Faith and Fire

SirLagginton · Jan 29, 2019

Shephard said:
His naked torso splattered with blood, the heretic raises his blade. "Do you fear Old Night? Do you fear Strife? Do you fear the Fall? Why, why do you fear what is so right, so beautiful?" He motions a blood splattered hand toward one of the broken screens. Within the captured psyker, a close shaven woman who looks like any other worker, kneels bound in black iron chains, her mouth gagged and eyes wide and full of tears. "We will anoint her in the black blood of this world. Her spirit will shine like the brightest gem, like a dowry for that which waits beyond the Veil. It hears us, but it needs more, needs more than we have been able to give! It will become one with her flesh and her spirit and it will speak Heaven's voice! She will be reborn in warp and blood and pain, and it will be beautiful. So beautiful! Why do you resist it? Why, why, why?"

Why he asked? It was as if Ilana had never left. A young girl huddled in the corner of a shattered mausoleum, silent tears leaking as she forcibly kept the grieving wails inside her chest for fear of the shadows and darker things besides beyond the rubble. The old fear, a madness like any other gripped at her, leaving her to that ugly, black hate as she raged against the power it held over her. She shouldered it all, the weight of the horrors that young girl had to face casting a pall over her terrible figure, and feeding the flames of her righteous hate.

"Why?" She rasped. Something shone in the reflected light of the dying mercenary's blood. A cruel helm taunted her, the eye-searing emptiness of its form paradoxical evidence of its existence, leaving her fingers to claw around the handle of her weapon as she levelled it at the madman. "I have seen the results of your beloved Fall heretic, seen skies choke on black miasma, and homes weep blood. And every time, only the innocent paid for your sins. The only Fall is ever your own fool." Her finger tightened against the trigger. "Perish unfulfilled."

Shephard · Feb 1, 2019

Mina said:
"Sister Liandra, their leader means to escape."

Maria stomped out, the body of heretics massing before her too much to forge through pell-mell, so she simply unloaded another salvo in the face of the apostate's rearguard, praying stray fire might end his desecration. It would be too small a thing for a true miracle, but she could pray. The fell relic he carried belonged in a furnace, sacred flames scouring away its corruption, or beneath the withering meltas of her sisters. Anything that arrested the flight of holy bolter fire so was a true abomination.

It made her rather angry.

SirLagginton said:
Why he asked? It was as if Ilana had never left. A young girl huddled in the corner of a shattered mausoleum, silent tears leaking as she forcibly kept the grieving wails inside her chest for fear of the shadows and darker things besides beyond the rubble. The old fear, a madness like any other gripped at her, leaving her to that ugly, black hate as she raged against the power it held over her. She shouldered it all, the weight of the horrors that young girl had to face casting a pall over her terrible figure, and feeding the flames of her righteous hate.

"Why?" She rasped. Something shone in the reflected light of the dying mercenary's blood. A cruel helm taunted her, the eye-searing emptiness of its form paradoxical evidence of its existence, leaving her fingers to claw around the handle of her weapon as she levelled it at the madman. "I have seen the results of your beloved Fall heretic, seen skies choke on black miasma, and homes weep blood. And every time, only the innocent paid for your sins. The only Fall is ever your own fool." Her finger tightened against the trigger. "Perish unfulfilled."

"That isn't the Fall, the Fall is Golden and-"

Just as Illana prepares to fire, a lasround punches clean through the cultist's upper torso, vaporizing most of his chest. He sways for a moment before toppling over the body of the dead mercenary.

"Justice finds you." The Witch Hunter growls, sliding a spent dueling las beneath his coat. "Apologies, Sister. He killed one of mine. Blood for blood, as they say." He says. A few steps over the bounty hunter shrugs, reloading her handcannon.

Out in the hall, Maria and Liandra stroll out into the gunsights of the heretics. "Let's cut off the head of the snake." Liandra calls out, raising her storm bolter in sync with Maria's heavy bolter. Rounds scream down the corridor, but heretics meet their death gladly to preserve their leader. Maria finds her targeting system awry, autosenses struggling to lock onto the fleeing cult leader, even as her barrage cuts down several heretics. Liandra's burst proves unerringly accurate A hulking mutant freak pushes to the front, only to fall as a bolt tears apart its tree trunk thick leg and drops it to the ground. Another cultist flings himself into the path of the fire and perishes for his trouble. The last few rounds in the burst slam against the apostate's defensive field.

The shadows flow around the apostate, and the bolts crash into them. There's a noise like shattering stone, and the rounds break through. They tumble through the air for a moment, course lost by the impact and penetrators blunted. But still, they detonate within the field. The Apostate staggers as a wave of fire and shrapnel rips into him and he's flung hard against the wall with a grunt.

"He's dead!" Someone screams.
"No he isn't! He's just hurt! Help me lift him!"

Cultists flock to their master, a tide of bodies too thick to see the apostate through. Perhaps the Sisters could have carved through them given time, but it was time they didn't have.

"Our lives for Dreverarch!" Two howling chem-warriors shout as they rush Maria, chainweapons howling. Their blades turn off her armor, but it was enough to keep her occupied. A few steps away, Liandra hisses as she hastily reloads her Stormbolter. Too slow.

Illana arrives on the scene just as the apostate leader is dragged to safety. She charges into the fray with Maria, her boltgun booming. The first heretic howls through her gasmask, knocking the boltgun askew with a lash of her chainblade. The burst punches through her side and rips the arm clean off her comrade who dies with a howl of agony, one stray round thudding against Maria's back plates and gouging a crater into the armor. Yet, Indomitable holds. As the woman sinks to the ground, blood spurting from the massive chunk torn from her side, Illana levels her boltgun and pulls the trigger. Another heretic drops to the ground. But alas, the apostate is already escaped, and his followers flee in his wake.

Fire from the retreating heretics slashes across the Sisters, but does nothing to their armored forms. Desultory bolter fire slays a handful more and sends the rest scattering. As Maria finishes chasing off the cultists, Illana goes to investigate the wounded mercenaries as the rumble of autogun fire and crack of a laspistol echo down a side corridor.

She emerges into a cramped room where a wounded mercenary lies, her leg bloodied from a shell fragment. Before her, several dead cultists lie in the doorway in a heap of cooked meat and severed limbs. The wall behind her and the bed beside her are shredded from point blank stubber fire, and yet she herself is effectively untouched.

"...Hi." The mercenary says, waving a hand. "How are you?"

The other mercenary by the entrance is alive, but unconscious. Illana estimates he needs to be evacuated to a proper hospital within twenty minutes or so just to have a chance.

In the main corridor, Liandra checks her vox. "Sister Anna, situation report."

"Dropped another ten or so heretics, plus a technical. Nice and quiet now. Guess they're only so suicidal."

Liandra nods her head. "Good, we'll be out shortly."

The Witch hunter emerges from the side room a moment later, carrying the bound psyker in hand. She's a young woman, gagged, her hair shaven off to reveal cybernetic wiring from a cranial implant. Her eyes are puffy and red, the right bruised and swollen. Her hands are wrapped in black chains that seem to eat up the light. Nonetheless, she stands tall, staring across the bodies of heretics strewn across the hall.

"Witches, nothing but trouble for the righteous. Thank you, Sisters. If you can get me to the Merud promethium facility, I would be further in your debt." The Witch Hunter says. "At first this seemed to be easy. Little resistance. Most of the Witch's cabal barely had weapons. But then these heretics ambushed us try to save her."

"Damn me, you mean." The witch says through her too loose gag. "We just wanted to heal people. But those madmen, they wanted-"

The hilt of the witch hunter's chainsword thugs against the back of the psyker's head, driving her to her knees. "If Matthias wasn't dead, I'd take that loose gag out of his pay. Someone tighten that." The Witch Hunter sighs.

Shephard · Feb 5, 2019

greendoor said:
Caelia backs up slightly, her mind spinning. A Daemon!

Her heart beats faster, and she instinctively turns to run, to put distance between her and it.

She steels herself-she was the blood of Velorum. She did not panic, she did not flee. She forces herself to focus on the creature-to study it. She chants the Fede Imperialis under her breath.

"From the begetting of daemons,
Our Emperor, deliver us"

For all it's terror, it did not match the true horror of the daemon that everyone on Velorum knew. It was not a true daemon, nor a truly powerful daemonhost. A weaker creature of the Warp, though powerful still. It was nothing before the power of the Emperor.

Caelia raises her bolter to deny the monsters.

Still, she trembled-it was one thing to know that the monsters could be beaten. It was another to actually do it.

(OOC: If I pass the WP test, Semi Auto bursts on the daemonhosts. If not, fall backward and full auto nearby cultists.)

Zeitgeist Blue said:
Daemons.

She could hear the snarl inside her head, hateful, almost desperate to deny the whispers that had accompanied the monsters' appearance.

It wasn't the first time she had shared a battlefield with creatures of the warp, but it had always been as a healer, tending to the wounded who had faced against the Enemy and lived. Never was she a combatant as she was now to come face to face with their twisted visages.

"Back! Back! Behind me!" With a wave of her hand, she urged the civilians to flee, to take cover, to run if they had to even as her stance widened, squaring herself.

She wouldn't run. She wouldn't run. She wouldn't run.

The mantra repeated in her head as she reported the daemonic presence to her sisters, as whispers continued to invade her mind, turning her thoughts dark.

Then Caelia's chant, low and muttered though it was, cut through the muddled thoughts, ringing like the clearest water in the finest spring, and Eriko grabbed a hold of that.

"We beseech thee, destroy them," the ending verse ran through her lips.

She would hold as Saint Leanna had done against darker and more powerful creatures. She would prove that she was worthy to follow Leanna's path.

Perhaps in this she would find a measure of pride. Peace.

(OOC: Eriko will stand her ground while waiting for reinforcements. She'll be reporting what she sees.

Overwatch. Semi-Auto Burst. Fire if the Daemons look like they're coming for her.

BS 40 + Semi Auto Burst 10 + Close Range 10 + Free Aim 10 + Accurate 10 + Holo-Targeter within 40m 10 = TN 90

2 Pen. Splintering. Proven 3.)

Cornuthaum said:
Lesser minds would flee in terror, too. But Pia? Pia just regrets she did not bring one of the specially sanctified canisters of ingiferous prometheum. Damn and blast, she should have known there would be moral hazards beyond flammable humans.

She checks the ammo readout of her flamer. Probably enough to burn a path to Eriko. "Sister-Superior, should I reinforce Sister Eriko, or make to burn clear the roof?"

"Run." The voice of a middle aged man pleas through a broken mouth as the his mutilated body twitches forward, like a marionette on strings.

In the scriptures of holy Leanna, it is said that the Saint knew fear. That faced with the Nightmare Given Form, and his minions, that she knew terror. For all her faith and piety, she was not one of the Adeptus Astartes who knew not fear. She was human. And knowing fear is human.

But denying it, as Saint Leanna did? That is what is divine.

Fear is what the Battle-Sisters of Squad Palais feel. Their fingers twitch and shake as they see those red forms pull forth through the unnatural smoke. They feel the fear burning in their blood. Their hearts pound, their mouths turn dry as a desert, sweat pours down their bodies. Yet, they stand their ground where other warriors might turn and flee. They do not run. Pia and Caelia are the worst affected, terror running like burning poison through their veins. And yet, they hold (Suffer disoriented effect, 1 fatigue).

Their visors flare with confused runes and madness as the twisting smoke closes in, and the Machine Spirits hiss litanies through the closed helmets of the Battle-Sisters. There are figures in the smoke. Scenes. As Eriko raises her shotgun, for a moment she sees the courtyard littered with the bodies of Guardsmen and other soldiers, a man in golden armor raising a burning sword high. Then it dissolves into two figures sprinting at her, blood dripping from flensed frames.

"Oh God-Emperor! Kill it! Kill it!" One of the laborers screams as Eriko hammers the trigger, emptying her magazine. The thunderous detonation of the airburst shells rings out, a flurry of spinning flechettes whipping into the figures. Chains slither across the creatures' flesh like snakes, absorbing direct hits across their iron shod forms. Then there is a noise, like nails on blackboard as the blades strike along the bare skin and raw muscles of the unholy creatures, and the flechettes fall like rain. Bent, broken.

Eriko's shotgun clicks dry.

"Run! Please, run!"

