- Location
- Dresden, Germany
Alright, let's see
Grim Dark Tech Support: A Dark Mechanicum Quest
- Thread starter Uniquelyequal
- Start date
- Sci-Fi
Winged One
Not the Simurgh
- Location
- definitely the ground
- Pronouns
- They/Them/It
Magos Malefactor literally just means "evil tech-priest," then? 
- Location
- Dresden, Germany
Technically it's a portmanteau of malefic and manufacture that also happens to be a word for 'someone doing evil things'Magos Malefactor literally just means "evil tech-priest," then?
A Host of Problems: Part 2
- Location
- Dresden, Germany
The Soul is a real, quantifiable thing. It is also severely misunderstood, not least by most of your not-so-esteemed Mechanicum compatriots. Party of that, you suspect, is that damnable term 'psyche', used both for matters of the soul and for a murky, badly defined area of interplay between neurology and endocrinology. As far as you can tell, there is no correlation between possessing a soul and possessing a full emotional spectrum, and you cut open enough Blanks to say so with reasonable certainty.
The soul does not affect any given subject's emotional spectrum. The opposite, however, is very much untrue. Your current working hypothesis is that what common parlance regards as a 'soul' would be more properly referred to as the capability of a human specimen's emotions to influence the Empyrean.
The overwhelming majority of humanity, and indeed of every sentient species in the galaxy, is at least somewhat psychically active: some more so than others. The Empyrean, thus, is influenced to an annoying degree by the collective fears and expectations of humanity.
You are not a Psyker, but the fact that you hold a connection to the Empyrean still means that you can tap into it, even if the way to do this is annoyingly allegorical. Humanity expects rites and rules from the Warp, and so the Warp provides.
It's a feedback loop. Sadly, you do not know enough about the interplay between sentient mind and empyrean to even begin calculating what would be necessary to break it apart.
You have, however, developed quite a few rites of your own, for diagnostic purposes. The raw power of the empyrean is simply too strong to ever pass up entirely, and so you need some way to quantify and measure it.
That does not mean that the way to do this isn't annoyingly imprecise.
You start out with a to-scale model of the Hive, made as accurate as possible with data provided by the Host: a vast thing of ferrocrete and metal. It is, in truth, not all that accurate: no map of a Hive can ever truly be. Accuracy, however, is not your main concern: the thing serves as a solid stand-in for the Hive, and that is what you need it for.
The other thing you need is sacrifice. You have, in the past, tried to get around this requirement: to make a substitute miming all the necessary functions of a sacrifice. That was foolhardy of you. A sacrifice that does not sacrifice anything does not work.
And so you bleed: you pour out a good part of the blood that remains to you until you feel your heart accelerate and your vision start to swim, and then you pour out a little more, until the interior of the model has been coated and coated well. You ramp up the pain as you do so, feeding the signals to your brain into feedback loops until your vision goes white, cutting off your vox caster to stop yourself from screaming.
You are dying, now. You feel the pump that has replaced your heart racing to push forward blood that is not in your system anymore. In thirty seconds, what remains of your organic matter will stop being properly supplied with oxygen, and then start dying.
It is within that time, as you find yourself at the edge between life and death, that the ritual will be conducted.
The fungus harvested from the dark, moist spaces of a Space Hulk races along the blood you spilled rapidly. It is only tentatively real, capable of truly thriving only where it is exposed to the Warp. Now, in this little space, it thrives.
You do, of course, not see the true interior of the Hive: the model necessarily enclosed. Instead, you watch the progress of the fungus on a hololithic projection, cast with the help of an Augur watching the model's interior.
To you, it seems like a patchwork of bright colors. You gesture to Theama-Nul to begin, not trusting yourself to speak, and he does.
The pendulum is cast from lead, and swings from a silver chain. It was created, or so Theama-Nul has assured you, from the melted-down Autogun bullets he retrieved from the scene of the attack: nine of them, each nine millimeters in diameter. These he has melted and cast into blood to harden.
The pendulum that now swings in the midst of the hololith bears a striking resemblance to the mark of Tzeentch: another striking example of that feedback loop, expectations influencing reality through the influx of the Empyrean.
The Hololithic projection isn't ideal, for something like this: something solid, like stone or paper, would be better.
The three-dimensional nature of the Hive, however, makes such impossible. It will have to do.
As the Pendulum swings, without any input whatsoever, you are certain that it has.
Twenty seconds remain. Blood reserves stand at the ready, but you have to trigger the release manually: if there was no risk of death, this would not work.
The Pendulum swings.
Regicia Ko-Bea flips over the first card.
You do not know how she has gotten the deck of psycho-active wavers she now holds. Such a thing tends to be a Psyker's prized possession, and unless you have gravely misjudged her, she is not one. Still you did not question her too deeply: right here, right now, these cards are useful indeed.
You do not note much of anything, now: the blood loss and increasing pain is seeing to that. Your mind wanders, focused on the timer counting down. You only catch glimpses of the cards that are flipped over, and recognize only some of them:The Enforcer, the Whim of Tzeentch, the Truth. Then your vision blackens, and your timer reaches zero, and you trigger the blood reserves, breaching the connection.
When your vision clears, you see that Regicia has drawn eight cards related to locations, before the ritual ended.
Each location will likely hold a connection to your target. What that connection is, however, is anyone's guess: it might be exceedingly tenuous.
All that remains, now, is to determine where to go.
___________________________________________________________________________
[] Administratum District
-The very first location the pendulum struck, right here in the very heart of the Host's control. The Card Regicia has drawn in association with it bears the image of some lord or planetary governor, securely enthroned and with a mace in hand. You recognize it as the Governor: as it is now, in its reversed position, it stands for domineering force, tyranny, aggression, and a lack of control.
[] Upper Hive
-The next two locations are in close proximity to each other, close to you within the Upper Hive: Hab Blocs on the approach to the Space Port, near what Borj Karplin helpfully informs you is the joint headquarters of the 72nd Sulavid Volunteers and the 18th Conarian Rangers. For these two locations, Regicia has drawn the card of the Serf Reversed: a bowed farmer, a whip held by unseen hands upon his back. In reverse, it stands for rebellion and things out of their proper place. It is thus a strange contrast to the second card associated with the area: a hulking, bare chested man branded with the eightfold star, a whip in one hand and a branding iron in the other. This is the Enforcer, who stands for order, discipline, and the enforcement thereof.
[] Middle Hive
Three locations have flared up here, though they are in close proximity to each other…and to the Headquarters of three more of the regiments that constitute the Host: the 81st Macabian Jannissaries, the 36th Moribundan Cavalry, and Captain Karplin's own 342nd Cadian Shock Troops. According to the Captain, the Mid Hive is where the Insurgency is the strongest, and the Regiments here are engaged in heavy counterinsurgency work in an effort to stem the bleeding. Three more cards have been drawn in association with these locations.
The first is the Whims of Tzeentch, simply signified by his Mark upon one of the Cards: in it's upright position, this symbolizes the inevitability of fate as well as its capriciousity.
The second is The Truth, shown much to your chagrin by a depiction of a man reading what must be the Book of Lorgar, the expression on his face somewhere in between rapture and terror. You do, of course, have opinions on the Word Bearer's lackadaisical attempts at theology being regarded as even remotely close ot the truth, but this does not change anything about the meaning of the card: zeal, fanaticism, religious fervor and conversion.
