To Pay The Tithe - A Warhammer 40k Quest

Approximate Strength: 19,000~

Heroes:

Technology Level:
Entrenched Feudal Era - Technology and equipment hailing from their home world is the prevalent force throughout the regiment.
Notably Advanced Animal Husbandry - Showcase a comprehensive knowledge of animal husbandry, a tendency to domesticate highly dangerous predators for their own use, and a meticulous approach to the care of such to ensure domesticated beasts of a particularly high quality.
Further notable assets currently unknown.

Regimental Traits:
Warrior Culture - Almost every aspect of Caledonian life revolves around warfare and combat with death in battle practically a form of religious worship. While they may be a feudal world this centuries of history has led to a mastery of warfare from fighting it to training for it. When rolling dice for Caledonian combat results roll 2d100 and keep the highest. (Roll 2d100kh)
Tunnel Warfare Doctrine - Vale Wars are fought not just in the Vales of the Caledonia's high mountains, but also in the tunnels and caves and Vale Warden nests that lie beneath them. To fight a war in Caledonia is to do battle with human and insect alike in ever twisting enclosed spaces. To Caledonians this is less a form of war and more an art. Provides +10 to combat rolls in applicable situations. (Roll +10 when applicable)

Internal Complications:
Old Ways meet New Means - The regiment and the Mechanicus detachment assigned to it are at odds. Tensions are climbing. The Caledonians are slow to adapt to these new tools of war and the Mechanicus have already openly clashed with the regiment's Vale-Smiths. In the old ways the road to progress finds little purchase.

The Impatience of the Blooded - None dare raise their voice in the face of those who earned their place but in quiet spots where only Squires are thought to stand the words are whispered nonetheless. The Hermits have done as they always have but how long the wisdom of countless centuries will temper the most impatient among them is a mystery…

Notable Achievements:
None, though such claims spoken within earshot of the regiment themselves will end in all out brawls.

Service History:
None currently though don't say as such to the Caledonians themselves.

QM Note: Much like the Glossary this will expand as the quest carries on and more details about the regiment come to light.

[X] Fort Hulm

---

Months have passed since the 122nd was raised upon that distant world of Caledonia. Today Annette does as she has every day since this fledgling regiment's Raising... She watches. Standing atop a catwalk in clothes borrowed from a deckhand back on the Guiding Light she strikes a rather unassuming figure with her light red hair tied back in pony tail and grease smeared across her arms. Any curious eye below would likely forget her presence moments after catching sight of her.

"Another worker among thousands. Dismissed just like that..." She mutters to herself, a small grin playing across her face as the show she came to watch starts up down below. Metal screeches as a pair of large doors are thrown wide. Cart after cart of mixed feed begins filtering into the cargo bay and towards a curved wall of stacked containers. A squad of exhausted youths step forward to meet them under the watchful eye of a man clad in that strange plate mail the Caledonians call Silvasari.

Behind Annette someone begins to approach. Their footsteps are... Disturbingly precise. Each one produces the same noise. Each one takes the exact same amount of time as the last. Each one is accompanied by barely perceptible hissing. She doesn't turn, already aware of who her new guest was, "This is for his mount getting out on the Guiding Light apparently. If you asked me a month ago I'd have thought a punishment like this was the Caledonian's shrugging what happened off, but-"

Her words are cut off by a sudden cry to action below. Six legged insectoids can be seen swarming over the wall of cargo containers. Their grey and brown mottled chitin seems to eat the light rather than reflect it causing Annette to lose track of those leading the pack from time to time. Her grin grows wider as the plate mail clad Knight, 'Anduval.' her mind comments, charges towards the closest one to punch it right between the antennae.

"But these Vale Wardens as they are called are highly aggressive and immensely dangerous beasts that were likely the peak predator of their world. Even domesticated their attempts at affection are potentially lethal to their caretakers," A synthesized voice finishes where Annette had left off as a red robed figure steps up to the railing beside her, "Yes. I am aware, Commissar."

A gentle laughter escapes her as she watches what was supposed to be feeding time turn into what the beasts below surely thought was a play fight even as a nasty gash is torn across a Squire's torso.

"It is good that we can skip the introductions then High Enginseer Oleg. I shall say this only once: I will not intervene in the conflicts between yours and theirs so long as it does not interfere with the 122nd's duties. However, the moment it does..."

Her eyes finally break away from the fight below to stare into the darkened hood of the adept of the Cult Mechanicus standing beside her.

"You will be the first I execute. And, before you attempt to claim that such an act is an overstep of my powers, I should inform you that you'll be the third member of the Mechanicus I have put an end to."

