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Memento Mori (Exalted/40k)

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[] The Silver Bullet Upon Which Is Written Atlantia

I know, I know, but just giving a shout-out to the user who came up with this glorious 8 words.
 
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II - Dead Men Make the Finest Killers
  • Threadmarks
    • The winning vote for the name was "The Last and First Gunslinger of Atlantia". It will probably be shortened by those who want to actually talk to you to something like "Last and First".

    Your character sheet will be linked on the first page, but if you'd rather have a look at it now:

    https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1SXDWsl05gDETr9R93pp8F9mycjkSXDUC-AsR6OgkQ_g/edit?usp=sharing

    Once, when you were a child, you got caught in an explosion at a munition factory. Gunmetal's entire industrial base relies on such industry and the safety protocols are consequently stringent, but there is only so much one can do when working with high explosives in the caldera of an active volcano. You never did find out what exactly caused the disaster, whether it was an accident or sabotage or simple environmental peril; you only know that one moment you were a drop in the river of the incoming shift, and the next you were covered in blood and gore and fifty paces down the road.

    Exaltation feels something like that.

    You are upright without rising, your blood singing and your muscles numb. The whole world seems slowed to a leaden crawl, your ponderous thoughts no exception,, and yet your instincts bleed razor-sharp and your body is already in motion. The rich man's hounds are still mere paces away, the air still rich with the tang of cordite and blood, and your gun is still in your hand.

    Your first shot draws a line from the first man's throat to the second's heart, deflects down off the ribcage and hits the grenade belt being worn by the third. He comes apart in a blossom of flame, spreading slowly like blood in the water to engulf the fourth hound before he can even realise what is going on, and the stench of burnt meat mingles eagerly with spilled blood and fresh spilled blood.

    The fifth hound is already in motion, metallican reflexes throwing his body into cover behind a set of cargo crates before his mind can even register the sound of the shots. You see every tiny bead of sweat on his ruddy skin and put a round through the crates and into his left eye. You don't see the result this time, but you don't need to. He's already falling, and will not rise again.

    Six and Seven are already firing, limbs blurring with the twitchy speed that characterises low-grade augments. They're using Bonefingers, you note, heat-resistant variants of a common Westingkrup design meant to work in the harshest of conditions. The slugs buzz like insects as they sail past your head, and with careless grace your pistol kicks twice more, folding those furious glares in on themselves like wet paper.

    That leaves three, the remnants of a standard tactical squad brought along to keep their principal alive and triumphant. They failed in that duty and have compounded the error by straying beneath the shadow of a fuel pipe, raw novices in the bodies of hardened veterans. You fire once more, snapping the emergency release valve in two, and the trio drown beneath a waterfall of burning gas hot enough to swallow their screams.

    Ten men, five shots, two seconds; the seeds of a legend, if there was anyone here but the dead to witness it. You lift the Hecuter to your lips and the smoke that wafts from the muzzle twists itself into the mournful visage of a leering skull, weeping silent tears before you snuff it out with a single breath. The barrel is different too, a strange silver alloy that shifts with inner movement, but it sits lightly in the hand and slides back into the holster without protest, and with your free hand you pull your hat back up onto your head. The light from the burning corpses plays across your rebuilt flesh, and by degrees you come to acknowledge what you already knew. You aren't human any more.

    You remember the black star the giant pressed into your chest, the promise of immortality and power. He remade you, it seems, and maybe damned you into the bargain, but you cannot say that he did not hold up his end of the deal. You're not an honourable man, but if there is one thing worse than signing your soul away, it's trying to cheat the devil of his due.

    "Marius Hax, huh," you murmur, just to feel the shape of the name in your mouth. It's an important name to be sure, belonging to a man so exalted he quite literally does not breathe the same air as you, but also one you know virtually nothing about. Hax has been Lord Sector since before your grandfather was born; what could you possibly say of him that you could not say of any noble, or indeed the class or Imperium itself? The thought reminds you of the noble you killed with your dying breath, and you look down at the corpse. "Don't suppose you can tell me anything useful?"