The third card is the Silver Tower: another of the Major Arcana, also associated with Tzeentch. It stands for sudden upheaval and broken pride, though whether this is a portent from the future or a sign from the past neither you nor Regicia wish to speculate on.
[] The Wasteland
-This one is strange: a bit of your blood spilled outside the confines of the model and promptly colonized by the Fungus, close to where the 117th Tallarn Armored and the 27th Praediphian Paladins make camp, guarding the approaches to the Hive against any armored incursion from the Wasteland or the other Hives upon the Planet. Regicia has only drawn one card associated with this place: the Sorceress, depicting a woman in white robes with blood-splattered fringes, a sacrificial dagger slick with blood in one hand, Warp Lighting crackling around the claws of her other. A card with an exceedingly simple meaning, this one: it stands for power drawn from the Empyrean
[] The Underhive
-The last location is Pump Station Alpha Three, deep in the bowels of the Underhive, which is, at least of Karplin is to be believed, actually amongst the more peaceful areas of the Hive as a whole, with the underclass banished here by and large having reacted fairly well to the change in management. It is once more associated with one of the Regiments that make up the Ninefold Host: the 54th Yularian Assault Regiment, who are apparently engaging in a recruitment drive amongst the population down here. The card drawn in association with it is the Mutant, showing a man with needle-sharp teeth and clawed hands, chin slick with blood. This one is another fairly simple one, signifying both strength and its acquisition, as well as simple good fortune.
___________________________________________________________________________
You look at the model again once you have chosen your goal, and note that right at the apex of the Hive, the Fungus has formed into an eye, lidless and unblinking. It is still staring at you as though alive even with the cessation of empyrean influx.
You quash it before the little structures of bone around it can form the muscles and feathers they need to become wings.
The soul does not affect any given subject's emotional spectrum. The opposite, however, is very much untrue. Your current working hypothesis is that what common parlance regards as a 'soul' would be more properly referred to as the capability of a human specimen's emotions to influence the Empyrean.
The overwhelming majority of humanity, and indeed of every sentient species in the galaxy, is at least somewhat psychically active: some more so than others. The Empyrean, thus, is influenced to an annoying degree by the collective fears and expectations of humanity.
You are not a Psyker, but the fact that you hold a connection to the Empyrean still means that you can tap into it, even if the way to do this is annoyingly allegorical. Humanity expects rites and rules from the Warp, and so the Warp provides.
It's a feedback loop. Sadly, you do not know enough about the interplay between sentient mind and empyrean to even begin calculating what would be necessary to break it apart.
You have, however, developed quite a few rites of your own, for diagnostic purposes. The raw power of the empyrean is simply too strong to ever pass up entirely, and so you need some way to quantify and measure it.
That does not mean that the way to do this isn't annoyingly imprecise.
You start out with a to-scale model of the Hive, made as accurate as possible with data provided by the Host: a vast thing of ferrocrete and metal. It is, in truth, not all that accurate: no map of a Hive can ever truly be. Accuracy, however, is not your main concern: the thing serves as a solid stand-in for the Hive, and that is what you need it for.
The other thing you need is sacrifice. You have, in the past, tried to get around this requirement: to make a substitute miming all the necessary functions of a sacrifice. That was foolhardy of you. A sacrifice that does not sacrifice anything does not work.
And so you bleed: you pour out a good part of the blood that remains to you until you feel your heart accelerate and your vision start to swim, and then you pour out a little more, until the interior of the model has been coated and coated well. You ramp up the pain as you do so, feeding the signals to your brain into feedback loops until your vision goes white, cutting off your vox caster to stop yourself from screaming.
You are dying, now. You feel the pump that has replaced your heart racing to push forward blood that is not in your system anymore. In thirty seconds, what remains of your organic matter will stop being properly supplied with oxygen, and then start dying.
It is within that time, as you find yourself at the edge between life and death, that the ritual will be conducted.
The fungus harvested from the dark, moist spaces of a Space Hulk races along the blood you spilled rapidly. It is only tentatively real, capable of truly thriving only where it is exposed to the Warp. Now, in this little space, it thrives.
You do, of course, not see the true interior of the Hive: the model necessarily enclosed. Instead, you watch the progress of the fungus on a hololithic projection, cast with the help of an Augur watching the model's interior.
To you, it seems like a patchwork of bright colors. You gesture to Theama-Nul to begin, not trusting yourself to speak, and he does.
The pendulum is cast from lead, and swings from a silver chain. It was created, or so Theama-Nul has assured you, from the melted-down Autogun bullets he retrieved from the scene of the attack: nine of them, each nine millimeters in diameter. These he has melted and cast into blood to harden.
The pendulum that now swings in the midst of the hololith bears a striking resemblance to the mark of Tzeentch: another striking example of that feedback loop, expectations influencing reality through the influx of the Empyrean.
The Hololithic projection isn't ideal, for something like this: something solid, like stone or paper, would be better.
The three-dimensional nature of the Hive, however, makes such impossible. It will have to do.
As the Pendulum swings, without any input whatsoever, you are certain that it has.
Twenty seconds remain. Blood reserves stand at the ready, but you have to trigger the release manually: if there was no risk of death, this would not work.
The Pendulum swings.
Regicia Ko-Bea flips over the first card.
You do not know how she has gotten the deck of psycho-active wavers she now holds. Such a thing tends to be a Psyker's prized possession, and unless you have gravely misjudged her, she is not one. Still you did not question her too deeply: right here, right now, these cards are useful indeed.
You do not note much of anything, now: the blood loss and increasing pain is seeing to that. Your mind wanders, focused on the timer counting down. You only catch glimpses of the cards that are flipped over, and recognize only some of them:The Enforcer, the Whim of Tzeentch, the Truth. Then your vision blackens, and your timer reaches zero, and you trigger the blood reserves, breaching the connection.
When your vision clears, you see that Regicia has drawn eight cards related to locations, before the ritual ended.
Each location will likely hold a connection to your target. What that connection is, however, is anyone's guess: it might be exceedingly tenuous.
All that remains, now, is to determine where to go.
___________________________________________________________________________
[] Administratum District
-The very first location the pendulum struck, right here in the very heart of the Host's control. The Card Regicia has drawn in association with it bears the image of some lord or planetary governor, securely enthroned and with a mace in hand. You recognize it as the Governor: as it is now, in its reversed position, it stands for domineering force, tyranny, aggression, and a lack of control.
[] Upper Hive
-The next two locations are in close proximity to each other, close to you within the Upper Hive: Hab Blocs on the approach to the Space Port, near what Borj Karplin helpfully informs you is the joint headquarters of the 72nd Sulavid Volunteers and the 18th Conarian Rangers. For these two locations, Regicia has drawn the card of the Serf Reversed: a bowed farmer, a whip held by unseen hands upon his back. In reverse, it stands for rebellion and things out of their proper place. It is thus a strange contrast to the second card associated with the area: a hulking, bare chested man branded with the eightfold star, a whip in one hand and a branding iron in the other. This is the Enforcer, who stands for order, discipline, and the enforcement thereof.
