WARHAMMER 40,000 Genestealer Management Quest

[DragonCobolt]

999
m41

98,120,112,002,982 kilometers away from Thedias Prime.




Whomp. Whomp Whomp.

Click.

Clack.

The sound of the fresh magazine slamming directly into Brother Theoboldius' heavy bolter, full of acid tipped hellfire bolt rounds. Each was loaded with countless thousands of microneedles, filled with a mutagenic acid that flooded the bodies of the chitinous horrors that swarmed down the metal corridors of the Price of Redemption. The once gaudy and gilt starship was splattered in the blood of both acolytes, serfs, servants of the Rogue Trader, and two brothers that Theoboldius had fought with in the Deathwatch for almost sixty years. He knew that his blood would be spilled soon - either here, under claw and fang, or in a few minuets, if the Adeptus Mechanicus had not been speaking pure binaric drivel.

Theoboldius was not particularly happy to be here.

Theoboldius, in fact, had not been particularly been particularly happy ever since he had been plucked from the underhive by the stern faced, black and yellow clad angels of the emperor. He had had a life, a family, a home, a distantly remembered sweetheart. The angel of the emperor had kicked in her face when she had tried to keep Theoboldius from being taken away from the hive after the trials. Then had come the pain, and the changes, and the training, and war.

Endless war.

Being detailed off into the Deathwatch was an honor for most chapters. For the Marines Malevolent, it was a matter of drawing lots - the Chapter Master had actively spat on the inquisitorial order, and everyone in the battle barge had been mocking those who had been chosen to be sent off to serve someone who didn't stand within the hierarchy of the chapter. Theoboldius had been glumly certain that his Deathwatch compatriots would see him as most of the galaxy did: Yet another member of the Chapter that worked the hardest to be the most hated.

Let them hate, so long as they fear.

That had been tattooed onto his back on his fifth decade in the Chapter, a reminder when he had only used half of the ammo he had been given - because they had run out of targets in the crushing of the insurrection on Lexa. He had been reminded the old axiom: The Administratum Only Feeds the Hungry Heart. With spare bolt shells, how could they demand more from the vast munitoriums of the Imperium? Use all the shells. So, he had used all the shells the next time, when they had run out of targets. They had blown apart farmhouses and burned fields, and his Captain had been pleased. The Chapter's requests for more resources was met, and the Malevolent had been redeployed alongside several small squadrons of Space Wolves. The bolt shells had been procured from the Wolves, who had gnashed their teeth and threatened retribution.

Theoboldius was sick of the thought. He hated his Chapter. He hated his brothers. He hated the Imperium.

And so, he had expected to be hated in the Deathwatch. But with his armor painted black, and his battle brothers being from many chapters, he had found something that he had never thought possible.

Family.

And now that family was dying. And despite the teachings of his instructors during his days as a scout in the 10th, who had told him over and over again that Death Is to Be Handed To the Weakest, Not Taken by the Strong ...he was glad. He felt a fierce, burning pride in his chest as he worked the receiver on his bolter and started to loose a series of quick, hammering barrages. The tyranids that were trying to push up the corridor writhed and died, screeching and howling. More were coming behind them. Over the vox, he could hear Brother Raxian speaking in his bland, calm voice: "It appears that we have slightly more of the bugs on this deck than previously anticipated. You may need to watch your back soon, Theo."

"If there weren't so many fucking bugs, would they even want us here?" Theoboldius snapped back, his voice dripping with acerbity. He felt a twinge. Big Ulnif had always laughed at his propensity towards 'human profanity' - but Ulnif had been ripped apart an hour ago in the fights on the outer skin of the ship.

"I suppose -nngh!"

The soft grunt of something striking home, a squeal of metal, and then the biosigns on Theboldius' headset went red and dim, the machine spirits of Raxian's armor carried off to the Grim Blackness with the rest of him. Theoboldius snarled, then glanced back. This position was going to go down swinging. The men and women around him glanced at him, then went back to firing the lasguns down the corridor.

Theoboldius hissed. "Fuck. Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!" He punched a wall. "Fall back! I'll cover you!"

The serfs, the sailors, the lexmechanics who had signed up for this death march, looked at him in complete, total shock.

"Are you fucking deaf!?" Theoboldius bellowed.

They stood and ran.

More Tyranids were coming. Theoboldius slammed the door shut between where he stood and the rest of the compartment, where the Pixus and the mad magos who had invented it was working frantic sorcery. Theoboldius hissed as a hail of snarling, biting creatures rained down on his armor, snapping, biting, wriggling, trying to get through his armor and into his flesh. He shook them off and fired another round of bolter-fire down the corridor, splattering more nids. But they were coming faster and faster now - the lasgun fire had, he supposed, help slow them. He fired, fired, fired-

Click.

He threw his empty bolter at a snarling termagaunt. Its face crunched in as he drew his roaring chainsword from his belt, swinging it up and cleaving three 'gaunts in half with a single blow. A claw rasped against his armor, showing silver damage under dark black paint. "Fuck you!" he shouted, punching the tyranid in the head. He had stopped even trying to identify the bioforms that swarmed downt he corridor. "Fuck you! Fuck you!" he brought the chainsword down, splitting a head, then cleaving another's chest open. Blood splattered and his cameras almost missed the sight as a claw swiped up. Theoboldius staggered backwards, his helmet flying off his head and carrying with it chunk of nose and lip. He fell against the door and the tyranids slowed - drawing aside as a massive, corridor filling beast stepped over the piles of dead, looking into his eyes with cold, pitiless fury.

Theoboldius spat some blood on the floor.

"I'm...Brother Theoboldius...of the Marines Malevolent," he said, panting softly.

The massive hive-creature roared.

"Fuck you too," Theoboldius said, then severed a fuel line running along the ceiling with a smashing blow with his power fist. Gasses gushed directly into the hive-beasts face and Theoboldius, with his final act, drove his foot directly into the creature's groin. He didn't know if Tyranids had genitalia.

He prayed to the Emperor, an Emperor that his youth and his life aboard the battle barge Vindictive had drummed into him was nothing but a withered corpse, an excuse to get funding and recruits and enemies, that they did.

The hive tyrant let out a croaking wheeze.

Theoboldius felt his first, actual, genuine smile in almost three centuries.

And the Magos Thepselion XVI-Alpha Two flicked the last switch on the interlocking shell of rapidly spinning cubes and verticies while tapping her fingers together. "I wonder if this-" she said, her grille buzzing with excitement as her optical implants and mechadendrites both recorded the flow of energies that she had started to gather.

The Price of Redemption turned into a rapidly expanding shell of high energy particles, several hundred thousand megatons of adamantine and ferrocrete and steel turning into undifferentiated quarks and gluons. The blue-white haze of radiation was nearly eclipsed by the oscillating, interlocking gridwork of purple lines that flared outwards and swept through the two billions, six hundred million nine hundred and fifty six thousand hive ships of the Hive Fleet Umbral - which itself was merely a fragment of a fragment of Hive Fleet Levithan. The purple fire caught, clung, and flared. But it did not burn the flesh.

It seared the mind.

A singular mind, threaded and immense, and hungry. Oh so hungry.

Then it was in pain.

And then it was in fear.

And then?

It was dead.

***
​

On the world of Thedias Prime, a great many people woke up with a feaverish sweat, a pounding headache, and a sinking feeling in their bellies. A single question flickered in their minds, all of them spread throughout layers of the rotting edifice that was Imperial society.

...what the hell were we doing?

---
Welcome to Thedas! It...

[ ] Is a sleepy agri-world
[ ] a bustling hive world
[ ] a glittering capital of a sub-sector
[ ] a naval research outpost
[ ] an Adeptus Mechanicus forge asteroid
[ ] a Rogue Trader's newly founded colony
[ ] Write In


...and it has a Genestealer Cult. Or. More accurately. It had a genestealer cult on it. Now, it has a bunch of people with psychic powers, genetic aberrations, revolutionary politics and a complete freedom from the hive mind that had been puppeting them from a distance! The Cult was...

[ ] Relatively small (4 points, not discovered)
[ ] Modest (8 points, rumors abounded but no serious investigation)
[ ] Large (12 points, Inquisitorial agents are sniffing around)

Being disconnected from the hive mind has...

[ ] Left the genestealer cult mostly unchanged, save for mental alterations (Normal Genestealers)
[ ] Left the genestealer's genetic structure wildly unstable (Rogue Trader fandom Genestealers)

Rogue Trader fandom is "freed genestealers lack the hive mind to keep their biology stable and, so, gain the ability to shapeshift but have to drink blood to sustain their biology or else they start to randomly mutate into puddles of goop."

The name/form of the cult will be determined once we know how many points we're working with!

EDIT: Oh, also, plan vote, duh

 

[DragonCobolt]

Hey, are you ready for the engagement of this quest to drop by 90% for one update, because I am! This is entirely out of character and mechanics!

Your cult has a GOAL, QUALITIES and ASSETS. You have 14 BUILD POINTS (BP) to spend!

The Goal is what you want to do, so...it's the first choice.

[ ] Build a democratic, free society where all can live in peace and plenty
[ ] Build a psionic utopia where all are one
[ ] Escape this fucking planet
[ ] Write In
​

Now, your Qualities are what you can do and your current resources. They're both the abilities of your cult and its health - losing some of them indicate that your cult is in serious trouble. There are five Qualities, and all save one starts at 0. You can increase them for ONE BUILD POINT. These qualities are added together to do actions - for example, training up your army and gaining weapons is a Territory + Sovereignty roll, as it depends on both your population and how loyal they are to you.

Each time you take an action, both Qualities used are reduced by 1 for that month, meaning that a company can be exhausted and need to regather its strength.

Qualities can rise and fall in play. That is, in fact, the entire point of the quest!

So!
MIGHT: the number of soldiers you have, their training, the weapons they have available, and their morale.

[ ] 0 MIGHT: Completely unarmed, your cultists rely entirely on other factors to keep themselves safe.
[ ] 1 MIGHT: Well meaning but poorly trained gangers, with a few auto-pistols and knives.
[ ] 2 MIGHT: Either a small number of reasonably well trained men with flak armor and las weapons, or a large number of gangers.
[ ] 3 MIGHT: A typical platoon of men with guardsman level training and gear, but no mechanical support.
[ ] 4 MIGHT: Excellent troops with las weaponry and good leadership - or good troops with excellent leadership.
[ ] 5 MIGHT: Excellent troops backed by a few squirreled away Chimeras, Lemun Russ tanks. Light on artillery.
[ ] 6 MIGHT: Tough, experienced veterans with an armored corps and either high tech weapons (bolters, plasma guns, meltas) or a cadre of trained war psykers.
​

TREASURE: your raw resources - not merely Thrones, but influence, blackmail, deals and connections, hidden stashes and even manufacturing capabilities.

[ ] 0 TREASURE: Your cult is starving in the gutter, largely speaking.
[ ] 1 TREASURE: Every level of the cult is visibly pathetic - ragged clothing, corpse starch, smeary candles.
[ ] 2 TREASURE: Your cult is struggling to make ends meet, but no one is actively starving to death, not even the lowliest members.
[ ] 3 TREASURE: Either a small, tightly run cult or a large cult with some haves and have nots - but the haves are approaching upper-middle class.
[ ] 4 TREASURE: A cult with the ability to throw around the economic weight of a minor noble family.
[ ] 5 TREASURE: A cult with their fingers in the resources of a major noble family, and access to some tech-priests.
[ ] 6 TREASURE: A cult that sits atop a planetary resources - controlling them openly and easily.
​

INFLUENCE: How many secrets does your cult know - and how many can they learn, and how many they can keep. Spies, loremasters, and public relations are all under the sway of influence.

[ ] 0 INFLUENCE: While your cult may be known by others, how it is seen is entirely out of its control. It operates in the dark, relying on force alone.
[ ] 1 INFLUENCE: Self absorbed and insular, your cult has minimal pull.
[ ] 2 INFLUENCE: Your cult may stumble upon a fact, or change a mind through intention if they're lucky.
[ ] 3 INFLUENCE: Your cult now likely has at least one harried and overworked spymaster.
[ ] 4 INFLUENCE: Your cult has multiple spies that work directly for it, and a loremaster who can acquire new information.
[ ] 5 INFLUENCE: Your cult has threaded its influence into many other organizations secretly, and can burn agents if needed, while its secrets are well kept and guarded. The loremaster's librarium holds many interesting facts.
[ ] 6 INFLUENCE: A shadowy, persuasive force, your cult is seductive, terrifying and secretive as it needs to be, presenting whatever face it wishes to the world beyond.
​

TERRITORY: Not merely how much of the planet you control, but also how many people are within your cult. The higher the value, the more of both. Note: This can represent lots of people spread over a large area (I.E, a widely spread conspiracy.)

[ ] 0 TERRITORY: The cult is a scant handful of powerful people with a few servitors and followers, and holds almost no ground, no safehouses, no permanent settlement. Entirely nomadic.
[ ] 1 TERRITORY: Small in number, your cult controls a small village's worth of people, or perhaps a single church, or the crew of a large airship.
[ ] 2 TERRITORY: A town, a modest settlement - ten thousand or more people.
[ ] 3 TERRITORY: You hold and control the equivalent of a single hive-level, easily one to five hundred thousand people, either centralized or spread out.
[ ] 4 TERRITORY: You hold the control over the equivalent of half of a hive-spire. Which half depends on your Treasure and Influence, to be quite honest.
[ ] 5 TERRITORY: You control an entire hive-spire's worth of citizens, easily millions of cultists.
[ ] 6 TERRITORY: You control...hmm...not the entire planet, but a significant portion of it.
​

SOVERIGNTY: This is an indication of how well your cult is cohered around their ideals. Their loyalties. Their beliefs and their feelings. Until literally seconds before the quest began in earnest, this was at an impossible value of 10 - superhumanly coherent, because the cult was a part of the approaching hive mind. It has now dropped to 1. 1 is the lowest value that Sovereignty can reach before you lose the game. If your Sovereignty drops to 0, that's it! The cult has dissolved into factions, the dream of a better world (or escape, or a massive genestealer orgy, or whatever) has been lost and the quest is OVER!!!! Because of that, you start with 1 Sov FOR FREE! Repeat! It does not cost anything to have 1 Sov!