The first figure emerges from the smoke. It is bleeding. Eyes, mouth, skin, covering it like a fine robe. A single flechette splits its mouth open, but it does not seem to mind. Then it is on her. Storm of Summer jolts as the Sister leaps backward. The first creatures slashes at her with split open fingers, embedded with ragged glass shards. Nonetheless, as they scrap along the edge of her armor they leave deep imprints. The other one gurgles through a ruined skull, chunks of meat and bone crudely connected by railroad spikes driven through the gristle. Its left arm, broken in six places, uncoils out, a rusted wood axe slipping past her throat and ripping the hood clean off the technical beside her.

"Back it up! Back the feth up!" The gunner hisses. "We're too close to the dybbuk!"

Screams radiate out of the smoke. Two of the figures fall upon a pack of fleeing civilians. The violence is more felt than seen. The snapping of bones, the ripping of muscle, the sound of wet intestines plopping onto the rockcrete. Someone pleas for mercy ending in a wet gurgle. Within moments, only the two shadows remain.

"The way! Clear the way!" Pia hears Palais shout as the Sister-Superior cuts down a heretic, though for a moment it sounds like Anais. She raises her flamers at the hostiles in the smoke, their autoguns booming. But not all are Heretics, she sees. Some are civilians, fleeing, screaming through the smoke. She focuses her attention on a block of heavy stubbers near the fountain, bathing them in the last holy promethium in her flamer tank. They scream and wail as they are consumed by flame, but it pales in comparison to the raging inferno of the fountain, cloaking the figure of the Saint in writhing flame. It is almost as though she is bleeding, bleeding just like the unclean things assailing Eriko, the blood pouring out over the crest of the fountain and washing over Pia until-

It is just blackwater, spilt from the fountain, splashing against her boots. A mirage gone as soon as it began. (Gain 1 insanity, corn).

Not far away, Caelia staggers under a flurry is caught in a storm of heavy las fire from the roof multi-las. Struck again and again and again, Caelia staggers, divots burned into her armor by the barrage and the heat felt even though her armor. A flurry of lasgun fire from the PDF drive the multi-las gun back down, and Caelia turns to her rescuers to find the PDF line in shambles.

"It's the Chosen! They're all over us, all around us!" She hears screamed over the vox, witnessing a PDFer empty his lasgun into a comrade before being tackled down to the ground. The wounded man rolls on the ground, clutching at a burning stump of a hand. A woman nearby puts her laspistol to her mouth and pulls the trigger, skull disintegrating in a flash of light and blood. Another PDFer drops screaming from a rooftop, crunching against the ground. On the other side of the line, men and women lie groaning on the ground from a nearby rocket impact, a baying heretic slicing open the belly of a trooper before being driven to the ground by a flurry of desperate bayonets. Other PDFers turn and flee from the unnatural smoke and dybbuk horrors, dropping their weapons and fleeing.

And yet the standard rises high. "Come on, you dogs! I thought you were soldiers of Dreverarch, not cowards and weaklings!" The standard bearer shouts as he races ahead of the unit, holding the banner high. "Will you not follow your banner? Will you let it stand alone against the foe? Follow me, for the honor of the regiment!"

The remnants of the PDF platoon push forward with a cry of defiance. Sister Derosa and Arina storm an enemy hard point and destroy it in a storm of chainsword and bolt, the Sister-Superior waving her bloodied chainsword forward. "Forward the Ex Cathedra! I want heavy bolter on those monstrosities!"

Caelia turns back to the Dybbuk, making out two of the figures standing amidst a pile of corpses. Just standing, still, save the occasional twitch of their head. She hammers them with a burst of boltgun fire, detonations flashing up as the rounds impact. The two figures do not fall. Their heads twitch toward Sister Caelia. She can see the red abysses where their eyes should be, boring into her. Beyond them, she sees more Dybbuk disembarking from the third cargo truck. The second truck has moved, rolling forward around the back of the fountain.

greendoor · Feb 6, 2019

In those moments of Madness, pain, and terror, Caelia knew only three unassailable truths.

The first was that she knew, deep in her bones, that her ancestors, her family, and her sisters in arms would be disappointed in her if she fled. She could not push forward, but she stood her ground, as if rooted in place by sheer stubborn refusal to accept the shame of cowardice. It kept her in place even as a rain of crimson fire washed over her like the shadow of death, even as the Daemons that had haunted a hundred generations of her kin came down upon her sisters, their eyes boaring into her soul.

The second was that the daemons were intent on the Sisters of Battle-as the Nightmare had sought Leanna, so too did the creatures come for them as well. There was no escaping a confrontation-there was only the faint hope of slaying them. It was possible-but it seemed like a faint dream-a quaint fantasy that paled in the face of dreaded reality. She tried to ignore that as she grimly tried to pick the creatures out of the smoke and chaos of the battlefield.

Third was that the Emperor Protected-she whispered it as she shouldered the stock of her boltgun. She heard it whispered back in the rattle of belt links as she pulled back the bolt. She yelled "The Emperor Protects!" into the choking confines of her warhelm as she spotted a pair of the creatures, coming right for her.

Her hands were shaking, her vision was blurred by the smoke and more, and her holosight wasn't responding, only a stream of confused techna lingua streaming down her vision. Aiming was not an option-the only hope of slowing the monsters was full auto. With a second's hesitation, she held down the trigger. The thundering noise of the firing bolter was faintly comforting even in this hell-it spat all of her defiance and hatred back at the daemons. She yelled out "Suppressing! The Emperor Protects! Suppressing!"

She held down the trigger and tried to track the monsters through the smoke. If it was only a yell of defiance, it was the only thing she could do.

(OOC Stand in place and full auto suppress the Dybukks)

SirLagginton · Feb 6, 2019

"Sister Liandra," Ilana laid the body of the now comatose mercenary on the sidewalk outside, grimacing as her once bright plate came back a glistening dull red. The man had managed through some miracle fashion a crude bandage in the time he had been conscious, but it had been far too little. Even from this position she could see the bloody entrails kept in check by soiled linen, and the deathly pallor of his skin. "I respectfully request that we vox for a medivac. Without a Valkyrie I fear that his time is too limited to reach a hospital in time to treat his wounds. Should Zayneth wish it he may accompany also his man to a more timely arrival to the Promethium facility or wherever else he may wish to go. A valkyrie would likely suit his purposes than even noble Viatorem."

Zeitgeist Blue · Feb 7, 2019

Eriko grunted as she was pushed back a step, gouges scratched into her armour by flailing limbs. The Dybbuk's chains clattered against Storm and for an instant Eriko contemplated the absurdities in front of her. The broken bodies wrapped in glass and primitive iron should have folded like paper before her and the Storm's might, yet it was she who was on the backfoot.

Desperately, she tugged her chainsword free just in time to parry the Dybbuk's arm. It jarred her, past the Storm of Summer's layers of plates.

With whatever semblance of intelligence the Dybbuks had left, the pair began to flank her, moving to both sides, but she struck the ground and pulled their attention back to her before they could set their eyes on the cowering civilians.

Again the pleas to run dribbled down the Dybbuk's mouth, lips dripping with blood. Again, the pleas cut through her mind but she ignores them.

"No." She ground her teeth together, but her vox speakers carried her voice and she managed to sound imperious, standing tall against the creatures. She whipped her chainsword in one hand, sending sparks to fly as the tip scraped the ground. "No. I will stand and you will fight me."

A futile gesture to speak to the creatures as if they could even respond with true intelligence. They were monsters, mocking their hosts' past life through this parody of the ability to form proper thoughts and speak them.

She did not fear death. She welcomed it with open arms, that which all but Him inexorably march towards. Even these Dybbuk, terrible and unnatural as they were, could not turn her from the hope of dying properly.

She would hold until she died or relief came. Nothing less.

Gripping the chainsword with both hands, she shifted her stance, solid and unyielding like the ground beneath her heels.

The Warrior's Path. She had sought it, believing that this Mission would provide all in time. She had leaped into the chasm without knowing what was at the bottom, trusting this was the path the Emperor would approve. But only now, right this instant before a mere glimpse of evil, is she beginning to accept her decision. A proper enemy, not peasant rabble pretending at war. The lives of the faithful and loyal behind her.

She smiled, a vicious thing only witnessed by herself and the Emperor, but that was enough. If she were to die than she would die smiling.

(OOC: Full Defensive Stance

WS 40 + Defensive Stance 20 = TN 60 to parry)

Mina · Feb 9, 2019

Shephard said:
"Damn me, you mean." The witch says through her too loose gag. "We just wanted to heal people. But those madmen, they wanted-"

The hilt of the witch hunter's chainsword thugs against the back of the psyker's head, driving her to her knees. "If Matthias wasn't dead, I'd take that loose gag out of his pay. Someone tighten that." The Witch Hunter sighs.

SirLagginton said:
"I respectfully request that we vox for a medivac. Without a Valkyrie I fear that his time is too limited to reach a hospital in time to treat his wounds. Should Zayneth wish it he may accompany also his man to a more timely arrival to the Promethium facility or wherever else he may wish to go. A valkyrie would likely suit his purposes than even noble Viatorem."

Maria bent down to shove the gag in and tighten the knot with armored fingers stinking of propellant residue and holy oils. That the witch was right, that the heretics had sought her death like rabid beasts did not make her protestations carry weight, or the witch hunter's callous disregard matter overmuch. As long as someone noted it, entered it in to their tactical consideration, recalled it the next time they faced down this particular band. She prayed.

It was like a day of flagellation missed, a night she did not tend to holy wargear and weaponry to ensure she would not be found wanting in battle, a meal without proper thanks to Him, a moment without the careful assessment of the path forward. The feeling of failure and neglect, not being her sisters' keeper with their hotheaded surges and joyous charge. She, the slow one. The quiet one. Careful.

"We can have the witch stowed and the Viatorem ready for travel in the time it will take to vox the medivac. If our time to the Merud facility is good, perhaps it could rendezvous with us along the route, or before the facility itself. The enemy has withdrawn, but tarrying will invite boldness."

Shephard · Feb 14, 2019

SirLagginton said:
"Sister Liandra," Ilana laid the body of the now comatose mercenary on the sidewalk outside, grimacing as her once bright plate came back a glistening dull red. The man had managed through some miracle fashion a crude bandage in the time he had been conscious, but it had been far too little. Even from this position she could see the bloody entrails kept in check by soiled linen, and the deathly pallor of his skin. "I respectfully request that we vox for a medivac. Without a Valkyrie I fear that his time is too limited to reach a hospital in time to treat his wounds. Should Zayneth wish it he may accompany also his man to a more timely arrival to the Promethium facility or wherever else he may wish to go. A valkyrie would likely suit his purposes than even noble Viatorem."

Mina said:
Maria bent down to shove the gag in and tighten the knot with armored fingers stinking of propellant residue and holy oils. That the witch was right, that the heretics had sought her death like rabid beasts did not make her protestations carry weight, or the witch hunter's callous disregard matter overmuch. As long as someone noted it, entered it in to their tactical consideration, recalled it the next time they faced down this particular band. She prayed.

It was like a day of flagellation missed, a night she did not tend to holy wargear and weaponry to ensure she would not be found wanting in battle, a meal without proper thanks to Him, a moment without the careful assessment of the path forward. The feeling of failure and neglect, not being her sisters' keeper with their hotheaded surges and joyous charge. She, the slow one. The quiet one. Careful.

"We can have the witch stowed and the Viatorem ready for travel in the time it will take to vox the medivac. If our time to the Merud facility is good, perhaps it could rendezvous with us along the route, or before the facility itself. The enemy has withdrawn, but tarrying will invite boldness."

"My thanks, Sister." The Witch-Hunter says, tilting his wide-brimmed cap at Sister Maria as he shoves the restrained psyker out the door. Sister Liandra pauses only to break the locks on the cages, ignoring the pleas from the schechin infected as they call out for the departing psyker.

Sister Anna awaits outside, bodies littering the street and broken shanties around the Viatorem. As the squad loads the mercenaries into the Rhino, Liandra clears her throat.

"Palatine Rathitta, this is Sister Liandra. We have secured Witch-Finder Vahn Zayneth and his quarry, but one of his men require immediate medical evacuation. Please advise, over." She says, striding up the ramp into the holy machine.

Rathitta's voice, harsh, is heard over the sound of boltgun fire and screams. "With the quarantine, getting a valkyrie extraction is not possible at this time. Do you have any landing zones large enough for one of our thunderhawks in your immediate AO?"

"Negative." Liandra states, slamming the ramp shut. A brief flare of static as a detonation echoes over the vox.

"There is a Hospitaller post not far from the Merud Facility facility. Some of our Sisters from the Order of the Pure Water. They arrived not long ago, alongside the Cannoness-Commander Jessira's Commandery. Sending you the coordinates, now."