[] Middle Hive
Three locations have flared up here, though they are in close proximity to each other…and to the Headquarters of three more of the regiments that constitute the Host: the 81st Macabian Jannissaries, the 36th Moribundan Cavalry, and Captain Karplin's own 342nd Cadian Shock Troops. According to the Captain, the Mid Hive is where the Insurgency is the strongest, and the Regiments here are engaged in heavy counterinsurgency work in an effort to stem the bleeding. Three more cards have been drawn in association with these locations.
The first is the Whims of Tzeentch, simply signified by his Mark upon one of the Cards: in it's upright position, this symbolizes the inevitability of fate as well as its capriciousity.
The second is The Truth, shown much to your chagrin by a depiction of a man reading what must be the Book of Lorgar, the expression on his face somewhere in between rapture and terror. You do, of course, have opinions on the Word Bearer's lackadaisical attempts at theology being regarded as even remotely close ot the truth, but this does not change anything about the meaning of the card: zeal, fanaticism, religious fervor and conversion.
The third card is the Silver Tower: another of the Major Arcana, also associated with Tzeentch. It stands for sudden upheaval and broken pride, though whether this is a portent from the future or a sign from the past neither you nor Regicia wish to speculate on.
[] The Wasteland
-This one is strange: a bit of your blood spilled outside the confines of the model and promptly colonized by the Fungus, close to where the 117th Tallarn Armored and the 27th Praediphian Paladins make camp, guarding the approaches to the Hive against any armored incursion from the Wasteland or the other Hives upon the Planet. Regicia has only drawn one card associated with this place: the Sorceress, depicting a woman in white robes with blood-splattered fringes, a sacrificial dagger slick with blood in one hand, Warp Lighting crackling around the claws of her other. A card with an exceedingly simple meaning, this one: it stands for power drawn from the Empyrean
[] The Underhive
-The last location is Pump Station Alpha Three, deep in the bowels of the Underhive, which is, at least of Karplin is to be believed, actually amongst the more peaceful areas of the Hive as a whole, with the underclass banished here by and large having reacted fairly well to the change in management. It is once more associated with one of the Regiments that make up the Ninefold Host: the 54th Yularian Assault Regiment, who are apparently engaging in a recruitment drive amongst the population down here. The card drawn in association with it is the Mutant, showing a man with needle-sharp teeth and clawed hands, chin slick with blood. This one is another fairly simple one, signifying both strength and its acquisition, as well as simple good fortune.
___________________________________________________________________________
You look at the model again once you have chosen your goal, and note that right at the apex of the Hive, the Fungus has formed into an eye, lidless and unblinking. It is still staring at you as though alive even with the cessation of empyrean influx.
You quash it before the little structures of bone around it can form the muscles and feathers they need to become wings.
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Nice Ritual
[X] Middle Hive
[X] Middle Hive
Wow, we do have no chill.
To paraphrase Zahariel's work, perception defines reality defines law.
We have to find and neutralize a Kill Servitor. So, time to play a fortune teller
One location, central control. Card is pretty simple: whatever force resides in there is (or was) tyrannical
I guess that by two locations you mean the docks and the joint HQ, not two locations of two Regiments. The cards are interesting indeed, but I think the meaning is quite simple: opressed became opressors.
Assuming each card corresponds to one of the regiments there, we can guess what happened to them. One seems to have got caught up in some sort of scheme (perhaps overplanning led them to their doom), one turned towards fanaticism and one had a sudden reversal of fortunes.
Two Regiments in one camp, so one card, and someone in that camp is doing sorcery.
So, the locals are most likely growing in power thanks to recruting underhive scum.
That is, of course, assuming the cards correspond to situations. Alternative: they tell what the Hand was doing. It was released to subvert the tyrannical order of Imperium (Governor, Serf), then the new order proved to not be better (Serf, Enforcer), so it turned against them when it realized it (Whims, Truth, Tower) and now is trying to grow in power through magic (Sorceress) and mortal power (Mutant).
That gives me two directions to go. If the reading is trustworthy, we should probably head to Underhive and disrupt the Hand's operations. If there are doubts, we should probably head somewhere to check it, most likely Upper or Middle Hive.
I'm fairly certain of my interpretation and there are no wrong answers here, so
[X] Underhive
Night_stalker
Slava Ukraini!
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Underhive
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] The Underhive
- Location
- United States
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Middle Hive
[X] The Underhive
[X] Upper Hive
I feel like given our target's apparent move to undermine the host's leadership, checking out the places associated with revolt and order may be a good idea
I feel like given our target's apparent move to undermine the host's leadership, checking out the places associated with revolt and order may be a good idea
- Location
- Dresden, Germany
Giving this some more time. We seem to be tied right now, though that might just be the tally not catching up to the last votes.
[x] The Underhive
Winged One
Not the Simurgh
- Location
- definitely the ground
- Pronouns
- They/Them/It
[X] The Wasteland
[X] Middle Hive
Vote closed
- Location
- Dresden, Germany
A Host of Problems: Part 3
- Location
- Dresden, Germany
Settlements, you have found, operate remarkably close to organisms, at least in the very broad strokes of their functions: they acquire the necessities for their continued existence in a wide variety of ways, process them, store them, use them as needed, and then dispose of the waste product, and for all this, they have discrete systems that are frequently dependent on less complex organisms to work. Here, as in organisms, redundancy is key: should one mechanism fail, in whole or in part, others often stand by to substitute, though often at the risk of a loss of some function. Of course, settlements can evolve to meet their requirements without any requirement of the laborious and time-intensive iterations of natural evolution: in that way they are much like you and your fellow brethren on the path to knowledge. Equally, they can mutate or sicken: systems made for one purpose put to a different use, tumors of random, unchecked growth cutting through linkages vital for the survival of the whole, the same organisms of lesser complexity finding their way to parts they should not be and wrecking untold havoc through their old patterns of behavior. Once this has occurred, once waste products begin to accumulate and vital resources stop being delivered quickly and efficiently, the settlement begins a spiral towards death: sometimes very quickly, as more and more systems begin to fail in cascade, sometimes very slowly, over years or centuries of millenia.
Sometimes, such cascades can be stopped and stabilized: like a medicare administering antibiotics or a surgeon placing a bypass or transplanting an organ, points of failure can be treated, removed, or replaced. Often, all this does is buy time, prolong the inevitable demise of the organisms at the cost of its quality of life.
Still, that time bought might be measured in generations and eons, and failure in the death of lives beyond counting.
The First Hive of Sephiron Prime is dying, and has been for a very long time. You can smell it in the air: a curious mixture of burnt Prometheum, rust, and mold, the sure sign of air filters long past their needed replacement. You can see it on its walls, their hastily added supports red with corrosion and holding up walls that must have been crumbling for a thousand years. You can see it in their infrastructure, in the tangle of pipes hastily welded onto the large arterials, both to bypass blockages that could not be accessed and to sap away some of the vital cargo they carry. At one point, the smell of waste water wafts into your nose, in what you are fairly certain is an improvised treatment plant to provide a community with some water instead of none, at the price of a horrifically increased risk of disease.
First Hive is dying, but without a full overview of its myriad sicknesses, you could not make a definite diagnosis of how long that process will take, and you would not even know where to begin taking such a census.