[ ] 1 SOVERIGNTY: The cult, frayed by the sudden death of the hive mind, is nearly as querulous and fractious as...as most...revolutionary organizations, actually.
[ ] 2 SOVERIGNTY: The cult has grudging and sullen cooperation, but constant infighting remains.
[ ] 3 SOVERIGNTY: Typical loyalty for most people - low level cultists gripe about their overlords, but if someone else were to insult the cult, they'd punch them.
[ ] 4 SOVERIGNTY: Unusual dedication, either due to exceptional leadership, communal spirit, or the overweening charisma of a tyrant.
[ ] 5 SOVERIGNTY: Every cultist is eager to live and die for the cult and the values it believes in, due to genuine belief in the cause, loyalty and love.
[ ] 6 SOVERIGNTY: Is it a new hive mind? Or is it merely the power of...communism?
​

These are the qualities - but what are Assets? Assets are modifications to a quality, giving it bonus dice (sometimes leavened out with penalties) that further specialize your cult. They each cost 1 BUILD POINT to buy, which is why you're not immediately putting 12 points into Might and Sov and conquering the planet. Well, okay, you can do that. That'd be a fun quest too.

Here are the ASSET LIST!

​

MIGHT ASSETS

[ ] PDF Turncoats (+2d when rolling to escape from Unconventional Warfare, but not for performing it)
[ ] Areospace Access (+2d might when using aircraft or orbital spaceships - you do NOT have warp capability)
[ ] Defensive Psykers (+2d to might rolls when combatting enemy psykers or psyker enhanced forces)
[ ] Swarm Tactics (+2d when your might is used against an enemy with a lower permanent might rating)
[ ] Hatred (If attacked by the Imperium, you get a one time +3d to your defense rolls for that engagement - after victory it is lost.)
[ ] True Love (a PDF officer/naval captain/war-psyker/inquisitorial acolyte has, unknown to you, fallen deeply in love with one of your most beautiful magi, and will at a dramatic moment turn against the rotting edifice of the Imperium, securing victory for you at the tragic cost of their life, dying romantically in the arms of their weeping beloved. +3d to any single might roll, once.)
​

TREASURE ASSETS

[ ] Seasonal Income (half of the planetary cycle, you get +2 to Treasure. During the other half of the cycle, you get -1 Treasure.)
[ ] Permanent Underclass (Your cult has some people it can just...push the shit work onto. Once per planetary cycle, you can permanently drop your Sovereignty by 1 to add 1 to your treasure.)
[ ] Excellent Military Logistics (Your cult ensures everyone has a charge pack, two frag, one krak grenade and a smoker. The first attack roll per month automatically turns 1 regular dice into an Expert Dice.)
[ ] Predictable Bounty (pick one month per planetary cycle - during this time, things get easier for your cult's internal activities, giving +1 Territory, +1 Treasure but -1 Might for the month.)
[ ] Day of Ascension Stockpile (the cult's long preparations have paid off - but they were expecting to be eaten soon so it will not last long. +2 to Treasure this month, which becomes a +2 bonus to territory next month. Then? It's gone.)​

INFLUENCE ASSETS

[ ] Kelermorphs (+2d when rolling to perform Unconventional Warfare, but not for the escape)
[ ] Active Propagandists (+2d when rolling to increase your Influence)
[ ] Pleasure Dens (-1 Difficulty to roll to improve Influence)
[ ] Uncomfortable Allies (Pick another Company, you have +2d Influence with them, they have +2 Influence with you)​

[ ] Prisoners | [ ] Khornites | [ ] Nurglests | [ ] Tzneetchians | [ ] Slaaneshite | [ ] Nobility | [ ] Prison Guards | [ ] Tech Priests​

[ ] Beautiful Hybrids (+2d when rolling to alter the opinions of another Company)
[ ] Well Positioned Neophyte Mole (Choose another company. You have a ONE TIME +3d bonus to influence, after which the Neophyte either is slain or has returned to the cult and cannot be used again.)​

[ ] Prisoners | [ ] Khornites | [ ] Nurglests | [ ] Tzneetchians | [ ] Slaaneshite | [ ] Nobility | [ ] Prison Guards | [ ] Tech Priests​

​

TERRITORY ASSETS

[ ] Techwights, Armorers and Manufactories (+2d to rolls to permanently increase your Might)
[ ] Tunnels and Bunkers (+2d to defend your territory if attackers are fighting through your defenses - no bonus if they've slipped past somehow.)
[ ] Pleasurable Kiss (People like the Cult for...obvious reasons - +2d to rolls to permanently raise your Sovereignty.)
​

SOVERIGNTY ASSETS

[ ] Revolutionary Rhetoric (-1 difficulty to raise Sovereignty or Might)
[ ] Bureau of Anti-Inquisitorial Action (+2d to rolls to resist Unconventional Warfare attacks.)
[ ] We Will Die Free (+2d to all Sovereignty rolls if your company is under attack from an outside force)
[ ] Limited Hive Mind (+2d when rolling to police your population.)
​

---

DRAGON COBOLT QUICKTIME CULT CREATION!

If that all seems like a lot, here's two premade cults. The Society of Sensation is a moderately small but deeply well connected among the joydens and recreation spots on Thedas, both above and below the cloud layer, with a connective hive mind but minimal military assets. Meanwhile, the Fellowship of Singing Stars are pulled together by their fervor for communism, hatred of the imperium, and the fact they've suborned not only prisoners but two platoons of PDF areospace fighters.

[ ] The Society of Sensation

-[ ] 1 Might
-[ ] 3 Treasure
-[ ] 3 Influence
-[ ] 1 Territory
-[ ] 3 Sovereignty
-[ ] Assets: Pleasure Dens, Beautiful Hybrids, Limited Hive Mind​

[ ] The Fellowship of Singing Stars

-[ ] 3 Might
-[ ] 3 Treasure
-[ ] 1 Influence
-[ ] 2 Territory
-[ ] 3 Sovereignty
-[ ] Assets: Areospace Assets, Revolutionary Rhetoric​

 

[DragonCobolt]

From orbit, she is beautiful.

From the surface, she is hell.

The world of Thedias Prime sat an uncomfortable distance from the roiling primary that shines her light across the blasted wreck that was the Thedian solar solar system. Heated by solar winds and turned to a furnace by the high pressure atmosphere shrouding her blasted surface, Thedias was named the Tricksters Jewel. From a distance, her glittering cerulean skies - streaked that color by the complex chemicals vomited forth from her stygian depths, seemed as blue and welcoming as memories of long ruined Terra.

The surface of Thedias was consigned in the year three of the sixth century of the thirty eighth millennium to be a colony of penal extraction by a joint agreement of the Administratum, whose scribes had noted the hiveification of the worlds of Le-Tast and Hondai both indicated a growing underclass that would need shipment and disposal, and by the Adeptus Mechanicus, whose long ranged scryprobes and theoclastic spectroscopic veraspix augeries had both revealed the vast mineral and chemical wealth waiting on the surface of Thedias prime. And so it was that three Universe class mass conveyor transports, in keeping with a Geller shrouded Pier-II orbital base, transported themselves from Le-Tast and to the orbit of Thedias.

There, they disgorged the first dropfall habitats. Vast pyramids of black, vomited from the bellies of ships that could have served as planetary cities. Held aloft by rocket plumes that melted craters into the blasted earth and lowered on suspensor fields powered by sacred plasma generatoria, these dropfalls settled into their places, now known by their prison given names.

Hellbreak.

Voidheart.

The Pits.

Skale's Demise.

Wrath Warren.

And, the worst of the lot: Golgotha.

Within each were ten thousand prisoners. And from them spread, like the fibrous mass of a cancer, humanity under the yoke. Drillshafts were sunk into tectonically active rift-valleys, and precious minerals were hewn forth with lascutters, with pickaxes, with bare hands. Launched into orbit on skytether servitors, they were hauled away by transports that, themselves, returned with yet more prisoners, yet more souls to consign to Thedias Prime's depths. The cerulean sky overhead took on the tone of hatred - blue became a cursed color, ocean reimagined into the pits of damnation. And the population swelled - for the Mechanicus had done their jobs too exactingly. The dropfall habitats were sturdy, their placement in half-buried earth, their sloped sides, all of it worked to keep the people within alive and working.

And breeding.

And plotting.

The first escape attempt came in the year sixty two of the sixth century. Well, that's not fair.

The first escape attempt came in the year three. And the year four, and five, and six. For while the world of Thedias killed all life and all rationality, there was nothing in the human spirit more resilient than the grim hope that death in attempting the impossible was better than this. Some escaped to deep tunnels, some simply tried to find work indoors rather than the mines. But it was not until the year sixty two that some prisoners managed to sneak aboard the skytether servitor and launch themselves into the air above the clouds. There, they discovered something shocking.

A paradise.

Yes, they needed to wear breathers when they opened the hatches on the bobbing servitor, but the temperature was clement, and the servitor was able to remain aloft entirely because the atmosphere within it was lighter than the clouds upon which they drifted and bobbed. The bored crew of voidborn that came down on a shuttle to snag the bobbing drone were overcome by the nearly feral prisoners, and the standoff continued on for three weeks after they came back to the shuttle bay. With her clan-crew at risk, the chartist captain of the Solitary Reward for Temperance refused to simply allow the Arbites to break in the doors and butcher everyone - while the prisoners negotiated, desperately. The siege dragged on, with different feints and methods being used to try and dislodge the prisoners without killing the thirteen families of captive voidborn clanners that were at risk.

People died.

But at last, a diminutive and quicksilver minded prisoner - the architect of the plan, in fact - got a line to the chartist captain directly and was able to make a deal. Currently, ships had to hunt for weeks to find cargo bobbing on the surface of Thedias' clouds.

So, why not have prisoners collect it in one easily found place?

The agreement was struck - despite the Arbites glowering complaints - and within a year, three tethered skytehter servitors were tethered into a crude habitat called Trustworthy Compromise. The name, quite rapidly, became exceedingly ironic. As years became decades, then centuries, the prisoners that floated overhead began to divide themselves into families, then houses, then noble lines. Trustworthy Compromise budded off estates and noble cities, each floating above the prisoners who slaved and labored down below, and within a thousand years, Thedias had reached its modern state. Below, the prisoners mine, smelt, forge, and work themselves to death. Above, the prisoner-nobles manage, direct, and collet.

It is a commonly accepted truism throughout the sector that if one committed a terrible crime, they would be sent to Hell. But if one commited a terrible crime with the right blood, one would merely be sent to manage Hell.

When, precisely, the Sisterhood of the Levithan arrived on Thedias Prime is a secret only the highest ranks of the cult knows. They came on a ship, of course, but was it a ship bringing tech-priests and supplies for the continued production of mined wealth and bounty? Or was it a prison ship, with several people hiding their long healed signs of being Kissed. Who can say.

But the cult did find itself on the world and began its slow, quiet work. They wormed deep into Trustworthy Compromise - which had, by now, become a vast, glittering skycity with a hundred thousand nobles and nearly five hundred thousand servants. The Sisterhood's outward face was that of a social club for the maintenance and advancement of mineral quotas and smelter futures offered to the women of several noble clans as a way for them to break out of the stultifying passivity that passed for pampered decadence in Thedias' noble circles. They had moved slowly. Carefully. Rather than offering the kiss to as many lowborn as possible, they instead took advantage of the isolation of Trustworthy Compromise and quietly secreted away their funds into a habitat that was on no map nor record - a long abandoned facility that the Machine Cult of Mars had constructed during the initial colonization and scouting of Thedias.

Here, they gathered.

Here, they found their purpose.

Here, they birthed the Child. SHe started as a cluster of cells no bigger than a human infant, but over the years, she grew and grew and grew, filling chamber with her bulk. A bioship, capable of flight, warp travel, and spawning tyranid bioforms. The reason behind the Hive Mind's alteration to the normal modus operandi of the cult - the reason behind the enigmatic demands of the Star Children, from the cult's perspective - was a mystery. A mystery that would have been answered.

Except.

***
​

Magus Trilla rolled a small orb of glass around on the table, her fingers planted against her, and rubbed her temple. "For the last time, I don't know."

"How can you not know!?" Magus Lilliand asked, springing to her feet. Her high crested collar fluttered around her slightly pointed ears like the wings of some great big bat. "You've led us up to the Day of Ascension - with the Star Children's words on your lips the whole time. We would protect the Child, and there would be the glorious day, and now...you don't know!?"

"Yes," Magus Trilla said, sighing loudly.

Her head hurt.

Everyone's head at the table hurt. The four Magi that served as the heart of the Sisterhood - each of them born to the offshoots of noble families and their trysts with a scant handful of inducted lowborn - sat around the plain metal table in the darkened chamber at the heart of one of the largest acid storms on Thedias' surface, the distant drumming sound of acid rain and howling winds barely audible through the meters upon meters of reinforced armoplast that made up the outer edge of the facility. They had woken up with two facts burning in their heads - something that had called them all together here, now, at this moment.

The first fact: The day had come and gone and nothing had happened.

The second: The voice of the Star Children was gone.

It was as if the single guiding light in each of them had been snuffed out, as easily as a candle.

Not every Magus was taking it well. Lilliand had turned her fear into anger. Trilla, though, was looking like she was converting her fear into ennui, her eyes a bit deaded, unfocused. She gulped, slowly, then looked from Lilliand to Yolanda and Xandra. Yolanda was smiling brightly - she was the only Magi that had been born with hair. The fact she had never needed to wear a wig but instead could simply dye her naturally white hair the same color as her fellow nobles had always left her more...chipper than the rest, and Trilla had no idea why. That chipper attitude seemed more plastered on than normal at this moment. Xandra, meanwhile, was chewing her knuckles.

"M-Maybe we should..."

"What?" Trilla asked.

