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Deus Pater (Exalted/40k)

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There are almost certainly segments of the Creed that believe mutation is the result of the sins of the parents manifesting themselves. However, I would expect less of them to go for 'sin is transferrable' and more 'sin is contagious'.

Spending time around sinners is dangerous. Studying their works is dangerous. Allowing those of blighted flesh to live among the pure exposes the innocent to corruption. The weakness of one soul can spread out to taint the community as a whole. Suspicion, quarantine... purification, these are the ways to fight the spread of sin.
 
[X] Bureaucracy. Your experience with Deacon Amelia has given you insight into the mechanisms of finance and the state.
 
[X] Bureaucracy. Your experience with Deacon Amelia has given you insight into the mechanisms of finance and the state.
 
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Chapter XI. Unknown Angel
  • Threadmarks
    • Five hundred miles due south of the planetary capital, stretching from one side of the primary continent to the other, are the Gravestone Mountains.

    As with all such locations on the surface of Sanguis, the mountain range is predominantly a place of spiritual retreat and grand memorial. Every peak and valley bears the name of the prominent saint or sacred figure entombed beneath their stone, and the slopes and ridges of the surface are dotted with shrines and lesser memorials dedicated to specific incidents and miracles associated with their lives and stories. Any of them could well serve as a place of contemplation and recuperation, each more than worth the time it would take to study them in depth, but your time is limited and there is one place within the range that means more to you than any other.

    The Nameless Angel is not, strictly speaking, a mountain. It must have been once, given the quality of the stone and the contours of the adjacent landscape, but the name and shape it once bore have been lost to the mists of time. Now there is only the angel itself; a vast, cyclopean sculpture that dominates the skyline and draws the eye for leagues in every direction. Clad in armour, kneeling with noble brow pressed reverently to the hilt of a tremendous sword, it is a symbol of worship and reverence to match any found in this sector or beyond. The craftsmanship alone is a work of exquisite beauty and mad detail, a billion individual feathers carved into shape with an artisan's care to form wings that cast whole valleys into shadow, until the whole thing resembles nothing less than a titan petrified in place.

    You have wondered, at times, just who it is that the gargantuan statue is meant to represent. The armour bears no iconography, the face is proud and noble but similar to any number of other statues to be found across the planet, and the earliest records you've ever been able to find in the depths of the planetary archives contain no mention of heritage or identity. In the absence of any official decision the citizenry have come up with a thousand different answers of their own, but for yourself you decided long ago that the answer didn't really matter. The important thing was the faith and dedication that went into creating this thing, and the silent strength it has always imparted upon those who find the time to contemplate its form at length.

    Dressed in the humble, anonymous robes of a common pilgrim, you settle yourself down halfway up the opposite slope and allow yourself to rest at last. It is approaching the middle of the day, and the rocks beneath you have been well warmed by the sun, creating a surprisingly comfortable spot for you to rest and contemplate the object of your pilgrimage at length. Far below you lies the small village dedicated to supplying wandering souls such as yourself, and even now you expect the handful of Sororitas who insisted on coming along as a quiet escort for you will be busy leading their fellow faithful in the midday prayers.

    They probably imagine that leaving the armour behind makes them discrete.

    Shaking your head in fond resignation, you turn your attention back to the kneeling form of the Nameless Angel on the other side of the valley. He has always been an inspiration and a source of strength to you in the past, so perhaps you can rely on him to be something similar once again. There is no logical reason why voicing your troubles to a mountain should help, of course, but then that's why you call it 'faith'.

    "Hello again, old friend," you say quietly, smiling fondly at the monolith, "It's been some time, since last we spoke. Well, by my standards at least."

    You wonder what it's like, being a mountain. Watching the centuries go by, watching as life flourishes and spreads and dies across your slopes with what must feel like blinding speed, enduring unchanged for centuries on end only to be reshaped in what must feel like relative instants of overwhelming force… it sounds almost enviable, to be entirely truthful.

