- Location
- Alice Springs, Australia
+5 to general Drago's survival cahnce, +5 to defence of Garden GroveOk, Drago omake.
What We're Trained For
General Kenneth Drago looked over the walls of Garden Grove, viewing the horizon as it's color changed to reflect the incoming daemonic horde. He was rather annoyed at not being able to send out Monitors to scout out the enemy forces and help with the artillery fire. The scout cars had become a staple of warfare for Avernus, and without them the artillery were firing blind at longer ranges. The effective range at which they could aim was helped by the spotters who were in the highest towers of the hive, having requisitioned the apartments of the city's wealthier inhabitants so they could see further past the horizon, but it still wasn't as good. But no matter, he and his forces would persevere.
They were nervous though, for daemons were one of the most feared and hated enemies that any man could face. They wouldn't falter, he knew, but with threats both internal and external they felt that they were in-between a rock and a hard place. He'd never been one for speeches, and he wasn't as inspiring as Frederick was, but he knew that the right words could help morale immensely. He went over to the nearest comms station, followed by his personal guards, those who were survivors of the Cadian 103rd Shock Troopers. Not a one of them seemed even phased by what was happening, for they had experience against daemons that most Avernites did not.
Kenneth had the comms operator patch him in to every vox in the city, and he began to speak.
"This is General Kenneth Drago. People of Garden Grove, as you know a great trial is before us. Already many of you have had to put down friends, family, neighbors, and comrades who have fallen to the foul corruption of the Dark God whose forces assail our world. I know that this is a heavy burden to live with, but you must live on for their sakes. Our Emperor suffered in terrible agony for thousands of years for the sake of humanity, enduring what would have broken any lesser human being, giving his body and soul until they could give no more. We must not dishonor his sacrifice. As he endured, so shall we.
"At this moment, the first wave of daemons approaches your walls. These servants of Slaanesh will seek to corrupt and enslave you. They will fail. Avernus was colonized to create an army capable of fighting on a Daemon World, where foul abominations like the ones that will soon assail us dominate the landscape. We are that army. Every last one of us, from the highest officer to the newest militia trainee. We are trained to fight these monsters. It is not us who should fear them, but them who should fear us. Good luck, and may the Emperor be with you."
A great cheer rose up throughout the hive city of Garden Grove, and Kenneth couldn't help but grin, but only for a moment.
"Sir, the daemons are in view of the spotters." one of the comms officers informed him.
"I see, give me a visual."
"Yes, sir." The screen showed the approaching horde. To be honest, they were looking a bit ragged. Daemons of Slaanesh weren't the most heavily armored of their kind, and walking through the endless fields of Razorgrass in Elysium had cut their fleshy bits up quite a lot. Sure, the sick fucks probably enjoyed the pain, but the damage to their physical bodies still reduced their capabilities. There were a few that seemed to be in a bit of a panic. Kenneth chuckled when he realized that a few must have taken a stroll through the Cannibal Grass, no doubt denied their precious sensations by the numbing agent in the thorns. For beings who reveled in sensation, the denial of it must be the worst form of torture. The enemy's ignorance of the terrain had made his job a bit easier.
"Well then, men, anyone care to place a bet to see how many of them make it to the walls?"
+5 to Drago and SchwarzWrath of the Drago
What was at first a simple visit to Elysium to inspect it's military and defenses had become a bitter war of survival with Drago and Lieutenant-General Schwarz leading the military while First Councillor Aryz was handing the cities. When the Daemons first started appearing and the world went made Drago wasted no time in throwing out orders preparing for battle and doing everything in his power to protect the people of Avernus. Seeing as they were cut off from the rest of Avernus due to the damage done to the rail lines and having no useful long range communication Drago decided to focus all his attention on Elysium and trust that everyone else can handle themselves.
Drago quickly got the military together to be able to hold back the Daemons and deal with the new cultists and Chaos Psyker that had shown up thanks to the Daemons arrival. He regrettably had to kill some of his own officers when the madness took them and Schwarz even saved his life when a Chaos Psyker had gotten too close. After that he made sure to be even more on alert and having his people hunt down these madmen before they could do serious harm and prevent them from fighting against the Daemons effectively.
