WARHAMMER 40,000: A Thousand Tiny Suns (40k/Exalted Crossover!)

You turned to Brutus.

"We're going to handle that," you said.

"But...how!?" he asked.

But you were already starting off, sprinting away, essence burning in your skin, greatcoat in hand.

"I hasten to remind you, neither of us know how to fly one of these things, and their seats are built for space marines, and I doubt Captain Brutus is going to just give us one of his battle brother pilots and-" Kit was saying as you two bounded up the gangway of the Thunderbolt and into the narrow corridor that ran along its center, past the large cocooned seats that served for the demigods who would normally take it into battle. Hatches set here and there ran to the ball turrets and implanted weaponry, but as you approached the cockpit, the seat spun around and Amberly was there, her commissarial cap tilted back at a jaunty angle, her blond hair spilling around her shoulders.

"You!" you exclaimed.

"You said we," she said, smirking.

"How did you get here before us?" you asked.

"Did you sit in that chair, waiting for us to arrive?" Kit asked, his voice less accusatory and more amused.

Amberly, rather than responding, had turned back to the console. She looked a bit like a girl-child, seated at her father's desk, playing with his data-slates and trying to act like a big important boss woman. If only her clothing had been oversized as well and the illusion would have been complete. Illusion or no, the Thunderbolt lurched and started to cruise towards the buzzing, humming voidshield array that stretched over the hanger bay. You stumbled, lurched, and finally got to the side of the seat, grabbing on with all dear life.

"Can you fly a thunderbolt!?" you exclaimed.

"How different from a skycar can it be?" Amberly asked, cheerfully, her dainty fingers closing around a yoke meant to be hauled about by biosynthetic steel fists the size of her entire upper torso. The thunderbolt screamed through the void, darting out and away from the battle-barge. Ahead of you, the snarling, hissing dragon was twisting on itself, trying to bring its claws to bear on the figure darting around it. You saw it hadn't taken any damage - whatever those lascannon blasts had done, they hadn't actually hurt it. Maybe it had all been for show? Just to get its attention. It swiped a claw the size of the prow of the battle-barge herself, and cleaved through space so fast you were fairly sure it would have registered as a kiloton impact on a planetary surface.

The spark was gone.

Had he struck it?

Was that heroic Champion - whatever that was - scattered into fragments.

"We're coming in hot!" Amberly said, cheerfully.

The dragon grew. And grew.

And then thump. The entire Thunderbolt lurched down and you, Kit and Amberly jerked your head up. A crackling voice came through the laud-hailer built into the lecturn...and spoke perfectly understandable Low Gothic. "I don't know where you people came from, but praise the Great Maker for you."

"Great Maker...she must mean the Omnisiah," Amberly said. The voice had been feminine, you had picked that much up. "Whoa!" Amberly yelped, then yanked back on the yoke. Whatever had landed on you clung to the upper edge of the thunderbolt as you flew up and away from a massive, sweeping claw. The voice crackled through the grille.

"We need to find a way to disable Oberashti - he's a lesser elemental dragon, so he's no joke. But this...madness of his, he blew past an entire cadre of the best Clerics we have," the woman riding atop you said. "If we kill him, Ku is going to be pissed."

You grabbed the speaker-captor from Amberly just as she started to say 'who the bloody hell is Ku' and instead: "Hold on!" Then you turned to Amberly. "Get us closer."

"Close? ...okay!" Amberly said, biting her lip. The thunderbolt flared and screamed forward on hissing streams of thrust. Amberly flew towards the dragon's belly - then banked up hard, arcing and twisting, so that when the dragon came down to bite the thunderbolt. It wasn't trying very hard - you were pretty sure if it had moved as fast as it had been before, it would have managed to kill you in a single instant...as it was, Amberly twisted up and away from its nose before the chomp happened and you got a great view at the top of the creature's body. The head was covered with...strange...

Not growths.

Buildings.