    "A lot has happened. I crossed an Inquisitor, reformed much of the local doctrine, received a blessing from Him on Earth that I still don't entirely understand… and yet there is still so much more to do," you continue, leaning back and letting the yellow sun warm your face with its gentle radiance, "the amount of weight on my shoulders, now… it was always significant, ever since I ascended to become Cardinal in the first place, but back then there were things I knew I could not do. There's no shame in neglecting a burden you lack the strength to bear, but now… now I'm not sure if that's true anymore, and it matters more to me than I realized."

    It occurs to you that the way the Angel has been shaped is… ambiguous. He is kneeling, of course, but while you always supposed the posture was meant as one of worship and submission, it probably wouldn't look all that different if the original masons were intent on showing fatigue instead. The closed eyes could come from weariness, the tightly held sword a form of support, the curved back bent under the force of some tremendous burden. If that is so, then the Angel has been carrying a weight you cannot even perceive for longer than written records have existed to enumerate such things.

    "That's all well and good for you to say," you mutter in a low voice, feeling oddly like a child sulking in the face of an elder's admonishment, "you're made of mountain stone. I'm just flesh and blood."

    Well. Flesh, blood, soul and will, if you wanted to be more specific. It doesn't sound like a great deal, but it's all any man has ever really had to work with, and with those tools and the aid of their peers your people have done great things. Even the Imperium, as monstrous and terrible as it is, has a certain grandeur that nothing else in this galaxy can truly begin to match. Even this statue, this mountain in the shape of a man, was given form by human hands and human craft. It does not sound like much, but in your heart of hearts you cannot bring yourself to dismiss it entirely, and…

    You stare at the Angel for a long moment. Then you grunt.

    "Good talk," you say shortly, levering yourself to your feet once more. There is a faint whistling sound in reply, the wind running through the mountain peaks, and for a moment you fancy you might even be able to hear words in it, but… no. There is a rhythm to the sound, of that there is no doubt, but it is not one that any human throat would produce.

    It is the sound of an engine.

    Ice forms in your gut as you raise your eyes towards the heavens, lifting a hand to shield your eyes from the sun. There, descending from the pristine blue, are a handful of dark black dots, plummeting through the sky in geometric formation and growing larger with every passing moment. It takes you a few moments to process what you are seeing, but eventually realization comes, and with it a spike of fear that sends you scrambling down the slope as fast as your legs will carry you.

    The Navy comes on wings of fire.

    Assault shuttles, their blackened hulls curved into vicious claws and dripping with the promise of blood, drop in carefully synchronized patterns around the town's perimeter. The bay doors open wide and armsmen in polished carapace spill out, electro-clubs and shot-cannons held ready for use, guided and directed by the barked orders of their superiors and the doctrines of their profession set down over ten thousand bloodsoaked years. You can see them from a distance, read their formations and deployments with a practiced eye, but you can't do anything to stop them.

    Stupid. You left your comm-link behind, seeking the solace of a private communion with your faith, and now you cannot intervene. Stupid.

    The roar of gunfire and the screams of the wounded reach you on the breeze, taunting your ears even as you pump your legs and run as fast as you can manage. Too few by far for a full-scale purge, but then you knew this was not such when the shuttles first appeared. The Navy does not deploy ground troops lightly, especially not to a backwards little town like this, especially not so many. They're here to recruit, to press gang new crew, and those they seize will never see their homes again.

    You promised to protect these people.

    When at last you reach the village perimeter, it is to find a crowd of pilgrims and townsfolk being herded towards the ramp of the nearest shuttle, their gaolers men and women in faceless visored masks goading them on their way with weapon butts and shocking whips. Their officer stands apart from the crowd, his armour marked by horizontal strips of gleaming red, and it is he that you approach at a level sprint.

    "Cease this at once!" You roar, incensed beyond reason at the sight of the faithful handled like cattle, "How dare you..."

    The officer's shoulders rise and fall in an exaggerated sigh, and with a single polished motion he draws the pistol from his belt and fires. A flower of red and white blossoms from the muzzle, and a bolt of light flashes across the intervening distance to strike you just beneath the throat.

    You catch it in one hand.