Thanks to his vast experience Schwarz was invaluable due to having fought Daemons in large scale at least once or twice for one reason or another. The old man was a monster on the battlefield and the forces under his command usually made quick work of the Daemons using large amounts of firepower and tactics to deal with them. Drago himself also got in on the action occasionally but focused mainly on leading the PDF and Helltroopers in general behind the front lines.
This is partly because Schwarz argued the overall military command of the planet should not needlessly risk himself on the front lines and was more useful in leading than fighting face to face with Daemons.
Having also been in the region at the time First Councillor Aryz was focusing most of his efforts in directing the people in an organized fashion and ordering around the militia to keep order while also taking down traitor forces. His help was also greatly appreciated and Drago was glad to have him around.
Drago was the General of Avernus and would not go down without a fight until he saved as many people as possible while also taking as many Daemons down with him.
+1 to all city defenceFor want of a daemon
The littlest things of things could add up to far larger consequences. This anyone in logistics, or strategy, would tell you without question. So it was with great abandon that the ill-consider invasion of Avernus, already going poorly, would jeopardized yet further. It was with the littlest things that one flipped the table with, after all. Or rather, re-flip it, given what had already transpired.
It began with a chaos psyker exploding into a warp rift that proceeded to summon a few demons from Slaneesh's onto the plains of Aridia. The daemons all died, eventually, to Avernites and wildlife, but what mattered was that those daemons had come from the ones charging into Avernus, pushed in by rivals and 'allies', in a struggle that would halt the swarm of daemons onto Avernus' rift on the pole by a number of minutes.
Minutes that would be leveraged by Avernus' penguins, exterminating daemons who found themselves lacking reinforcements. Not quite a complete extermination, mind, but enough. Enough that when the flow of daemons onto Avernus' poles was forced again, it was as if they had back-tracked their progress against the penguins by days.
The flow of daemons from the north, naturally, lessened. The initial pause of minutes in daemons of the north would become half an hour of peace for the Avernite cities assaulted by them a few days hence from that incident, who then capitalized on that pause in their own ways, some using it on clearing out chaos cultists in relative peace, some to patch up defences, reorganize forces, or just having a moment of rest before the tide of daemons continued once more.
So when they came, casualties were ever so lower, morale ever so higher, and the balance of forces all the more favorable. Such were consequences of the littlest of minutae.
+5 to Tamia, +10 to psyker hunting in SalemSo, I decided I like the Tamia Jameson personality I came up with, so here's another little something involving her and hunting down chaos psykers.
The Desert Witch (or Tamia Jameson and the Annoying Interruptions, or Tamia of Aridia)
Tamia was not having a very good day. To be fair, no one was really having a good day recently. This whole demonic incursion really put a damper on just about everyone's day. And at least now things were organized enough that she wasn't trying to do three or four things at once. She was good, very good, even by Avernus' standards, but between resisting the mental effects of the Incursion (far more potent against a psyker than the rest), holding local command and control together in the face of communication outages through telepathic messages, closing any portals before the defenders could be overwhelmed, verifying key personnel had not been corrupted through mental scans, and being shuffled around in a whirlwind tour of the city to take out cultist strongpoints and chaotic psykers, she had been stretched too far.
Returning to one of the small warded areas scattered throughout the cities (and wasn't that a good idea) where visiting and newly-discovered psykers were normally quartered, Tamia tried once again to relax and get some sleep. She wasn't asking for much, after all. At this point, a solid hour would do.
But no. Again, barely fifteen minutes after settling down, she was called upon to do her duty once more. Communications were solid, the nearby portals had been closed, the army had little to no trouble putting down the cultist uprisings and occasional demon that made it to the walls, and all the still-living key personnel had been verified, but their ability to deal with chaotic psykers had been stretched beyond its limits.
So here she was, riding off to put down yet another of her fallen brethren before they overcame the perimeter around them. Truly she hated this--few indeed fell to Chaos by choice, especially in times like these, and the death and destruction they caused wrenched her heart. Internally, she promised once again to make this twisted thing that had replaced what could have been a new brother or sister suffer.
Checking through the notes she was given, she shook her head in annoyance. Yet another biomancer, likely reasonably strong even before infused by chaos. It--and it truly should be called it, now--did not appear to be actively trying to breech the perimeter around it, instead preferring to sculpt its form. It had demonstrated a near-immunity to both Impaler rounds and melta munitions, but fortunately did not seem to yet understand how to increase its speed to the same level. Clearly this one was both powerful and strong of will--a weaker mind would have rampaged immediately in its quest for sensation. She was quickly becoming an expert on such things.