"The Emperor graces us, then. By Leanna's Mercy, Sister Liandra out."

The Viatorem thrums eagerly as your helms display the new coordinates, and Sister Liandra steps up to the Stormbolter position on the roof. In the troop bay, Sister Anna rests on her knees, keeping the critically wounded mercenary stable. The others shift uneasily in their seats, as the witch finder reloads his dueling lases one at a time. Two other mercenaries, wounded, groan in the back, clutching at their bandaged wounds.

"God-Emperor, that went to shit in a hurry." One of them mutters, pulling a round out of a crater in his helmet. "Next time Vahn, you can find some other schmucks to fight ravening hordes of cultists for you. I'm done."

Vahn's hired bounty hunter elbows him. "Quit your belly-aching. You got arse saved by the Emperor's Daughters. You think most people get Battle-Sisters coming to their rescue?"

"Your efforts and sacrifices today will be generously rewarded by the Ministorum. Of that, I am assured." Vahn says, closing his eyes to the groaning of the wounded mercs. A slight smile crosses his lean face. "Most assured."

Fifteen minutes through the winding streets and one detour through a shallow river that wasn't on the map later, you arrive at the Hospitaller post. It is a far cry from the maze of crumbling tenements and metal slabs of the shanties that surround it. Prefab structures of polycrete and pure white medical tents line the road, in carefully organized rows, expertly divided up by controlling barriers and fences that direct the sprawling crowds of wounded into orderly lines. Servo-skulls flutter overhead, speaking devotional litanies and spilling antibiotic incense across the packed crowds, whilst Hospitaller direct the flow of bodies with ruthless efficiency. Where the city around is rotted warren, here there is order found.

The burst apart bodies of at least a score of heretics outside the hospitaller post only makes that distinction all the more clear. Sisters in the red armor of the Order of the Burning Rose usher you in past the crowds, where you are greeted by a silver haired matron of the Order of Pure Water. Spreading from the lip of her gasmask over her right eye is a swollen bruise, yet she seems unconcerned as she gazes over the wounded man, the blueswept robes over her carapace armor swaying in the wind.

"Patient is in critical condition, pulse weak, severe bleeding. Penetrating abdominal trauma, I'm seeing damage to the large bowel and liver. Potential internal hemorrhaging from the intra-abdominal vascular. Use of the sacred waters needed. Sisters Livia, Amanda!" Even as two Hospitaller begin to roll the critically wounded man away, the first woman anoints the mercenary's forehead with a drop of water from a vial on her belt. "I pray to slow the blood and close the wound. Saint bless thee."

Her treatment for the other mercenaries is just as swift, and they are soon dismissed to a line for the non-critical patients. The number of wounded is immense. Most are civilians caught in the riots, though some are Merud Guildsmen or government men, like a corpse-collector who is being treated from a sniper rifle wound. Shrapnel wounds, incendiary burns, limbs removed by shot and blade. Some people have blown out eardrums, or cracked bones from brutal beatings or being run over by trucks. Not all of it was caused by the cultists. You see a Merud Guildmen, his right leg broken in two places, flinch away from passing civilians. A hospitaller has to draw her bolt pistol to get two groups of civilians to stand down as they curse and rave at one another. Much of the crowd, you see, are Pelagers. Perhaps even most, judging by how many bear the mottled skin and black eyes of their abhuman breed. Perhaps even a majority of those wounded are abhumans, and even with pure humans taking priority, you see many of their ilk being treated.

"There's no PDF troops here. Or officio medicae." Sister Anna mutters. "Just us Sisters. Surely they could spare a few men to help with this medical post?"

"You're assuming the Sisters of Pure Water came here with the blessing of the city's officers." Liandra says. "If I know the Order of Pure Water, they'll have pushed through the bureaucracy."

Vahn, bringing a handkerchief to his lips, steps forward. "Some of my colleagues in the PDF may have mentioned something about that." He says, before motioning a finger beyond the barricades of the hospitaller post. There you can see rusted steel vats and barracks behind a fortified wall, even through the smoke rising from before its gates. It is several blocks away, even still. "That would be The Merud facility. Safest place in this district, even with your arrival. No offense to your Sisters, but a wall stops bullets more effectively than a boltgun can."

In the distance, you can just hear a voice over your auto-senses. Perhaps one word in three. Something about the needs of the faithful, and about Merud needing to serve the Emperor. The words are harsh and loud, with a soft rasp to them.

"Pater Suriel Tibim." The bounty hunter says, tapping a hand against augmetic implants in her ears. "I'd recognize that man's sermons anywhere, from the videos on his missionary work in the bad-lands. Hard to believe he ended up in this dunghole district."

You think you can see him, a figure standing tall upon an improvised stage with a laud hailer in hand as he shouts toward the gates of the Merud facility and to the throngs surrounding. Both the crowds and smoke from fires are thick, and you think you can make out other groups arranged opposite his own band.

OOC: Merc lives, btw. Made his toughness check.

Shephard · Feb 15, 2019

Zeitgeist Blue said:
Eriko grunted as she was pushed back a step, gouges scratched into her armour by flailing limbs. The Dybbuk's chains clattered against Storm and for an instant Eriko contemplated the absurdities in front of her. The broken bodies wrapped in glass and primitive iron should have folded like paper before her and the Storm's might, yet it was she who was on the backfoot.

Desperately, she tugged her chainsword free just in time to parry the Dybbuk's arm. It jarred her, past the Storm of Summer's layers of plates.

With whatever semblance of intelligence the Dybbuks had left, the pair began to flank her, moving to both sides, but she struck the ground and pulled their attention back to her before they could set their eyes on the cowering civilians.

Again the pleas to run dribbled down the Dybbuk's mouth, lips dripping with blood. Again, the pleas cut through her mind but she ignores them.

"No." She ground her teeth together, but her vox speakers carried her voice and she managed to sound imperious, standing tall against the creatures. She whipped her chainsword in one hand, sending sparks to fly as the tip scraped the ground. "No. I will stand and you will fight me."

She did not fear death. She welcomed it with open arms, that which all but Him inexorably march towards. Even these Dybbuk, terrible and unnatural as they were, could not turn her from the hope of dying properly.

She would hold until she died or relief came. Nothing less.

Gripping the chainsword with both hands, she shifted her stance, solid and unyielding like the ground beneath her heels.

The Warrior's Path. She had sought it, believing that this Mission would provide all in time. She had leaped into the chasm without knowing what was at the bottom, trusting this was the path the Emperor would approve. But only now, right this instant before a mere glimpse of evil, is she beginning to accept her decision. A proper enemy, not peasant rabble pretending at war. The lives of the faithful and loyal behind her.

She smiled, a vicious thing only witnessed by herself and the Emperor, but that was enough. If she were to die than she would die smiling.

(OOC: Full Defensive Stance

WS 40 + Defensive Stance 20 = TN 60 to parry)

Blood weeping from its shredded skin and eyes, the first dybbuk turns its dead eyes upon Eriko. "No, no, please..." It pleads, the words dribbling from its gaping maw. In the distance, Eriko can hear her Sisters singing.

"A morte perpetua, domine, libra nos!"

From death everlasting, our Emperor, save us.

Eriko brings her chainsword up in a standard guard, ready to stand against the beasts.Her blade lashes up to catch a falling axe, only for it to be smashed aside and nearly torn from her hands. A second blow slams against her cuirass, denting the scarlet metal inward. Suddenly breathless, Eriko feels herself sliding backward, feet frantically trying to find their balance. A moment later, she feels an impact against the back of her head as she slams against the road. The first dybbuk is upon her in an instant, its claws slicing past her compromised defense and digging chunks of ceramite out from under her right armpit. Sparks fly as some servo is damaged. The two things curl around her, readying the finishing blow.

"No!" Eriko hears cried out from behind her as the glass-clawed monster drags its claws toward her eyes. She hears its human voice, pleading, begging. A few steps away, she hears the click of a rifle bolt being slid back. At the corner of her vision, Eriko sees a cultist step from the smoke, lowering her autogun at the civilians behind Eriko. She hears the thud of bullets against the ground, the cruel laughter of the cultist beneath her rebreather. "Dance, scum! Entertain the dybbuk with their dinner!"

"It is by sacrifice that the Imperium survives. Better mine than others." The words she remembers are like a kind whisper in her ear-if only she were not to fail them. A teaching of Leanna, Eriko recalls, as she walked forth to meet her death before the Daemon-King. As Eriko has failed to live up to the example of. "Not yet. Get up."

"Get off of her, you freak!" A pair of women, their flesh crawling with pustules and blackened, rotted skin, leap onto the back of the clawed dybbuk. It throws off one with a shriek, the woman grunting as she picks herself up, but the other latches on desperately onto its back. Blood weeps from its peeled flesh across her clothes, staining them a bright scarlet.

The cultist drops to the ground as a burly man in promethium soaked work clothes slams a rusted pipe into her head, sending her bonelessly to the ground. Another man picks up the woman's fallen autogun.

As new fury rushes through Eriko's body, she swings her chainsword in a wide arc, even as she ducks aside from another axe blow. The sword strike slams right into the torso of the staggering claw-fiend, sparks flying as the adamantium blades tear into one of the runed chains that writhe across the monster's body like a living thing. There is a sound, like crunching bone, as the chain suddenly gives way and falls apart in a spray of broken links. Her blade digs into the Daemon-host's skin, ripping out chunks of flesh and muscle. Though it does not flinch, its mouth curls into a loud, agonized scream. The dybbuk rips the whining blade out of its stomach, even as it head-butts the schechin infected woman on its back. As she staggers, it grabs a hold of its robes.

"Don't kill her!" Its voice pleads, madly, even as the schechin infected, struggles in the 'dybbuk's' grip.

OOC: Refresh 1 faith point.

greendoor said:
In those moments of Madness, pain, and terror, Caelia knew only three unassailable truths.

The first was that she knew, deep in her bones, that her ancestors, her family, and her sisters in arms would be disappointed in her if she fled. She could not push forward, but she stood her ground, as if rooted in place by sheer stubborn refusal to accept the shame of cowardice. It kept her in place even as a rain of crimson fire washed over her like the shadow of death, even as the Daemons that had haunted a hundred generations of her kin came down upon her sisters, their eyes boaring into her soul.

The second was that the daemons were intent on the Sisters of Battle-as the Nightmare had sought Leanna, so too did the creatures come for them as well. There was no escaping a confrontation-there was only the faint hope of slaying them. It was possible-but it seemed like a faint dream-a quaint fantasy that paled in the face of dreaded reality. She tried to ignore that as she grimly tried to pick the creatures out of the smoke and chaos of the battlefield.

Third was that the Emperor Protected-she whispered it as she shouldered the stock of her boltgun. She heard it whispered back in the rattle of belt links as she pulled back the bolt. She yelled "The Emperor Protects!" into the choking confines of her warhelm as she spotted a pair of the creatures, coming right for her.

Her hands were shaking, her vision was blurred by the smoke and more, and her holosight wasn't responding, only a stream of confused techna lingua streaming down her vision. Aiming was not an option-the only hope of slowing the monsters was full auto. With a second's hesitation, she held down the trigger. The thundering noise of the firing bolter was faintly comforting even in this hell-it spat all of her defiance and hatred back at the daemons. She yelled out "Suppressing! The Emperor Protects! Suppressing!"

She held down the trigger and tried to track the monsters through the smoke. If it was only a yell of defiance, it was the only thing she could do.

(OOC Stand in place and full auto suppress the Dybukks)

Despite the fear in her heart, Caelia opens fire. Her weapon sights sway in her shaky grip, and rounds whip past the creatures or tear chunks out of the road-one stray round tearing a heretic in half. Still, she hits them. Once, twice, a third time but they do not slow, do not even flinch. Their chains writhe around them like living things, knocking aside her bolts and the shrapnel that slices against the bare flesh of the creatures results only in a discordant sound like nails on chalkboard. A burst of heavy bolter rounds screams over their heads, Greiland hissing a prayer to the Machine-Spirit as her heavy bolter revolts against the horrors it is targeting. Vaguely, Caelia is aware of impacts against her armor as the multi-las lights her up a moment before it is finally silenced by a storm of lasfire. She is vaguely aware of cultists fleeing at her flank as Sister-Superior Derosa, Sister Arina and a group of PDF storm their position, but her gaze is focused on the creatures as they close in. On the black maw of the one in the lead, growing wider and wider and wider until it seems it will consume the whole of her existence.