    "What…"

    The officer manages to speak a single word, baffled incomprehension in his tone, before you reach his side and give the bullet back to him. His armour folds like paper beneath your fist, and the wet thump he makes as he hits the floor a dozen paces distant draws the eye faster than any shout.

    The remaining armsmen stare at you in mute astonishment for a moment. Then they raise their weapons.

    On the battlefields of the 41st Millenium, there exist heroes and villains capable of facing entire armies of their foe and emerging victorious. To better model battles of such magnitude, large numbers of similarly skilled and equipped troops are abstracted into what we refer to as 'battle groups' - effectively a single combatant's profile with a few additional traits attached:

    Size represents the sheer number of soldiers on hand, and runs from one (less than a dozen) to five (a full thousand or so). This value adds an equal number of automatic successes to the group's attack rolls, and increases their soak and health similarly. The armsmen here have a size of two.

    Drill represents the training and discipline of the forces, allowing them to support each other and not get in their comrade's way. It modifies defense and the difficulty of any rolls made to command the unit. The armsmen have an average drill, which grants them one automatic success on defense rolls.

    Might is an uncommon trait, and represents troops that are notably superhuman in some combat relevant fashion; daemons, aspect warriors or Space Marines would all qualify. A might score increases both attack and defense rolls; the armsmen are mortal, and thus have a might of zero.

    You close, simple pilgrim robes billowing around you as you move, but the crowd of the faithful has been driven to panic by the sudden explosion of violence and are starting to flee in all directions. You weave around a young woman clutching an infant to her side and all but run into the next of the armsmen in your path, a thug brandishing a sparking maul. You sidestep, avoiding his blow with the smooth motions that the Sororitas drilled you in, and lay him out upon the ground with a hammer-blow that shatters his mirrored helm in twain.

    Someone cries an order, and the barking roar of shotguns fills the air. Men and women fall around you in clouds of blood and gore, and with a hoarse yell you stagger, red-hot pellets carving bloody divots in your flesh.

    The pain is significant, but compared to the horror of watching the innocent fall around you it is as nothing. In the corner of your eye you see an icon hit the ground and shatter, tumbling from the lifeless hands of a pilgrim struck by an errant round, and the knowledge fills you with an urgent rage. You have to move this fight away from the crowd, you have to end it before anyone else can get hurt…

    You have to make them pay.

    With a roar you charge, legs carrying you forwards in great bounding hops and hands balled tight into shaking fists. The armsmen were not expecting a man without weapons or armour to charge them so directly, and that weakness gives you the opening that you need. You break a man's skull with one hand, sweep the feet out from the next with the other, and before he can land lash out with a kick that sends the broken body sailing into a knot of his fellows and brings them all crashing down.

    A pair of armsmen charge in to confront you, hoarse cries on their lips as they swing their shock-staves, but you are in no mood to tolerate such blasphemous defiance. Divine fire floods your limbs and sings in the depths of your mind, and with a snarl you raise your arms and catch the incoming blows across the length of your forearms. Electricity sparks and crackles, clawing at your skin, but you permit it no purchase and the weapons recoil as though hammered into iron bars.

    The armsmen curse, and you note in some distant corner of your mind that there are rather a lot of them still. At least another dozen that you can see, all armed, all running on instinct as they attempt to strike you down. You have no weapons, no armour, and already you are wounded. Can you hope to overcome these men alone? Can you stop the horrors being inflicted, not just on this town but on however many others the Navy have selected? Can you win, alone and unsupported?

    You will not have to.

    "TO THE CARDINAL!"

    Large bodies of troops can work wonders when led by someone who knows what they are doing. An officer can elect not to directly attack an enemy in a given turn in order to bolster the troops under their command, rolling an appropriate pool (typically charisma or intelligence plus war) and adding the successes to the allied battle group's attack rolls.

    The Sister Superior has a command pool of eight. She gets two bonus dice from the elite drill of her unit, for a total of ten. This is averaged out to five bonus dice on their actions.