Stepping through the perimeter, she began humming. This was a new trick she had figured out hours ago (and was it really only just hours ago? It felt like so very much longer. A lifetime, at least). Before the Incursion, one of her pet projects had been trying to figure out why mirage palms were so much more effective in their deceptions than illusory pines, and had stumbled upon the idea that they might also project something into the subconscious mind, influencing those under its thrall to believe what they saw at an instinctive level. She had gotten nowhere with the idea--she had not figured out how to test it, and even if it was the case, had no clue exactly how it reached into the subconscious, but it had lead to this.
Earlier that day, she had been fighting another pyromancer, and, loopy from lack of sleep (she was doing much better right now, thank you very much), had decided she wanted to mimic Gerald's 'stop hitting yourself' defeat of a chaotic psyker. Unfortunately, the chaotic psyker's control of his flames was sufficient to prevent her from using that tactic, and his strength of will was high enough to prevent him from succumbing to her control through siren song. Then, her sleep-deprived mind had stumbled upon an idea. She could use elements of siren song (specifically, the bit that made you want to keep listening) to mimic how she thought the mirage palm might work to influence his subconscious desires and instinctive responses to get him to willingly and enthusiastically turn his flames on himself! It was genius, and right then was the correct time to try it out--no need for boring practice or to spend some time working out the complexities of the idea, after all, she was good. Fortunately for her, it had worked.
So she hummed, subtly insinuating her desires into its subconscious, as she walked towards it. Fun fact--in a melee or fast-paced fight, almost every move is made instinctively, especially among trained soldiers or psykers who had given themselves to the Ruinous Powers. And even if an individual's strength of will was sufficient to throw off the inserted instincts, the conflict between them would cause a small pause. And if the inserted instinctive response was considered reasonable, it was incredibly hard to throw it off.
The melee that followed was short and brutal. Tamia was dab hand with her staff, and between battle precog and the inserted instincts, she knew every move it was going to make before it did. Truly it was much more a well-choreographed dance of death rather than a fight. Gerald was going to be so envious about her latest trick--he was all about subtle and getting the enemy to best themselves after all.
Walking away, she heard the men whispering, remarking upon the skill and power of the Desert Witch. She could live with that sort of fame. She just wished she could get an hour or two of sleep before she would have to live with it, and up to it, again. Also, did it have to be 'witch'? She knew they meant well, but that word still had some bad connotations...
+5 to Sarens survival chanceTranth omake, cause I like science-y shinies and would like for them to continue.
The Purpose of a Machine
Archmagos Veneratus Explorator Tranth sat in his office/laboratory in the Colliga Reconstructus. The only concessions he made to the Incursion by the forces of Slaanesh were allowing the Skitarii assigned to protect him into the slightly more delicate areas of his lab and keeping his tactical and warp interfaces up. Retreating to a bunker would serve no purpose--as a side effect of the shielding needed to conduct the dangerous experiments he frequently needed to do and keep sensitive equipment isolated, his lab was technically harder to break into than the fortified bunkers. He was glad that Fabricator-General Britton had insisted that if he was going to spend that much on shielding that he would spend a bit more to dramatically improve its tactical value, even if he had been annoyed by the inefficiency at the time. Additionally, there was a small section of his lab that he had warded against the warp, where he conducted the most delicate experiments, and it had provided an unexpected boon allowing any among him or his guard that became plagued by the whispers of Slaanesh's minions respite.
Really, he was quite safe here. And the Colliga Reconstructus was likely one of the safest places in Dorthonion too from the forces of chaos. To appease the Old Guard, who did not readily embrace the changes it had brought, careful screening of its members had been done to ensure that all were faithful, strong of will, and harbored the proper abhorrence for the ideal of seeking either change for the sake of change or absolute perfection in their creations--the largest risk factor by far among the Mechanicus for falling to the wiles of The Changer of Ways or Slaanesh, respectively. Or at least that was what Britton had told him about the cause of the extra scrutiny, and Tranth trusted Britton's judgement about political necessities just as Britton trusted him to discover and understand the holy secrets of the Omnissiah. Each part in a machine had their place, after all, and it was only blind adherence to tradition that opened the way to the Abomination. Not that Abomination corruption was much of an issue here either--by its very nature, the work required thought, innovation, and judgement.
