night air,
Dropping off the survivors they picked up, in the old battle fortresses.
Every able person picks up arms, to try and withstand the herd.
Those that don’t have firearms or want back up. are outfitted with greaver blades.
Wicked looking pole axes.
While those, too sick, too old or too young, to fight take refuge in the deepest recesses of the fortresses, and wait for what may come.
If they survive the night.
The Squeaky friends have been relegated to nurse duties, to help the over worked hospital staff members.
The ones who managed to be evacuated that is.
The hospital was lost early on. It crumbled in to dust under the continued pressure of too many fluffies to count pressing in on it.
They all died in silence.
There is Mr. Bailey’s owner of swiftstar, pinging away at the herd with a rifle.
The fluffiesdie in silence, as their bodies fall down, down the mega heard where they are trampled to mush.
Four, five others take its place.
It’s like fighting a hydra.
Luke King, the candy king stand owner, shoots at the herd with a pair of six shooters and has to reload every few minutes.
Turbyne, the owner of the Infraturbine steam store, has hauled out a wicked looking contraption, that pulps fluffies with compressed air.
While Mr Silverowl has lugged out some strange looking gun, that is mounted on a tripod it shoots off 60 bullets a minute.
Easily shredding whatever fluffy shows its head over the ramparts, even though the barrels turns so red hot it can only be used in short bursts.
Lest its barrel melts, or worse becomes clogged and explodes, rendering it useless.
The polish girl, Carmilla from the Skettiswiper restaurant, seems to be having a bit way too much fun with her shotgun though.
Going “boom headshot” with each shot.
The biggest weapon however comes from the Dread Pirate people, whom have their workshop in the French quarter.
They rolled out and hoisted something that looks most like double barreled anti air craft guns with sit down controls.
It’s so big it needs to be manned by two pilots.
A Mr Summer and a Mr Morton.
One of the pilots turns a massive iron wheel manually, turning the entire contraption while, the other shoots.
It’s hooked up via tubes and wires to a humming glowing contraption, that’s mounted inside in a room with thick stone walls.
Just in case.
According to Mr Summer the entire thing can be rather volatile.
And it is rather volatile
Each time it shoots a high pitch whining sounds, before unloading a purple energy discharge, that just tears a groove through the titanic herd of still too silent fluffies.
Leaving behind a smoldering crater, of half dead, or alive torn open, half burned fluffies.
Others from the mega heard slowly begin to fill the crater up again, with new bodies.
Piling upon dead or alive fluffies alike.
This weapon would have been a possible savior or at least able to stop the mega herd dead in its tracks.
So off course it won’t happen.
It has to recharge for 15 minutes after each shot.
Negating any effect it may have.
This situation is untenable.
Eventually the herd will overwhelm the defenders through sheer numbers alone.
If the walls haven’t given way by then.
The local fluffies don’t seem to be affected by whatever is animating the herd though.
Most of the local fluffies are either indignant or terrified.
Some however get proactive.
A large brutish fluffy is so angry at the proceedings, he actually physically attacks any of the mindless herd fluffies.
Tearing their throats out with his teeth.
He is soon surrounded by numerous corpses or mindless fluffies gasping silent for breath, like beached fish.
He also is found later, molesting a crippled one.
Ace, Memphis and Belle are flying in an arrow formation, with Ace at the front.
Memphis and Belle are her wing fluffies.
Each of them carry 6 timed grenades, which they release by yanking on a rip cord with their teeth.
The grenade drops with a 15 second fuse.
They don’t really have to aim, just drop their pay load and return.
“Ou dummeh fwuffies come git it !” Ace yells as she drops all 6 grenades on a section of the herd, encroaching a bit too closely on the defensive walls.
The fluffies are torn apart in utter silence and the spearhead crumbles.
Memphis and Belle break away from the formation, in a controlled fall and drop their pay load in an arc.
12 grenades.
It doesn’t seem to hurt the roiling and boiling mass below them, all that much.
The burning craters are closed up in unnerving silence.
But all they are really doing is running interference.
The real work is done way, way lower, closer to the actual mega herd.
Robin Ollershaw is standing on the front deck of the Mr Owl holding a pair of binoculars and sweeping the skies.
Monster, a black and green fluffy with a fake horn and wings on springs is sitting next to him.
He functions as a secondant and relays messages between the decks and the heads of the resistance.
Robin Mr Deerborne and the others from the flyfing fluffy society, somehow managed to mount a resistance movement by commandeering the airships and getting them airborne.
Thereby saving many lives, and not ending locked up.
Which may still happen if they survive the night.
Robin is also responsible for the desperate ploy they are currently employing and probably their only real chance for survival.
A Tesla fence.
A quick and dirty modification of the new electric lampposts, to create a blue electric field, that should keep the herd out.
Or it will draw way too much power, the steam power central will explode in a blue fireball and all the lampposts wil melt in explosions of molten wrought iron.
Either option works as far as Robin is concerned.
The first will protect what’s left of New Orleans, the second option will hopefully deal significant damages.
Nearly all the lampposts have been modified by the flying fluffies.
The modification had to be simple and easy to install by fluffies and stil work, which was no easy task.
In the end they just plug in to the existing light bulb socket.
Only one lamppost is left to be modified, and then it’s do or die, for all of New Orleans.
“No no, you are way too far off goal.” Robin says over the short wave radio, that looks like a massive box with exposed vacuum tubes.
“Otay !” Frosty veers to the left as she has been instructed.
She wears a bag around her neck with the last interpolator needed to complete the Tesla fence.
And has 6 grenades under her wings.
She wears flight goggles with dark lenses.
She has never been more afraid then she has been now, she is also vaguely aware that everything now depends on her.
A feeling that doesn’t sit too well with her.
Below her, the titanic herd roils and boil, like a angry sea made from fluffies. She flies so low over them that she could touch them.
She has to fly this low to reach the last lamp post.
Which is standing amidst the herd washing over it.
Cover art provided by @PeppermintParchment
Cameo’s
If you object to your cameo please let me know and i’ll edit you out
The follow people or their fluffies have a cameo
List Of Cameo's
@Motowhed
@fluffysomething
@Oculusfluffy
@Ryou
@WhalerTom
@anon9416460
@Lothmar
@GreaverBlade
@SqueakyFriend
Part 2 can be found here New Orleans Stands Part 2 ( AMDk7)