"...I dunno," Xandra said, shrugging. "Uh. We can just leave this place. We can stay low and quiet."

"There's an inquisitorial agent and a squadron of those awful brutes hanging around in orbit!" Lilliand snapped. "We can't just go 'oops, sorry, we didn't mean to try and destroy your fascist theocracy.'" She said, waggling her hands angrily. "And there's the Child!"

"Well, is it a Child exactly?" Xandra asked. "I...I don't know anymore." She looked haunted.

"We all still have psyker powers," Yolanda said, nodding. "And our brothers and sisters."

"And you have your husband's money," Trilla muttered.

"He is a dear," Yolanda said, smiling brightly. "...should we infect him still?"

"Of course we-" Trilla stopped her voice from cracking. She put her hands on her face. "We need to face fact, Magi. The...the Star Children are gone. The better world they promised..." She hesitated. "...is not."

The other Magi looked at her.

"They may not come down to us, but we have the Child," Trilla said, firmly. "We need to make plans for the future - we're on our own, that just means we need to be decisive. Xandra!" She snapped her fingers. "Give us the complete rundown of our threats right now." They had all grown a little lax on keeping up - since, well, why did it matter if the Star Children had been about to come and liberate the world for them? They simply needed to wait till the right moment, then strike. It had seemed very simple and easy...then. She sighed, then looked at Xandra, who flushed.

"Well," Xandra said, leaning back in her seat, her hand brushing along her dark pate. "We know there are the Arbites, the Tech Priests, the various prison gangs...and, of course, the three major noble houses, the Pierres, the Marks, and the Zavs" She hesitated. "A-And the Interrogator, Af-Baru, and her retiune." She paused. "A-And the, um..."

"Yes, yes, the psychopaths," Trilla said. "have we learned why there's a squad of Marines Malevolent in orbit?"

"Well!" Yolanda said, brightly, clapping her hands together. "in the last dinner party I had at the Zavs, Melinda Larque-Zav said that she had heard from Opaque Larque, her third cousin, that a tech-priest that worked on her breather augmetics said that he had heard that the Angels of the False Emperor were here to retrieve one of their own from the Deathwatch."

"...well, they're going to need a big net for that," Trilla muttered, which jerked a snort out of Lilliand. Trilla felt her sense of creeping doom fade and a faint smile on her face. "Do we have any...details?"

Yolanda blushed. "Not really."

"How is the cult...internally working?" Trilla asked.

Xandra shook her head. "Bad. Everyone feels disconnected and scared. Our money is secure, but we have no Pure children, our arms stockpiles were confiscated en mass by the interrogator, and we've burned a few too many spies to be comfortable in anything we know anymore." She sighed. "...I was really banking on not needing to work today, you know?"

"Quite," Trilla said.

---
A cult/planetary situation sheet will be up soon if you want to have everything laid out. All your dice are at max values, as it the first roll of a month. We shall refrain from having "do multiple things at once" for now until we're more comfortable with the mechanics, since that's more complicated. If you pick something and it has a BLANK, you need to write in what you're doing it on!

If it is a "vs" roll, the other two are what the targeted company rolls against you.

[ ] Attack BLANK (Might + Treasure VS Might + Territory)
[ ] Being Informed (Influence + Soverignty vs Diff 1)
[ ] Spying on BLANK (Influence + Treasury vs Influence + Territory)
[ ] Influence BLANK to do BLANK (Influence + Treasury vs Influence + Territory)
[ ] Increase your Sovereignty (Territory + Treasure vs Diff [Current Sovereignty])
[ ] Police BLANK (Might + Sovereignty vs Influence + Might)
[ ] Rise in Stature (Sovereignty + Treasure vs Diff [Current Influence]
[ ] Train and Levy Troops (Sovereignty + Territory vs Diff [Current Might]
[ ] Unconventional Warfare (write plan in)

TUTORIAL: So! Attacking means waging open war, the game shifts into a military focus, I get to break out the DIE MEN! mini-game, there's rolls, it's fun.

Being Informed means learning things about your own cult - learning the feelings of your people, knowledge some of them might have, and general world information - like, this is a good way to grab onto plot hooks and learn if your people hate how things are going (Sov 2 means the answer is...yes!)

Spying/Influencing BLANK means you can learn secrets about another company (say, how many guns they have), or you can convince them to do something else using your spies!

Increasing Sovereignty, Rise in stature and Train/Levy Troops are all the same move, you roll against a set difficulty and if you succeed, you add a permanent +1 to the stat you're buffing.

Police BLANK means you crackdown on a movement, organization or something in your purview. If some of your cultists get FUNNY IDEAS (like, say, corpse-worship), you can crack down on them this way.

Unconventional Warfare is the most mechanically complex, but it's how you assassinate people, steal shit, blow up factories, that kind of thing!

Now, to make the overview post. You don't know the statistics or any other company, but you do know they exist.

 

[DragonCobolt]

The day after the news reached, via scorching out the throat of one astropath and the rupturing of another's teeth - which burst into writhing flies and maggots as their hand wrote the parchment-missive - the decision was made immediately above the cloud layer. There was only one thing that could be done in the face of planetary, nay, sector wide reprieve from a fate worse than death.

Throw a party.

House Zav, the first among equals of the noble houses of three noble houses that ruled above the clouds on Thedias Prime, was the one to put forward the idea. The current head of House Zav, Korask Rute-Pierre von Zav XII, gave a great long winding speech while surrounded by servants, and bequeathed to the noble and honorable champions of the Emperor that the next two weeks would be given over to feasting and feting the glorious warriors of the divine Imperial Majesty who had seen so fit to sacrifice their number so the countless billions of the sector could be saved. In his largess, he further added that each work cycle would be given two ten minute work breaks where one might take their leisure performing administrative tasks, rather than menial ones. With such largess, the head of House Zav hoped that the people of Thedias Prime would think well on him.

Not the miners, of course.

He hadn't even thought of them once, no, he was mostly interested in the other nobles thinking he was fair minded and generous.

The other houses, not willing to be outpaced, threw equally lavish parties. Picts were distributed among the cloud habitats: Garlands of specially bred oxybreathing flowers spreading around the shoulders of a tall, taciturn looking black armored angel of the Emperor, surrounded by glittering, brightly dressed women and men who were eagerly speaking to one another around them. Their face, their features, could have been carved entirely from stone.

The only real problem was that while House Zav did manage to meet, mingle, share information and grow in stature...so did House Pierre. And House Mark. All three of them threw around barbed words and whispered secrets, all of them became better able to shape their public face, and all of them were equally elevated. And thus...

None of them were.

It was infuriating for Korask.

Deeply. Deeply infuriating.

***
​

"Finally! Fucking finally."

The voice that echoed inside of the Arbites watchfortress STIGIA-2 was female, grizzled, and faintly augmetic. Sur Laloine glowered down at hte piles of papers and data slates that her baton twirling auxilaries had brought her. Being one of the scant hundred true Arbites on the planetary surface of a penal colony was...not entirely the cakewalk that some of the more heavily populated planets imagined. Yes, she didn't need to juggle the complexity of a hive planet's polities - this world had a scant two billion souls, it could hardly be compared. But she also lacked the same infrastructure that a Judge on one of those worlds would have. The Arbites were not beat cops, they did not walk from street to street save on the most precious worlds of the Imperium, where resources were plentiful and Schola Progenium cadets were overflowing from the walls of their cadres, eager to get out their and bust heads.

No.

Arbites were administrators. They collected. They collated. They understood. They directed the beat cops were to go. And here, the beat cops were the ugly scum that the noble houses chose to post down below the cloudlayer, rather than the pretty scum they kept among their houses as bodyguards and pets. And the beat cops had finally dropped off their fucking reports.

Sur scowled and picked up a slate, skimming through the reports. Between the lassitude and the obvious bribes - really, Janko, nothing to report on Murder Alley, the alley named for how many dead bodies we keep finding there? - there was a clear sign that the forces on the street, the three major gangs, were all gearing up for one of their semi-yearly throwdowns. Two years ago, nearly six thousand people had been shot in a three week period in a running gang war that had eaten half of Stygia and a quarter of the Pits, and that had been the end of the Jeznakz and the beginning of the reign of the Skavz gang.

Right now, according to her reports, the Skavz had the best guns and best training - well, in so far as gangers did - but there had been a few stashes caught with Orbtz colors painted on them. And if her gaggle of halfwit beat cops had found this many Orbtz ganger markings then there had to be dozens, maybe hundreds of arms shipments that they had missed.

"They're all gearing up..." She frowned. "But they should be showing it."

"Curious, isn't it."

The voice jerked Sur around.

Lounging in the seat in the back of the watch fortress...

Was her.

"You," Sur said, her voice bitter and cold.

The woman sitting in the chair was quite possibly the most beautiful woman to have ever set foot on Thedias Prime. No scars, no blemish, not even the signs of augmetics or implants. Her nearly unnaturally perfect cheeks were smooth and porcelain white, and her freckles were like stars against her pale skin. Her eyes were Cadian purple, and her hair was red. She wore a purple cloak, with the hood thrown back, and was slowly swinging the inquisitorial Rosarius that she had flashed to Sur, months before, on a chain. Her voice was sardonic as she said. "Yes, me."

"You still haven't given me your name, Interrogator," Sur said, crossing her arms over her chest.

"Mmm. Quite," the interrogator said, licking her lips subtly. "Now, the guns."

"Yes, the guns," Sur said. "The gangs are all trying to get more weaponry. But they should be showing the weaponry. Flaunting it. Demonstrating it. Strutting around with shotscreamers and boreguns - but instead, all we're finding is the traffic scraps. This smells wrong." She frowned. "It has something to do with that tip you gave, a month ago?"

"It may," the interrogator said, then stood. "Did you know the rate of guns on the open market in Thedias Prime has been dropping steadily for the past four months? That there are caches and storerooms that the Inquisition has found-"

"Found and not reported to the Law, I notice," Sur muttered.

"-and yet, who exactly has been stockpiling the guns, or why, has been remarkably elusive." The Interrogator hesitated. "The Hive Fleet has been destroyed. But the rot that precedes it has not."

"And that rot is?" Sur asked, frowning. "I need to know if I am going to fight it."

"Do you?" The interrogator asked. "Curious, here, I was thinking that I, being the servant of his majesty's most sacred inquisition, and thus, not beholden to you or your chain of command, that were I who might be able to determine what you do or do not need to know." She frowned, seriously. "I do not simply do this to yank your chain, Arbites. There are creatures that can rip secrets from a mind-"
"I've trained on psykers," Sur growled. "I can keep secrets."

"Not these kinds," the interrogator said, her eyes flashing as she looked into Sur's eyes.

Sur remained quiet. "So, if I cannot know who the enemy is, can I at least know what I am to do?"

The interrogator nodded. "Keep gathering information. Keep your eyes open. And..." She stepped close. Her voice was soft. "Do not allow any of your Arbites to fraternize with anyone, male or female. Chastity belts, chastisement, postponement of marriage vows, whatever it takes."

Sur frowned. "...ah..." she said. "One of those."

The interrogator, to Sur's great, if muted, pleasure looked askance.

"Cult on Regil II, big in brainwashing during fucking," Sur said, shaking her head. "Had to burn down half the brothels to root it out."

"Ah," the interrogator said.

She turned and swept away - and between blinks, was gone.

Interrogator Shexia Af-Baru leaned back in the seat of her aircar as it skimmed through the cloudlayer, then up into the brightness above the hell-pits of Thedias. She relaxed the psychic shields that she had used to conceal herself from perception for just a moment, then lifted her vox to her chin, flicking it on. "Please, please, please tell me that the Marines have responded."

Short pause, then a hissing voice of her armsmaster, Lot. "Yessm."

"And?" Shexia asked, her voice showing every bit of weariness she had.

"Mmm, Deathwatch 's in."

"...and?" Shexia frowned.

"Marines sent back Vek with two broken knees, m'm."

Shexia pursed her lips and lowered her fox.

"...fucking Marines Malevolent," she said to an empty aircar. She glared at where her master would sit, as if the old crusty bastard was there and not five hundred lightyears away, likely putting his dick in a daemonhoast. Again. "This is your fault, somehow."

Her master deigned to respond. After all.

He was five hundred light years away.

Though, in his somewhat modest defense, even an inquisitor as radical as he had never actually put his dick in a daemonhost, no matter how often Shexia muttered dark deprivations about it.

The aircar banked towards Trustworthy Compromise.

***
​

Four months ago.

In darkness...

In the secret...

There are places of repose. Places of rest. Places that, very carefully, some are chosen are gifted with the pleasure of the Kiss.

Ophelia was one such girl. She was hard working and tough minded, fair and even in her management of her small work gang. She paid off the Orbitz and she could maintain a family. And so, she writhed on her back in a pillowy casement, gasping as the gentle caresses of the beautiful male she had rented for the evening reached their climax along her body, finding places she hadn't known could relax, nor tighten, nor glisten so. She rolled her head back and gasped as she panted. The male - his curiously bright eyes glittering, the strange ridge on his brow adding a devilish cast to his feature - looked up from between her thighs and gave her a smile.

"Want to see something special?"

"H-He...Hell yeah..." she said, laughing raggedly. Her fingers ran through her hair. "I, uh...Emperor be damned, that's what I'm paying for, right?"

The man shrugged. "Not sure why you'd thank the Emperor. I'm doing all the hard work. So are you."

Ophelia didn't know it.

But this was the last of the tests.

She bit her lip as his fingers traced circles along her dark, muscular belly, tracing the lines of muscles, sweat beads clinging to his pale finger. His fingernail was...oddly sharp.

"I mean..." She shrugged. "What other choice do we got? He's on Earth. We're down here. Maybe he'll forgive us."

"What did you do that needs forgiveness?" The man asked. "Buy some food vouchers that were counterfeit? How were you supposed to know? They starve you on midlevel 32." He leaned in, his voice soft against her ear. "It's not fair. Is it?"

Ophelia bit her lip. "Not...really," she admitted. The tiny core of anger had been flicking in her for a while.

