[X] Fight

Why the fuck not.
Just wanted to ask if the Emperor will be in this reality as well?
 
Mini-turn: Inconvenient Truths
[X]Fight

The pain was still present but subsiding, so you slowly picked yourself off of the ground. The bodies of the doctors and nurses laid motionless on the ground around hospital bed. Some barely recognisable beneath the deformities that had left their bodies broken and twisted. Nayla herself was not even recognisable as human at this point. The second bird-like head having grown at least as large as the first, it was squawking and cackling maniacally. The multicoloured feathers had by now spread across her entire body, replacing her hair, and now glowed with shimmering ever-shifting lights. Just like the coloured orbs that now all vanished as suddenly as they had appeared. It hurt to look directly at it all, so you closed your eyes and grit your teeth.

It still felt as though there was a war going on inside you. You bodies regenerative abilities pushed to their limit as they worked to fix mutations and squash tumours as quickly as they could form. You'd have been dead a dozen times over if it weren't for your nature as a perpetual, an advantage that no one else in the room could claim. Yet still the voices scratched away at your mind, where you abilities were far less useful.

"See! The host fails no? We should have waited longer, but you were too impatient no?" the second voice squawked.

"All goes according to plan yes? Besides, the secret seeker could make a fine host yes?" the first responded, sounding far too smug for your liking.

You had no idea what the voices in your head were, at the time you thought they may have just been hallucinations from all the pain. But whatever they were, you needed to stop what was happening. So you began to stumble towards the bedside, eyes still closed as you extended your arms outwards, searching for something to use as a weapon.

"No! They lack the gift, no." the second voice continued, seeming to grow louder as you neared the bedside.

"They can be taught yes. You hear me secret seeker yes? We can teach you all you wish to know about immaterium yes? All you wish to know and more..."

As the first voice addressed you a shiver ran down your spine. It felt as though you were standing in the path of an oncoming storm, one that threatened to blow you away if you didn't get out of its way.

"Yes secret seeker..." the first voice continued, "Let us show you things beyond your mortal comprehension yes? Let us show you the great truths of the universe yes?"

By this point you were running on instinct more then anything. So when you finally wrapped your fingers around something small and heavy, a diagnostic devices of some sort, you swung as hard as you could towards the bed. You eyes had still been closed for the first swing, but the sound and cackling squawks guided your strike. It was meet with a solid crack and the spray of ice cold blood. You opened your eyes, just for a second to line up for your follow up strike, but you wish you hadn't. The first swing had struck true, cracking the beak of the second head and silencing it. But the first head was unharmed, and looking straight at you.

The face was unrecognisable, a horrifying mess of feathers and flesh and bone all mashed together in some hideous parody of avian features. But the eyes, the eyes were still that of a little girls... You closed your eyes and swung again, again and again you struck whilst the body thrashed a screamed beneath your blows. You have no idea how long the lopsided battle lasted. It must have only been a few seconds, but to you it seemed to drag on for minutes.

Then without warning. A bright flash of psychedelic light burned through your eyelids, and you were sent flying backwards from a sudden explosion force. Chilling blood and frozen gore covered you from head to toe as you felt yourself collide with some of the equipment lining one of the rooms walls. You felt your spine and the back of your skull crack, and then everything went dark...

You're not certain how long you'd blacked out for. But when you next awoke you were still on the floor of the hospital room. Covered in both the remnants of your own melted flesh and the blood of the creature that had once been Nayla Shah. New members of the hospital staffs had arrived on the scene, and a pair of doctors had hauled you onto a stretcher. They seemed surprised that you were alive and quickly hurried you away from the room. But not before you were able to get one last look at the carnage. Nayla's body was completely gone, reduced to a pile of gore in the remains of the hospital bed. Those unfortunate doctors and nurses that rushed in at the first sign of trouble still laid lifeless on the ground, twisted beyond all recognition.

By the time the doctors had gotten you out of your now hopelessly soiled clothing and examined you for any signs of mutation of genetic degradation, you'd had enough time to collect yourself a think of a convincing cover. You told them how you'd come to visit Nayla and wish her well on her upcoming surgery before saying goodbye. Close enough to the truth that no one would question it. Then after leaving you'd heard screaming and had run back to the room to investigate. A bit of a half truth, but they didn't need to now that you'd been in the room the whole time. After seeing the bodies of the hospital staff on the ground, you'd entered the room to try and help, only to be caught in the explosion of gore. That helpfully explained why you'd been covered in gore, yet not horribly mutated like the others. And since they had no reason to doubt your story, they never even bothered check the DNA of the bile on your cloths, so they never figured out that most of it was yours.