It is, in this way, like every Hive you have ever visited: none of them are sustainable, and all are sustained nonetheless, for humanity for all its troublesome tendencies is a tenacious species indeed. The Host of Ninefold Reveleation, you would wager, regards itself as a curative: an injection of venom in a low dosage to stave off a larger disease.
You could not say, and do not care, whether they will succeed in this or fail, but as you make your way lower into the Hive, driven once more within the Tauros of the 342nd Cadian Shock Regiment, you cannot help but hope it is the former.
You frown at that, a bit: it is more sentimental than you have allowed yourself to be in a long time.
The trip down to the forward base of the 54th Yulrasian Assault Regiment is a long and arduous one: it takes you the better part of 24 hours even in the quick and nimble Tauros.
Part of that is that you frequently find yourself rerouted around active combat operations, this or that unit of Conarian Rangers, Janissaries, or Moribundan Cavalry clearing out a section of the Hive of suspected insurgents.
In this, at least, they seem to be about as brutal as can be expected: at least once the actual reason you are forced to reroute is that your original path has been turned into a wall of fire, and another time you are held up by members of the 18th Conarian Rangers herding a large crowd of people past you. You had not heard of that Regiment before, and as you regard them, it becomes abundantly clear why: they are a Conscript Regiment, taken, if the crossed scythes on their khaki uniform are anything to go by, from some Agriworld or the other. The Voss-Pattern Lasguns in their arms are clearly second or third hand equipment. The only person sporting even Flak Armor amongst them is the Officer you see leading them: the rest has to make do with cloth uniforms and field caps with neck flaps
Still, they seem oddly dangerous to you: something about the way they hold themselves, about the light you see shine in their eyes. These are men and women that have never held power in their life, now getting their very first taste of it: conscripts made conquerors by the might of the Host. It is incredible, you consider, that discipline seems to be holding up as well as it does, though of course you cannot see them away from the eyes of their commanders and superiors. Borj Karplin stirs next to you as he looks over the masses, pride clear in his eyes.
"They have come far", he says, gruffly, and it occurs to you that he must have had thoughts quite similar to yours. Strange, you think, but then the column is past, and you consider it no further.
Underhives are strange, and fascinating: structures within the larger organism of the Hive that are sometimes vestigial, sometimes parasitical, sometimes symbiotic and often utterly crucial to the continued function of the Hive, with no way to determine which is which. Entire populations live their life away from the prying eyes of whichever overlord rules the Hive, between the constant humming of pump stations, the radiation of generators, and the fumes of waste products long beyond purifying and simply dumped below.
Between that, frequently, treasures: the refuse of the Dark Age, discarded without thought or hidden away, now valuable beyond measure. You have seen the expeditions return to Nuton's Folly, laden heavily with plundered goods. Once or twice, you were tempted to go yourself, invited along on this expedition or that by people that valued your expertise or at least your ability to catch bullets in their stead. Always, you demurred: always, there was something more important. The last time you actually went below into an Underhive was on Terra, hunting a Company of White Scars that had gotten itself cut off from the Palace alongside some Emperor's Children.
That was a very different environment from the one you now descend into. For one, that Hive was significantly more on fire.
The Cadians actually relax the deeper they descend, and it is soon clear why: graffito of the Nine-winged Eye marks the walls with increasing frequency, and the people within the settlements you pass through part for you, raising their arms and cheering as you pass them by.
"The Underhive was the first section of the Hive we liberated", Borj Karplin explains. "The people came to our side in swathes, ready to throw off the yoke that had been placed on them for eons."
Another of those points of failure, you muse: an underclass of outcasts tends not to like being an underclass of outcasts, and once the systems holding them down fail, all bets are off.
Pump Station Alpha Three towers over its surroundings like a mountain, the rumblings of its inner workings audible even an hour of driving away. Corrugated iron huts and hovels cover it almost in its entirety.
"Water tends to leak from the pump", Karplin tells you, by way of explanation, "and it and the heat produced means that people congregate around it. Call it the Tower of Life, apparently: its Overlord was one of our first allies down here, and is hosting the Colonel of the Yulrasians even now. "
You see the first of the Yulrasians soon after, as you draw close to the base of the Tower. The noise is growing, here: the rumbling of its internal machinery is almost overwhelming, forcing you to read lips and switch your canting to a lower frequency to be understood. Chimeras are stood around the tower, weapons facing outwards in an orderly manner, lines marked somewhat haphazardly around their base: all measures taken, you consider, to make it clear that they are here as guests and allies, not as a besieging force.
The Yulrasians themselves are the heaviest infantry: the ones guarding the tanks are clad in Carapace Armor that gleams even in the low light of the Underhive, Sallet-style helmets combining with high gorgets that conceal most of their faces. They are sharing their guard, you note, with some people who must be locals: mutants wielding autoguns and weaponry improvised from tools, their armor simple in make but elaborate in appearance, with water and valves frequent motives across it. Relations seem cordial: cordial enough you spot several of the Yulrasian's Lucius-Pattern Lasguns in the hands of locals, and several of the presumably functionless valve wheels attached to the armor of the Astra Militarum Regiment.
Captain Karplin steps from the Tauros, and exchanges a quick series of words that are utterly lost in the drone of the pump, and then you are being waves through, into the interior of the tower, and onto what might be the most structurally unsound construction you have ever entered.
The Tower of Life was built by people who learned everything they did about structural engineering haphazardly and through trial and error: you can tell this with absolute certainty, because the evidence of the error is on display all around you.
You stop analyzing the welds for their integrity after you find the first one that doesn't actually attach the ground plate to anything. The entire structure sways in time to the vibrations of the pump. Several times you are forced to make a detour, entire rooms having torn loose from the tower. Still, thousands live here, and you can somewhat tell why: there is water everywhere, and greenery has sprouted everywhere it could find any sort of fertile ground. The Tower of Life, for all its dangers, offers shelter, and water, and food, and community: humans will put up with worse for such things.
This does not mean, of course, that you do not stay close to the wall at all times, ready to ram your legs into the walls should the structure fail. You climb for a little more than an hour: through tight corridors and up dangling ladders, over stairs that have clearly been pilfered from somewhere else and up ramps slick with water and rust. The structure slims towards its top, but this simply means that the rooms become larger and more ambitious.
You are glad that you seem to be sticking largely to the structures close to the core of the Tower: its edge, you judge, is the most unsafe part.
Of course the edge would also allow you to try a desperate jump to safety, should the entire thing begin to collapse on top of you.
You are preoccupied enough with such thoughts that you barely take note of the people that mill around the tower, beyond the very basic signs of malnutrition that are on display near universally and the mutations that appear to be ubiquitous. Mutagens in the water or the air rather then exposure to the Empyrean, if you had to guess, though of course neither the Imperium nor most of the forces of Chaos make such a distinction. A mutant is a mutant, to be used and exploited: that one side shuns and fears them as it does so and the other pretends to engage in some sort of veneration does not make much of a difference.