It was part of why the Sisterhood had taken note of her.

She bit her lip harder as his hand reached down and began to do things to her body that made the whole world seem to make sense again. There is something wonderful about the human ability to find comfort, to find bliss, even in the bottom of Hell itself. With acid rain pounding against metal mere meters away, with the screaming, bone scouring wind hissing and rattling against the seal-sheets, with the work hour creeping closer inch by inch, Ophelia clung to the beautiful man's hand as he worked in her. On her. To her.

"F-Fuck the Emperor, give me more of that!" she said, laughing.

"Heh." The man smiled. "Do you want to see something special?"

Ophelia licked her lips. Slowly, she nodded.

When the creature emerged from the darkness and into the room, she felt a strange hazy glow settle onto her eyes. She knew she should be scared, but the man showed no fear. "I-Is...t-that a mutant?" she whispered, her eyes widening. "I...I hear these places have mutants, but..." The creatures claws reached up and over the bed, its lower arms grabbing onto the narrow walls of the sleeping niche. Warm drool, warm as long forgotten rain, dripped onto her belly and Ophelia whimpered in fear that did not quite manage to batter through the warm, warm haze of comfort that had been built in her mind.

"They're the future, and freedom, and joy all in one." The male whispered in her ear.

The creature leaned forward.

And his tongue plunged down Ophelia's throat, deep, deep down and she knew the name of the Star Children.

Now, four months later, and Ophelia stood on a small box before a collection of other followers of the Levithan. The Sisterhood had been...possibly poorly named. Most of the people surrounding her were a part of the cult, but they were all men, mostly from her work gang and the neighboring ones. Good, steady men who didn't waver, didn't flinch, and knew their duty. But they were all looking afraid. Ophelia knew why they were afraid - but she had an advantage over them. Something that she didn't think most of them had. Many of them were murderers. Some had done worse. They, on a certain level...knew they belonged here.

But Ophelia had been in the cult for months. She had listened to the sermons and played her part - not simply in the child that strained her belly now, but in the careful hording of weaponry and the quiet taking of notes and the preparation for overthrowing the whole rotten system that the cult wished to defeat. She had never seen the Child, but in her heart was a deep, fierce belief in not just the child, but the world that the Day of Ascension would have brought.

Freedom.

"My brothers!" she said, wincing slightly as shifting her weight caused her feet to ache. She smiled, her hand going to her belly. "As you can see, this speech has to be short, before junior forces me to sit down."

She had hoped that giving a little joke would help even things out. She heard chuckles, and one of the men called out. "Get Sister Ophelia a chair!" This provoked some cheers, but she waved them aside, which made more cheers burst out - and she could feel the weight lifting from them as she threw herself into the speech.

"My brothers! The Star Children...are not coming. But we are not alone. The Imperium's yoke lays heavy on this world - but their battlefleet has been destroyed in the efforts to wipe our saviors out...and now, their hateful, vile inquisition seeks to hunt us. But what they do not know is that while they force others to serve with fear and lies, we serve because we believe! We hope! We dream." She pointed. "You! Malthas, what were you going to do after Ascension Day?"

"I was going to write a book!" She had picked Malthas specifically - the old man, whose fingers were gnarled and knotted from the torture he had been put through for writing a book that had been decreed as seditious, was always a heartening sight, his fervor and his passion carrying him past his year.

"And you, Gideon, what were you going to do?"

"I...I was gonna take care of oprhans, make sure none ever have to, to..." Gideon paused, the big burly man wiping a tear from his eye. "I was gonna make good! F-For the people I kilt. I was gonna do it! I was!"

"Redemption! Freedom! Art! Culture!" Ophelia said, her voice fierce and echoing. "That's what we hoped for - but are we going to give up becuase things have gotten hard?"

"No!" The roar was immediate, echoing throughout the chamber, sealed off for this meeting.

"Are we going to lay down and die, because the Imperium needs a few more megatons of adamantine?"

"No!"

"Are we going to let those noble bastards throw their trash onto our heads anymore? Are we going to suffer for their amusement? Their hunts? Their prima nocta!?"

"Nooooooo!"

The roar was nearly feral and Ophelia nodded. "Tell everyone in the cult that couldn't make it. Spread the word. Our biggest weakness now is to give into fear...fear is what the Imperium runs on. Fear and hatred. And cruelty. And lies. We will defeat them all by refusing to be afraid! By refusing to be broken!" She lifted her fist. "For the Child!"

"For the Child!"

"For Levithan!"

"For Levithan!"

"For the future!"

"For the future!"

As the meeting broke apart, Ophelia did finally let herself sit. She felt the kicking and scrabbing of her baby and sighed, rubbing her belly - then started as a warm voice said.

"You give a good speech...Ophelia, right?" The bald woman was immediately recognizable to Ophelia, lack of the blessed voice or no. The connection, she missed like an ache. But she would live without it. She blushed and started to stand, but the Magus held up her hand, placing it on her shoulder, pushing her back down. "No, don't stand on my account."

"I..." Ophelia bit her lip. "Thank you, my lady."

"Please," the woman said. "Trilla. We're all as one under Levithan."

Ophelia smiled, a bit shyly.

"Can you give more of those speeches?" Trilla asked.

"I think I can," Ophelia said, nodding, then winced. "I may need help getting around. Junior is a big boy."

"That he is!" Trilla said, chuckling, caressing her belly gently. Her voice was amused. "Anything else we can do to make it easier, sister?"

Ophelia bit her lip. She looked down, then around herself. None of the other members of the Sisterhood were near - and she was able to whisper. "Trilla...I just..." She gulped. "I worry. Sometimes. That I'm lying to them. About the future."

Trilla shook her head. "You never said it'd be easy, did you?"

Ophelia supposed...that she hadn't.

---
The month is still up - you can take more actions or rest! However, I am introducing...a NEW RULE!

If you choose an option and then also write in a plan, a scheme, an idea that uses characters and concepts from within the fiction, you can earn...BONUSES! At minimum, having a plan will give you +1d, but the better and better the plan is, the bigger the bonuses!

They go Minor (+1d) -> Significant (+ED) -> Outstanding (+2d) -> Major (+MD) -> Spectacular (+3d) -> Epic Triumph! (+1d+MD) -> Mastermind Maneuver (+2d+MD)

Now, technically, rules as written, a bad plan can penalize you too, but I'm too nice and squishy to ever say a plan is bad. Well, I would tell you if a plan seems bad or unworkable, you may want to take the penalty to get the in universe plot outcome, I dunno!

[ ] Attack BLANK (Might + Treasure VS Might + Territory)
[ ] Being Informed (Influence + Soverignty vs Diff 1)
[ ] Spying on BLANK (Influence + Treasury vs Influence + Territory)
[ ] Influence BLANK to do BLANK (Influence + Treasury vs Influence + Territory)
[ ] Increase your Sovereignty (Territory + Treasure vs Diff [Current Sovereignty])
[ ] Police BLANK (Might + Sovereignty vs Influence + Might)
[ ] Rise in Stature (Sovereignty + Treasure vs Diff [Current Influence]
[ ] Train and Levy Troops (Sovereignty + Territory vs Diff [Current Might]
[ ] Unconventional Warfare (write plan in)
[ ] Wait and See

 

[DragonCobolt]

The parties continued above the cloud layer.

Below them?

Below them, a few people were asked a few pointed questions. The coinage of Thedias was far from the bright gilt of a golden Throne - crudely hammered copper circles, a few bars of iron, things that represented work-shifts, whispered promises of a change to take a break from the mines, or the refineries. Those currencies flowed, and they flowed well. The people they were handed to were those that had somewhat shifty character and unscurpulous bents, people who didn't ask when robed figures came to them in the darkness and whispered.

Look here.

Tell me if you see anything.

Leave a note at this corner, if you do.

It was...ironic, really.

With the robes and the shadows, none could tell if they served the Emperor on Earth or his myriad enemies. The people who took their coin looked and sought, to the best of their admittedly modest abilities. They kept their eyes open, their ears perked, and their tongues stilled.

And they found...

Nothing.

"Nothing conclusive, at least," Interrogator Af-Baru muttered as she glowered down at her reports.

"Quite so, 'm," Lot said, pouring her her fifth cup of recaff. Af-Baru rubbed her temples, frowning. The time was growing short, the first month of the cycle was to end soon and she was painfully outstretched. She reminded herself: Patience. Patience. She was dealing with a rat that had broken its leg. She merely needed to find it and kill it before it could heal - but she had time. And...her eyes drifted to the black armored sentinel that stood in her chambers.

She had a very large rock.

***
​

There was a trick when it came to Lord Korask Rute-Pierre von Zav XII, a trick that Yolanda knew quite well.

He was an idiot.

"Oh wow," he said, nodding with wide eyes as one of her cousins regaled him with what might be the most impossibly fake story of clouddiving that had ever been listed - what kind of man had survived the Hurrigale of 34 as an adult and didn't notice when a story demanded that the hypothetical clouddiver had to survive winds in excess of the planetary's record in a wing-suit without repulsorfields?

Well, the kind of man like Korask.

"And then he pulled the ripcord..." her cousin said, cheerfully. Yolanda gave him a warm smile - and he winked at her right back. Poor Lutre, though. He wasn't a part of the Sisterhood - not due to any particular failing on his part, but rather, because his wife was an utter harridan and so devoted to the Imperial Creed that she'd absolutely notice something was amiss. Yolanda was always accused of being a sentimentalist by her fellow Magi, which was why she had been trying to find a good way to get Lutre's wife somewhere appropriate to pull the scales from her eyes. The fervor tied to a dying corpse who demanded her children be fed directly into a war machine should have been freed to fight for something better, like the Star Children!

Ah well. It was one of the many projects that Yolanda had needed to abandon in favor of the Sisterhood's immediate gains.

Maybe later, she thought as she found the exact, perfect moment to do what the cult required. She smiled and stepped over to Korask Rute-Pierre von Zav XII's wife, Louisa Opal Gemanite Corwin-Af Maru Von Xav. She had been driven from her husband's presence in clear annoyance, her delicate features set and her eyes flashing as she got a new glass of tea from one of the servitors that stood in the chamber. She drank it down with a heaping spoonful of artificial sugar and hissed under her breath. "Clouddiving, really."

"Boys and their stories," Yolanda said, chuckling as she moved over. "Sorry about cousin Lutre. He loves to go on."

Lousia gave her a smile. "Oh Yolanda, I'm so glad you're here. I haven't seen you at any of the parties lately - your father?"

Yolanda's father's ailing health - in truth, his quite obvious blessings from the Sisterhood and the Star Children alike - had been an excellent cover for her double life, and she clicked her tongue and shook her head. "I'm afraid the Tech-Priests have needed to put in new augmetic lungs, but they're fairly sure he can go out. He may need to wear a big robe...they're..." SHe hesitated. "Bulky."

"Ahhh..." Lousia looked sympathetic. "Still, it is good to have you here. We have a large gala tomorrow, and we have to show up the Pierres, Kor thinks that we can't let it stand."

"Oh?" Yolanda asked.

"Well, the Pierres last party had sky jousts," Lousia said, frowning. "Whatever shall we do?"

Yolanda...pounced.

She smiled. "Let me help. If you don't mind my family servants getting involved, and me inviting some of my House minorus friends?"

"Of course not, Yolanda, you don't even need to trade for that kind of favor," Louisa said, beaming at her as she delivered that absolute lie with complete and utter confidence. Yolanda knew quite well that for all her smiles, Louisa was, unlike her husband, as sharp as a chainsword's honed blade. She could bite and tear through problems and conspiracies - it was her, after all, who had managed to keep the other houses in line. Not her husband.

Yolanda beamed. "Then never you fear."

And so it was that the Sisterhood of the Levithan had an eye in every party thrown by House Zav, and Yolanda Puriee and her house minorus grew in stature that day - as everyone on Thedias Prime, from the lowliest prisoner to the highest born noble, shared the same adoration and love of fireworks. The fact that they were modified and repurposed munitions that had been quietly stolen from the PDF was easily missed - and, in fact, served quite well to lead the Inquisition even further off the cult's trail. After all, it was hard to trace something used as a firecracker. And as the blooming lights flickered and guttered overhead, the parties continued.
And eyes were open.

And ears were listening.

And the Sisterhood was learning.

---
Your Treasure and finances are getting pretty strapped - fortunately, the Inquisition didn't find you...YET!

AS a note, most companies will be taking 1-2 actions per month, simply due to wanting their dice pools to refresh. You can push harder, but remember, if you tap out all your dice pools, then someone goes, "Hehe..." and then attacks you then? Trouble! You can probably play it riskier now, because no one seems to know where the cult is...but still!

To be clear, you CAN fail this quest, this isn't like my normal quests where I have a story I will fit into the mechanics, you can just all die.

[ ] Attack BLANK (Might + Treasure VS Might + Territory)
[ ] Being Informed (Influence + Soverignty vs Diff 1)
[ ] Spying on BLANK (Influence + Treasury vs Influence + Territory)
[ ] Influence BLANK to do BLANK (Influence + Treasury vs Influence + Territory)
[ ] Increase your Sovereignty (Territory + Treasure vs Diff [Current Sovereignty])
[ ] Police BLANK (Might + Sovereignty vs Influence + Might)
[ ] Rise in Stature (Sovereignty + Treasure vs Diff [Current Influence]
[ ] Train and Levy Troops (Sovereignty + Territory vs Diff [Current Might]
[ ] Unconventional Warfare (write plan in)
[ ] Wait and See

THE SISTERHOOD OF THE LEVITHAN
(Cycle 1, Month 1)

MIGHT: 1 | TREASURE: 5(3) | INFLUENCE: 3 | TERRITORY: 1(0) | SOVEREIGNTY: 3(2)​

 

[DragonCobolt]

The nobility managed the supplies above the cloudlayer. They were still launched on skytether servitors, but they were collected by barges - vast airbags surrounded by hardened metal frames, their dangling gondolas served by men and women who had sworn fealty to a noble house or another. They used long poles to fetch the servitors from the clouds and spent many a long week trawling to find them.