"For the Emperor and His church!" She hears Palais shout as she vaults over a car ahead, her chainsword slicing a squad of heretics to ribbons. Caelia sees the two Dybbuk closing in on her sister-superior, the smoke billowing around them like death shrouds. She sees Palais raise her chainsword in pious defiance, even as Caelia lowers her boltgun on the lead horror and presses the trigger once again.

The first round glances off a bare shoulder as though it as adamantium, exploding in the air. A second detonates against a writhing chain, shrapnel pockmarking its tattered rags.

For the Emperor.

Her third bolt punches directly into the right pelvis. There is a flash of light and blood, and the creature's upper torso slams hard into the street as its shredded legs dance behind it before they too, topple over. The creature snarls as it crawls forward, digging into the rockcrete with its bare finger. Its spine curls and unwinds like the movement of a snake or caterpillar as it crawls forward, its wide maw singing a keening wail of hunger. Intestines and gore trail behind it for several meters as the thing drags itself forward, but finally, the sparkling star lights within its mouth and eyes go out. With a noise like a sigh, something like smoke rises from the things orifices to dissipate into the air. Its carcass resolves into the upper body of a normal woman in her thirties, bloodied and mutilated, her face a rictus of terror.

A dozen steps away, Palais and Derosa fall upon a second Dybbuk. Derosa's chainsword is whipped aside by the living barbed wire rippling through the creature's unholy flesh, her off balance swing cleaving through the top of a cultist's skull just as he tries to join the fight. Palais' blade howls as it slices through the edge of a rune bound hook, biting into the creature's rib cage. Barbed wire scratches at her power armor as the blade bites through the monstrosity's sternum, and with a final laugh it crumbles to the ground, convulsing madly. Before either Sister-Superior can finish it off, another creature slams into Palais, nearing knocking her off her feet as its glass-nails tear shards from her gorget. More of the creatures rush forward, pouncing on a cultist in their path and swiping at others who desperately rush off to avoid becoming prey for their lords.

Caelia hears them shouting in terror. "They slew the dybbuk! They the dybbuk!"

Behind, Pia's flamer and lasgun fire unleash a wave of devastation on an advancing force of heretics. The cultists' desperate counter-fire fails to make Pia so much as flinch, and though PDFer's stumble and fall under the fail of bodies, they swiftly pick themselves up and raise their weapons. Bodies are sliced apart by the storm of lasfire or set alight by the promethium from the Sister's flamer. Bodies fall, and other cultists turn tail and flee. And yet, through the swirling smoke, one of the cargo trucks from where the dybbuk's emerged comes howling out of the smoke, its driver howling in mad delight as it barrels straight toward the advancing Imperials.

greendoor · Feb 15, 2019

She had slain one

The thought didn't push the fear out of Caelia's heart like many a story would have her believe, but it did harden her resolve. Her hands still shaking, perhaps slightly less now, she sighted down the next Dybukk. "The Emperor Protects!"

They could be slain

What was once a distant fantasy was a real possibility now. Something resembling hope flooded through her-it was at the same time exhilarating and terrifying. She let the barrel of the boltgun align with the next abomination, her crackling holosight coming into focus a split second later. A good sightline-at least, in these conditions.

They would be slain

New found determination squeezed the trigger of her boltgun. Once, twice, thrice. Yelling her defiance was no longer the only thing she could do-she could strike back now.

(OOC: Stand in place and semi auto+aim into oncoming Dybukks. If they all get in melee with Sister's Superior, charge into melee with Sarissa. If they charge me, half step out of melee then Point blank full auto them)

Zeitgeist Blue · Feb 16, 2019

They had come to her aid.

Civilians, those she was trying to protect.

She had fallen prone and the Dybbuks were upon her, claws finding purchase on her armour, scrabbling to pry them open to reach the soft flesh underneath. Somewhere along the mad melee of flailing limbs and slavering mouths, her chainsword was knocked from her grip and she had though her end near, able only to keep the Dybbuks at bay with the use of her gauntlets.

But the civilians, women both, had leaped into the fray, grappling the creatures from behind with strength brought from desperation. The action had pulled the Dybbuks' attention away, just enough for her to grasp her chainsword and pushing it into the belly of a hunched-over Dybbuk, struggling with a woman hanging on its back.

Her strike had done something but not enough, not ever enough. Then it had the woman in its bleeding fingers, chains writhing like living things.

Eriko grit her teeth, a new fire burning in her chest. She scrambled to her feet, beating back the other Dybbuk's claws through luck more than skill, its strikes close enough to shave off scarlet paint on her gauntlets. Pain pulsed through her body and her knees threatened to give up, but she couldn't fail the women, couldn't let the actions of the courageous end like this.

For they were courageous and they were faithful, even if their rotten skin and pustules would make many think otherwise. Their actions now spoke of their character and challenged the Battle-Sister to reciprocate. She was swaddled within Storm of Summer and gifted the Order's equipment, but they were all too mortal in their sickness and ratty clothes. Yet they had come to her aid.

It pounded inside her head, stronger than the cries of the possessed. A hundred times more for in that instant she could imagine failing and the shame that would follow. Another failure to mark her years.

"Damn your priorities." She spits, hands tighten around her weapon's grip. "Face me instead."

(Stand up. Standard Melee Attack.

Then after, Aim + Standard Melee Attack.)

SirLagginton · Feb 18, 2019

Shephard said:
"Pater Suriel Tibim." The bounty hunter says, tapping a hand against augmetic implants in her ears. "I'd recognize that man's sermons anywhere, from the videos on his missionary work in the bad-lands. Hard to believe he ended up in this dunghole district."

You think you can see him, a figure standing tall upon an improvised stage with a laud hailer in hand as he shouts toward the gates of the Merud facility and to the throngs surrounding. Both the crowds and smoke from fires are thick, and you think you can make out other groups arranged opposite his own band.

OOC: Merc lives, btw. Made his toughness check.

Ilana looked towards the throng of flame and smoke, shrouding the city like a funeral cloak to mask its rotted bones. She could see their faith tested under the weight of plague and the machinations of the foeman, and found it strained to breaking point. How long she wondered could their mortal weaknesses withstand that pressing test? To keep faith even as their family withered around them, friends dying around them and the lying tongue of glory and content everlasting if only they would submit the meager price of their souls.

It was the idiotic, uninformed, foolish flailing of a people who only wished the best for their loved ones that made Ilana despair, rage, and sympathise with all at one. That sin and virtue could be bound so closely to one another had to be one of the universe's cruelest jokes, and in her mind's eye she could hear the callous laughter of thirsting gods.

She couldn't help but feel that Father Tibim was one such victim of that pitiless joke, where he felt he must frustrate Imperial authority to tend to his flock, even that of the mutant. Yet the stalemate was clear. Ilana couldn't claim that she would be going to make the man see reason, after all it was perhaps he who was the one seeing reason here, but she could talk, and maybe shoulder that burden she knew was growing heavier on the Emperor's shoulders by the day.

"Sister Liandra," Ilana went on the vox. "I've located Pater Suriel Tibim, permission to approach for negotiation?"

Shephard · Feb 18, 2019

Zeitgeist Blue said:
They had come to her aid.

Civilians, those she was trying to protect.

She had fallen prone and the Dybbuks were upon her, claws finding purchase on her armour, scrabbling to pry them open to reach the soft flesh underneath. Somewhere along the mad melee of flailing limbs and slavering mouths, her chainsword was knocked from her grip and she had though her end near, able only to keep the Dybbuks at bay with the use of her gauntlets.

But the civilians, women both, had leaped into the fray, grappling the creatures from behind with strength brought from desperation. The action had pulled the Dybbuks' attention away, just enough for her to grasp her chainsword and pushing it into the belly of a hunched-over Dybbuk, struggling with a woman hanging on its back.

Her strike had done something but not enough, not ever enough. Then it had the woman in its bleeding fingers, chains writhing like living things.

Eriko grit her teeth, a new fire burning in her chest. She scrambled to her feet, beating back the other Dybbuk's claws through luck more than skill, its strikes close enough to shave off scarlet paint on her gauntlets. Pain pulsed through her body and her knees threatened to give up, but she couldn't fail the women, couldn't let the actions of the courageous end like this.

For they were courageous and they were faithful, even if their rotten skin and pustules would make many think otherwise. Their actions now spoke of their character and challenged the Battle-Sister to reciprocate. She was swaddled within Storm of Summer and gifted the Order's equipment, but they were all too mortal in their sickness and ratty clothes. Yet they had come to her aid.

It pounded inside her head, stronger than the cries of the possessed. A hundred times more for in that instant she could imagine failing and the shame that would follow. Another failure to mark her years.

"Damn your priorities." She spits, hands tighten around her weapon's grip. "Face me instead."

(Stand up. Standard Melee Attack.

Then after, Aim + Standard Melee Attack.)

The dybbuk twists its head to the side, the bones of its neck audibly scraping and cracking as it bends farther than a human's should. Your chainsword rakes along its back, ripping out chunks of muscle, but it does not flinch-Even as its mouth curls into a hideous scream. "Aggh! Arrrggh!"

Absently, it tosses the woman back, meeting your gaze with its bleeding eyes.

"What are you doing? Run, Sister! Run!" The voice of its host curls from its lips, even as it calmly steps forward. Then the other snaps forward, axe swinging through the air, crashing aside your guard with ease. It strikes against the dents in your cuirass, ceramite shards flying into the air as the force pulses into your torso.

You find you cannot breath. You cannot feel your pulse. Your legs move erratically, the servos of the Storm of Summer straining as it desperately attempts to stabilize you. You feel the pricks of painkillers, see your life-signs flash, turn red. Your vision turns dark, and you begin to fall-
A rose, burning in the dark.

Breath floods your lungs.

Blood on the thorns. Flesh torn.

Amber runes flash across your helm for your status.

A thing of shadow, leering and hateful, retreating before the flame.

You right yourself, even as another blow turns from your plate. Your vision a haze, you strike and riposte back blows, drawing away chunks of flesh. One of the dybbuks, axe in hand, flinches as a bolt round slams against its back, chunks of meat and bone splattering onto the pavement beneath it. Yet, it keeps coming, where its naked torso should be nothing but gristle. Behind you, you hear a loud crack and from the corner of your vision make out a mustachioed man leaping onto the quad-stubber of the truck. He bellows something, and though you don't hear the words, you understand the intent. You duck aside as the four barrels of the heavy stubber open up on the axe wielding creature.

The noise in your ear is a hellstorm of fire, round after round after round punching against the dybbuk. Sparks fly as its rattling chains whip bullets out of the air, blood sprays as the rounds punch into its torso, chest, arm. There's a horrific sound, a whistling scream as a chain across its torso bursts, then another, and a third. The top of its skull bursts apart, the right side of its torso punched clean through and the lower half of the lung destroyed. Its axe is torn from its hand and it falls to the ground.

Then, it picks itself up. Its torso is a red ruin, organs exposed, each pierced through with a long spike, many of them shredded or destroyed by the stubber. Its spine is broken in three places. Yet, it stands. Its head, already a ruin, should have disintegrated entirely, the entire top of its skull and most of the right side gone. It's pieces of disparate meat, held together solely by metal pikes. Chunks of brain slither out of the bulging gaps in its skull, splashng to the ground at its feet. Calmly, it picks up its axe and slides the right side of its shattered jaw back into place, its tongue wrapping around the exposed bone to try and keep it in place.

As it raises its axe, you bring the chainsword down. A chain whips into the path of the falling blade, and sparks fly as unholy metal and blessed adamantium meet. The former gives with a human sounding scream, wailing in your ears as you cleave through the chains guarding its arm, tearing through the forearm. Bits of bone spit across your helm as the chainsword jams in its arm, the thing clawing at your face as you gun the motor again and again. And then, with a hungry howl, the chainsword reignites, grinding through the remainder of the creature's arm before you drive it through the shattered chainlinks into the meat of its shredded torso, through its cracked spine and out the other side. The creature swings at you one last top as it separates apart, its mutilated skull splattering as its upper half slaps wetly against the rockcrete.

The other dybbuk's claws slash across your armor, but fail to bite. Its lips curl into something like a smile. "You killed it? You killed it! Kill me! Please! Kill me!"

greendoor said:
She had slain one

The thought didn't push the fear out of Caelia's heart like many a story would have her believe, but it did harden her resolve. Her hands still shaking, perhaps slightly less now, she sighted down the next Dybukk. "The Emperor Protects!"