As if to support your point, it is just when you have finished that thought that you meet the first Ogryn. The powerful mutant (you refuse to adhere to the ridiculous notion of 'abhumanity' the Imperium frequently employs to justify their own hypocrisy) is clad in the gleaming carapace of the Yulrasians, and bears in his hands a long pneumatic hammer in surprisingly good repair, complemented by a shield lavishly decorated with what you presume must be the markings of the Regiment: what you recognize as a primitive Blacksmith's Hammer, crossed over with the Lucius-Pattern Lasgun that seems to be their primary weapon: the entire design has plainly been modified since then, they nine-winged eye now stood proudly where hammer and gun meet. The Ogryn too wears the round helmet favored by his compatriots, further complimented by a gas mask that only leaves his beady eye visible.
He has affixed a flower to one of his pauldrons: a weedy, pale thing, probably grown in the sump somewhere, but it lends him an oddly innocent look despite the fact he could, by the looks of him, end you without exercising even what little capacity of thought he possesses. He is in conversation with a fair-haired child of eight or so years, what little is visible of his brows furrowing in conversation as he listens to what appears to be a girl: if he is supposed to stand guard he is doing lousy work. You see the burn-marks of where a shock collar once sat around his necks as you pass him by, though the device itself is nowhere to be found: a risk taken by the Yulrasians, you consider. Slaves tend to use any opportunity that presents itself to enact revenge, even if they are nominally freed.
It is not something you blame them for: in their shoes you would do the exact same thing.
Past the Ogryn, you find what must be the Throne Room. The pipes sprout from the top of the pump, here, and a cupola of steel has been affixed to them, burning fires dousing the entire area in an eerie, red light. The throne made from what must be water barrels stands currently empty on its platform by the pipe. A table runs all across the room, and it is presently filled with people: Yulrasians and nobles, all without helmets, all engaged in what you suppose is probably best termed merriment: there seems to be meat on the menu, and by what your olfactory sensors are picking up at least some of the people here will either be blind or have a splitting headache in the morning. "That is Colonel Parlo", Captain Karplin points out, pointing at a man in gilded Carapace Armor and gold-fringed red cape, currently arm in arm with a hulking, white-haired mutant in muscle plate, a rebreather hanging loosely from the later's neck. "That's the Overlord", Karplin adds, rather superfluously: the man is sitting on an elevated seat, the choices of bites before him. That the Colonel occupies a seat of equal elevation is interesting, if probably not relevant to your immediate issue. "You know", Regicia muses, "that seems like a Consort's chair more than that of a trusted ally."
Well, if she says so: you don't much care about the dalliances or indiscretions of the minor warlord of the backwater of a backwater: you are here to gather the information you need and then leave as quickly as you can.
You allow Regicia to wander off and conduct her impromptu anthropological experiments: you don't really care as long as she returns when you call for her. This is, you are fairly certain, the place you received the reading from. This place holds some sort of connection to the hand of transformation: you simply have to find it, now.
You frown, as you look around. You had sort of hoped it would be more obvious than that.
Well, more fool you, hoping for straightforward answers from the Warp. Guess you'll have to do this by hand.
Empyrean Mold makes a fairly decent early warning system against the incursion of the Warp, and you always carry some of it around with you in a glass vial for that exact reason. You retrieve this glass vial now, moving it from left to right in front of yourself testingly, hoping for some sort of reaction.
You make your way around the pipes in this matter, murmuring to yourself as you go and feeling vaguely ridiculous. The congregation, at least, ignores you: Regicia seems to have worked to smooth things over.
You notice, somewhat to your chagrin, that you have lost Theama-Nul somewhere in the crowd as you finish your circuit.
Then, rapidly, your attention is drawn elsewhere. The Empyrean Mold is blooming, suddenly, turning from gray dust to impossible colors in an instant. "I found something", you cant, rather excitedly, then look up as the Platform shakes.
The Ogryn from before has entered the room, its heavy tread reverberating through the platform, a determined look on his face. The child is walking behind him, seemingly confused. Quiet falls across the room in an instant, as the crowd becomes aware of his presence. Something is wrong: you and everyone in the room can feel it.
There is a scramble for weapons, when the Ogryn roars and charges, Pneumatic Hammer raised.
A las shot, fired from somewhere behind you, glances off its shield.
You do not have time to see who fired it. The mutant is charging straight at you.
You are not the target: his gaze is firmly fixed somewhere behind you. You are just in the way.
You hit the mutant in the face with a needle fired from your arm as you skitter out of the way. A slight crater of blood erupts from its left eye. Then the shield hits your chest and you hear something within you break as you stagger backwards. A second needle glances off the helmet, but a third finds its neck and jugular. The poison you have dosed the creature with should be enough to stun even something of it's bulk, but it simply keeps going. One of the guests turns to red mist under its hammer. A second is obliterated as Regicia fires her Digiweapons. The Ogryn doesn't even flinch as it is bombarded by gore, and then Regicia's arm is gone, though not before her taser staff is lodged firmly beneath the Ogryns chin. Torrents of electricity rush through its body, and this seems to actually slow it down, though it takes two more slow, cumbersome steps towards the Overlord and the Colonel.
It is Theama-Nul who ultimately brings it down: at least you figure the mysterious figure in the crowd firing the Webber at it is the enigmatic Tech Priest. Razor-sharp filament wraps around the Ogryn's bulk and slices open his face, and then it comes into contact with the electrical current of the Taser Goad and flares up in a sudden burst of electrical fire. For a moment, you do not see an average man, though much of Theama-Nul remains obscured by their robe the arcs of lighting running across their body.
It hits the Ogryn worse, at least.
The the mutant crashes onto the ground like a marionette with cut strings.
[Roll:Eta-Nu 9 35: Combat: 1d6: Roll: (5), Partial Success]
[Roll:Regicia Ko-Bea: Combat: 1d6: Roll: (4), Partial Success]
[Roll:Theama-Nul: Combat: 2d6: Roll: (5,3), Partial Success]
"Moro!", the child screams and runs towards the creature, which strikes you as a terrible idea. The vial of Empryrean Mold, you note, has flown from your hand and shattered on the floor: it is growing now, creeping its way towards the toppled Ogryn.
Something stirs, and then he opens his mouth and screams, and something of impossible color and unreal flesh leaps from him and towards the Colonel.
You move forward as quickly as you can, but Theama-Nul is faster than you. You recognize the device he uses, if only vaguely: a venic noose, made from sinew and hair.
[Roll:Theama-Nul: Warpcraft: 3d6: Roll: (3,6,1), Full Success]
He arrests the process of the creature mid-leap, and you suddenly find yourself looking at what is by all appearances a miniature version of a Horror of Tzeentch: a small patch of ever-mutating flesh, the only features with any definition it's malicious eye and the mouth that is now drawn into an angry snarl.
It seems hurt, somehow: incomplete. Tiny wisps of immaterial flesh strain away from its edges, as if trying to connect to something that isn't there. The room is a flurry of activity, now, as drunken revelers try to switch gears to becoming a professional fighting force again. Several people are screaming, demanding to know what happened. The Colonel, you note, had instinctively thrown the Overlord down and covered him with his body, and is now helping him to his feet somewhat sheepishly.
"Possession?", he asks, and frowns when you nod in the affirmative.
"There's been more attacks", Borj Karplin suddenly says, hand on the microbead in his ears. "All over the Hive, apparently. Reports of…seemingly loyal people just…"
He frowns, and pauses, tapping the microbead with some force. "That's weird…another attack?"
You tap into the Vox Channel, and do not bother suppressing a burst of irritated binaric at what you hear.