The balloon Gyap was currently on course to find one of those servitors, and her crew was a boisterous lot. They often took passengers, and the current one was a a popular one. Always wearing goggles, Geelie was an eager girl to run her mouth and to show off her wingsuit.

"Designed by the best techwights in Stigya!" she said, proudly, again and again. And Geelie was always eager to listen, to talk, to share rumors and hear them. She was also always eager to show off her wingsuit and what it could do. The crew cheered as she dove, caught the termals, then whipped around to fly past the ship, laughing gaily.

"Look at her go!" One of the crewmen shouted, while Geelie swept around for another pass, cackling at the top of her lungs.

"Shoot the spars, Geelie! Shoot the spars!" A jovial crewman shouted, as she whipped past the prow of the balloon.

Geelie had been told, repeatedly, by the Magus who had given her her mission: Geelie, you are here to learn information about the supply shifting up overhead, and what's going on with the nobility. These ships see other ships - we want to know if the damned Inquisition is sniffing around any spots on the globe they shouldn't be. This is not a time for you to enjoy your damn hobbies.

Alas, poor Geelie.

She had always thought, first and foremost, of the thing she had heard last. She'd been given her mission assingment at the beginning of the month, and her mate on the Gyap was right here. SHe spread her wingsuit and dove, shooting towards the spars that kept the armored bulk of the balloon's gondola in place underneath the frame of the airbag. She narrowed her eyes, held her arms just so, shooting towards the narrow, one and a half meter wide gap she'd have to hit to be safe. The entire crew watched with baited breath-

And the balloon caught a thermal at the exact wrong moment.

Quite a mess, the mournful crew had said at port, raising a glass to poor Geelie. Quite a mess indeed.

***
​

The opening days of the Month of Scampering began...with a bang. Well, more of a clatter. In the back parts of Habitat Block 3-A, in the Pits, a grating fell down into a closet that was used by the Orbtz gang to hold the people that didn't pay their protection racket. Three men, beaten blue and bloody, were hunched in the corner while a huge Orbtz that looked half ogryn by his build and glower, cracked his knuckles. He turned at the clatter while a lithesome woman in Skavz colors dropped in behind him, leveled a stub revolver at his face, and blew his brains against the walls with a resounding whirr THWAP as the quasi-heretical maglev impeller attached to the barrel of the gun accelerated the shot to hypersonic speeds.

The next four Skavz that dropped into the room had shotbores, grazers, arc-swords, and similarly crude weapons of destruction. Their leader, Tent, opened the door, stepped out and shot down three more Orbtz gangers before they even knew that they were under attack. One staggered back, clutching the blood pouring from his thigh and shrieked. "Skavz! Skavz in the base!"

The decision that made the next hour as messy as it was came when the Orbtz leader, Krull, was roused from the bed and lithesome joyboys that he was sprawled with by his second in command as they opened the door and shouted in. "Skavz in the base, K, they're sending the whole fucking gang in!"

"How?" Krull growled, standing up and up and up, his augmetic jaw grinding metal on metal teeth together. The grille of his second hissed with an annoyed sigh.

"Vents."

"Shit," Krull muttered. He thought hard.

And he made his decision.

"Bleed em."

Any other leader might have made a hash of that order. But while the Orbtz might have had less men and slightly fewer guns than the Skavz, what they had was...a remarkably good number of vox-beads. Three, as opposed to enthusiastic bellowing that the Skavz used for direction and communication. And so, the Skavz ran into a problem that - though they'd never believe it - was as old as Terra: Exceptionally well planned opening attack running into what next and not knowing how to proceed. Their fireteams blew their way through shocked Orbtz, then were drawn into chambers that the Orbtz had set up with heavy barricades and stubbers. High caliber rounds blew Skavz apart, even as Tent dove for cover, then fired her maglev pistol again and again - the impacts slamming into cover, punching through and blowing Orbtz lungs out against the walls.

In the spate of a single 24 hour day, nearly eight hundred people had died. The Orbtz had been forced to retreat into the underwarrens of The Pits and cede their territory to the Skavz. But of those eight hundred, six had been Skavz as they had run into determined resistance and their leaders had simply fed in more troops from the side habs and the tunnels, pouring them in like whisky going down a throat, and pissing down the drain.

Needless to say...

***
​

"That is interesting..." Magus Xandra said, grinning as the second of the two joyboys that Krull preferred stood next to her in the small, smokey parlor. While she didn't exactly need his information - the whole of the underclouds had heard about the short, sharp brutal war between the two of the biggest gangs - it still was good to hear from a...trusted source.


---
[ ] Attack BLANK (Might + Treasure VS Might + Territory)
[ ] Being Informed (Influence + Soverignty vs Diff 1)
[ ] Spying on BLANK (Influence + Treasury vs Influence + Territory)
[ ] Influence BLANK to do BLANK (Influence + Treasury vs Influence + Territory)
[ ] Increase your Sovereignty (Territory + Treasure vs Diff [Current Sovereignty])
[ ] Police BLANK (Might + Sovereignty vs Influence + Might)
[ ] Rise in Stature (Sovereignty + Treasure vs Diff [Current Influence]
[ ] Train and Levy Troops (Sovereignty + Territory vs Diff [Current Might]
[ ] Unconventional Warfare (write plan in)
[ ] Wait and See


Normally, your company acts first before anyone else - but I thought it'd be A) fun to have something dramatic kick off month 2 and B) a good way to show how wars work with a minor engagement.

So, ignore this if you don't care about how the mechanics work!

Spoiler: The Mechanical Breakdown of the Skavz/Orbtz War

The Skavz, flush with guns, eyes the Orbtz territory. They want it. They make a sudden attack using the vent shafts to drop into the Orbtz behind their territory, giving them +2d for the good plan. Despite this, the Orbtz have excellent defenses (thanks to an asset), giving them a +2d.

The attack roll for the Skavz is Might+Treasure, versus the Orbtz Might+Territory! That's a 5d for the Skavz and 5d for the Orbtz.

The Orbtz decide if they want to try and disengage and fight defensively, or bleed the Skavz. They're feeling pretty bloodthirsty, so they're gonna bleed em. This means the roll is a dynamic contest, rather than a simple opposed check. The Skavz roll a quite good 2x9 for their attack, while the Orbtz roll a 2x9 for THEIR defense!

This means both sides "hit" eachother at the same time - the Orbtz take 1 Territory damage, and the Skavz take 1 Might damage.

Now, this damage is on top of normal degradation from rolls. So, the Orbtz are at -1 Might, -2 Territory, while the Skavz are at -2 might and -1 Treasure. Damage caused by attacks becomes permanent if the stat is reduced to 0, meaning that the Orbtz Territory of 1 has hit 0, so it's permanently reduce. Meanwhile, the Skavz might of 2 has hit 0, and since it was in part reduced by an attack (not merely by use), it also hits 0.

So, in short, the Skavz DO capture Orbtz territory and run them off, but the Orbtz retreat with their forces mostly intact - since they can refresh their 2(1) might back up to 2 next month. Both gangs are weakened and not exactly in a better position. The Skavz control more territory...but thinly spread, with barely anything to defend it with, and the Orbtz have no territory, but retain their core of hard fighters. The risks of small gang fights, huh?

THE SISTERHOOD OF THE LEVITHAN
(Cycle 1, Month 2 - the Month of Scampering)


MIGHT: 1 | TREASURE: 5 | INFLUENCE: 3 | TERRITORY: 1 | SOVEREIGNTY: 3​

 

[DragonCobolt]

The issue with being a homeless gang?

It was a hell of a lot of people. Nearly a hundred, two hundred gangers in Orbtz green and whites, their weapons in hands, hurried from their defensive positions and spread throughout the habitats, using mag-trains and warren tunnels to hide low. The advantage they had, though, was the Orbtz had always had a finger or two in the most...well liked professions on Thedias: Prostitution and Bootlegging. They made the best hootch, and knew the prettiest girls and the prettiest boys. More than a few tired, beaten down Orbtz fireteams found a place to hide as bouncers, or as guarding large stills that the Orbtz still technically ran, even if their main territory was locked down...

But Krull was a canny fellow, even if he looked as big as an ogyrn. A quicksilver brain worked in that head - and he knew, for a fact, that it was only a matter of time until his men and women were hunted down by the Skavtz or the enforcers of the dome security. He had to find a place for them.

Which is why, when the very pregnant woman entered into the room he had been in with his second, and said: "I have a proposition, Krull..." He didn't immediately throw her out.

"Who are you?" His second asked, voice buzzing in his grilled jaw.

"I'm Ophelia," the woman said, and Krull frowned.

"You're in the work gangs for section 2 and 3, one of the bigwigs, right?" he asked, frowning. "Your shifts don't pay anyone tithes - you stick too tight together. Makes me wonder...which gang do you actually run with?"

Ophelia chuckled. She walked over, winced, then blinked as Krull kicked out a chair at his table - taking advantage of his very, very long leg. The chair skidded to a stop, and she put her hand on the back, then settled. She sighed, quietly. "You're half right," she said, her voice soft. "We do stick tight together. But we don't do it because we're loyal to a gang."

Krull arched an eyebrow.

"We do it because we're loyal to an idea," Ophelia said. "An ideal."

"Oh futter me, you're a load of throne lickers," Krull said. "The Emperor hasn't done me any fucking favors down here, pardon the language."

Ophelia snorted. "Do I look like a woman who cares what a corpse thinks?"

Krull and his second sat very still. Krull's hand was still on the table. Ophelia sensed it immediately - a misstep. Krull leaned in close. His voice was soft. "We a man around here, three cycles back, talking that kind of way. Enforcers find that kind of man, they drop entire rocks on habitats. We're gangers. Not stupid."

Ophelia leaned in. Her voice was soft. "We've airlocked our own share of folks like that. They might see that the Emperor is a false god - that doesn't mean their gods are real either." She reached out with her hand, clenching it into a fist. "This is real. Flesh. Bone. Blood. The effort of your fellow humans - down here, in the pits." She nodded, her eyes flaring with the red hot passion she had had, ever since she had first been given the Kiss. "Your gang worked better together, as a whole, with one goal, one dream in mind. But does that goal have to be twenty percent of some brothels, a few bootleggers?"

"What kind of dream do you got, lumpen?" Krull asked.

"The stars," Ophelia said. "Freedom. Equality."

Krull frowned. "You're insane."

"Am I?" Ophelia asked. "Maybe. But also, I'm the only hope you have. We have some habitats, out in the wastelands, and some territory above the cloud layers. Places your people can go, if they don't mind some cramped positions. In exchange for your protection and your eyes, we provide places to stay, and a purpose. Something more than grubbing."

"This is insane," Krull said.

"It is," Ophelia said, laughing softly. "It is madness to hope for change in the Imperium. But would you rather die mad and free, or live as a slave, in Hell?"

Krull tapped his fingers.

"Boss," his second said.

The door opened and a tough looking girl whose face had been dyed half green leaned in. She stepped over, whispering in Krull's ear.

"Enforcers just busted Meg's," Krull said. He frowned. "Fuck. If I'm falling, might as well try flapping my wings."

Ophelia smiled at him.

Excellent work. We'll arrange a proper introduction when they arrive, her Magus' voice spoke in her mind, the astral tingle of her telepathic touch shivering along Ophelia's cheek.

"I wish I could be there to see it..." Ophelia whispered.

***

​

Barik was reconsidering a lot of decisions he made in his life. Normally so utterly and completely disaffected by discomfort and his physical body that he scoffed at long work hours, sneered at danger, and didn't like looking at himself in the mirror, the idea of tailing a few people for a few thrones had seemed entirely unobjectionable. But after his work shift had turned up missing, save for Larent who had been drilled in the face by a lasbolt at close range, with a note pinned to his chest: Reconsider your Career Options. The letter had been read to Barik by someone who knew their letters, and Barik had gone to the scary man to tell him.

The scary man had then produced the stick: A letter, which he proclaimed, would have Barik shifted from puddling to deep-core mining.

And so, Barik had gone back to following the people he'd been told to follow. And when they stole into a warehouse, and started to load into one of the ashcans. They scrambled in, closed the door, and Barik knew that if they headed into the canyons, then he'd never trace them again. Someone who did not hate himself and life as much as Barik did might have slowed down. Instead, he rushed forward, scrambled under the ashcan as it started to rumble and roar, its huge, armored wheels creaking. He looped a belt around a flange beneath the heavy belly of the device, cinched himself up, hooked his legs under, then swung himself as hard against the belly of the vehicle. Then he closed his eyes and hoped against hope that his filter-breather would keep him safe.

He would, after all, not be in direct winds.

The doors opened and the heat and buzzing, hissing winds of the valleys started to drip down. The 'peller fields that kept the canyons drivable hummed overhead, but what got through was still enough to soak him in sweat, then dry the sweat off his body. His eyes closed and he tried to not think of his body, nor the time.

The ashcan rumbled at its top speed for what felt like an eternity. A few droplets of hissing acid almost touched his skin, one buzzed along the bottom of his boot. His arms ached. And when the 'peller fields that were mounted on the canyon walls grew dimmer and less maintained by the cogs, the heat and pressure grew fiercer. His ears popped and his body ached with the deep agonies. And through it all, he closed his eyes and prayed to the God-Emperor that this torment might end his. But no. No luck. The ashcan came to somewhere closed and metal, and hissing air rushed in, blessedly cool. He tugged off the filter - which had been filling his brain with the screaming agony of carboach.

He breathed in and felt his body slowly come back to him - aches and pains fading, his hands flexing as blood rushed back into them. A pity.

He waited until the people in the ashcan emerged. They were gangers by their conversation. "I hope we're not too late, Boss Krull said this place was amazing. Like paradise."

