WARHAMMER 40,000: ROGUE TRADER: THE CITADEL OF SKULLS (Roleplaying on the Farthest Frontiers)

"All right," you say, glaring at the man. "Then explain."

The bald headed man blinked a few times.

"Fuck," he said. "I wasn't actually expecting that to work."

"Then why did you ask!?" You splutter.

"I rightly suspected, missy, that Old Dexy here was about to be up before a firing squad - and thus, being of a rational mind and quick wits, I leaped to the conclusion that my best option was to begin with the only thing that would possibly give me a chance at keeping my bone box intact for the foreseeable future, dim though that chance may be. But though hope springs eternal, no sane or right thinking man should be inclined to trust in it overmuch, savvy?" He asks.

"I'm shooting his kneecap," Ryia says, drawing her crossbow and slapping a bolt shell into the cradle.

"Okay, okay!" Old 'Dexy' said, throwing up his hands. "Rightly, ah, well, the story begins, that is, to say, uh-" he stammers, clearly trying to find a way to say what it was that had brought him here without immediately being killed. "I was serving, see, on the Jolly." He gulps at Ryia's glare, though Em places his hand upon her shoulder. You quietly take her other hand, squeezing it, feeling the coldness of her augmetics. "A-And, well, we came to this world seekin' to meet, to parlay, with a scurvy dog of an Ork named Snokgrits, to see if we could avail of his services. Being freebooters and all, er, well, you know how you can hire such beasts. But during parlay, me Captain n' some others - including, of course, meself - we got it into our heads that this was folly. Dealing with an Ork?" He shakes his head, frowning. "but our first mate, Brakkus..." He spits. "Brakkus, he cares more fer suckin' up to our...well..." He pauses again, then looks nervous. "Us pirates, we must hang together, lest we all hang separate, so..."

"Spit it out, who is your warlord?" Em asks, frowning.

"Admiral, sirrah!" Old 'Dexy' sounds remarkably wounded. Em takes a step forward, then grabs onto the lapels of his jacket, glaring into his eyes.

"Pirates don't have admirals," he says, with a grim firmness that sends a shiver down your spine.

An excited shiver, this time.

"R-right you are, sirrah!" Old Dexy says, hurriedly, nodding. "But...now, uh, don't take this the wrong way, but-"

"Out with it!" Em releases him. "Good Emperor, are you a man or a coward?"

"Coward, sirrah!" Old Dexy says, immediately, then sighs. "...Karrad Vall."

Em's frown grows more intense. Ryia, though, snarls, and aims her crossbow right at his head. "The Faceless Lord?" she asks. "The butcher of the Ravening Deeps? The man who sacked Footfall in 94? The Lord of the Screaming Vortex? That Karrad Vall?"

Old Dexy spreads his hands, as if to say 'what can you do' and barrels forward: "So, anyway, Brakkus wanted to sup to Vall, he wanted to be a proper lacky-like, and me? I wanted us to live to see the end of our days. Violence ensued, twixt the Captain's side n' Brakkus' side and, ah, I happen to be ejected from yonder ship onto this here planet with this here salvation pod. As marooning goes, s'not so bad, is it. There's rum!" He kicks the side of the still gently, his hands still raised.

Ryia shoots the still. The bolt shell slams into it and explodes outwards with a roar of smoke and a spray of glass.

"Ah! The rum!" Old Dexy exclaims.

"So, Vall sent you to send the orks to Damaris. Why?" Em asks.

"Uh-"

Ryia reloads the gun.

"Vall's searching for sommit big!" Old Dexy says, hurriedly. "Not sure what, but it's big and he wants it."

You cross your arms over your chest - thinking of the Relic that had been kept secret on Damaris for so many centuries. But you have a question, and so, you step forward, and glare up at Old Dexy. "Do you know what happened here? Since, after all, you've been here longer than we have."

Old Dexy gives a melodramatic shiver. "Ah, yes. You noticed that too? See, we got here, eh..." He thinks. "Three, four months hence." Your nose wrinkles. That does explain the smell. "Cap'n got himself the idea he could squeeze that crone Aspys Chorda for her colony - you know, threaten to shell it, get some Thrones for us to recline upon, ha ha ha...a-anyway, we got nothing but static for our troubles. While we was dealing with the ork in orbit, the Cap'n sent down some fellas down here to check the colony out - they found silence and specters and that's all. They didn't find anyone - figured they had to be hiding or Chorda had had em pulled from this colony to another." He shrugs. "Coulda brought down cutters to get into the big door, but we was running enough of a risk as it is with them orks in orbit."