    The distinctive coughing sound of bolt rounds in flight fills the air, and is echoed a moment later by a series of dull booms as men and women begin coming apart in bloody chunks. From the direction of the town, your escort approaches; a full dozen Adepta Sororitas in gleaming battle plate, weapons raised and spitting death even as their wearers charge to your aid.

    Faced with such foes, and confronted by a man capable of shrugging off shotgun rounds who is even now beginning to glow with golden light, the Navy men break in short order. They turn and flee, racing in all directions with cries of fear and confusion, dropping their weapons as they go.

    You wince as the Sororitas cut them down.

    "Holy One, you are injured!" The Sister Superior, her rank marked by an unusually elaborate array of chains and purity seals scattered across her armour, races to your side with almost unseemly haste, "Hold still, I will summon a chirugeon…"

    "No time for that, Sister," you say brusquely, shaking your hands and letting the blood painting your knuckles splatter against the ground, "Tell me what is going on."

    "The situation is… unclear, Holy One," the Sororitas says in a professional tone, even as her squad fans out to surround you, "We are getting reports from across the planet of similar attacks, but no word has been received from the capital."

    You grit your teeth in an attempt to quell the furious curses before they can poison the air. The Navy have conducted press gangs before, but protocol always dictated that they contact your office beforehand. You cannot imagine any of your staff would have granted permission for something like this, so the Navy must have just… disregarded their wishes and started anyway.

    Still, how this happened is ultimately not your concern. What is important is this: what are you going to do about it?

    Article:
    Choose a course of action:

    [ ] Hijack a shuttle. You will return to orbit with the press gangs and, once aboard the Navy ships, be in a position to demand answers in person. This is the most direct course, but potentially the most risky as well.

    [ ] Return to the Capital. It will take time to return, and likely the operation will be over by then, but this course will allow you to gather the most information and act with the full weight of your office and accumulated resources behind you.

    [ ] Write in


    Round one begins, Ignatius has the initiative. He makes an attack and adds four dice to his roll with the brawl Excellency.

    **Maugan Ra** rolled **7** <9; 9; 1; 3; 9; 10; 6; 8; 3; 7> # attack the armsmen [ID: 65143]

    The armsmen have a defense of four, so Ignatius hits with three net successes. Their soak rating is normally ten, but this is where Fists of Iron Technique comes into play; acting in support of a defining intimacy (a Shepherd should protect his flock) Ignatius reduces their soak by five points, making it five. However, since Ignatius is only strength two, his raw damage (strength 2 and three net successes) results in one point of actual health damage done (unarmed attacks have a minimum damage rating of one. Other attacks may have a higher rating, and certain armours reduce the minimum damage of hostile attacks).

    The battlegroup still has eight levels remaining, and now they get to attack in turn.

    **Maugan Ra** rolled **7** <7; 9; 10; 3; 8; 5> # shotguns [ID: 65144]

    Unfortunately for Ignatius, who has a defense of three, they hit with four net successes. A shotgun has a base strength of four, so the raw damage is eight. Ignatius has a stamina of three and no armour, but he also has Durability of Oak Meditation, which makes his total soak five. He takes three health levels of damage.

    Although he has taken three levels of damage, Ignatius has not yet begun suffering any penalties from his injuries. He decides to stop holding back, and ups his excellency commitment to the maximum six dice, even though this will have consequences (see the essence fever rules posted at some point after this update)

    **Maugan Ra** rolled **10** <4; 9; 8; 10; 8; 10; 5; 9; 8; 1; 7; 5> # Ignatius round two [ID: 65146]

    Ten successes is much better, for six net on the hit. As before the Armsmen have a modified soak of five, so this time Ignatius inflicts five levels of damage. He reduces their health to 3/9, but they are still in the fight and have yet to take any notable penalties themselves.

    Ignatius is at the glowing level of his anima.

    **Maugan Ra** rolled **5** <2; 7; 10; 4; 3; 6> # danger close [ID: 65147]

    This time the armsmen score five successes on their attack roll, but Ignatius is drawing on every bit of Essence he can get his hands on, and his unarmed defense is currently set to six; he gains two more points of fever, for a total of four. Fists of Iron Technique allows him to apply his unarmed defense against lethal damage, and so he emerges unscathed this turn.