A cheerful chorus of voices is counting up, the numbers echoing and overlapping: an evergrowing talley, larger by the moment.
You do not know if it was on purpose, or by accident, but it seems Myges Talef has just shut down communications at the worst possible moment.
__________________________________________________________________
You spend a few minutes trying to penetrate the scrap code, to no avail: you only stop when the tally starts creeping into your internal processors and you have to purge them. Whatever it is Talef has done, he has done it thoroughly indeed.
[Roll: Regicia Ko-Bea: Social Manipulation: 3d6: Roll: (2,1,6), Full Success]
Regicia, in the meantime, has corralled the Yulrasians and locals, managing to sway them from the initial unfocused wrath into a somewhat more manageable focused rage. They are still drunk, though somewhat sobered up by the sudden bout with death. "I've seen these creatures before", Colonel Parlo says, frowning. "The Hetman had some of them with her, when we stormed the Spires."
He frowns, as he considers the thing. "Moro has been nothing but loyal to me for all the years we served together. This was…possession, of some sort?"
He frowns, and you can see his mind working, clearly coming to some conclusions that might not be entirely accurate to reality. At the very least any aggression would not be aimed at you: if he noticed Regicia obliterating one of the party guests, he doesn't seem too hung up about it.
Still, you have a choice here: tell him that Lady Czevene had nothing to do with this, or leave him to stew in his possibly somewhat misdirected anger, and avoid any further questions that might be asked of you.
__________________________________________________________________
[] Tell Him
[] Keep Quiet
___________________________________________________________________
[Roll:Theama-Nul: Warpcraft: 3d6: Roll: (6, 4, 5), Full Success]
"This is only a fragment of a larger Daemon", Theama cants to you, looking deeply fascinated. "Just an organ, basically: it's mind is somewhere else."
The caught Horror hisses and then snaps at you, and you note the wisps of pseudo-flesh seeking to escape from it. This is interesting: essentially a compass pointing directly back to the Hand of Transformation.
"This thing is weak enough it can't survive outside flesh for long", Theama-Nul opines, "though it's going to be quite stable for a while now. It probably leapt from person to person until it got here."
You can, you consider, probably find the Hand of Transformation quite easily, should you wish to. You are, however, hurt: Regicia and Theama-Nul are as well. The Yulrasian Assault Regiment is quite angry, and might do undue damage to the machine you are, after all, trying to repair. Also, this was plainly not the only attack: if you are interpreting the ritual together, there were at least eight more instances, some in concert, some of their own.
With the Vox down, you cannot ascertain how chaotic the situation in the Hive above is. It may be prudent to take the Yulrasians upwards, in order to stabilize the situation and ensure that there is still a client when you return back home.
It only takes you a moment to decide.
___________________________________________________________________
[] Go after the Hand with the Yulrasians
[] Make your way Uphive along the Yulrasians
[] Go after the Hand on your own
[]and leave the Yulrasians to their own devices
[]and try convincing the Yulrasians to go up hive and assist
Sometimes, such cascades can be stopped and stabilized: like a medicare administering antibiotics or a surgeon placing a bypass or transplanting an organ, points of failure can be treated, removed, or replaced. Often, all this does is buy time, prolong the inevitable demise of the organisms at the cost of its quality of life.
Still, that time bought might be measured in generations and eons, and failure in the death of lives beyond counting.
The First Hive of Sephiron Prime is dying, and has been for a very long time. You can smell it in the air: a curious mixture of burnt Prometheum, rust, and mold, the sure sign of air filters long past their needed replacement. You can see it on its walls, their hastily added supports red with corrosion and holding up walls that must have been crumbling for a thousand years. You can see it in their infrastructure, in the tangle of pipes hastily welded onto the large arterials, both to bypass blockages that could not be accessed and to sap away some of the vital cargo they carry. At one point, the smell of waste water wafts into your nose, in what you are fairly certain is an improvised treatment plant to provide a community with some water instead of none, at the price of a horrifically increased risk of disease.
First Hive is dying, but without a full overview of its myriad sicknesses, you could not make a definite diagnosis of how long that process will take, and you would not even know where to begin taking such a census.
It is, in this way, like every Hive you have ever visited: none of them are sustainable, and all are sustained nonetheless, for humanity for all its troublesome tendencies is a tenacious species indeed. The Host of Ninefold Reveleation, you would wager, regards itself as a curative: an injection of venom in a low dosage to stave off a larger disease.
You could not say, and do not care, whether they will succeed in this or fail, but as you make your way lower into the Hive, driven once more within the Tauros of the 342nd Cadian Shock Regiment, you cannot help but hope it is the former.
You frown at that, a bit: it is more sentimental than you have allowed yourself to be in a long time.
The trip down to the forward base of the 54th Yulrasian Assault Regiment is a long and arduous one: it takes you the better part of 24 hours even in the quick and nimble Tauros.
Part of that is that you frequently find yourself rerouted around active combat operations, this or that unit of Conarian Rangers, Janissaries, or Moribundan Cavalry clearing out a section of the Hive of suspected insurgents.
In this, at least, they seem to be about as brutal as can be expected: at least once the actual reason you are forced to reroute is that your original path has been turned into a wall of fire, and another time you are held up by members of the 18th Conarian Rangers herding a large crowd of people past you. You had not heard of that Regiment before, and as you regard them, it becomes abundantly clear why: they are a Conscript Regiment, taken, if the crossed scythes on their khaki uniform are anything to go by, from some Agriworld or the other. The Voss-Pattern Lasguns in their arms are clearly second or third hand equipment. The only person sporting even Flak Armor amongst them is the Officer you see leading them: the rest has to make do with cloth uniforms and field caps with neck flaps
Still, they seem oddly dangerous to you: something about the way they hold themselves, about the light you see shine in their eyes. These are men and women that have never held power in their life, now getting their very first taste of it: conscripts made conquerors by the might of the Host. It is incredible, you consider, that discipline seems to be holding up as well as it does, though of course you cannot see them away from the eyes of their commanders and superiors. Borj Karplin stirs next to you as he looks over the masses, pride clear in his eyes.
"They have come far", he says, gruffly, and it occurs to you that he must have had thoughts quite similar to yours. Strange, you think, but then the column is past, and you consider it no further.
Underhives are strange, and fascinating: structures within the larger organism of the Hive that are sometimes vestigial, sometimes parasitical, sometimes symbiotic and often utterly crucial to the continued function of the Hive, with no way to determine which is which. Entire populations live their life away from the prying eyes of whichever overlord rules the Hive, between the constant humming of pump stations, the radiation of generators, and the fumes of waste products long beyond purifying and simply dumped below.
Between that, frequently, treasures: the refuse of the Dark Age, discarded without thought or hidden away, now valuable beyond measure. You have seen the expeditions return to Nuton's Folly, laden heavily with plundered goods. Once or twice, you were tempted to go yourself, invited along on this expedition or that by people that valued your expertise or at least your ability to catch bullets in their stead. Always, you demurred: always, there was something more important. The last time you actually went below into an Underhive was on Terra, hunting a Company of White Scars that had gotten itself cut off from the Palace alongside some Emperor's Children.
That was a very different environment from the one you now descend into. For one, that Hive was significantly more on fire.