Em hmms softly.

"Who was this...Captain?" Ryia asks, her voice tight.

"Oh..." Old Dexy shrugs. "Captain Sly!"

Ryia freezes. Her hands tighten into fists and you can see the expression on her face - a set one, the kind of hard mask she clamps down to cover up what she's feeling, but you didn't need empathy or telepathy to know, immediately, that her heart is shattering, that horror is unfolding like a jagged flower in her. She betrayed Sly, killed him. But what if he had survived? What if that betrayal had pushed him down the self same dark path that Ryia had so very narrowly avoided herself.

What if?

There was just one tiny problem.

You caught it out of the corner of your eye - a tiny flicker of emotion in the reaver's eyes, perceptible thanks to your own augmetic senses, registering on your logis implant as a microexpression of barely expressed relief and joy. As if a gambit had worked.

As if a lie had taken.

"Oh?" you ask. "Are you telling me that Jacksome Sly has fallen to Chaos? Really?"

"Aye, that's the name," Dexy says.

Well.

The mask's off now.

"WHAT THE BLOODY HELL ARE YOU PLAYING AT, YOU BLACKHEARTED SCOUNDREL!?" Ryia shouts, grabbing onto Dexy's chest and lifting him, bodily into the air. Her hair swirls faintly and her eyes flash as she glares up at him, her arm whirring and clicking. "His name was Jentan! You're a liar!"

"Hell! Hell! Warpsblood!" Dexy's face paled and his legs kicked. "It's me! It's me! I'm the Captain!"

Ryia turns and throws him to the ground. Em steps up, placing his hand on her shoulder - his old Naval habits kicking in. There's a certain amount of roughness that Em will accept, but no more before he starts getting prickly about his gentlemanly honor. Dexy coughs and puts his palms against the ground - and suddenly seems quite a bit less laxidasical. He looks up at you, shaking his head. "My name is Dexen Skar - captain of the Jolly."

"Where is Sly? How do you know him?" Ryia snarls.

"He's a pet of Vall!" Skar says, holding up a hand.

"Sly is dead!" Ryia shouts. "How can he be a pet of Vall?"

Skar laughs. He looks down at the ground, his shoulders trembling.

"Answer me!" Ryia steps forward.

"You don't get it, Imperial, do you?" Skar asks, lifting his head up again, shaking his head. "You sit in your guttering Empire, huddling up next to campfires, and you tell yourselves stories. You say you drop an apple and it falls, that a clock ticks forward second by second, that the past can't be changed." His lips skin backs more, showing a rictus smile. "You bow to a corpse and think that it'll keep you safe and sane in a galaxy that's neither...I've sailed deeper and further than any of you Rogue Traders." He speaks the name with contempt. "I've walked the Cat's Cradle and seen the soulsmiths of Q'sol. Have you? I've seen the endless labyrinthine world of Perdition and watched the chronochariot races between daemons and wagered slivers of my yesteryears for tomorrows and neverweres. You've docked at the hellforge of Pollux and seen what a mind unbound by rationality can accomplish in the Sea of Souls - chaining raw warpstuff to steel and spite to make guns that can kill without a touch and swords that sing and you think that being dead is enough for Vall to say he's done withn you?"

Ryia steps back and away, her face ashen.

"Now..." Skar pushes him to his feet. "I lost my ship. I lost my place. I lost my crew. And I have in this salvation pod, a bolt pistol with one shot left. That shot's for Brakkus Rex's traitorous heart...you hear me?"

Em frowns, but before he can speak, Skar says something else.

"Before you say I won't live to see it..." he licks his lips. "This colony's vanishing, the attack on Damaris, the mutiny, the object Vall seeks, they're all linked together. You want to know the answers, maybe stop this from happening ever again?" He smirks slightly. "Maybe find an old mate and free him?"

Ryia tenses.

"Then you got one place you have to go," he says.

"Where's that?" you growl, glaring at him.

"The one place Vall puts anything of value - be it secrets or treasure. The Vault of the Citadel of Skulls - in Vall's home port of Inequity." He puts his thumb to his chest. "And I know how to get there, how to navigate to Inequity, how to slip past the guards, how to open the Vault, n' how to get out again with your lives and your souls still attached." He smirks. "So. How about it?"

He offers his hand, his glove caked with blood red dust.

---
Well?

[ ] Shoot him
[ ] Take his hand
[ ] Write In