    The dead man's eyes open and he levers himself upright, cooling blood running down his chest in crimson rivulets. "Marius Hax is a tyrant, and like all tyrants he fears nothing more than that which lies outside his power. He places his Chaliced agents among the army and leaves the Lucid Palace once a decade at best. We have never met."

    You stare at the dead man's pale face for a long moment in silence. Then you draw your pistol and turn his skull to bloody fragments, turning your back on what remains and walking away without a further word. This is a day for new and terrible surprises, but that doesn't mean you have to deal with them all at once.

    You walk until you come to the edge of the tier, where the staggered plates that encrust the sides of Mount Thollos overlap and imbricate, and without pause step off the metal platform and into open air. Your long coat of synthetic leather billows around you as you fall, until you land atop one of the many ore transports rumbling down the access road on the floor below. The servitor at the helm, half-dead and desiccated by the extreme heat of the industry that it feeds, turns briefly to stare at you with what might almost be interest. You glare at it until it turns back to its work, then settle yourself down on the edge of one of the great hexagonal containers and let the rushing wind give shape to your thoughts.

    The Lucid Palace is in Hive Sibellus, you know that much; the silhouette of its flower-petal architecture has been praised as one of the great wonders of the sector so often even an illiterate gun-thug from Infernus could probably recognise it, but you'd have better chances of finding a single bullet in Gunmetal than getting access to the palace yourself. You need to find some way to lure Hax out, or attach yourself to someone who can get an invite to the most exclusive building on the planet. If you can get face to face, then - wait, no, do they even duel in Sibellus? They must, you think, but chances are it is probably restricted to some ridiculous format like those stick-thin swords foreign nobles are always being painted with instead of a proper gun.

    The ore hauler reaches a corner, cargo pods listing precariously as it takes the turn faster than any living man would dare, and with a grunt you kick off from your perch and land on the roof of a nearby hab-block. Your body feels at once elevated and degraded, thrumming with power but unfamiliar as an ill-fitting shirt, and you grimace at the sensation even as you leap from rooftop to rooftop with more than human grace. Eventually the dissonance grows too much for you and you drop back down to street level, joining the arterial flow of workers heading for their next shift at the foundries, pulling your scarf up across your mouth and nose out of old habit. Every man and woman in the crowd around you is armed, revolvers sticking out from oil-stained overalls and stubguns slung on straps across their backs, but without a word the crowd parts enough to give you space to walk alone.

    Privately, you acknowledge the truth; you cannot hide from what you are now, and you must not attempt to fulfil this commission before you understand yourself and your new abilities in full. Perhaps you no longer have to fear the death and pain that would reward a man who took a fresh gun into a killer's duel, but old habits are hard to break and the stench of failure impossible to scrub away. Yet to resolve such a thing is easier than to perform it, and you are still no closer to settling upon a destination - should you head for the Infernus, to shoot and kill until enlightenment comes? To your old haunts in the mid levels, to consult the old salts and wise fools on where you might head next? Perhaps you could even set course for the upper levels of the city, there to settle accounts with Lyra's old masters and perhaps win the patronage of a rival who knows more of Hax and Sibellus than you could ever hope to.

    This crowd is headed to the Rim, and from there the mass transit lifts that will take them down to their assigned workplaces. There they will labour for most of the day, before flowing back out to the entertainment districts and then their cramped little domiciles. You leave them behind without a backwards glance; it has been decades since you were truly one of their number, and you've killed too many to ever walk that path again. Instead you divert onto the most rickety of old viewing platforms and from there the mighty statue they were created to admire, all details long since lost to the endless clouds of caustic byproduct, and from the tip of its outstretched hand you look out over the city where you lived and died.