Barik frowned and waited more. once he was absolutely sure that the warehouse was empty, he let himself drop fully to the ground. He rolled out from under the ashcan, brushing dust and bits of grim off his gloves. He took his breather helmet fully off, blinking his watery blue eyes, then looked slowly around. This wasn't a drophab - it lacked the labyrinthine size of it. No, this was a place that had been built after, in the thousands of years that Thedias had been settled and mined and worked. The walls were thick plasteel, and there was a strange symbol done in bass relief: A set of three stars arranged around one another in a triangular pattern, with a fist in the center of it. Beneath it were three words in a variation on high gothic: Liberte, Fraterneti, Astralitae.

Barik rolled his shoulder, then moved towards the doors that the gangers had entered into. He opened the seal and saw that they were being approached by men in white robes, who took their hands, smiling and nodding. "DOn't worry," one said, his voice soft. "You're safe here."

Barik knew, then, that this was the place. Some might have investigated farther, but Barik was being paid and threatened to do just one thing: Find anything suspicious. Well, either these were throne lickers and the scary gents wouldn't bother them other than roughing a few priests up, or they were something very, very, very bad and he'd be given...well, a kick in the ass and a throne gelt, if he was fucking lucky. A shot in the head if he was very, very lucky.

Getting back...

He considered going for the ashcan and simply driving home. But the canyons weren't exactly places you could hide - nor did he know which turns and switchbacks they had taken. But maybe...he turned and headed to the ashcan. He opened the door with a grunt, the hinges squealing, the acid pitting on the hull looking to have scored a few extra deep gouges and furrows in. Looking within, he saw that the ashcan was one of the nice ashcans. The kind midshift people used, puddlers like him if they got really lucky. THe kind...with a vox. The vox-net of Thedias was spotty at best, but a vox in an ashcan meant breaking down in the canyons wasn't certain death. It meant you could listen to hymns, or those radio dramas about the Small Lord.

He picked up the vox controller. Dialed in.

"Hey," he said. "This is K-2. Found something, track this signal. Repeat. This is K-2, track this-"

"You there!"

Barik jerked his head up.

The man standing across from him was not wearing a white robe. He was also not human. His brows were ridged with elegant purple chitin, his eyes were pure black. He had claws on his fingers, and they were gripping a sleek lasgun, which looked like it was enforcer made. He frowned and Barik sighed, then lifted his palms. "You caught me," he said.

"Yeah. I did." The man prodded him forward. "Walk."

Barik walked, grimly. He was marched towards a doorway - and the hatch swung inwards. And he stepped from one world and into another. From Hell...to Heaven. The room was large and pale white, bright gold, and warm purples. Sheets hung here and there, providing gauzy haze between his eyes and bodies. Naked bodies. A woman sighed softly near him, and the soft sounds of giggles, laughter and moans reached his ears. Two burly looking men in Orbitz colors - their clothing discarded by equally pretty looking boys who...were...wrong somehow - walked by. Barik gaped, and saw that both of the men had...four arms. Their pale skin glistened as if they had been oiled, and their hands stroked the ganger's backs.

The man behind him prodded his lasgun into his back. "C'mon, the Magus is not gonna be happy, but she needs to know."

They were approaching the center of the room. Of the orgy. An orgy that would not be glanced at in the clouds, but down here? This was where people worked and suffered. Where poverty drained the joy out of everything. There was no sign of fine wine, fine drinks, fine food - in fact, Barik saw two women enjoying a ration bar together. The food was mundane and simple. But the women, their bodies pocked by scars and radburns, one of them with a face that had been half melted, the other with an augmetic hand, so clearly enjoyed their repast, as if it were a banquet fit for the Lords of Terra itself. He watched as the augmetic fingers of the other pushed a quarter of a ration-bar into the other's lips. She chewed, laughed, caressed her lover.

They make it a banquet, Barik thought, dazedly, as they came to a large cushion.

There...was a noblewoman. No one else could be so beautiful, so perfect. Her long blond tresses spilled down over her full breasts, just barely concealing her nipples. Her hands caressed the knees of the man she was reclining atop, and the joining...where body met body, Barik could see that the man she was riding had ridges. Purple knobs that-

"Ahh, yes!" The noblewoman sighed, then laughed. "Oh, who is...this..." She frowned, seeing the lasgun.

"Magus Yolanda, we caught him rooting around in the ashcan that brought the last of our new members," the man with the lasgun said.

Barik wasn't even watching Magus Yolanda. He was watching another woman. She was fine boned, delicate, and bald. Her brow was ridged, and her clawed finger was holding a slender looking Orbitz painted girl in place. Something sleek and alien, shrouded by a curtain, was pressing its inhuman lips to the other woman's crotch. The Orbitz woman arched her back, gasping and crying out - her lips forming the words oh stars, yes! as the bald woman caressed her belly, smiling with a matronly grin.

Then Barik felt fingers on his chin. He looked back at Yolanda. She smiled at him.

"I don't want to hurt you," she said, her voice soft. "Thumbtacks and screws and fire and brands. We kill when we must, but we try to avoid hurting." Her finger brushed through his hair. "My word, you are a pretty fellow." SHe smiled. "Do you wish to join the Sisterhood?"

"Yes," Barik whispered, desperately. "I mean...no, I...w-what is this place, are you mutants?"

"Mmhmm," Yolanda said. "Though, I smell something in you." She leaned in. Her head cocked and she smiled, showing her very sharp teeth. "Do you mind if I peer into your mind? Open yourself to me. It'll be gentle." Her fingers tugged at his collar and Barik trembled, his skin prickling. He had no idea what she meant by peering into his mind. Was it witchcraft? He gulped, then whispered.

"I-I don't know?"

"Shh."

Her eyes met his. And she felt cold fingers brushing through his mind. The touch was not uncomfortable, but it was not pleasant either. He didn't fight as she swept through his mind, and then frowned. "Well, drat," she said, then shook he head. "You were threatened, starving, and miserable, my sister." She smiled. "Go...to...that corner." She nodded. "And do everything those sisters tell you - I have to, sadly, forego being fucked silly." She smacked Barik on the shoulder. "Also...Baria. How does that sound?"

"I-I...what?" Barik blinked, then saw the naked, glorious woman walking off to the other bald woman. The two murmured, then hurried off.

When he came to the corner, the women there were mostly purple. One had three arms. One had no hair and bright gold-purple eyes. The third was...mostly human, but she had painted herself in purples and blacks. Each of them enjoying a bright hooka which was filled with a chemical that smelled tingling, the smoke a bright pinkish hue. The three grinned at him playfully. "Here to join the Sisterhood?" one purred.

"I-I...I..." Barik stammered.

"Don't worry, Baria, Yolanda already told us. Come on. Take a puff and don't worry. We have all the time in the world."

Barik knelt. He took the pipe. He breathed in. His mind hazed. His eyes half closed. He breathed out. And for the first time in his life, Barik felt a deep peace in his skin, even as the girls started to tug off his clothing. He lounged back into the seat, his body tingling. His arousal did not show in any visible sense - his cock remained quite soft as the girls giggled and stroked him - one actually began to gently buzz a arc-stubber along his cheek. The searing sting of each of his folicles getting seared out was easy to ignore, thanks to one of the other girls feeding the hooka pipe into his mouth. He smoked again, then sighed. "Wow, that feels nice," he said, voice sounding higher than he expected.

He settled in.

Magus Yolanda and Magus Xandra looked at one another. Xandra frowned.

"Storm's coming," she said. "Once the intiation is done, we...we will have to make some plans."

Yolanda nodded. She glanced back, and saw Baria, looking quite a bit more feminine, pink haze fogging around her head as she giggled happily. The budding of her new breasts were already present - the finest alcochemists on Thedias had worked on that hormanta batch and, Yolanda had to admit, was quite a potent kick for members who wanted to become Sisters, not merely members of the Sisterhood. She flicked her finger and one of their Pure started to head over, to give the new girl a kiss. She looked back at Magus.

"Think we'll be facing both of them?" she asked. Yolanda sometimes was seen as nothing but a silly noble fop. But her voice could be quite serious. Quite cold.

"...Star Children, I hope not," Xandra whispered.

***
​

Brother Raxian, Brother Theoboldius, Brother Ulnif.

The three names burned inside of Olrax's mind as he worked the sinch tighter and tighter on his makeshift glove. Joining the Deathwatch had meant setting aside his Chapter's livery, all save for a single pauldron. It meant leaving behind his Chapter's faith and culture and becoming a part of the Deathwatch. But there were some things that, even for something as honorable as the Deathwatch, was a step too far. He sinched the glove tighter, his teeth clenching hard. The small cell he knelt in opened - and a nervous looking scribe peered in. It was not a chapter serf, but rather, an Inquisitorial toady.

"S-Sir," the toady said. "We have a location."

Olrax stood, slowly.

"My...surviving brothers?"

"They are being prepared."

Olrax turned, frowning.

"The drop pod?" he asked.

"Aimed. Loaded." The man gulped.

"Good," Olrax said, blood dripping to the ground as the glove bit.

It bit tight.

---
DUN. DUN. DUNNNN!!!! The inquisition has the location, and they have the Deathwatch. So, five space marines are going to land on your head! You are UNDER ATTACK! They're going to be rolling Might+Treasure, while you guys roll Might+Territory with a +2d bonus for being on the defensive (so, in the ORE system loose dice rolling high can give you some leeway, and since you DID roll a 10, I decided to give you the leeway of catching the spy and knowing the attack is coming, which means you can use your Tunnels and Bunkers defense.)

Now, the question is: Do you wish to fight defensively (block their attack but leave their might undamaged), or do you want to try and bleed em (attack back, reducing their Might and, potentially, spoiling their sets.)

ADVANTAGE OF DEFENSIVE: Safer! Easier!
DISADVANTAGE: Their next roll will be at only normal penalties, prolonging the fight, and it means the might loss won't be permanent.

ADVANTAGES OF OFFENSIVE: Increases their dice penalties by reducing their might, and if you bring their might to 0, YOU KILL THEM ALL (!!!!)
DISADVANTAGES: If your set and their set are tired, you both hurt one another (that happened to the Skavtz, remember?)

Normally, you can also buff yourself by hiring mercs but...A) you don't have time and B) not for all the thrones in arabax sector, the only way to get people to fight space marines is if they well and truly believe.

Oh, and do remember: The better the write in, the better your chances, so if you want to describe a really fucking cool strategy, tactic or move, go now!

[ ] Fight Defensively
[ ] Fight Aggressively

 

[DragonCobolt]

The skies above Thedias were always rich with starships - though many had fled in the face of the oncoming Hive Fleet. The only thing keeping many in place had been the shadow cast in the Warp, preventing them from fleeing. One of those ships was the secondary vehicle of the Inquisition.

It was as unassuming as the Price of Redemption had been glorious.

And its belly, like the Redemption, had a series of small nodules. One blew away in the silence of the void - and then from it dropped a single black shrouded, sensoria guarded drop pod. It screamed down towards the cerulean clouds of Thedias. The only sign of its movement was a streak of orange light through the bright skies overhead. And it was seen. A single rigger on the back of an airship, whose membership in the cult was entirely ideological - he had never been Kissed, though he hoped he would be some day.

He saw it...and he used the thing that had drawn him to the Cult. The thing that had made him wish to find succor in someone who spurned the Imperium's stultifying superculture came in handy.

He closed his eyes and stretched himself. He felt the snarling brush of danger - and then the connection.

They're coming.

***
​

Magus Xandra frowned as she used a hammer to ram in the explosive piton, each impact driving along her arm. As she worked, the rest of the mining crew she was with milled around her. "M'lady," one of the miners said, his goggle covered eyes wide and stairing. "You cannot be here."

"It's my plan, I should be here to at least make sure you don't all get butchered," Xandra said, her voice flat. "We're a Sisterhood, not a Some-Women-Hide-In-The-Back-hood."

The mining crew all looked at one another. Their heavy lascutters - which they had been using to weaken struts in the complex that the Sisterhood's habitat had been built atop - were still smoking. The leader grabbed onto Xandra's arm. "Magus...Xandra..." He said, using her name with emphatic care. "There are space marines coming - if we do not survive here, if we do not win this day, then we will need you to keep the fight going." He smiled, showing sharp teeth. "Your plan will be with us. Your training."

Xandra's bulky shoulders slumped. The hammer in her hands almost slid between her fingers. She closed her eyes, then took the other cultist by the shoulder, gripping firmly. Her voice was a husky snarl. "Give them the death they so ardently worship, my brothers and sisters. For the Child."

"For the future," the chorused response came.

A low whump echoed throughout the cave system. Dust pattered overhead and Xandra started to hurry towards the elevators as the miners got to work. Deeper in the tunnels, the pure hissed and waited, their attentive focus honed and drawn in taut by Xandra's will. She still felt the strange detachment they had - the lack of the voice of the Star Children. But the pure were not stupid - they were not fools. They knew as well as everyone else that the future depended on working together. She came to the elevator and looked up - and sent a prayer to her brothers and sisters on the surface.

***
​

The door to the drop-pod thumped into the red dust that spread along the bottom the canyons. The repeller fields that stretched above the canyon roof and kept the worst of the pressure and acid off so that work crews could get at the immense riches that sprouted from every wall hummed quietly, undisturbed by the passage of the precisely aimed pod. Brother Olrax stepped from it with a grunt, his heavy boots sending up spurts of blood-red dust around their soles. Behind him, Brother Gaius and Brother Hatoshi emerged, their weapons at the ready. Their heads swiveled and spotted a work gang that was gaping at them in shock. The work gang looked entirely normal.

They dropped to their knees, their rubber gloves planting down to the ground, bowing low in reverence.

"Ah, the mortals greet their saviors, eh, Olrax?" Hatoshi asked, his voice wry, amused.

"Hurm." Olrax began to stomp forward. Gaius, always the quiet one, simply took his auspex off and began to sweep it in a slow arc. Hatoshi knelt down beside the mortals, his black armored frame still towering over them.

"Stand," he said. "You have nothing to fear from the Death-"

Olrax snatched one of the men up by the scruff of his neck and slammed him into the nearby wall. Hatoshi jerked to his feet. His voice clicked as it came through the directional vox. "Olrax, what are you doing?"

"We have no time for this," Olrax growled. "Half our brothers are already dead, and I will not let them get away through leniency."

