Update 9: Through the hive, Part 1
[X]Pass by the local Mechanicus temple. Maybe they have something nice. Maybe it's already been looted.
(6 encounters +the temple)
Rolled: 62,99,93,18,59,75
[X]leave it open. You can retreat quicker that way.
You head towards the Mechanicus temple. It's practically your holy duty. To ensure you have a way out, you leave the hidden tunnel entrance open. You left Gene a whole bunch of dudes, they can earn their pay.
You make your way forwards. The place is dark and rundown, and full of piles of rubble. Most seems to have fallen from much higher up, through the long shafts that pass through the hive.
Occasionally you pass by old battle damage. At one point you have to cross an old pile of human bones nearly two meters tall. Some of the bones have teeth marks on them. It's a stark remainder of the price of failure. You move on.
An hour later you find another corpse. This one you recognize. It's Magos Prime Roykal Werten, and he's part of the Explorator Fleet. You didn't particularly care for him, and he cared more about killing blasphemers than furthering understanding, but he was a tough bastard. He seems to have fallen from one of the bridges higher up. Most of it came along.
It wasn't the fall that killed him. It was the numerous horrific wounds. His metal body has been melted, pierced and generally mistreated. He's more holes than anything else. Looking around, you find a number of other bodies, both Skitarii and Techpriest, in similar states.
You make your way up to where to battle must have come from. You try to figure out what happened
Investigation said:
1d00+1/4*20 (Combat) =90+5=95, needed ???: Success?
You don't quite manage to make sense of it. You think they were ambushed crossing the bridge, and Magos Werten severely injured. His command moved to retreat, and Werten held their attackers of, ultimately sacrificing himself to destroy the bridge. The ornery bastard wouldn't do that lightly, and that worries you.
It's all sensibly enough, but there are several small niggling details. You're damn sure it wasn't Orks, for a all that there are bullet holes liberally scattered about. The damage on the bodies shows great fire control, even if the attackers tried to cover it up afterwards. Some of that damage was postmortem.
So that leaves, what? Chaos? It's not impossible that a squad of Chaos Marines survived in the lower reaches of the hive.
You do find something a bit more positive. Going by the tracks, at least some of Werten's men survived. Maybe you can link up? Very carefully, you don't want to get ambushed as well, those tracks could be fake.
-**-*-*-**-*-**-**-**-**-**-*-
They weren't. You've managed to track those remnants down. Though calling them 'remnants' is somewhat misleading, since they outgun you by a significant margin. All told, it's about two and a half squads of Skitarii, seven techpriests, and a dozen servitors. Oh, and an Onager Dunecrawler. You don't know why that crazy bastard Werten thought it was a good idea to bring one into a hive, and you don't know how he brought it along this far. You're not complaining. In fact, he might've been onto something.
Anyway, now you get to talk to them, and hope they don't shoot you.
"This is Magos Explorator DHFE-54DF-FF74 Lychinus Iracundia. Identify yourself "
One of the Techpriests turns in your general direction, rather more accurately than you'd like.
"I am Magos Prime Anna Markov, Number T6-LF342-SGNBW. What do you want?"
You scoot behind some heavier cover. That woman is not happy.
"We found the remains of your little spat. Wondered who'd been killing you. Oh, and your boss is dead."
You hear the high-pitched screech of tortured metal. You don't think she appreciated your candor.
"Very well, then step out, I shall explain, and then you can aid us in recovery and retribution"
You hold back a sharp bark of laughter.
"Gal, I'm the leader of a ship. You're not. If anything, you listen to me. Actually, hold that thought."
And then you shout a series of control codes. The Skitarii and Servitors should be under your control now. She might be able to override this, but that would be a rather sharp escalation. Most Magos don't have the guts to go against their superiors quite that blatantly.
The screeching returns. It stays quite a while. Finally, she seems to come to a decision.
"Very well. I suppose we are at you command"
She puts an amazing amount of feeling into her digitized voice. And Binary isn't designed to express emotions, quite the opposite. She's really wasted in the military arm. With her language talent, she should've become a Transmechanic and joined the Divisio Linguistica.
She doesn't appreciate your advice.
(gained: 2.5 Skitarii Vanguard squads, 12 Combat Servitors, 6 lesser Techpriests (Myrmidon),1 Onager Dunecrawler ,1 Magons Prime )
As it turns out, she doesn't know anything more than you. In fact, she knows less. She kinda sucks at her job. Oh well, now you're here, so it's all good.
She still does not appreciate your opinion. You also offer to fix her Bionics, if she's can't fix them herself. That screeching is getting on your nerves. Oddly, that actually helps. A serene smile settles on her face, and she relaxes. Then she starts going through her weapons, and it gets kinda weird. You hurry off before she does something heretical.
-*-*-**-**-**-*-*-*-
Two hours later, just a short distance from the Mechanicus Temple, you meet a second group of Techpriests. Their Magos sacrificed himself to allow them to retreat, though they're less well organized, lacking a higher ranked Techpriest. They fold quickly into your command.
There is however one issue: These guys didn't belong to Werten. And that means something ambushed and scattered two groups of Techpriests. You do not like the implications of that. The only bright side is that neither group got completely annihilated.
(gain 5 lesser Techpriests(various), 4 squads of Skitarii Rangers)
-*-*-*-**-*-**-*-*-
You arrive at the temple to find it already occupied. Seems a bunch of Orks made it their home base. They have at least one Mek going by the constant clanging. You estimate there's a force of around 80 Orks, and at least 3 Deff Dreads. There might be more inside.
It would've been a lot scarier a few hours ago.
Plan:
(you can come up with terrain features and similar, if it leads to something cool/clever. You also have a decent amount of supplies)
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Equipment
(what sort of neat stuff do your new troops have? Check the 1d4chan page for options)
[]write in
Your forces:
-You
-1 Magos Prime
-6 Myrmidons
-17 combat servitors