    The City stretches out before you, a truer vision of hell than any you might hear at the pulpit. From here you can see the shape of the metropolis in its entirety, from the jumbled stacks that rise up the slopes of Mount Thollos to the sweeping curves of streets that run around the caldera's interior, but details of any kind are lost amid the clutter and the red-brown smog that drowns the city in its depths. Great factories and civic buildings rise here and there like leviathans emerging from the depths, but all else is reduced to the dim echo of shapes and pools of infernal light beneath the smoke. Only the palaces of the wealthy are spared that ever-constant filth, perched like circus acrobats atop needle-thin towers of polished metal that erupt from the hidden corpse of the city at their base, connected by the shimmering lights of aerial transportation that their masters need never dirty their feet with the common crowd below. The air is hot as an open forge and stinks of volcanic sulphur, and everywhere you hear nothing quite so clearly as the constant pop-pop-pop of gunfire beneath the haze.

    Just another day in Gunmetal City.

    Article:
    Where do you wish to go?

    [ ] Descend into Infernus
    Among the gangs and burning rock of Gunmetal's lowest levels, you can put your new abilities to the test and forge a reputation as something more than a mere legend. Perhaps you will even find answers to your strangest questions among the exiles and forbidden remnants.

    [ ] Return to Old Haunts
    In the saloons and speakeasies of the middle city you will find those who know you, and who make a business of knowing everything else as well. At least some of them will know of paths that lead to Sibellus and the Lord Sector, if you can pay their price.

    [ ] Ascend the Spires
    You will climb the metal towers and see for yourself how the other half live, beginning with the family that claim Lyra for their own. Living or dead, they will answer your questions and serve your purpose.
     
  • Threadmarks
    • [X] Ascend the Spires
    You will climb the metal towers and see for yourself how the other half live, beginning with the family that claim Lyra for their own. Living or dead, they will answer your questions and serve your purpose.
     
    Maugan Ra said:
    You lift the Hecuter to your lips and the smoke that wafts from the muzzle twists itself into the mournful visage of a leering skull, weeping silent tears before you snuff it out with a single breath. The barrel is different too, a strange silver alloy that shifts with inner movement, but it sits lightly in the hand and slides back into the holster without protest, and with your free hand you pull your hat back up onto your head.
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    Hm… does this apply to all guns we pick up, just certain types, or only the one?

    Kinda want to find a Bolt Revolver.
     
    [X] Ascend the Spires

    Nice update, still, when are we gonna name our gun, cause how can we call ourselves a gunslinger if our gun does not have a name.
     
    [X] Descend into Infernus

    Much as I'd like to see the spires, I'd prefer to wait until we have a better handle on ourselves.
     
    [X] Ascend the Spires

    Time to clean Lyra's slate for good and make sure no one else goes after her again.

    Maugan Ra said:
    The winning vote for the name was "The Last and First Gunslinger of Atlantia". It will probably be shortened by those who want to actually talk to you to something like "Last and First".
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    I would also accept getting nicknamed "Atty" by more casual acquaintances.
     
    BigBadBob7070 said:
    Time to clean Lyra's slate for good and make sure no one else goes after her again.
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    That's largely why I'm voting for Ascend, along with my figuring that us showing up in the Spires after killing that one noble should provide more than enough noisy distraction for Lyra and her crew to get even further away.
     
    Always Late said:
    Hm… does this apply to all guns we pick up, just certain types, or only the one?

    Kinda want to find a Bolt Revolver.
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    Click to shrink...

    This is the result of your existing pistol being reforged as The Prince of Pistols, an artifact merit, which puts it on par with any archaeotech wonder in terms of stats etc and will also grant unique powers as you use it and grow more familiar with it.

    (Is it the same pistol? As with the ship of Theseus, that is more a question of philosophy than hard fact.)
     
    [x] Descend into Infernus
    Among the gangs and burning rock of Gunmetal's lowest levels, you can put your new abilities to the test and forge a reputation as something more than a mere legend. Perhaps you will even find answers to your strangest questions among the exiles and forbidden remnants.
     
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