Lights cut on beneath Oleg's hood, red and green and blue lenses sliding into place in several different configurations seemingly searching for something. Commissar Annette's grin doesn't slip from her face as she turns back to watching the fascinating creatures beginning to tear into the mountains of feed brought to them, "Feel free to stay and watch High Enginseer, but I will have to ask you do so far away from me. In case you didn't notice I am trying to stay out of sight for now. Good day, Oleg. May the God-Emperor and Omnissiah be with you."

She doesn't turn away from the entertainment before her as the sound of the figure retreating rings clear in the air. Her hands reach into her pocket and slowly unravel a compressed food bar that she bites into with surprising relish. Muttering to herself at a volume just high enough for the retreating figure to hear, "Truly a shock those things don't consume meat, isn't it?"

---

Almost six months pass between the raising of the 122nd on Caledonia and their arrival on the fortress world of Fort Hulm. Much of the journey is uneventful even as the regiment finds its numbers swelling to nearly twenty thousand as various auxiliaries are attached to bring them in line with the standards of the Astra Militarum.

A host of enginseers and servitors under the command of one High Enginseer Oleg are brought on for maintenance and repairs to the various advanced technologies the regiment is soon equipped with.

Dozens of scribes and laborers under orders to assist with regimental logistics arrive dispatched from the Munitorum bringing with them convoy trucks.

A dispatch from the Ecclesiarchy sees ten members of the clergy integrating into their ranks to uphold their religious belief and act as spiritual guidance in the days ahead.

Chefs, Chiurgeons, vox-specialists, and far more trickle in with every stop along their route. And it is with every stop that problems begin to grow under the surface of the seemingly calm force of the Imperial Guard.

Youths expecting and longing for the chance to prove themselves find instead chaffing prisons of metal trapping them in the void of the Starry Vale denying them the Errantry they were promised. Clashing ideologies, beliefs, and understandings of the world at large serve to drive a wedge between the Hermitage and the members of the Mechanicus even as the Archivist does her best to hold things in line. News of the fleet's arrival to Fort Hulm does little to alleviate the problems as the likelihood of a years long stay on this world begins to set in.

Gained Internal Complication - Old Ways meet New Means
Gained Internal Complication - The Impatience of the Blooded

The 122nd Caledonian Cavalry is to be one of two regiments to be deployed to the planet below bolstering the standing force to a total of five regiments... A far cry from the fifteen that once stood vigil here before the demands of the Indomitus Crusade drew them away.

It is as transport ships begin to ferry the two regiments to the world below, its surface obscured by hazy grey smoke and clouds of violent hues of orange and red, that disaster strikes.

---

And with that our Quest can be considered properly underway. You'll find the vote options down below, but for now I want to explain the core mechanic we'll be centering play around. As I mentioned in the opening post you all are not controlling the guardsmen we created so far but instead are essentially acting as fate which will take several forms as we progress but currently means you are forced to choose a Crisis that the 122nd is confronted with.

A Crisis will always be an event capable of bringing insurmountable harm to the regiment. These events will shake its foundations and potentially wipe them out in the process. However, by coming out the other side you will learn more about who and what the 122nd are and they'll unavoidably be changed by them.

Surviving a Crisis will often not be beneficial to the 122nd. Our Quest isn't about building that perfect regiment, but instead attempting to give the regiment we are following a satisfying story. So, who wants to shove our fledglings from a cliff?


What Crisis befalls the 122nd?
[] The Extinguished Light Of Wisdom - The Archivist. The Great Hermit of the Vale of Golden Winters. Sage of the Northern Fiefs. Mentor to two Knights of the Tenth Vale. Mother to the Seventh. Many are her titles for she was known across Caledonia as one whose wisdom and knowledge could rival even those from the Starry Vale above. A life of eighty seven years has left her one of, if not the oldest Caledonian. And yet it is during something as simple as atmospheric entry that her life comes to an end.

All Caledonians mourn her death. The Seventh is lost. None remain to keep the Hermitage in check.

[] Only A Moment Of Weakness - For centuries Fort Hulm has stood tall against the enemies of the Imperium and yet never in all those years has the world been weaker than in this moment. Drained of resources and military might by the Indomitus Crusade that swept through merely a year prior, the forces standing guard are stretched beyond thin. And so, it should be no surprise then when the arrival of reinforcements is met with joy on one side... And the roar of planetary defense batteries on the other.

Beware, Knights of Caledonia, part of Fort Hulm has fallen and it is into the very heart of the fire you fall...

[] Look And Behold, The Savage - Intolerance... Intolerance is part and parcel of the Imperium. One of many foul pieces of a cruel regime. Yet so often that intolerance is directed not to their 'fellows' but to the xenos beyond or the mutants they claim to be so different... To Lord Governor Xander there is no difference between the Mutant, the Xenos, the Heretic, and these "Lowborn, backwater savages".

What awaits on the planet below is not the welcoming arms of comrades but the iron grip of a bigoted tyrant.