They could be slain

What was once a distant fantasy was a real possibility now. Something resembling hope flooded through her-it was at the same time exhilarating and terrifying. She let the barrel of the boltgun align with the next abomination, her crackling holosight coming into focus a split second later. A good sightline-at least, in these conditions.

They would be slain

New found determination squeezed the trigger of her boltgun. Once, twice, thrice. Yelling her defiance was no longer the only thing she could do-she could strike back now.

(OOC: Stand in place and semi auto+aim into oncoming Dybukks. If they all get in melee with Sister's Superior, charge into melee with Sarissa. If they charge me, half step out of melee then Point blank full auto them)

"Emperor, be my light!" Palais bellows as she and Derosa exchange blows with a pack of the gibbering beasts.

Greiland's heavy bolters scream at the encroaching truck, halting it in its tracks with a hail of heavy bolter fire that shreds through the tires and engines, disentegrating the driver in a storm of shrapnel and punching holes through the cargo container lining its back. As the truck slides to a halt, smoke billowing from its burst engine, the tattered side of the cargo container explodes outwards. The bare feet of four more dybbuks slap wetly as they slam against the ground, turning toward you with bleeding eyes and mouth. Each is a horror unto themselves. The skin of one is too tight across its bulging muscles, tearing with every movement and pouring blood across the ground. One is dressed in the night dress of a common Imperial citizen, her skin stained with black tattoos, but her joints are bent backwards and she stares at you with a limp, broken neck. Hanging from the glass nails in her hand is a children's shoe, yellow as the sun. A grenade detonates behind you, sending PDF troops crashing to the ground around you, but you hardly notice, your eyes on the emerging daemon-things.

"Rations have been cut again. I don't know what we're going to do, love." The third speaks through a madly smiling maw as it rushes at you. "I'll put in double-time, whatever it takes. Maybe we can sell the old vox down the road." The words come from its voice distorted, as through from a broken vid-screen. Each word sounds like a scratch more than anything spoken.

"Did you hear about Leanna's house? Plague got her husband. I can hardly believe it." Its voice scratches as you snap up your boltgun. "I promise, promise you I'll keep my mask on, not let anyone talk me. We've survived worse than this, my little sunshine."

You fire, hammering it with boltgun round after boltgun round. The first round takes it directly in the face and its head disappears in a flash of fire and light. It steps out of the smoke cloud, the flesh of its face peeled to the bone. Still, it smiles. "You can't go outside, Davian, it's not safe out. I'll take you to the park another day." A round bounces off a bare shoulder, detonating in the air. Another is whipped aside by a lashing chain. But you keep up the fire. A chain takes two more rounds thne shatters, blinks whipping through the air like lashing scourges, more rounds ripping open the thing's torso and shredding apart much of its torso. "Sunshine? Davian? Where are you? Where are you! Who the hell are? What are you doing in my house?"

"Where are you-" The words whistle through its skinless face as at last it topples to the ground, its mortal frame beginning to give in. "What did you do with them...?"

Another dybbuk crashes to the ground halfway to you, cut down by boltgun fire from another sister, torn apart limbs bouncing across the rockcrete and looking all so normal and human. The other two push forward. Lasrounds flash against them, but it doesn't even slow them. In an instant, they crash into you. Blows slam against your armor, denting and scraping the ceramite but failing to penetrate. Then, Pia crashes into the dybbuk with an axe, her power maul coming down hard on its skull. A chain shatters apart and the splitting skin disintegrates before the power blow. The crack of the maul slamming into the dybbuk's head calls more to mind a club against a wall then it does a skull, but still, the thing's head fractures and it collapses to the ground with a groan. More pile into the combat around you, a Sarissa blow from another battle-Sister slicing into its body, bayonet stabs from a pair of PDF troops piercing through its nightgown and into its meat and muscle.

The thing sobs as it swings at you, claws scraping against your armor, your own desperate blows failing to bring it down.

"With me, Sister!" The other Battle-Sister bellows, readying her Sarissa. "Drive this abomination from the Emperor's sight! Purge the Unclean!"

Mina · Feb 18, 2019

Shephard said:
In the distance, you can just hear a voice over your auto-senses. Perhaps one word in three. Something about the needs of the faithful, and about Merud needing to serve the Emperor. The words are harsh and loud, with a soft rasp to them.

"Pater Suriel Tibim." The bounty hunter says, tapping a hand against augmetic implants in her ears. "I'd recognize that man's sermons anywhere, from the videos on his missionary work in the bad-lands. Hard to believe he ended up in this dunghole district."

You think you can see him, a figure standing tall upon an improvised stage with a laud hailer in hand as he shouts toward the gates of the Merud facility and to the throngs surrounding. Both the crowds and smoke from fires are thick, and you think you can make out other groups arranged opposite his own band.

SirLagginton said:
"Sister Liandra," Ilana went on the vox. "I've located Pater Suriel Tibim, permission to approach for negotiation?"

In the front seat Maria simply reached across to pull down her grenade launcher and check its load. They'd never make it through the crowd without unacceptable damage, for she was loathe to run down the sick and downtrodden masses when other paths were open.

"I will provide her support."

The smoke and stench of the district might be tolerable to its denizens, but she doubted they'd love choke gas so much if Ilana was unable to bring the preacher down from his ledge.

"Check your seals, we pray the straying flock might find its way, but prepare for when they reject benevolence."

Shephard · Feb 18, 2019

SirLagginton said:
Ilana looked towards the throng of flame and smoke, shrouding the city like a funeral cloak to mask its rotted bones. She could see their faith tested under the weight of plague and the machinations of the foeman, and found it strained to breaking point. How long she wondered could their mortal weaknesses withstand that pressing test? To keep faith even as their family withered around them, friends dying around them and the lying tongue of glory and content everlasting if only they would submit the meager price of their souls.

It was the idiotic, uninformed, foolish flailing of a people who only wished the best for their loved ones that made Ilana despair, rage, and sympathise with all at one. That sin and virtue could be bound so closely to one another had to be one of the universe's cruelest jokes, and in her mind's eye she could hear the callous laughter of thirsting gods.

She couldn't help but feel that Father Tibim was one such victim of that pitiless joke, where he felt he must frustrate Imperial authority to tend to his flock, even that of the mutant. Yet the stalemate was clear. Ilana couldn't claim that she would be going to make the man see reason, after all it was perhaps he who was the one seeing reason here, but she could talk, and maybe shoulder that burden she knew was growing heavier on the Emperor's shoulders by the day.

"Sister Liandra," Ilana went on the vox. "I've located Pater Suriel Tibim, permission to approach for negotiation?"

Mina said:
In the front seat Maria simply reached across to pull down her grenade launcher and check its load. They'd never make it through the crowd without unacceptable damage, for she was loathe to run down the sick and downtrodden masses when other paths were open.

"I will provide her support."

The smoke and stench of the district might be tolerable to its denizens, but she doubted they'd love choke gas so much if Ilana was unable to bring the preacher down from his ledge.

"Check your seals, we pray the straying flock might find its way, but prepare for when they reject benevolence."

Liandra cocks her head to the side for a moment. "In a moment. I'm going to speak with our counterparts, then we can head over." Liandra says, striding off to speak with the Sisters from Cannoness Commander Jessira's Commandery and one of the members of the Order of Pure Water.

Anna glances at the departing Sister, then stretches out her back. She peers toward the falling sun in the distant, painting the smoke a chalky red. "It's a good thing the Hospitallers are here. This district needs a lot more help than we can give them," She says. "Wonder if Rathitta will have us working through the night. Hope not, even if we could probably sleepwalk our way through these cultists."

The minutes drag on before Liandra returns, Storm bolter in her hands. "It seems Tibim is not the only one who's been here today. Stick close, and keep an eye open. I don't want anyone to get blown up Maria almost did."

You advance down the hill from the hospitaller station, the crowds opening up to allow you passage. The streets are perhaps the worst hit of any you have yet seen. Wounded are everywhere, dragged by their friends and family or moaning piteously from among the dead. Bodies litter the streets, many killed by shot and blade, others simply beaten to death by fist and club. Vehicles are overturned and burning. You see one truck engraven with the twisted sigil of chaos punched into the side of a building, its wheels stained red with blood and gristle. Men and women and children flood about you. Some with eyes blank, others weeping or shouting. Some are still holding signs or shouting abuse at each other, even as more carry the broken bodies of their loved ones away.

This is not merely a riot, it's a warzone. Dead cultists and rioters alike litter the streets, even brass collared merud guildsmen torn apart by the fury of the mob and the fighting. Bodies lie shrung from lamp poles. But even more than the violence is the desperation. The battered hulk of an administratum cargo truck lies tipped on its side, food and medical crates shattered into pieces around it, and even with most of the supplies taken you see men and women fighting over what scraps remain. The gates of the Merud facility loom ahead, sealed shut, as the sights of heavy stubbers sweep over the crowds from the towers. Piles of bodies litter the area before the walls, even a pair of rickety looking ladders splintered apart on the rockcrete.

It is not long after that you see Suriel Tibim in the flesh, standing atop the remains of a auto-carriage with laud-hailer in one hand and a laspistol in the other. He does not make for a heroic figure, with a balding head of hair, flickering augmetic right eye, and shadows about his other. His robes, perhaps once fine, are tattered from shell impacts and sodden with sweat and water. Yet, he stands straight and powerful, his gaze one of driven purpose as he shouts and bellows through his laud-hailer. Men and women and yes, pelagers too, lift their hands into the air as he speaks, echoing every shout and powerful word that rings from his mouth.

He however, is not the only one shouting. Just across the street are gathered groups of men and women, many bearing the augmetics and tattoos that mark them as promethium industry workers who shout and curse at both the Merud walls and the Father's groups. Where Tibim's group contains many Pelagers, these others are notably absent of the abhuman. Ilana quickly identifies them as being of Selveria Collier's lot, and though the woman herself is absent, she notes one of her lieutenants barking orders from a laud-hailer of his own.

As you approach, his speech comes to a halt. Around his impromptu stage, humans and Pelagers alike close ranks. You see clubs and signs, rifles and shotguns, swords and hammers and spears, all held in shaking hands. Some of the Pelagers, you note, bear symbols of Eriente's faction. For a moment, it seems a confrontation is likely-and then the priest waves his hand.

"Don't be fools. Let them pass."

The four of you stride forward as the crowd reluctantly parts, the priest kneeling down as you near. He wipes beads of sweat from his forehead, holstering his laspistol. Even as he does, the raucousness of the crowd continues. You see signs waved, shouts bellowed-both at rival groups of rioters and at the gates of the Merud facility.

"I greet you in the name the Immortal Emperor," Tibim says, making the sign of the aquila. Liandra and Anna return it after a moment. "Forgive my flock, they are overzealous."

Liandra gives a glance at the burning vehicles and blood on the street. "So it would seem. You have drawn quite the following, Father."

The man snorts. "Mutant freaks and desperate dregs, but they are who I am appointed to." He motions his laud-speaker across the crowds. "I never wanted to be assigned this miserable post, but I have a duty to them nonetheless. The entire district withers on the vine whilst the city sits back and watches. And now with the cult attack...Too many died today, already. I just want to make it worth something" He sighs, closing his eye for a long moment. "The Merud guild is hoarding the food and medicine the people of this district needs to survive. If I must, 'I will steal from the plate of decadence to feed the mouths of the powerless.'"

Anna clicks her tongue. "Sebastian Thor, Sermons, volume XIV, chapter XXXVII," The priest nods his head. "I get what you mean. It's just...There's kind of a lot of things on fire?"

The priest grimaces at that. "Much of that is from the cult attack earlier," Liandra gives him a look. "But not all," He admits. "I have served with the Adepta Sororitas before, in my days as a missionary to the pagan tribes of this world. I know I have no authority over you in this. I will not demand that you throw open the gates. But I would ask that you intercede with the guildsmen on my behalf. Perhaps they will be more inclined to heed you."

Maria looks past the priest, deeper into the crowd. It is difficult to tell any one of the Pelagers from another for her, each looking much the same with their black eyes, hairless bodies and mottled hide, but she recognizes one from the dataslate she was shown that morning. A female Pelager, a more pronounced nose, with well worn hide and a particular splotch beneath her right eye. Eriente Bluejacket, another of the ring-leaders of these riots, turns from speaking with some sort of lieutenant of hers to stare at the Adepta Sororitas squad with narrowed eyes. If she notices Maria's gaze, she gives no notice, taking a nervous sip a canteen in her hand.

Zeitgeist Blue · Feb 20, 2019

Eriko felt fragile.