True, he could have taken command of the Skitaari and helped to rout the attacking hordes or crush the small outbreaks of fallen Mechanicus personnel. Although he was not a general per se, his experience in his explorations and dealing with wildlife attacks gave him a more than passing familiarity with command. However, the risks involved were deemed unacceptable. Commanding through the local tac net alone was inadvisable--the touch of chaos pervading the very air itself made such communications unreliable and prone to cutting out at the worst of times--and exiting his laboratory exposed him to a significant amount of risk. And for what gain? He was deadly in combat and a passing fair commander of men, but nothing beyond what they had already.
So he spent most of his time in his lab, working carefully yet methodically. If a cultist tried to gain access, he killed them, and if a group gathered to assault the Colliga he would somewhat reluctantly take command of the local forces to drive them off. But despite the threat this Incursion posed to Avernus and the Mechanicus, his best service to both was to preserve his life and continue his work.
+5 to Aria's suvival chance, +10 to Psyker HUnting in Garden GroveAnother omake, this one for the head of our Witch Hunters. I figured that position was going to be kind of important, and I felt like trying to put together another personality.
Aria's Resolution
Aria decided that of the Ruinous Powers, she hated Slaanesh most of all. Ordinarily, she hated the Abomination the most—at least after his birth. To try to take the form of her beloved Emperor was horrible, as was the number of young psykers and deluded cultists IT had influenced. Today, though, she would cheer on that pretender as it killed off Slaanesh. Of course, as soon as it finished, she would of course go right back to hating it with every fiber of her being.
As the leader of the Witch Hunters, she had been touring the cities of Elysium, both ensuring the performance of her people was up to scratch and helping them seek out those with potential, when the Dark Prince and his forces had somehow decided it was a good idea to launch an attack on Avernus. Between her training as an elite Primaris psyker, her faith in the Emperor, her specialization in telepathy, and her unusually high level of control, she was at little risk of falling to the temptations of those twisted beings. Nonetheless, their futile attacks and pointless enticements continued to claw against the impenetrable bulwark of her mind, constantly causing her discomfort and distracting her focus.
Worse, in her mind, was the effect they had on others. In addition to her talents being well aligned with finding new psykers among the population of Avernus, so too did her sensibilities. She worked so hard because she truly desired to find those poor souls and give them training before the Ruinous Powers got their claws in them. If she was too late, and they had been corrupted, she would use her forces to grant them the mercy of a quick death, and then redouble her efforts to avoid failing again. True, it was inevitable that she would frequently fail—the inherent corruption of the warp was insidious, and none could be everywhere at once—but she never let that stop her from continuing to improve.
The numbers Slaanesh had corrupted here alone boggled her mind. Her telepathy, trained over decades of service to be uniquely proficient at identifying the taint of Chaos, detected bloom after bloom of Slaanesh's touch, each one forever damning those it found purchase in. Nevertheless, she knew her duty, and she continued to tersely snap off directions to her subordinates, directing them to hot spots and giving them what information she could glean about what they would find there. Almost mechanically, she herself started to move, still spouting off information. She had felt the corruption of a strong Daemonologist, and she would have to face them herself before they settled down and began using their powers—her men and women were ill-suited to this fight, but she was well prepared.
She dreaded what she would hear once communications opened back up with the rest of the planet. Although she hoped things were the worst here, she feared it was not the case. She would pray to the Emperor that these poor souls found His mercy. But she would not do so now, for she could ill afford the distraction in these trying times.
+5 to nonheroic Primaris PsykersPrimaris Psyker omake I mentioned earlier.
The Troubleshooters
Today was probably the worst day in living memory for the Primaris Psykers of Avernus. In the backs of their minds, they almost envied the Sanctionites and Witch Sniffers. True, many had been overwhelmed by the strength and pervasiveness of Slaanesh's presence, and those that had not were constantly struggling with the temptation, but at least they could rest. At least they could remain huddled under the heaviest of wards, knowing that none expected--nor desired--for them to do more than win their personal battle of wills against the forces trying to corrupt them.
The battle psykers also had more freedom. Those who fought might have been exposed to among the greatest risks among the psykers, but they too were coddled. Strong of will enough to be sent to fight, to strike back against the heinous invaders of this world they were, but they too were limited. Limited in the power they were asked to draw upon, in the time they could serve, and in the desperation of the situations they were sent into. They could strike directly against their tormentors, and rest satisfied that they had done what they could.