The Cadians actually relax the deeper they descend, and it is soon clear why: graffito of the Nine-winged Eye marks the walls with increasing frequency, and the people within the settlements you pass through part for you, raising their arms and cheering as you pass them by.
"The Underhive was the first section of the Hive we liberated", Borj Karplin explains. "The people came to our side in swathes, ready to throw off the yoke that had been placed on them for eons."
Another of those points of failure, you muse: an underclass of outcasts tends not to like being an underclass of outcasts, and once the systems holding them down fail, all bets are off.
Pump Station Alpha Three towers over its surroundings like a mountain, the rumblings of its inner workings audible even an hour of driving away. Corrugated iron huts and hovels cover it almost in its entirety.
"Water tends to leak from the pump", Karplin tells you, by way of explanation, "and it and the heat produced means that people congregate around it. Call it the Tower of Life, apparently: its Overlord was one of our first allies down here, and is hosting the Colonel of the Yulrasians even now. "
You see the first of the Yulrasians soon after, as you draw close to the base of the Tower. The noise is growing, here: the rumbling of its internal machinery is almost overwhelming, forcing you to read lips and switch your canting to a lower frequency to be understood. Chimeras are stood around the tower, weapons facing outwards in an orderly manner, lines marked somewhat haphazardly around their base: all measures taken, you consider, to make it clear that they are here as guests and allies, not as a besieging force.
The Yulrasians themselves are the heaviest infantry: the ones guarding the tanks are clad in Carapace Armor that gleams even in the low light of the Underhive, Sallet-style helmets combining with high gorgets that conceal most of their faces. They are sharing their guard, you note, with some people who must be locals: mutants wielding autoguns and weaponry improvised from tools, their armor simple in make but elaborate in appearance, with water and valves frequent motives across it. Relations seem cordial: cordial enough you spot several of the Yulrasian's Lucius-Pattern Lasguns in the hands of locals, and several of the presumably functionless valve wheels attached to the armor of the Astra Militarum Regiment.
Captain Karplin steps from the Tauros, and exchanges a quick series of words that are utterly lost in the drone of the pump, and then you are being waves through, into the interior of the tower, and onto what might be the most structurally unsound construction you have ever entered.
The Tower of Life was built by people who learned everything they did about structural engineering haphazardly and through trial and error: you can tell this with absolute certainty, because the evidence of the error is on display all around you.
You stop analyzing the welds for their integrity after you find the first one that doesn't actually attach the ground plate to anything. The entire structure sways in time to the vibrations of the pump. Several times you are forced to make a detour, entire rooms having torn loose from the tower. Still, thousands live here, and you can somewhat tell why: there is water everywhere, and greenery has sprouted everywhere it could find any sort of fertile ground. The Tower of Life, for all its dangers, offers shelter, and water, and food, and community: humans will put up with worse for such things.
This does not mean, of course, that you do not stay close to the wall at all times, ready to ram your legs into the walls should the structure fail. You climb for a little more than an hour: through tight corridors and up dangling ladders, over stairs that have clearly been pilfered from somewhere else and up ramps slick with water and rust. The structure slims towards its top, but this simply means that the rooms become larger and more ambitious.
You are glad that you seem to be sticking largely to the structures close to the core of the Tower: its edge, you judge, is the most unsafe part.
Of course the edge would also allow you to try a desperate jump to safety, should the entire thing begin to collapse on top of you.
You are preoccupied enough with such thoughts that you barely take note of the people that mill around the tower, beyond the very basic signs of malnutrition that are on display near universally and the mutations that appear to be ubiquitous. Mutagens in the water or the air rather then exposure to the Empyrean, if you had to guess, though of course neither the Imperium nor most of the forces of Chaos make such a distinction. A mutant is a mutant, to be used and exploited: that one side shuns and fears them as it does so and the other pretends to engage in some sort of veneration does not make much of a difference.
As if to support your point, it is just when you have finished that thought that you meet the first Ogryn. The powerful mutant (you refuse to adhere to the ridiculous notion of 'abhumanity' the Imperium frequently employs to justify their own hypocrisy) is clad in the gleaming carapace of the Yulrasians, and bears in his hands a long pneumatic hammer in surprisingly good repair, complemented by a shield lavishly decorated with what you presume must be the markings of the Regiment: what you recognize as a primitive Blacksmith's Hammer, crossed over with the Lucius-Pattern Lasgun that seems to be their primary weapon: the entire design has plainly been modified since then, they nine-winged eye now stood proudly where hammer and gun meet. The Ogryn too wears the round helmet favored by his compatriots, further complimented by a gas mask that only leaves his beady eye visible.
He has affixed a flower to one of his pauldrons: a weedy, pale thing, probably grown in the sump somewhere, but it lends him an oddly innocent look despite the fact he could, by the looks of him, end you without exercising even what little capacity of thought he possesses. He is in conversation with a fair-haired child of eight or so years, what little is visible of his brows furrowing in conversation as he listens to what appears to be a girl: if he is supposed to stand guard he is doing lousy work. You see the burn-marks of where a shock collar once sat around his necks as you pass him by, though the device itself is nowhere to be found: a risk taken by the Yulrasians, you consider. Slaves tend to use any opportunity that presents itself to enact revenge, even if they are nominally freed.
It is not something you blame them for: in their shoes you would do the exact same thing.
Past the Ogryn, you find what must be the Throne Room. The pipes sprout from the top of the pump, here, and a cupola of steel has been affixed to them, burning fires dousing the entire area in an eerie, red light. The throne made from what must be water barrels stands currently empty on its platform by the pipe. A table runs all across the room, and it is presently filled with people: Yulrasians and nobles, all without helmets, all engaged in what you suppose is probably best termed merriment: there seems to be meat on the menu, and by what your olfactory sensors are picking up at least some of the people here will either be blind or have a splitting headache in the morning. "That is Colonel Parlo", Captain Karplin points out, pointing at a man in gilded Carapace Armor and gold-fringed red cape, currently arm in arm with a hulking, white-haired mutant in muscle plate, a rebreather hanging loosely from the later's neck. "That's the Overlord", Karplin adds, rather superfluously: the man is sitting on an elevated seat, the choices of bites before him. That the Colonel occupies a seat of equal elevation is interesting, if probably not relevant to your immediate issue. "You know", Regicia muses, "that seems like a Consort's chair more than that of a trusted ally."
Well, if she says so: you don't much care about the dalliances or indiscretions of the minor warlord of the backwater of a backwater: you are here to gather the information you need and then leave as quickly as you can.
You allow Regicia to wander off and conduct her impromptu anthropological experiments: you don't really care as long as she returns when you call for her. This is, you are fairly certain, the place you received the reading from. This place holds some sort of connection to the hand of transformation: you simply have to find it, now.
You frown, as you look around. You had sort of hoped it would be more obvious than that.
Well, more fool you, hoping for straightforward answers from the Warp. Guess you'll have to do this by hand.
Empyrean Mold makes a fairly decent early warning system against the incursion of the Warp, and you always carry some of it around with you in a glass vial for that exact reason. You retrieve this glass vial now, moving it from left to right in front of yourself testingly, hoping for some sort of reaction.
You make your way around the pipes in this matter, murmuring to yourself as you go and feeling vaguely ridiculous. The congregation, at least, ignores you: Regicia seems to have worked to smooth things over.