She was supported only by Storm of Summer and her mind floated in that half-space between registering the shock and pain of her body... and the painlessness from drugs injected into her bloodstream. Her limbs were numb by the result but her mind was as sharp as ever. She had endured worse even as an student of the Schola and that thought brought confidence welling into her chest.

She-- they had killed the dybbuk. All four of them, five if one counted the civilian keeping the cultist occupied. Somehow that made her day brighter than anything that had since happened, and through the screams and sounds of battle far away she stood against the last creature of the pair that had assaulted them. Stalwart, but more of the Storm, than her and she shut her ears to its cries.

Pitiful.

She would kill it because she wanted to and not because it demanded it. As if something birthed in sin and blood could demand or even hope. No, she would silence it because it grated her ears to listen to it parody the human voice.

It opened its maw to cry once more but the heel of her hand slammed it shut and she grabbed it, dragging it to the ground with her.

"Enough! I will hear no more from you, creature, and neither will you strike at the faithful any longer." She twisted her arm around its neck as chains whipped about her armour but she spared a glance at the civilians. "Give me your hands and your strength! Beat it down or strike now when it is helpless!"

(OOC: Sheathe chainsword. Grapple Opponent. Try and get the civilians to give Assistance to the Grapple or attack the dybbuk. +1 DoS, -1 DoF from Armour History.)

greendoor · Feb 20, 2019

Shephard said:
The thing sobs as it swings at you, claws scraping against your armor, your own desperate blows failing to bring it down.

"With me, Sister!" The other Battle-Sister bellows, readying her Sarissa. "Drive this abomination from the Emperor's sight! Purge the Unclean!"

"Purge the Unclean!"

Caelia echoes her Battle-Sister. Even now her hands shook, and sweat ran down face to be facing these monsters. But she knew now that they could be killed-that she could make it so. Now there was only one standing before her-one more and her duty would be done on this nightmarish field. One more and she would not have been a disappointment.

She poured every last reserve of her strength, and the strength of her powered armor's machine spirit into the blows. Everything into the Slayer of Ten Thousand and it's Sarissa-all or nothing.

Victory or Death.

(OOC: All out Attacks until the end.)

Shephard · Feb 25, 2019

Zeitgeist Blue said:
Eriko felt fragile.

She was supported only by Storm of Summer and her mind floated in that half-space between registering the shock and pain of her body... and the painlessness from drugs injected into her bloodstream. Her limbs were numb by the result but her mind was as sharp as ever. She had endured worse even as an student of the Schola and that thought brought confidence welling into her chest.

She-- they had killed the dybbuk. All four of them, five if one counted the civilian keeping the cultist occupied. Somehow that made her day brighter than anything that had since happened, and through the screams and sounds of battle far away she stood against the last creature of the pair that had assaulted them. Stalwart, but more of the Storm, than her and she shut her ears to its cries.

Pitiful.

She would kill it because she wanted to and not because it demanded it. As if something birthed in sin and blood could demand or even hope. No, she would silence it because it grated her ears to listen to it parody the human voice.

It opened its maw to cry once more but the heel of her hand slammed it shut and she grabbed it, dragging it to the ground with her.

"Enough! I will hear no more from you, creature, and neither will you strike at the faithful any longer." She twisted her arm around its neck as chains whipped about her armour but she spared a glance at the civilians. "Give me your hands and your strength! Beat it down or strike now when it is helpless!"

(OOC: Sheathe chainsword. Grapple Opponent. Try and get the civilians to give Assistance to the Grapple or attack the dybbuk. +1 DoS, -1 DoF from Armour History.)

"What are you doing? Use your chainsword! Free me! Please, Sister! Free me!" The voice bellows as the creature's claws rake across your armor. Storm of Summer turns aside the blows, and you slam into the creature, pulling it into a classic arm lock learned all those years ago in the halls of the Schola Progrenium. The two Black-rot infected women try to assist, hanging off loosely off the monster as it roils and twists in your grip.

One of the civilians steps forward, leveling his autogun. "The Emperor protects!" The man cries out as he levels the rifle and pulls the trigger. There is a blinding flash, the crack of a round ricocheting off Storm of Summer's helm. One of the two women twists about with a scream, most of her rotted shoulder torn away by a stray round, blood and puss splashing against your cuirass. The other woman grunts as shrapnel shards slice into the diseased flesh of her belly, but does not let go. The dybbuk just stills, as flattened stub rounds land about the ground at its feet.

The man stares in horror at the dying woman. "No, no, no! Die abomination! You don't belong in the Emperor's world!" He calls out, sprinting forward to stab out with the vicious edged bayonet at the end of the rifle. With all his might and strength he stabs forward, the mono-edged point striking into the bare, torn muscle of the daemonhost. The blade, capable of biting deep even into armaplas plate, sinks barely an inch. With a worldless cry, the man tries to twist the blade in the wound and then, with a resounding crack, the polished blade snaps like a twig.

The dybbuk stares for a moment, not even reacting as you put a boot to the back of its knee and force it to the ground. Then, it stretches its jaw wider than should be possible, its cheeks splitting apart into an amused, rictus grin. The noise that comes from its lips is not the voice that has been speaking. You hear the creature's jaw crack and snap as the hideous, twisting noise echoes up into the heavens, broken teeth and implanted glass shards chattering against one another in some mad symphony. Blood and broken bits of bone splash against the man's chest. Bloody tears run down the schechin victim's faith as he falls to his knees, curling up into a ball. "Emperor, Emperor, Emperor..."

The dybbuk resurges against you with the utmost strength. It twists its arm out of your grip, ignoring the snapping of its bones and the tearing of its flesh, slamming its fists against you and raking your armored hide. Warning signs blare as the Storm of Summer struggles to contend with the creature's strength, servos hissing and sparking as you wrestle with one another on the ground. Faintly you hear the man on the truck, having bloodied his club with a fallen cultist, shouting from the gun. "I don't have a shot! I don't have a shot!"

Finally, it flips you over, forcing you to the ground. It is still making that ungodly noise. Through the maelstrom you can hear the prior voice, its words broken and anguished, weeping as again and agian the dybbuk tries to drive its claws through the joints in your armor. Then, a figure clad in scarlet.

"From the begetting of Daemons, our Emperor, deliver us!" Sister Greiland cries out, stabbing down with her gladius blade into the creature's back. It writhes, not truly hurt but momentarily distracted. "Get away, Sister!" She calls out. You kick the dybbuk clean in the face, shattering its jaw and giving you room to roll away. You turn to see Greiland stumble back, the dybbuk rising to its feet, broken jaw dancing in the wind.

Then, you see the serried ranks of PDF troopers, their standard fluttering in the breeze. The officer motions a chainsword at the creature. "Specialist Macharius? Kill that abomination!"

One trooper steps forward, leveling a bulky plasma gun. "Spirits of the Machine, reward my faith, and smash the target." He hisses as he pulls the trigger. Your visor darkens in that instant as a second sun flashes across the field. A human scream echoes out for just a moment before cutting out. As the last of the plasma bubbles away on the rockcrete, you see the scorched remains of the dybbuk, most of its torso and legs melted away and the chains that had bound it reduced to molten metal. A last, wailing groan escapes the creature's charred lips before it, at last, lies silent.

PDF troopers kneel to pray or embrace on another, now that at last the horror is slain. The plasma gunner kneels down, patting his plasma gun appreciatively as steam rises from its barrel. Sister Greiland eyes the thing's corpse.

"To be a light. To shine into the darkness. To cast the daemons out..." She breathes, turning her gaze upon you. "That is what it means to be daughters of the Emperor. To be a Sister of the Rose."

greendoor said:
"Purge the Unclean!"

Caelia echoes her Battle-Sister. Even now her hands shook, and sweat ran down face to be facing these monsters. But she knew now that they could be killed-that she could make it so. Now there was only one standing before her-one more and her duty would be done on this nightmarish field. One more and she would not have been a disappointment.

She poured every last reserve of her strength, and the strength of her powered armor's machine spirit into the blows. Everything into the Slayer of Ten Thousand and it's Sarissa-all or nothing.

Victory or Death.

(OOC: All out Attacks until the end.)

The next few moments are a whirlwind of righteous violence. You hear the sound of bayonets bouncing off its bare flesh, of blows sparking against its roiling chains and thudding into its flesh. Its nightgown stained red with blood, it swings out with its glass-tipped fingers, its broken neck swinging wildly with every blow it rains down upon you. Armor dents, glass shards tearing away ribbons of cereamite, but your armor holds. A Sarissa blow severs the creature's foot and it falls to its knees for a moment-And you bring down Slayer of Ten Thousand in a perfect, executioner's arc. Chains shatter, flesh tears, bone breaks. Its head bounces across the rockcrete. Its body twists and slashes out for another few moments before finally stumbling, something like smoke rising from its spurting neck. Finally, it topples.

In the moment before you rush to the next fight, you see the head looking up at you, no longer bearing the aura of the Daemon and its features bearing the softness of youth. You see the blue eyes vacant eyed and surrounded by blood, the blonde hair curled into a pony tail matted with filth, tattoos of flowers curl around the severed neck. You see the Astartes doll on the cobblestone, its stitches torn and the grey and white armor stained a hideous scarlet.

You twist your gaze away from the horror, throwing yourself into battle alongside Palais and the rest. Your arms jar with the force of blows you ring down upon the foe, your ears with the cries of your fellow warriors of the Emperor. You see bayonet blow after bayonet blow rain down on the creatures, barely managing to draw blood. One, pinned by a half dozen bayonets twists and writhes before Palais brings her chainsword down in a two-handed strike that splits it open. A PDF sergeant, his flak armor torn open as though it was paper and her belly sliced open, slams hard against you before toppling into the bed of an nearby truck. But still, one by one the creatures fall.

When the last one speaks, it is a distortion over your vox, like an old vox-show through a haze of static.

"Tick tock, tick tock, the hour grows late and the night draws near." It sings, queerly beautiful. "Black blood of a black world, recalling a black age. Will the Sisters of Thorns accept this dance with the Crownless King?"

Pia's power maul caves in its chest a moment later, driving it to the ground. Finally, stillness and silence runs across the field. The last of the creatures are fallen-their mortal hosts crippled, if not dead. The last of the cultists are dead, unconscious or fled, with even the apostate leader having fled before the might of the Imperium.

PDF troopers fall to the ground, weeping, exhausted. Some vomit or pray to the heavens. Palais staggers, leaning heavily on her chainsword, running her hands across the aquila upon her cuirass. You see Arina and the sister you had fought alongside embrace one another, breathing their thanks to the Emperor, as Derosa reloads her bolt pistol.

"Our work is not done." Derosa says, kicking over the twitching body of one of the Daemons. "Join me, Sisters. As we banish these creatures from the Emperor's sight."

Zeitgeist Blue · Mar 1, 2019

Eriko pulls herself up, nodding at Sister Greiland's words.

There is a moment when Eriko's vision falters and she fears she would lose conciousness but it passes quickly. A deep breathe is all she needs before she rushes over to the armless woman to apply aid. With a crack her tools slide into the open air and her assessment is immediate. The woman's arm would need to be cauterized to prevent bloodloss. The quickest and cleanest option.

She begins to work and while doing so she addresses Sister Greiland.

"I understand. Or perhaps I did once but now I understand with more clarity, the difference between lecture and living." She pauses then turns towards the officer so that he may know she was addressing him.

"Officer, bring your wounded and all the hands you can spare. We shall create a field hospital here. Now."

Then she turns back to the task before her, almost finished now, and as she applies the last dosage onto the woman's stump she murmurs a prayer for healing. Then without a second glance she pivots towards the other woman who took the brunt of the autogun's fire, but Eriko dismissed the wounds as not grave enough, so she turned her eyes towards the rest of the battlefield.

"To destroy daemons wherever they manifest so that others may not have to face them," she said to Sister Greiland. "You have my gratitude for the assistance but my work is yet to have ended."

And she strode away to the nearest faithful that needed aid, ignoring the cries of dying cultists.

"Sergeant!" She barked at one PDF soldier. "Where are your attached medics? Your wounded? We shall treat them but you need to bring all of them to me first."

A healer did not have the luxury of rest merely because the fighting has ended.

It was entirely her element.

(OOC: First Aid on the woman with Bloodloss. +20 to Medicae to stop Bloodloss. Then initiate triage for the PDF and civilians with the help of the PDF.