Protrusions of black metal, gears with an almost organic froth surrounding them, cables and wires. It was all sick. It was all wrong. And it was driven directly into the creature's brain. Surrounding the buildings were hideous mockeries of the Tech-Priest's art. Flesh was stretched between gears that connected in no logical fashion, while crystal nodes emerged from eye sockets and buzzed and crackled in complete disregard of the proper rites of the motive force. You thrust your finger.

"Heretics!" you said. "Tech-Heretics have taken control of this...this...machine spirit! I think it's a machine spirit."

"Elemental of Smoke, actually," the voice over the grille said - and you started. You hadn't even spoken into the speaker-captor. "You have an odd way of speaking - but you are...a..." She paused. "Are you lever-puller? You have the mask for it, and the coat."

"She is 41-22, and a natural magos," Kit said, grinning impishly as he got ahead of you. "An artificer unlike anything the galaxy has ever seen."

"An artificer! Hah! I'm kitted for combat, not artifice - maybe you can fix Oberashti before-"

The massive dragon roared again. Enough! Submission equals Truth! Endings ...Endings...Endings equal...Equal... His whole body shuddered. No! He gnashed his teeth, and his head flung to the side. I serve...Ku! The Minister of the Far Reaches! The Regulator of Smoke! I serve...the God of Mysteries and Fear! I...stand between the future that must not- He trembled, then roared. Submission Equals Truth! Submission! Equals! Truth!
"The tech-heretics are overwhelming the machine spirit's righteous abilities!" you said, immediate understanding blooming. "We have to stop them!"

The flesh of the huge dragon writhed - and in great, bloody chunks, scales tore and what looked a whole awful lot like multilasers started to spring up like acne on the face of someone who didn't know how to change their mask properly.

"Oh Emperor!" Amberly whispered, at the same time the voice of your passenger came through the grille.

"Oh Great Maker."

It seemed worlds apart, cultures diverged, and yet, humans remained humans.

---
What do you do!?
[ ] Land at the least defended part of Oberashti's back and fight your way up on foot
[ ] Try and land at the head, risking the essence cannons
[ ] Ask Amberly to try some Sidereal Bullshit and pray!
[ ] Write In


Health: Fine
Anima: Glowing (-2 to stealth)
Willpower: 5/5
Personal Motes: 13/13 | Peripheral Motes: 28/28 (Committed Motes: 5)
Limit: 1/10 (Trigger: Being stymied by indulges around her)
XP: 0 | Solar XP: 0
Major Projects: 0/5
SXP: 11 | GXP: 18 | WXP: 11

"I'm taking us down!" Amberly said.

You did the only logical thing to do in such circumstances.

You began to pray, whispering so soft that it was muffled up in your breather. The starfield spun wildly as Amberly twisted hard on controls that were far too large and far too durable for her hands. Bright flashes of blue-white light exploded from the weaponry sprouting on the back of the gigantic reptile, and several of them whipped past the Thunderbolt's wings. more than a few shot towards the front window - but before they struck, a body moved before the cockpit and the narrow prow of the ship.

They were humanoid, that much was certain. They were clad in gleaming blue and gold armor, somewhat similar to power armor, though you saw no carapce that made it swift and mobile - and it was carved to a feminine figure. But from her back spread two...wings? Save they were not wings at all, they were narrow metal limbs that unfurled glimmering, wispy energy that formed the shape of feathers without their physical presence. She held in her right hand a hilt and from that hilt burst a crackling red field of energy that just barely formed the shape of a sword's blade. Her left bore a shield, the edges covered with serrated teeth like a chainsword's blade. Steam hissed from vents along the small of her back as her arm blurred into motion - intersecting again and again with incoming pulses of energy, reflecting them away with bright sparks.

"I can't see with you in the way!" Amberly shouted.

"Would you rather be splattered!?" The woman barked - looking back over her shoulder.

She was not wearing a helmet.