The Primaris Psykers, on the other hand, had no such luxuries. Minute after minute, hour after hour, they were called upon for the most sensitive and grueling work. Portals had to be closed, personnel had to be verified as corruption-free, brethren fallen to the wiles of Chaos needed to be put down. The battle-psykers needed to be coordinated and escorted, weak points in the line needed to be shored up, breeches needed to be defended, and those among the enemy that were too strong for mundane arms to harm effectively needed the elite to bring them down.
Through this they had to remain cautious of the ever-louder whispers in the Warp. As they did not require the respite of wards or the counseling of priests to avoid temptation, they were often forced to do without. They could draw far more deeply upon the Warp, and in return they had to in order to defeat the monstrosities that could not be brought low without such power being brought to bear. They completed their tasks, and as a reward were assigned new ones. They were the fixers, the backup plan, and the thin red line all rolled into one. And they knew that if they failed even one of their tasks, not only would they likely end up dead or worse, but that hundreds, thousands, maybe even millions of fellow Avernites would die because of the task they failed and those they would not do.
But they remained strong and focused. On any other world, each one of them would be considered the absolute pinnacle of psyker power, control, and skill. Each would be considered at the very least the equal of most anyone in terms of willpower and martial skill. They were rigorously trained in the ability to command thousands of men and women in and out of battle. They were the best of the best, and they would not--could not--allow themselves to fail in so vital a task.
For they knew that everything they valued was under threat. Their lives, their home, their souls, and those of their brothers, sisters, and all other Avernites depended upon it. So they continued to complete impossible task after impossible task, knowing that to fail was unthinkable and wishing that they could do more. They could reminisce about how terrible today was tomorrow.
The premature
The floating fortress was a wreck. Gaping holes were torn in its armour, showing the lights iluminating scores of tech priests and menials as they worked like so many ants building a hive. Tranths research facility had been following the island turtle, which the crew had taken to calling Jeremiah, for almost 2 weeks, and was more damaged than it would've been at the end of a 6 month campaign against the most advanced of xenos. This damage had not been caused by direct assault, Jeremiah had been driving that away. possession however, from the menials, to the tech priests, all the way up to the onboard helguards commanding officer had wracked the ship with sabotage. There were a harrowing few occasions where the void shields flicked, but the ship lurched onwards.
Saren was on the bridge observing the turtle when the sky returned to a dark midnight rather than pink. He looked across the horizon and saw a vortex forming in the clouds, with lightning leaping from it to a similar vortex in the sea. He could feel the wind whistling through the now numerous holes in the armour, and as the ship was wracked by a massive buffet, Saren lurched for the wheel, wrapping his mechadendrites around it.
There was a bright blue flash as Saren wrestled with the titanic wheel, and in the glare of it he let out a maniacal laugh.
In the horizon, a shape rose up out of the water. It was dark, and towered like a small hive. Saren saw the conditions, and risked launching a flight of servo skulls into the warp cleared sky. Upon getting close to the object Saren let out a gasp.
The thing looked like a malformed foetus, with a few horrible differences. A pair of stubby, incomplete wings jutted out of its back at an unfeasible angle, like flags upon the back of an ancient swordsman. Upon its mountainlike head, in the place where a human would have a nose and mouth were tentacles the size of a titanic gnaw worm. It's eyes were covered with a thick translucent film.
Upon first seeing this beast Saren instinctively thought of the deathstrike missiles he still had left. It looked demonic, even if it were more nurglesque than was expected. Suddenly, there was a huge bolt of lightning, firing from the beast to the coast, and a flash of light in the distance. Calculating quickly, he realised that the yield of the strike must have been in the megaton range.
The beast launched itself upwards, somehow with its wings and flew off into the distance, towards the land. The clarity in the warp left with it, and soon, the whispers started again.
In an arc, the beast and it's aura of relative calmness flew over the northern frontier of Averneus, bombarding concentrations of daemons further to the north. When it reached the spine, it turned and proceeded to the poles, no doubt joining the terrifying deziens of the north in there battle against the Prince of Pleasure.
Edit: Sorry if it kills us all.
+5 to Sarens' suvival chance
[/
SPOILER]