Int 40 + Medicae 10 + Master Chirugeon 10 + Bloodloss 20 - Fatigue 15 = 65)

greendoor · Mar 1, 2019

Shephard said:
PDF troopers fall to the ground, weeping, exhausted. Some vomit or pray to the heavens. Palais staggers, leaning heavily on her chainsword, running her hands across the aquila upon her cuirass. You see Arina and the sister you had fought alongside embrace one another, breathing their thanks to the Emperor, as Derosa reloads her bolt pistol.

As the last of the Dybukks were disabled or slain, Caelia goes to her knees, as if exhaustion and fading adrenaline drove her to the ground. She weeps, both in gratitude for the Emperor granting her the strength to slay those monsters, and for her weakness and terror in the face of them.

She resolves to be stronger next time, to not let the fear consume her again. She wonders if this is how her ancestors felt, facing horrors upon the bloodsoaked fields of Velorum. A nagging voice said they had been stronger, had stood taller-she does her best to ignore it. Still, she stays there on her knees for uncomfortable seconds, mumbling jumbled prayers and thanks.

Shephard said:
"Our work is not done." Derosa says, kicking over the twitching body of one of the Daemons. "Join me, Sisters. As we banish these creatures from the Emperor's sight."

Until she no longer has time. Battle waits for no weakness-she climbs to her feet in an effort of will. There was still work to be done.

(OOC: Join the rest of the sisters in finishing the daemons)

SirLagginton · Mar 4, 2019

Shephard said:
The priest grimaces at that. "Much of that is from the cult attack earlier," Liandra gives him a look. "But not all," He admits. "I have served with the Adepta Sororitas before, in my days as a missionary to the pagan tribes of this world. I know I have no authority over you in this. I will not demand that you throw open the gates. But I would ask that you intercede with the guildsmen on my behalf. Perhaps they will be more inclined to heed you."

Ilana looked at Tibim, at the once pristine sanctified robes of his office now soiled by his ministration of the aberrant and the mutant. Though he stood in opposition to Imperial authorities, she could respect the his intentions of tending to the downtrodden, even those who looked pushed to the edge of riot by the ravages of desperation. More than that though, it took a certain force of will to remain commited to the spiritual wellbeing despite the inherent sinfulness represented by the mutant. Those who could cast aside their own biases for the higher cause of Him on Terra were worthy servants.

However she shook her head, "We are sympathetic to your aims, never let it be said that the Sisters of the Burning Rose are indifferent to the plight of the Emperor's flock. As it stands now though any supplies sent out by the Guild will be torn apart in a frenzy. Any distribution of supplies must be orderly if we are to help the people. We are willing to speak on your behalf, but they will be justified in rebuffing us if we cannot guarantee the safety of their guildsmen. If you can help convince both your flock and those of the other leaders of this demonstration then we shall have a much stronger case to advocate for you."

Shephard · Mar 5, 2019

Zeitgeist Blue said:
"To destroy daemons wherever they manifest so that others may not have to face them," she said to Sister Greiland. "You have my gratitude for the assistance but my work is yet to have ended."

And she strode away to the nearest faithful that needed aid, ignoring the cries of dying cultists.

"Sergeant!" She barked at one PDF soldier. "Where are your attached medics? Your wounded? We shall treat them but you need to bring all of them to me first."

A healer did not have the luxury of rest merely because the fighting has ended.

It was entirely her element.

(OOC: First Aid on the woman with Bloodloss. +20 to Medicae to stop Bloodloss. Then initiate triage for the PDF and civilians with the help of the PDF.)

Injecting yourself with another dose of pain suppressants, you kneel down besides the groaning woman. Hastily injecting your patient with a cocktail of coagulants and morphia, you wrap the end of the shoulder in a swift tourniquet to help control the bleeding. Then, with a muttered prayer to the Machine-Spirit, you activate the chain-edged blade of your hospitaller medical tools, then cleanly drive the mono-edged teeth through the woman's molting flesh and shattered bone-you feel the reverberation in your weary bones, forcing you you to bite back a gasp of pain. Blood and puss spurts against your knee-pads as you wrap the wound in synth-flesh bandages. Your vision swims as you try to hook up a line of blood substitute, and a woman in the segmented armor of the Dreverarch PDF slips next to you, a medicae symbol visible through the cracks and craters on her right pauldron.

"Allow me." She says, hooking up the line. Then, she's gone, rushing off to help the wounded elsewhere.

The PDF officer, busy shouting orders at his men, turns toward you as you address him. The man looks at you, then at the multi-las emplacement still visible on a rooftop across the courtyard, then at the still smoldering fountain. His wan face curls into a face of utter disbelief.

"No. I think not. The manufactorum building there," He points his chainsword. "Will suffice."

Zeitgeist Blue said:
"To destroy daemons wherever they manifest so that others may not have to face them," she said to Sister Greiland. "You have my gratitude for the assistance but my work is yet to have ended."

And she strode away to the nearest faithful that needed aid, ignoring the cries of dying cultists.

"Sergeant!" She barked at one PDF soldier. "Where are your attached medics? Your wounded? We shall treat them but you need to bring all of them to me first."

A healer did not have the luxury of rest merely because the fighting has ended.

It was entirely her element.

(OOC: First Aid on the woman with Bloodloss. +20 to Medicae to stop Bloodloss. Then initiate triage for the PDF and civilians with the help of the PDF.)

"It was PDF who killed that thing. I just helped you get out of their way." Greiland laughs, until she sees you heading off. "Wait, Sister-" Greiland says, raising up a hand, but you're already gone. You stumble through the field, every footstep drawing up fresh pain through your body. You could use another set of pain suppressants, but you've already used most of your armor's supply.

The PDF sergeant turns from speaking with a weeping trooper. The woman looks at you with hollow eyes. "The medics? They just got done stabilizing sergeant Marian. Throne, so much blood..." She runs a hand over her face. "The lieutenant's setting up a field hospital at that manufactorum. Men from the first and second squads were moving men over there, a little less than a dozen severely wounded. Why on Terra would we wait for you?"

You feel a hand clamp on your shoulder. "Sister Eriko." Palais says, her voice quiet and soothing. "Sister, slow down. Just take a moment." She says, resting a hand on the cracks across the Storm of Summer's cuirass. It is now that you consciously become aware of the warning runes flashing through your helmet. It's about then that the painkillers finally begin to wear off. Your vision blurs as agony shoots up through your chest, and you hear a thud. Distantly, you are aware you are on your knees. Sister Palais grabs you, holding you steady as the pain recedes. After several long moments, at last, you find yourself able to breath, able to blink through the tears of pain running from your eyes.

"Medicae, heal thyself." Palais mutters, holding you steady. "Alright, Sister. I think you can stand now. But take it slow." You almost topple again as you force yourself to stand, grinding your teeth against the pain. One of your ribs is broken and at least one other fractured, you've suffered moderate bloodloss that blessedly seems to have staunched on its own, and you've suffered severe bruising, including on some of your internal tissue. You've burned through nearly eighty percent of Storm of Summer's pain suppressant stock, and are swimming right on the edge of a potential overdose.

"Sister, Emperor's sake. I know you have a duty to the wounded, but you look nearly as bad as them. I thought I saw your rune flash red for a moment in the engagement. Emperor's sake, I thought you died." Palais shakes her head. "I'd ask to lay down, but we're Sisters of the Rose. I know neither of us would be willing to do that. Just...the PDF know their duties, Sister. You don't need to be barking orders at them. Especially when you're on enough morphia to put a grox to sleep."

OOC: You have 5/6 pain, a crippled torso, a torso fracture, and used 4/5 pain suppressants. Also you should honestly be stunned for about three turns. You're fethed up.

greendoor said:
As the last of the Dybukks were disabled or slain, Caelia goes to her knees, as if exhaustion and fading adrenaline drove her to the ground. She weeps, both in gratitude for the Emperor granting her the strength to slay those monsters, and for her weakness and terror in the face of them.

She resolves to be stronger next time, to not let the fear consume her again. She wonders if this is how her ancestors felt, facing horrors upon the bloodsoaked fields of Velorum. A nagging voice said they had been stronger, had stood taller-she does her best to ignore it. Still, she stays there on her knees for uncomfortable seconds, mumbling jumbled prayers and thanks.

Until she no longer has time. Battle waits for no weakness-she climbs to her feet in an effort of will. There was still work to be done.

(OOC: Join the rest of the sisters in finishing the daemons)

The boom of boltguns and howl of chainswords herald the final demise of the possessed. They twist and writhe, trying to propel the broken bodies of their hosts despite crippling wounds that would have slain any normal man. But their mortal flesh has been pushed beyond even the limits these unclean spirits can force. They are sent back into the warp, laughing or screaming or howling, in utter ignominy. Even in such a state, the way these bodies have been twisted and mutilated is pain upon the eyes, their drones and wails clawing at ears and minds. The songs of banishment and hate that ring from the Sisters' lips is weary, driven beyond exhaustion. Yet, it is still triumphant, for the Emperor's work has been done this day.

In death, the monsters look like any other corpse. Men and women, some barely more than children, faces curled in agony. You put them to the flame, and sing to the heavens as you do.

"Oh Emperor, Lord of Mankind,
He who sits upon the Golden Throne,
We beseech you,
Our Master, Our Liege,
Lord of ten thousand years and more,
Drive out the unclean spirits
Drive out the taint of Chaos,
Hear this prayer, king of our hearts,
And banish this fiend from your sight."

The PDF, for their part, stay well away from the fallen daemon-things, concentrating on setting up a perimeter, rallying the men who paled before the daemon-things, and establishing a field hospital post. They have also taken up the task of gathering up those civilians that had not already fled the aftermath of the battle. They have suffered losses, but it is a pittance compared to the legion of heretics, dead and wounded alike, that litter the field.

Above it all, the fires around the statue go out, leaving only dying smoke plumes in its wake.

"Too bad that apostate managed to run off." Sister Arina says, burning incense over her boltgun. "Shouldn't have let that Hospitaller chase her alone. Work like that needs a warrior's touch, not a healer's, wouldn't you say Katherine?"

"It's not like they can run far." The other Sister says, the one who you fought alongside, sarissa to sarissa. "It's only a matter of time until we scourge this district."

Sister-Superior Derosa strides over, replacing the broken teeth of her chainsword. "Sister Katherine, Arina. Legatine Lethicia is coming over with reinforcements. It seems Palatine Rathitta wants this market district secured. Let's greet them with the light burning pyres, shall we?" She turns her attention to you "Sister Caelia. Palais seems to be helping your hospitaller, and Greiland is setting up on overwatch. If you'd wish to join us..." She leaves it an open question.

SirLagginton said:
Ilana looked at Tibim, at the once pristine sanctified robes of his office now soiled by his ministration of the aberrant and the mutant. Though he stood in opposition to Imperial authorities, she could respect the his intentions of tending to the downtrodden, even those who looked pushed to the edge of riot by the ravages of desperation. More than that though, it took a certain force of will to remain commited to the spiritual wellbeing despite the inherent sinfulness represented by the mutant. Those who could cast aside their own biases for the higher cause of Him on Terra were worthy servants.

However she shook her head, "We are sympathetic to your aims, never let it be said that the Sisters of the Burning Rose are indifferent to the plight of the Emperor's flock. As it stands now though any supplies sent out by the Guild will be torn apart in a frenzy. Any distribution of supplies must be orderly if we are to help the people. We are willing to speak on your behalf, but they will be justified in rebuffing us if we cannot guarantee the safety of their guildsmen. If you can help convince both your flock and those of the other leaders of this demonstration then we shall have a much stronger case to advocate for you."

Tibim mulls over your words for a moment, sweeping his gaze toward the Merud facility.

"Justified?" He growls. "Any danger the Guildsmen face is of their own makings. As the district has burned around them, they have given out only scraps of rations and pay to their workers. Rations too thin to meet the needs of their families, payment that has become more and more worthless as the prices on supplies have risen. All the while, their bellies have remained full. They brought this frenzy upon themselves with their selfishness."

Liandra steps forward. "And yet, even if they were to have a change of heart, can you say that your flock would not tear them apart as Sister Ilana suggests? Perhaps they have heeded your words, Priest. Would they be in the wrong for waiting for tensions to cool? Sister Illana is correct that they can only help you if they won't be torn apart."

Tibim smiles at that, and rises to his full height. "You're right. Heh. In my days as a missionary, I often had to put up with obstinate fools with grace. I suppose I will have to do once more. Very well. I will aid in calming the crowds. The other leaders, I am not in contact with most, but I may be able to provide assistance. And as for Eriente Bluejacket..."