And she was not human. Her skin was sky blue, and her hair was bright red - but not the red of a Cadian, no, it was the red of silicate crystals or the mineral worlds of the far frontier. It was metallic red, and each 'strand' was a crystal the size of your thumb. Then she looked back ahead, parrying an incoming blast with her shield, then with her sword, both impacts causing her to stumble back, her body filling the entire vista-plate.

"Emperor damn it!" Amberly snarled, then plunged forward. The engines screamed and the entire ship twirled hard and-

The sudden ringing in your ears and the feeling of your mask being almost knocked off your face sent you scrabbling. You grabbed wildly, caught onto Kit's arm, and blinked at him. He was holding onto a dangling leather strap - while Amberly cackled as she threw the throttle even faster. The strange woman on the hood of the ship had caught onto the port side of the cockpit window and was clinging on with her fingernails.

The starboard side of the cockpit was gone. A glowing, cherry red hole tore away all save for a bit of sparking console, a few dangling cables, and the feet of the copilot servitor. You gaped at the void whistling past. Then, loudly. "Why are we not depressurizing!?" You exclaimed.

"The Emperor protects!" Amberly said, cheerfully.

"Not that much!"

The dragon was filling the forward vistaplates - Amberly, somehow, had bent fate and gotten the Thunderbolt almost to the scales. Then the entire cabin lurched up and down with the impact as she skidded to a stop, thrown against the controls and then yanked back. Kit, unmoving, kept you rooted with a single burly arm.

"There we are," Amberly said, sighing and springing to her feet, drawing from nowhere her laspistol - aiming and firing a flurry of shots. Several techno-organic horrors that were rushing up at the side of the Thunderbolt fell back, screeching. "Now, what's the plan? I say we go straight for the brain of this Emperor be damned monstrosity and put it down."

"Can we even go out there? Is there air!?" You exclaimed, while the blue clad, blue skinned, blue winged woman swung around to fill the hole, her wings folding shut as she dropped into the thunderbolt. Her grin was brash.

"Hello!" she said. "I'm the CSA Vengeful Crystalline Hawk. Nice boat." She patted the side of the thunderbolt.

"It's called a Thunderbolt," you said.

"No, it's a Thunderhawk," Amberly said.

Your brow furrowed and then you scowled, then stomped across the Thunderhawk's cockpit to stick your gloved hand experimentally beyond the edge of the twisted metal. You didn't feel the void out there. But you did see several of the hideous creatures that had camped out on the vast dragon were rushing up into positions - they carried crossbows, and three were dragging a large essence cannon with wheels on the sides to make it easier to move. You had a few seconds to decide how to handle this fight, and so, you stuck your head out and swept your gaze around. The Thunderhawk had landed right in the middle of the main settlement of creatures, near three huge buildings that were attached to the skin and, from the furrowed welts and pustules growing around midnight black scales, burrowed into the brain of this beast. There were lots of people that looked like human but twisted and augmented into something...more.

Or far less.

They had enough heavy weapons to turn the Thunderhawk into bubbling slag, if you let them.

And on your side, you had this Hawk lady, who looked tough and armored enough to give a space marine a run for their money, and Kit, who was just pure murder on two legs. And then there was yourself - with the Lens Lance, it wasn't as if you were a slouch in combat. Also, Amberly was there. Your brain whirled through all of this in a single flash and you said...

---
What are your plans?

[ ] We all push for the big building - we free the snake, we end this.
[ ] Amberly and HAwk, keep our Thunderbolt safe, Kit and I will hit the main building
[ ] Lets clear this town out, then circle around to the main building once we won't be shot in the back
[ ] Write in


Health: Fine
Anima: Glowing (-2 to stealth)
Willpower: 5/5
Personal Motes: 13/13 | Peripheral Motes: 28/28 (Committed Motes: 5)
Limit: 1/10 (Trigger: Being stymied by indulges around her)
XP: 0 | Solar XP: 0
Major Projects: 0/5
SXP: 11 | GXP: 18 | WXP: 11