    On round three, the Sororitas arrive. They have a basic dice pool of nine dice (as opposed to the six that the armsmen have) and are gaining five more dice from their sister superior. They also have a might rating which adds two automatic successes.

    **Maugan Ra** rolled **11** <3; 3; 7; 5; 6; 8; 5; 7; 10; 5; 4; 2; 7; 10> # faith and fire [ID: 65149]

    Having scored seven net successes on their attack roll, the Sororitas now compare their raw damage (bolters are strength four, so eleven) to the enemy soak (ten, but bolters reduce soak by three, so it becomes seven). They inflict four levels of damage on the enemy, reducing them to -1/9.

    When a battlegroup reaches zero health, their size drops by one and their health resets. However they must then take a rout check, rolling their willpower against a set difficulty.

    **Maugan Ra** rolled **1** <6; 4; 5; 7> # rout check, difficulty 3 due to quality of foes and supernatural punch-priest [ID: 65150]

    The armsmen fail their test and thus break and flee.
     
  • Threadmarks
    • That's right, folks, we're not dead yet.

    Sorry for the hiatus, I ran into a series of really busy work weeks in succession that pretty much killed my motivation to write almost anything at all. Still we're past that now and I can get back to writing the story of Ignatius.

    As mentioned in the rolls section, I have decided to update the rules on how essence and your charms work. The basic effects will remain the same, I just want to modify how the anima stuff works. I'll post a full explanation later on.
     
    [X] Hijack a shuttle. You will return to orbit with the press gangs and, once aboard the Navy ships, be in a position to demand answers in person. This is the most direct course, but potentially the most risky as well.
     
    [X] Return to the Capital. It will take time to return, and likely the operation will be over by then, but this course will allow you to gather the most information and act with the full weight of your office and accumulated resources behind you
     
    [X] Hijack a shuttle. You will return to orbit with the press gangs and, once aboard the Navy ships, be in a position to demand answers in person. This is the most direct course, but potentially the most risky as well.

    Commence boarding operations and shout at the idiot in charge. A lot.
     
    [X] Hijack a shuttle. You will return to orbit with the press gangs and, once aboard the Navy ships, be in a position to demand answers in person. This is the most direct course, but potentially the most risky as well.

    These fucks will give answers
     
    [X] Hijack a shuttle. You will return to orbit with the press gangs and, once aboard the Navy ships, be in a position to demand answers in person. This is the most direct course, but potentially the most risky as well.
     
    [X] Hijack a shuttle. You will return to orbit with the press gangs and, once aboard the Navy ships, be in a position to demand answers in person. This is the most direct course, but potentially the most risky as well.

    We have a long way to go. Once we establish a legend things should go easier.
     
    [X] Hijack a shuttle. You will return to orbit with the press gangs and, once aboard the Navy ships, be in a position to demand answers in person. This is the most direct course, but potentially the most risky as well.
     
    [X] Return to the Capital.

    All it would take is one overly faithful reactor tech priest hearing that the bridge has been taken by heretics to end this.
     
    [X] Hijack a shuttle. You will return to orbit with the press gangs and, once aboard the Navy ships, be in a position to demand answers in person. This is the most direct course, but potentially the most risky as well.
     
    [X] Return to the Capital.
    It'd be REALLY nice to get this straightened out on a bereaucratic level because this isn't just a pulp-fiction where the hero saves the day- this represents a fairly concerning breakdown in communications.
    Plus if we punch our way up to the Captain and learn that yes he had his paperwork filled out why didn't you recieve it Cardinal, we're going to have some major egg on our face.
     
    [X] Return to the Capital. It will take time to return, and likely the operation will be over by then, but this course will allow you to gather the most information and act with the full weight of your office and accumulated resources behind you.

    Diplomacy is where we are best. Not boarding and duelling. (because the navy settles everything with duels)

    Plus, there may be a lot going on behind the scenes.
     
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