Tibim pauses as a pelager woman pushes her way through the crowd, folding his hands behind his back. It takes you a moment to recognize her. Like any other Pelager she's all but hairless, with black eyes, visible gills along the sides of her neck and leathery hide. But she has a pronounced nose, weather worn hide and a particular splotch beneath her right eye. She wears a sleeveless work shirt, stained with sweat and promethium, and something that reminds you of a diver's pants. A number of other workers and pelagers follow in her wake, more than a few bowing to you and father Tibim.

"I'm right here, Tibim. Thought I might as well come by and say hello." She says, looking over the Sisters of Battle with a mixture of awe and trepidation. "Throne, you're even bigger and shinier up close." Nervously, she scratches the gills along the right side of her neck. "You aren't going to set me on fire or anything, are you?

Sister Anna speaks first. "Depends. Is it true you eat babies?"

The abhuman cocks her misshapen head. "Sure. With a zesty lyd-seed sauce. But only after cooking it well done. I'm not just a baby eating cannibal, but an awful cook too." She replies, deadpan.

"Eriente. Some respect, please." Pater Tibim sighs, as Anna snorts in amusement. "This is Eriente Bluejacket. She is an...Ally of mine. We've shared common cause, though we haven't agreed on everything. I can promise you that rumors such as that are nothing more."

"You would be wise to heed the priest's warning, abhuman." Liandra says, pointedly. "Watch your tongue."

Eriente, after a moment's hesitation, kneels. She keeps her inhuman eyes at the ground. "My apologies, holy ones. It's just, everything, seems like a bad joke these days. The district's falling apart, and Merud and Daughters is still running the promethium refineries like it's business as usual. Just two weeks ago I got a raise on my paycheck of all things. But I go to the market, and what food is left is priced so high I'd have to sell my right arm." She scoffs. "When things went to warp, people looked to me. Me and Father Tibim, I guess we kinda fell in together. Actually saved his life."

The priest frowns. "I was fine without your aid." He waves a hand. "But I digress. The Sisters have agreed to help. If we help calm down the riots."

She smiles tiredly at that. "Guess it'd be hard to argue with boltguns. But feth, it's not like we're the only ones making trouble." She nods her head in the direction of the augmented rioters across the street. You can hear chants of 'witch' and 'mutant', cursing the pelagers for having spread of the plague. Then, she gestures toward the gates of the facility, littered with bodies. "There's blood on the streets, and people are scared and angry. I can try to calm people down. But it's right mess right now."

Mina · Mar 5, 2019

Shephard said:
She smiles tiredly at that. "Guess it'd be hard to argue with boltguns. But feth, it's not like we're the only ones making trouble." She nods her head in the direction of the augmented rioters across the street. You can hear chants of 'witch' and 'mutant', cursing the pelagers for having spread of the plague. Then, she gestures toward the gates of the facility, littered with bodies. "There's blood on the streets, and people are scared and angry. I can try to calm people down. But it's right mess right now."

Maria shifted, jerkily, unused to such a light load. They could not afford trying, or failure in this. She did not doubt for an instant that her solution was inelegant, elegance simply wasn't in her wheelhouse.

"Calm would be good, but cowed is better. There seems to be so much...misplaced hatred in the air. These secular arguments are weighty. And divisive. What can unify the fractious but a demonstration of faith, and hate turned to its holy purpose? We have targets slated for execution already, human, witch, and otherwise."

"The blood of the wicked will wash the streets clean of misspent effort, and remind the citizens considering violence upon their neighbors that the Imperium's grip remains strong and unremitting."

Zeitgeist Blue · Mar 6, 2019

Shephard said:
Injecting yourself with another dose of pain suppressants, you kneel down besides the groaning woman. Hastily injecting your patient with a cocktail of coagulants and morphia, you wrap the end of the shoulder in a swift tourniquet to help control the bleeding. Then, with a muttered prayer to the Machine-Spirit, you activate the chain-edged blade of your hospitaller medical tools, then cleanly drive the mono-edged teeth through the woman's molting flesh and shattered bone-you feel the reverberation in your weary bones, forcing you you to bite back a gasp of pain. Blood and puss spurts against your knee-pads as you wrap the wound in synth-flesh bandages. Your vision swims as you try to hook up a line of blood substitute, and a woman in the segmented armor of the Dreverarch PDF slips next to you, a medicae symbol visible through the cracks and craters on her right pauldron.

"Allow me." She says, hooking up the line. Then, she's gone, rushing off to help the wounded elsewhere.

The PDF officer, busy shouting orders at his men, turns toward you as you address him. The man looks at you, then at the multi-las emplacement still visible on a rooftop across the courtyard, then at the still smoldering fountain. His wan face curls into a face of utter disbelief.

"No. I think not. The manufactorum building there," He points his chainsword. "Will suffice."

She nodded at where he pointed his chainsword.

"Good. That would provide better protection. Best to get your men to it."

Then she walks away without another word, looking for more to organize. The pain grows but with one command to Storm of Summer suppresses it as a fresh drug cocktail enters her bloodstream. There was always something to do and as the battle entered its last moments, she could only see clearer the path laid before her. This was much like the battlefields of past years and she could carry out her duties with her eyes closed.

Shephard said:
"It was PDF who killed that thing. I just helped you get out of their way." Greiland laughs, until she sees you heading off. "Wait, Sister-" Greiland says, raising up a hand, but you're already gone. You stumble through the field, every footstep drawing up fresh pain through your body. You could use another set of pain suppressants, but you've already used most of your armor's supply.

The PDF sergeant turns from speaking with a weeping trooper. The woman looks at you with hollow eyes. "The medics? They just got done stabilizing sergeant Marian. Throne, so much blood..." She runs a hand over her face. "The lieutenant's setting up a field hospital at that manufactorum. Men from the first and second squads were moving men over there, a little less than a dozen severely wounded. Why on Terra would we wait for you?"

Eriko's eyes narrow. Insolent. She was offering her art, her hands, yet to so curtly rebuff a Hospitaller of the Pure Water was like thrusting one's hand into an open fire. Counter-intuitive when she was her comrades' best hope at living. Eriko opens her mouth to retort but feels a hand clamp on her shoulder and she looks away to meet the visor of her superior.

Shephard said:
You feel a hand clamp on your shoulder. "Sister Eriko." Palais says, her voice quiet and soothing. "Sister, slow down. Just take a moment." She says, resting a hand on the cracks across the Storm of Summer's cuirass. It is now that you consciously become aware of the warning runes flashing through your helmet. It's about then that the painkillers finally begin to wear off. Your vision blurs as agony shoots up through your chest, and you hear a thud. Distantly, you are aware you are on your knees. Sister Palais grabs you, holding you steady as the pain recedes. After several long moments, at last, you find yourself able to breath, able to blink through the tears of pain running from your eyes.

"Medicae, heal thyself." Palais mutters, holding you steady. "Alright, Sister. I think you can stand now. But take it slow." You almost topple again as you force yourself to stand, grinding your teeth against the pain. One of your ribs is broken and at least one other fractured, you've suffered moderate bloodloss that blessedly seems to have staunched on its own, and you've suffered severe bruising, including on some of your internal tissue. You've burned through nearly eighty percent of Storm of Summer's pain suppressant stock, and are swimming right on the edge of a potential overdose.

"Sister, Emperor's sake. I know you have a duty to the wounded, but you look nearly as bad as them. I thought I saw your rune flash red for a moment in the engagement. Emperor's sake, I thought you died." Palais shakes her head. "I'd ask to lay down, but we're Sisters of the Rose. I know neither of us would be willing to do that. Just...the PDF know their duties, Sister. You don't need to be barking orders at them. Especially when you're on enough morphia to put a grox to sleep."

OOC: You have 5/6 pain, a crippled torso, a torso fracture, and used 4/5 pain suppressants. Also you should honestly be stunned for about three turns. You're fethed up.

"No," Eriko shakes her head resolutely. "They know but not enough. They need a guiding hand to achieve the greatest results. Soldiers to live and fight now or tomorrow if need be, not dead men and women or soldiers crippled out of inaction."

She climbs to her feet, leaning heavily on Palais. She teeters on the edge of blacking out but she grits her teeth and pushes past the sweet promise of unconsciousness into painful wakefulness. A second's pause allows her to sweep her eyes over her helmet's runes, reading and taking meaning from them as quickly as she would a children's book.

She could take her last dose but Palais is right. It would be too risky.

If she was to continue her duties it would be through the strength of will alone.

"I can do this. This is what I can do." She grits her teeth as she releases her grip from Palais. "Let me do this."

Free from Palais' support she attempts to take a step towards the manufactorum, now a field hospital. She had spent what seemed to be her whole life in field hospitals much like what the manufactorum was now, sheltering her and her Sisters and their patients from bombs that dropped like rain around them.

There were no bombs now, just the dying and the battle ending. Perfect conditions, but even then her legs would not move. She tried again, pushing, but still her feet were planted on the ground.

She checked her helmet readings and saw that the servo-joints of Storm of Summer's legs had shut down of their own accord. She would stay put in her position short of being carried like a sack of rice.

Realizing the futility of fighting her armour in this, Eriko closed her eyes and rested her chin on the upper lip of her breastplate. There was little to do but wait and pray to the Emperor for forgiveness.

"I believe I shall rest, Sister-Superior."

greendoor · Mar 11, 2019

Shephard said:
The boom of boltguns and howl of chainswords herald the final demise of the possessed. They twist and writhe, trying to propel the broken bodies of their hosts despite crippling wounds that would have slain any normal man. But their mortal flesh has been pushed beyond even the limits these unclean spirits can force. They are sent back into the warp, laughing or screaming or howling, in utter ignominy. Even in such a state, the way these bodies have been twisted and mutilated is pain upon the eyes, their drones and wails clawing at ears and minds. The songs of banishment and hate that ring from the Sisters' lips is weary, driven beyond exhaustion. Yet, it is still triumphant, for the Emperor's work has been done this day.

In death, the monsters look like any other corpse. Men and women, some barely more than children, faces curled in agony. You put them to the flame, and sing to the heavens as you do.

"Oh Emperor, Lord of Mankind,
He who sits upon the Golden Throne,
We beseech you,
Our Master, Our Liege,
Lord of ten thousand years and more,
Drive out the unclean spirits
Drive out the taint of Chaos,
Hear this prayer, king of our hearts,
And banish this fiend from your sight."

At first, the songs are strained, forced out. Caelia is exhausted, coming down from a high of terror, adrenaline, and combat drugs. She could not feel the triumph in her bones. But as the songs raise ever higher and as the boltguns boom, as the remaining Dybukks are slain, Caelia's troubles seem to slide away. Victory had been achieved, though at great effort.

Shephard said:
"Too bad that apostate managed to run off." Sister Arina says, burning incense over her boltgun. "Shouldn't have let that Hospitaller chase her alone. Work like that needs a warrior's touch, not a healer's, wouldn't you say Katherine?"

"It's not like they can run far." The other Sister says, the one who you fought alongside, sarissa to sarissa. "It's only a matter of time until we scourge this district."

Caelia briefly considers defending Sister Eriko, before shaking her head. The Sister's arrogance had gotten her trapped and isolated-she could defend her own reputation if she wished.

Shephard said:
Sister-Superior Derosa strides over, replacing the broken teeth of her chainsword. "Sister Katherine, Arina. Legatine Lethicia is coming over with reinforcements. It seems Palatine Rathitta wants this market district secured. Let's greet them with the light burning pyres, shall we?" She turns her attention to you "Sister Caelia. Palais seems to be helping your hospitaller, and Greiland is setting up on overwatch. If you'd wish to join us..." She leaves it an open question.

Caelia nods. She was still exhausted, but the triumph of victory and purging the remnants of the enemy lent a certain energy, burning like dark coals deep inside. "Of course, Sister-Superior." She grabs her boltgun, and falls in with Sister Superior Derosa. There was still work to be done.

(Join the Sister Superior)

Faith and Fire

Shadow Cabal Caerbannog Bun-Bun

Still in Statis

Still in Statis

(Verified Door)

Shadow Cabal Caerbannog Bun-Bun

Currently Made of Metal

Still in Statis

Still in Statis

(Verified Door)

Currently Made of Metal

Shadow Cabal Caerbannog Bun-Bun

Still in Statis

Still in Statis

Currently Made of Metal

(Verified Door)

Still in Statis

Currently Made of Metal

(Verified Door)

Shadow Cabal Caerbannog Bun-Bun

Still in Statis

Currently Made of Metal

(Verified Door)