"Is that the ghost of Theoboldius speaking in your ear?" Hatoshi snapped, while Olrax took his helmet off with his other hand. The man he had grabbed was looking stunned, blood dripping down his neck. Hatoshi took his helmet off - his former jests and easy smiles replaced with a fierce frown, his eyes flashing. "Or your own ego?"

"If we had found the cult months before, then our brothers would not be galactic ash," Olrax snarled, then looked back at the mortal he had pinned.

"P-Please!" The mortal choked out. "I'll tell you anything!"

The others had already started to draw away.

"Yes," Olrax said. "You will."

The man screamed as his arm wrenched free. Hatoshi turned his head aside, disgust clear, as the mortals broke and ran.

It took one slow chew before Olrax spat the offending tissue out, triggering his Belcher's Gland at the same moment - so both landed in the same pile and hissed, bubbling.

"Xenos taint," he said, then thumped the helmet back on. "Kill them all."

Hatoshi shook his head, but drew his pistol, aimed, at the mist shrouded fire.

He did not miss.

***
​

The Space Marines had not taken the bait. The plan was a bust. That meant there was only one option: Immediate and total withdrawal. Give ground, to spare lives, and to let the wastelands of Thedias do to the Marines what bombs and cave-ins were meant to. Xandra's mind reached out as the ashcan that was her get-away vehicle was prepared, her retainers working to bring aboard the last of the children and the most important records. The less important records were being doused in promethium. Her mind felt the outermost defenses - and then felt them flash, then go dim. Pain wracked her as she clenched her teeth.

Then, seconds later, the second level went dim and dark. A few she had webbed into her connective mind survived scant horrifying seconds and...

Oh by the Star Children.

The flashes she saw.

Seared inside of her mind, nausea thick and gut wrenching, a woman scrabbling vainly with one arm, her insides sprawled next to her detatched shoulder. The bolt shell had burst in her left lung. The wrenching feeling of her neurons collapsing in the face of total shock left the Magus gasping. A man, pinned to a wall by such shocking, sudden force that his entire head crunched and the flare of confused agony was as brief as the image through narrowed, slitted eyes: A space marine, back turned, impaling him with a single thrust of his brutal combat knife - while the bolter roared.

Each time it roared, another part of her died.

"Magus! You must come!" One of her retainers said.

The door to the garage exploded inwards with a blue-white flare of plasfire. The figure that stepped through was black armored, with an insectile assemblage of auspex systems mounted on his helmet and an intricate combiweapon - ten thousand years of labor and they only make better tools for killing! - that had an underslung plasma launcher with a bolter mounded atop it. His pauldron, the only part of the Deathwatch that showed their prior chapter's livery, was painted with a white field and a blue bird upon it. Another imperial eagle, another carrion bird, to peck at a better future.

"Get the children out of here!" Xandra shouted, waving her hand as the hideous mutant aimed its weapon at the vehicle. The wheels roared, bit, and the plasma-gun launched a small, glowing star at them. Xandra, her head still aching with the aftertaste of so many deaths, wrenched her hand up in a curving arc. A field of pure telekinetic force thumped into existence with a low whump, catching the plasma blast within it and enfolding it. The ball of starfire roiled, boiled, trembled, trying to wrench free and reach its target. It took every bit of her focus to keep it contained. Then, at last, the orb detonated as the magnetic bottle containing it failed.

Xandra stumbled backwards.

The ashcan rolled out, shooting into the canyons beyond.

The space marine flicked one massive thumb and with a soft click she knew what was coming next. The bolter stuttered and half a dozen bolt shells flew into her telekinetic shield, their gyrojet rockets blazing as she lifted her arm, snarling. "Pathetic!" Xandra snarled. She brought her hand twisting down and crushed every bolt shell into the ground. The rippling explosions sent tiny shrapnel, some of which skimmed along her broad shoulders, her hips, her cheek. Her robes fluttered around her, tattered as her eyes crackled with lightning. "You came to kill children, you butcher!" She brought her hands together and a vast replica of them, invisible but oh so very tactile, closed around the space marine, wrenching him into the air. His arms trembled and he strained, his auspex crunching as she cupped her hands and squeezed her fingers, interlocking them as her mind sang with the raw power of the Warp.

The armor strained.

The helmet creaked.

The space marine fired another plasma bolt. The high energy weapon impacted in the wall about six meters above and to the left of Xandra's head - shockingly close for such an awkward angle, for such a desperate shot. Molten metal hissed and she snapped her head to the side.

She saw the blur.

She heard the thunder.

The pain of her own body, when finally felt, was a shockingly distant compared to the agonies of her cult. She looked down, and saw the knife protruding from a few inches below her sternum. Her legs felt numb. Her back ached. She gasped as the space marine held her up - his helmet was off, and his features were not Cadic or Imperial mongrel - he had the look of prisoners who were hauled off Shaxix or Luden II. His eyes were...

Shockingly human.

"You fought well, witch," he said, then set her down. She lay there, gasping. The other marines stepped over - each splattered in blood.

"She's still alive," the one in the middle said, his voice reproving. Xandra clenched her jaw, tight.

"The interrogator may want someone so highly ranked, I thought," the helmetless space marine said, shrugging one shoulder.

"No, you wanted to show away," the one in the center said. "As always, is this but a game to you?"

"A game!?" The space marine grabbed onto his leader's cuirass. "I seek to save the lives of mortals - you seem to find them merely a fine repast!"

"You-"

The two were nearly brought to blows as Xandra glared at them, trying to draw breath. Her hands were just barely able to move. Her eyes flashed with fury as the two marines were drawn apart by the third. When he spoke, his voice was surprisingly gentle and shy.

"I-I...reported in. The In...Interrogator...wants her...f...f...for a triumph."

"We'll send them running..." the leader said. "Like rats."

He lifted his boot and Xandra knew nothing but nightmares and pain.

---
Here is where the imperfect information game is in your favor. The Inquisition thinks "hive fleet destroyed, the genestealer cult is in disarray, easily broken." So their plan is to attack your Sovereignty twice - they've accomplished the first attack, and believe they can (by breaking Magus Xandra on the wheel on interhab vox-broadcast) accomplish the second. They think that'll be enough to zero your Sovereignty and, thus, destroy the cult (any company whose Sovereignty hits 0 collapses and is easily cleaned up.)

They're wrong, of course.

[ ] Fight Defensively (Xandra dies nobly and with bravery, inspiring the cult rather than demoralizing them)
[ ] Fight Offensively (Write in your plan on how you get her back!)

THE SISTERHOOD OF THE LEVITHAN
(Cycle 1, Month 2 - the Month of Scampering)

MIGHT: 2(1) | TREASURE: 5(4) | INFLUENCE: 4(3) | TERRITORY: 1(0) | SOVEREIGNTY: 4(3)

​

 

[DragonCobolt]

Yolanda stood in the bathroom and put upon her mask. Unlike her sisters, the mask was not one of false tissue or false hair or false clothing. It involved concealing no arms, nor dampening psionic powers. It was a mask that many a Imperial noble had needed to wear. It was why she had always loved the Sisterhood. It was why her mother, who had had the gift...the curse...of psychic powers, had joined and embraced the kiss. It was why she had been born.

Commoners looked up, and in their misery and their privation, they saw vast, glittering boot.

They didn't know about the poison sniffers. The hypno-indoctrinated assassins, concealed among people you thought you could love or trust. They didn't know about the constant wheeling around power - just a bit more control, a bit more security, a bit more wealth, a bit more of everything. Even within the heights of the Imperium, the hatred and the evil that made the whole rotting thing was turned inwards. The gilt was over blood, and the diamonds were bought with souls.

The mask she would have to wear, no matter what, was what she hated.

Yolanda knew that her fellow Sisters sometimes thought she was a little silly, because she did like the pomp. She liked the fine wines. She liked the parties.

But they all knew how deep, and how solid her desire to break chains were - even if they were chains of gold, rather than rusted iron.

She brushed her make up along her cheeks and settled in the mask.

Eyes empty.

Big smile.

Pure delight.

Then, with her dress frilling around her hips, she turned and sauntered out into the ballroom that had been established around the brutalized, burned, bleeding body of the woman she loved as a sister, to break bread with those that delighted in her pain. It had taken every bit of her quiet negotiations to get the prize of running the second of the three parties for Xandra's capture. For her part, the Interrogator was at least remaining distant - a dark figure, a mysterious figure, watching things from the shadows. But her creatures, her retainers and her agents, were in every party, keeping notes and watching intently. The Deathwatch had been brought in, and to her surprise...so had the Marines Malevolent. The bruting, yellow clad warriors loomed in the corner of the room and watched everything like vultures, even as one of the Deathwatch warriors spoke with a jovial carelessness to some nobility.

"No, it was quite easy, Giaus had her distracted..."

Yolanda repressed her immediate reaction with the ease of long effort. She walked, instead, to Xandra. She had been branded along her cheek, and her arms were lashed to the second of the three devices that they had arranged for the proper triumph. In the first party, she had been nailed to the Throne - one of the more old fashioned forms of execution, as it simply took too long for most people to appreciate on Thedias. In the second, her bleeding hands had been bound and lashed to the wheel, her body stretched on it, her face a grimace of discomfort.

"You know I can't feel anything beneath my hips, right?" she asked, her voice venom as she glared at Yolanda.

Yolanda looked at her.

In her mind, she rushed forward, she undid the latches, she let her drop down, she turned and her power reached out, snakes of energy flowing through eyes and ears. The souls would be ripped from each of the laughing throats surrounding her - these parasites would...Xandra gave her a look. Somehow, despite being bound and burned and broken, she still managed to be the mature one.

Yolanda scowled and spat on her, eliciting a jeering call from the other nobles. She turned back and saw the Deathwatch warrior who had stuck her love like a pinned gemcrawler. He was giving her a warm look. "Always good to see a member of the nobility brave enough to look evil in the eye. Hatoshi." He offered his large, black gauntlet to her. She took the finger with one hand, curtsying politely.

"Yolanda Puriee, of House Puriee," she said, nodding. "It was an honor to have so many members of his majesty's divine warriors in our party. I was not aware that space marines attended social gatherings."

"It depends on the space marine and what they seek," Hatoshi said, grinning down at her. Yolanda blinked. She had expected to see many things on the face of a warrior of the Imperium. Flirtatious charm was not one of them. She opened her mouth, then gambled.

"And what is it you seek, Honorable Hatoshi?" she asked.

"Well, my needs are simple. Good wine. The wind of passage in my hair - that is somewhat hard to attain on this world. Failing that, something sweet and beautiful to ride," he said. Then, eyes sparkling. "Horses. Motorcycles."

"I am a married woman!" Yolanda gasped, and so many years of training went into that particular gasp. She had honed it on a battlefield as cut-throat as any hive world - the stakes all the more desperate for how utterly, utterly banal they were. Every noble on Thedias knew that for all that they stood ankle high, there was still an infinity to drop below. They clung, like men at the lip of a pit, with fingernails and blood alike. The mutant warrior plucked from some barbarous tribe and turned into a killing machine? He had not a prayer in the world.

"And where is your husband, so I might congratulate him?" Hatoshi grinned exactly as she wanted him to.

Yolanda sighed. "He...has...other tasks." She looked away. "I...I must go for a moment, I believe that my needs as a hostess are needed."

She started off, her mind whirling. If her snare was caught...then she had an opening there. The only problem was that while having a space marine on a string was as dangerous to her as it was to the marine. But...there were only three Deathwatch marines - maybe twelve Marines Malevolent. She frowned intently, as she came to Louisa Xav, who was in quiet, fan-concealed conversation with two minor members of House Xav.

"Louisa, darling!" Yolanda said. "I'm so glad that you're here - but i have to know...is it true?"

"Well, first, let me congratulate you - so brave, you spat in her face?" Louisa asked, and the delight in her eyes filled Yolanda with the image of her head twisting around in a vice of telekinetic force. She pushed the thought down - Louisa was...not entirely at fault. She had been raised in the toxic stew as Yolanda narrowly avoided and other than her blind spots, she was a fine woman. And so, Yolanda just blushed and looked aside, shaking her head.

"I-I...it was the least I could do..." she whispered, then softly. "But is it true? That they're going to simply burn her in the third party?"

"It is the traditional third station," Louisa said, biting her lower lip. "But it does feel a bit wrong. We may not be the oldest world, but we do have our own traditions."

"I was thinking the exact same!" Yolanda said, smiling. "Surely, we can bring about a better end for her, yes?"

"We...hmm." Louisa considered. "We do only have a few hours..."

"I may have taken some liberties," Yolanda said, her eyes sparkling. "I was hoping to find you and...well, I hired some experts from the lower levels." She grinned. "They have the exact right kind of tank - one that keeps the pressure from ramping too quickly."

"Oh, you are just the finest of us, Yolanda!" Louisa said, patting Yolanda on the shoulder. Then, the music changed. "Ah, the time has come for the dance to the symphony."

"...y-yes..." Yolanda said.

The music began.

And the wheel turned. Xandra, despite her efforts, screamed - and the musicians caught the music and worked it into the sprightly tune - uplifting and designed to edify and educate in equal measures. "By the Emperor, I think one of those dashing Deathwatch demigods wants a dance!" One of the Xav girls said and Yolanda turned. She saw that Hatoshi was grinning at her, like a hunter. She looked aside, trying to act as if she was offended at his temerity - in such a way to lead him on, like a false tarp over a pit trap. And...in doing so, she saw some of the nobles.

Some Xavs.

Some Marks.

Some Pierres.

They were among the young and the old, male and female. In and among the crowd, they tried to hide it. They tried to wear mask. But the anguish on their faces, their disgust, their turning away. One, a girl, hurried away, her face green as Xandra's screams were worked into a sprightly violetta piece, her hand over her mouth.

Seeing them made Yolanda's hand tighten.

For them.