You notice, somewhat to your chagrin, that you have lost Theama-Nul somewhere in the crowd as you finish your circuit.
Then, rapidly, your attention is drawn elsewhere. The Empyrean Mold is blooming, suddenly, turning from gray dust to impossible colors in an instant. "I found something", you cant, rather excitedly, then look up as the Platform shakes.
The Ogryn from before has entered the room, its heavy tread reverberating through the platform, a determined look on his face. The child is walking behind him, seemingly confused. Quiet falls across the room in an instant, as the crowd becomes aware of his presence. Something is wrong: you and everyone in the room can feel it.
There is a scramble for weapons, when the Ogryn roars and charges, Pneumatic Hammer raised.
A las shot, fired from somewhere behind you, glances off its shield.
You do not have time to see who fired it. The mutant is charging straight at you.
You are not the target: his gaze is firmly fixed somewhere behind you. You are just in the way.
You hit the mutant in the face with a needle fired from your arm as you skitter out of the way. A slight crater of blood erupts from its left eye. Then the shield hits your chest and you hear something within you break as you stagger backwards. A second needle glances off the helmet, but a third finds its neck and jugular. The poison you have dosed the creature with should be enough to stun even something of it's bulk, but it simply keeps going. One of the guests turns to red mist under its hammer. A second is obliterated as Regicia fires her Digiweapons. The Ogryn doesn't even flinch as it is bombarded by gore, and then Regicia's arm is gone, though not before her taser staff is lodged firmly beneath the Ogryns chin. Torrents of electricity rush through its body, and this seems to actually slow it down, though it takes two more slow, cumbersome steps towards the Overlord and the Colonel.
It is Theama-Nul who ultimately brings it down: at least you figure the mysterious figure in the crowd firing the Webber at it is the enigmatic Tech Priest. Razor-sharp filament wraps around the Ogryn's bulk and slices open his face, and then it comes into contact with the electrical current of the Taser Goad and flares up in a sudden burst of electrical fire. For a moment, you do not see an average man, though much of Theama-Nul remains obscured by their robe the arcs of lighting running across their body.
It hits the Ogryn worse, at least.
The the mutant crashes onto the ground like a marionette with cut strings.
[Roll:Eta-Nu 9 35: Combat: 1d6: Roll: (5), Partial Success]
[Roll:Regicia Ko-Bea: Combat: 1d6: Roll: (4), Partial Success]
[Roll:Theama-Nul: Combat: 2d6: Roll: (5,3), Partial Success]
"Moro!", the child screams and runs towards the creature, which strikes you as a terrible idea. The vial of Empryrean Mold, you note, has flown from your hand and shattered on the floor: it is growing now, creeping its way towards the toppled Ogryn.
Something stirs, and then he opens his mouth and screams, and something of impossible color and unreal flesh leaps from him and towards the Colonel.
You move forward as quickly as you can, but Theama-Nul is faster than you. You recognize the device he uses, if only vaguely: a venic noose, made from sinew and hair.
[Roll:Theama-Nul: Warpcraft: 3d6: Roll: (3,6,1), Full Success]
He arrests the process of the creature mid-leap, and you suddenly find yourself looking at what is by all appearances a miniature version of a Horror of Tzeentch: a small patch of ever-mutating flesh, the only features with any definition it's malicious eye and the mouth that is now drawn into an angry snarl.
It seems hurt, somehow: incomplete. Tiny wisps of immaterial flesh strain away from its edges, as if trying to connect to something that isn't there. The room is a flurry of activity, now, as drunken revelers try to switch gears to becoming a professional fighting force again. Several people are screaming, demanding to know what happened. The Colonel, you note, had instinctively thrown the Overlord down and covered him with his body, and is now helping him to his feet somewhat sheepishly.
"Possession?", he asks, and frowns when you nod in the affirmative.
"There's been more attacks", Borj Karplin suddenly says, hand on the microbead in his ears. "All over the Hive, apparently. Reports of…seemingly loyal people just…"
He frowns, and pauses, tapping the microbead with some force. "That's weird…another attack?"
You tap into the Vox Channel, and do not bother suppressing a burst of irritated binaric at what you hear.
A cheerful chorus of voices is counting up, the numbers echoing and overlapping: an evergrowing talley, larger by the moment.
You do not know if it was on purpose, or by accident, but it seems Myges Talef has just shut down communications at the worst possible moment.
__________________________________________________________________
You spend a few minutes trying to penetrate the scrap code, to no avail: you only stop when the tally starts creeping into your internal processors and you have to purge them. Whatever it is Talef has done, he has done it thoroughly indeed.
[Roll: Regicia Ko-Bea: Social Manipulation: 3d6: Roll: (2,1,6), Full Success]
Regicia, in the meantime, has corralled the Yulrasians and locals, managing to sway them from the initial unfocused wrath into a somewhat more manageable focused rage. They are still drunk, though somewhat sobered up by the sudden bout with death. "I've seen these creatures before", Colonel Parlo says, frowning. "The Hetman had some of them with her, when we stormed the Spires."
He frowns, as he considers the thing. "Moro has been nothing but loyal to me for all the years we served together. This was…possession, of some sort?"
He frowns, and you can see his mind working, clearly coming to some conclusions that might not be entirely accurate to reality. At the very least any aggression would not be aimed at you: if he noticed Regicia obliterating one of the party guests, he doesn't seem too hung up about it.
Still, you have a choice here: tell him that Lady Czevene had nothing to do with this, or leave him to stew in his possibly somewhat misdirected anger, and avoid any further questions that might be asked of you.
__________________________________________________________________
[] Tell Him
[] Keep Quiet
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[Roll:Theama-Nul: Warpcraft: 3d6: Roll: (6, 4, 5), Full Success]
"This is only a fragment of a larger Daemon", Theama cants to you, looking deeply fascinated. "Just an organ, basically: it's mind is somewhere else."
The caught Horror hisses and then snaps at you, and you note the wisps of pseudo-flesh seeking to escape from it. This is interesting: essentially a compass pointing directly back to the Hand of Transformation.
"This thing is weak enough it can't survive outside flesh for long", Theama-Nul opines, "though it's going to be quite stable for a while now. It probably leapt from person to person until it got here."
You can, you consider, probably find the Hand of Transformation quite easily, should you wish to. You are, however, hurt: Regicia and Theama-Nul are as well. The Yulrasian Assault Regiment is quite angry, and might do undue damage to the machine you are, after all, trying to repair. Also, this was plainly not the only attack: if you are interpreting the ritual together, there were at least eight more instances, some in concert, some of their own.
With the Vox down, you cannot ascertain how chaotic the situation in the Hive above is. It may be prudent to take the Yulrasians upwards, in order to stabilize the situation and ensure that there is still a client when you return back home.
It only takes you a moment to decide.
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[] Go after the Hand with the Yulrasians
[] Make your way Uphive along the Yulrasians
[] Go after the Hand on your own
[]and leave the Yulrasians to their own devices
[]and try convincing the Yulrasians to go up hive and assist
[X]Plan: Fuck her, she is not paying us
-[X] Keep Quiet
-[X] Go after the Hand with the Yulrasians
-[X] Keep Quiet
-[X] Go after the Hand with the Yulrasians