They would end up keeping you under observation for a couple of days just to be on the safe side. During which time you were interviewed again by the members of you former investigation team. Needless to say no one was happy that another "incident" had occurred. Though with Nayla now dead, along with another four people, there didn't seem to be anywhere else for the investigation to go. An amendment was added to the report that had been submitted not a few days prior, with your own comments and testimony included, and the case re-closed shortly before you left the hospital.

You didn't mind being stuck in the hospital all the much, it gave you time to process everything that had occurred. Plus the confirmation that your exposure to the whole psychic event had not left you with any noticeable mutations, genetic or otherwise, was certainly reassuring. Still as you tried to make sense of all you had witnessed your mind kept coming back to those mysterious and extremely agitating voices. The more you though about it, the more you became convinced that they hadn't just been some sort of pain induced hallucination. But if that wasn't the case, then what were they?

They spoke of "hosts", and the secrets of the "immaterium". Had they meant the Warp? It had long been something off a fringe theory that the Warp may be home to some sort of extremely alien forms of life. But it had always been difficult to imagine, let alone prove that such entities truly existed. The Warp was a chaotic, ever-changing sea of extra-dimensional energy. No known form of life could survive for long in such a place.

But if it was possible, if those voices really had come from some sort of Warp entities... Then it would mean that no only did such lifeforms exist, but they were also intelligent. Capable of interacting with our world the same way that psykers interacted with there's perhaps? Wait. Could that have been what they had meant by "host". Were they somehow using Nayla as means to interact with the world beyond the Warp. And if so, were they responsible for both the incidents that had cost near a dozen lives?

There were too many questions and not enough answers. But if your suspicions were true. It could completely change Humanities understanding of the Warp, of psykers, the universe and their place in it.

(New Research Project Unlocked: Warp Entities- (0/1000))

By the time you were allowed to leave the hospital word of the second psychic incident and its death toll had already reached the public. The media circus that had surrounded the Lowland Park Incident started up again with renewed vigour. Now it wasn't just an isolated tragedy, but a pair of previously unprecedented psychic catastrophes that had occurred within three months of one another. Tabloids went wild with speculation, the vocal minority of conspiracy theorists and alarmists gained even more media attention, and all Kaylar's city government could offer was unsatisfying answers that only raised more questions.

Given your involvement in the whole affair, it wasn't long before people started reaching out to you. Asking for you to give interviews and answer their questions. You could have just declined their offers and tried to ignore the whole situations, but you doubted this was going to just blow over on its own. You were in a position to try and shape the public consciousness here, and it would irresponsible of you to let that go to waste...

How do you wish to address the public?
[] Write in...

Exact wording isn't necessary, just a general idea of what you intend to share with the public and how you wish to try and shape public opinion.
For example;
[x] Down play the severity of the events and try to get everything back to normal.
or
[x] Pressure the planetary government to impose more restrictive measures on the monitoring of known pyskers.
 
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[X] Stress the need for more study to improve the chance of preventing or ameliorating future incidents. For now, the response should be to emphasize humane treatment and priority in matters of mental healthcare, as heightened stress was the triggering event. Oppression will simply make these incidents happen more often.
 
[x] be honest about the nature of the threat,instead suggest on developing a mass survailance program to ensure no subtle corruption happens,put psykers under higher security but offering them training and militarization fo their skills
 
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[X] Stress the need for more study to improve the chance of preventing or ameliorating future incidents. For now, the response should be to emphasize humane treatment and priority in matters of mental healthcare, as heightened stress was the triggering event. Oppression will simply make these incidents happen more often.
 
@Thornez what kind of cult was willing to fund us? Do they have a long history? Do they know things like exorcism and such?
Since you didn't take them up on their offer you know relatively little about them. You know that they appear to be a fairly new organisation, only popping up in the last few years since the warps storms cut the planet off. They seem to believe the Warp is some kind of divine higher dimension, and that the warp storms are punishment for Human sin. But since you've shown an interest I'll include an option in the next turn to investigate the cult further if you wish.
 
Since you didn't take them up on their offer you know relatively little about them. You know that they appear to be a fairly new organisation, only popping up in the last few years since the warps storms cut the planet off. They seem to believe the Warp is some kind of divine higher dimension, and that the warp storms are punishment for Human sin. But since you've shown an interest I'll include an option in the next turn to investigate the cult further if you wish.
Thanks! Knowledge is power, and since their cult revolves around the warp, they might be a natural ally or an already infiltrated organization.
 
[X] Stress the need for more study to improve the chance of preventing or ameliorating future incidents. For now, the response should be to emphasize humane treatment and priority in matters of mental healthcare, as heightened stress was the triggering event. Oppression will simply make these incidents happen more often.
 
[X] Stress the need for more study to improve the chance of preventing or ameliorating future incidents. For now, the response should be to emphasize humane treatment and priority in matters of mental healthcare, as heightened stress was the triggering event. Oppression will simply make these incidents happen more often.
 
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