***
​

To Yolanda's supreme and complete irritation, Hatoshi proved that when he decided to do something, he used every bit of skill he had picked up over his several centuries of life and experience. The minor benefit of making her acting significantly easier was vastly outweighed by the feeling of betrayal rushing through her as her body shuddered in a fierce, sharp orgasm as she clung to his broad, broad shoulders, nose bumping against one of the sockets that made up his black carapace. She gasped against his scarred shoulder as a hand large enough to encompass both of her hips and still have room to almost reach her groin. His skin was rough and his movements were precisely controlled - as precisely controlled as the battlefield.

And of course, he was entirely proportional.

"I do always enjoy serving the nobility of the Imperium," Hatoshi said, his voice amused as Yolanda shuddered against him. "Husbands neglecting vital duties, for example, I like seeing to those."

Yolanda nodded, and tried to sound incoherent and blissful. It was, again...irritatingly easy. But one thing about a human in a situation like this? Walls dropped. And Yolanda's gift seeped in, plucking out a thought here, an image there. She bit down on his shoulder to muffle a cry of pleasure...and of joy. Hatoshi and his comrade, Olrax - Olrax, the bastard who ate Kemet's arm, the bastard - had had a row. He was inside of Yolanda now not merely to enjoy the pleasure of her flesh. He was also here to spite the commander he disdained, to flaunt how he did not need to follow his orders outside of combat.

He was here. And that meant Olrax and Gaius had no one to cover them.

Yolanda gave Hatoshi the most beatific grin. And the urge grew in her to reach in deep - and to boil his brain from the inside out.

"Ahhhh..." he sighed - and his warmth flooded her as her psychic fingers touched a deep, deep core of something Hatoshi worked so very hard to ignore. And in the backwash of pleasure, in the momentary bliss of joining, that core flooded into his mind. A glacial, vast sadness. A shame that burned her to her core. The shame, right now, had Xandra's face.

Maybe it was caution. After all, how to hide such a body?

Maybe it was fear. What if she failed in her strike?

Maybe...

Maybe it was a human connection, between two people who weren't.

Yolanda simply gasped in his ear, her hair stringy and sweaty. "Ah. Ah. Ah. Does it ruin this...ah...to know my husband enjoys being cucked?"

"What!?"

***
​

Xandra hissed as the interrogator's toadies worked behind her. The sparking flash of connection ports being drilled into her back could only be felt faintly. She dangled from her wrists, her body thrumming with stims to keep her conscious and focused, while blood dripped from her lip and her nose, her eyes looking forward, hazed by pain and rage. Sitting across from her, the interrogator was tapping her foot.

The interrogator was in shadow, her face concealed. Her mind was a vast, glittering gemstone, a shielded faceted thing that projected pure security, pure confidence.

"This is going to be illustrative," the interrogator said, her voice a quiet purr. "You've said you are the only magus - if that is the case, your cult may be on the run. It may be about to fall apart. But I don't know if that's true."

"Funny that...ah..." Xandra gasped as the connection snapped on and the bridge of her broken spine tingled to life. She felt her toes coming to life, burning and spiking like needles were being jammed in. next to actual torture, the feeling of nerve endings coming to life again was almost comedic. She clenched her teeth. "Is that why you're...going native?"

"The local tradition is more eye-catching. And I hope to see those that might witness it," the interrogator said, her voice soft as the toadies dragged Xandra by the rack that kept her standing to the circular glass pod - elegantly designed, with bass reliefs on the metal cap hanging overhead, each showing a different heretic who had died famously, culminating in Horus himself mid obliteration. Xandra was shoved into the glass tube and the cap was sealed into place. The whole airship shuddered and the interrogator stepped from the darkness. She was...beautiful. Redheaded, purple eyed, with skin as pale and perfect as porcelain. Her eyes and Xandra's met.

"The fault is in your stars, little xeno-tainted witchling," the Interrogator said, brushing her fingers along the glass. "You were born for this moment. Crafted by an abominable intelligence, merely to die." She frowned. "I hope...that in your death, you find redemption for the billions of lives you nearly snuffed out."

Xandra smirked. Her knees locked as she pressed against the glass.

Her voice was husky.

"Some day...maybe not today...maybe not tomorrow...me...or someone like me...is going to pull you into silken sheets and slide an ovipositor down your throat. And as you cum from the greatest Kiss you've ever felt, you will realize every lie you serve, every fascist fakery you parrot, every stupid piece of bullshit you've dropped...and you will beg for forgiveness." She smirked. "And we will grant it. And I will finger-fuck you into oblivion."

The interrogator did not blush. Instead, she simply twitched her fingers. "Drop her."

The glass pod dropped with a crunch - falling, falling, falling, then coming taut. Xandra smashed against the glass, stumbled back, then laid on her ass, gasping as her tattered, ruined outfit clung to her body. She planted her palms to the glass, and looked around wildly at the thick blue clouds that swirled around her tomb. The capstone hissed - and some of the atmosphere began to leak in. The stinging pressure of it burned along her skin and she closed her eyes, clenching her teeth against the pain that would ramp up and up and up. Then darkness fell - the tank was flying through clouds.

Whump!

The impact jarred Xandra. Her eyes snapped open - and she saw a wingsuited, goggle clad, masked figure. Two arms clung to the cap, two legs were planted against glass...and a third arm held a lascutter, which sliced into the glass tube. Her upper right hand reached down, slapping one of the pads she used to cling to the glass onto the cap, then pulled out. "To me!" She shouted and Xandra hissed, then threw her arms around the belly of the figure. SHe swung out, and cling - and focused. Hard. A telekinetic shield snapped to life around her body - and the agony of the droplets of acid that burned along her, the droplets that had hit her before she had thrown up the shield forced a shriek from her. The wing suited figure clung on with one arm, two feet - her third arm slotted the glass back in, then sprayed sealent over it. Then she kicked off - turned, and snapped her wingsuit arms wide.

Xandra clung.

And they dove.

Dove.

Dove into freedom.

***
​

Olrax frowned as he watched the clouds from the deck of the airship. "S-sir, are you sure you should put such weight there?" A female voice called from behind him. "It's not very stable."

Olrax ignored her. In fact, he leaned further on the railing, trying to watch the shrouded tank, wanting to see the xenos witch die. Her screams were echoing through the vox mounted on the airship platform, while impeller fields hummed and hummed and hummed, keeping the atmosphere at bay. It was pure expense - demonstrating the raw wealth of the nobles rather than simply having a cheap adamant glass enclosure.

"Sir!" That damn female was whining at him again. Olrax leaned more.

And felt the material he leaned on give way.

With more irritation than fear, he started to drop into the openness, falling into the clouds. The Interrogator's voxlink snapped on. "Olrax! What are you doing!?"

"The damn railing gave way," he said, in irritation. "My armor will absorb the kinetic impact - I will simply make for a nearby habitat. I simply need to-"

His throat froze. His mind was trying to speak, but he couldn't. Instead, his arms started to move, jerkily, like they had their own will.

"How...embarrassing," the interrogator said. "...Olrax?"

He tried to speak. To scream. But the feeling of fierce hatred burned in his head. He felt ice-claws along his wrists, but they were inside his muscles. His own nerves were betraying him. They reached up and took hold of his helmet, then yanked it off - the interrogator's voice vanishing in a confused doppler whistle as the helmet was yanked away. Acid beaded along his toughened skin, stinging at first, then burning. He tried to scream, but instead his body twisted, convulsed, as if he was trying to assume the worst position to land possible. He tried to do anything.

How is this for torment, corpse-worshiper? A venemous voice hissed inside his mind. Female.

That female.

In a flash, Olrax realized where he had seen her before. He had heard her voice, whispering to a person there, advising a servant there. She had been a subtle but inevitable part of every part of the celebrations - which had all lead to the xenos witch being precisely where no one had eyes on her.

As acid stole his vision, Olrax saw clearly.

He screamed - not in fear, for he knew no fear.

He screamed in pure, petulant fury.

And then he hit the ground and laid there, struggling to move, to twitch a muscle, as the acid worked in. And in. And in.

His suit was never found.

---
With zero might and weakened Sovereignty (morale loss due to both Olrax's unliked command and their failure on the field of battle) the Deathwatch is weak...but still present on the planet. Do you have any more actions to take this month? As a note, the Interrogator does still know where you are until you use Influence Interrogator to Lose Trail to fix that.

[ ] Attack BLANK (Might + Treasure VS Might + Territory)
[ ] Being Informed (Influence + Soverignty vs Diff 1)
[ ] Spying on BLANK (Influence + Treasury vs Influence + Territory)
[ ] Influence BLANK to do BLANK (Influence + Treasury vs Influence + Territory)
[ ] Increase your Sovereignty (Territory + Treasure vs Diff [Current Sovereignty])
[ ] Police BLANK (Might + Sovereignty vs Influence + Might)
[ ] Rise in Stature (Sovereignty + Treasure vs Diff [Current Influence]
[ ] Train and Levy Troops (Sovereignty + Territory vs Diff [Current Might]
[ ] Unconventional Warfare (write plan in)
[ ] Wait and Recover

THE SISTERHOOD OF THE LEVITHAN
(Cycle 1, Month 2 - the Month of Scampering)

MIGHT: 2(0) | TREASURE: 5(4) | INFLUENCE: 4(3) | TERRITORY: 1(0) | SOVEREIGNTY: 4(3)​

 

[DragonCobolt]

Interrogator Shexia Af-Baru glowered down at the snapped railings, then turned to glower at the cringing nobleman who had been apologizing for the last few minutes. "I have no idea, no idea at all-"

"Quite," she said, cutting him off. "We have search parties out there, hunting for him - but the transponder has been lost in this damn waste of a planet." She pinched the bridge of her nose. She had not wanted to come out here. She had not wanted to be so obviously on the scene - but the immediate response of the Thedasians had been utterly bumbling, and she had needed to step out. Lot and a few of her other armsmen were already among the crowd - and one of them pulled forward a breathtakingly beautiful noblewoman. Shexia shot her a guarded look, eyes flicking her up and down.

Blond tresses, done up in the absurd style of this planet, blue dress, gold collar that plunged down remarkably along her generous décolletage. She was, in short, the exact kind of woman that would either be married off for breeding stock or start a cult. Shexia frowned at her, noting that she had bright tears in her eyes, and...a wafting sense of guilt, tingling around her, an ineffable smell of that Shexia's own psyker talents picked up with ease.

Cult or cheating housewife, she thought, while her armsman nodded.

"Lady Yolanda here was right near Lord Orlax when he fell," he said, bluntly.

The woman quailed at Shexia's look, hand going to her throat.

"Did you push him?" Shexia asked, watching the cringing aura of guilt grow brighter - and filled with fear.

"W-What? No!" Yolanda gasped. "I...I was actually warning him - he was leaning so far over, to watch that horrid witch meet her fate, i should have pushed harder. No, verbally, that is, I should have...oh dear!" Yolanda's hand went to her mouth. "S-Surely, he could survive even a fall such as this?"

"If he landed right and kept his helmet on, yes" Shexia said, pursing her lips. "...you are guilty about something, though."

Yolanda froze. "I...I..." She stammered, the guilt flaring brighter.

Shexia stepped closer. She narrowed her eyes. "What is it?" her voice was as cold as iron. "The Inquisition has harder methods of asking - but I will allow you, as befits the privilege of your rank, to merely use the tongue the Emperor blessed you with."

Yolanda looked aside. She stepped close, whispering. "I, uh...I was..." She blushed, even more. "...I made love with one of the D-Deathwatch..." Her thumb rubbed along the glittering wedding band she wore, and Shexia shook her head, flipping her hand and turning away from her.

Cheating housewife, she thought. Then she considered Yolanda. "You have been in close contact with two space marines?" she asked, frowning. "And how did you manage that? Wait...you're Yolanda Puree, yes?" She stepped closer. "You arranged the second of the two fetes, and your servants assisted in arranging this expedition - catering, correct?"

"Y-Yes..." Yolanda breathed, looking down.

Shexia frowned. She weighed the options she had - her people were blooded, but the cult had been bloodied worse. But there was the nagging sensation at the back of her mind - and she wondered, if she should try pushing. It would cause a horrid stir - everyone would notice, at the very least, when a noblewoman started shrieking and her eyes exploded, or blood fountained from her nose, or she vomited up a pile of spiders, or bones, or a living worm the size of a baby's arm. The risks of pushing and simply ripping information from minds. THe nobles were still supporting her investigation, but even momentary disgust could spell the difference between life and death.

Success and victory.

Interrogators are chosen because of their ability to pick these threads, these narrow moments, these small chances. They alone of their fellow acolytes, have managed to be forced to flip the coin, skull or throne, and call throne when it matters most. It was a harsh school, which winnowed nearly all who passed through it.

But it was not a perfect school.

Shexia nodded. "Your piety shows you quality, Lady Puree." She said, quietly.

Then she turned and stalked off, frowning intently.

***
​

Two days. It had been two days of struggle to break the cult's back, and now they simply had to clean up the remains. Shexia sat at her desk in her quiet office in the governor's mansion and read through reports from the Arbites watch stations - they had been finding corpses that had been badly burned by acid wind, and with some marks of self inflicted violence. Was it the normal array of suicides a planet as dreary and dismal as Thedias offered, some murders...or were the cultists devouring themselves. Without the dark intellect of the Hive Fleet and the magus-witch, how could they stay together.

There were no new pamphlets about revolution too, but...that was to be expected.

Shexia pinched the bridge of her nose. She was getting tired. Sleep was needed, even if it stole her from her work. There was a long month ahead of her.

She would do three more reports.

She was in the Black Ship again. The gangway, the last time she had seen her home. The chains bit heavy and deep into her wrists and she heard the sounds of struggling. She lifted her head, and it was strange. For once, the fog of the translation and the sanctioning process parted and she could see the other that had been beaten that day. Her hair was bright blond. She was beautiful. She glared, fiercely, around herself as the Black Ship's crew shoved her to the ground.

In the dream, Shexia shoved backwards. She got herself between the crew and the blond, hissing as a scourge that had splattered the blond's brains out instead slashed along her back, leaving a deep scar. She shrieked. In the strange timesness of dreams, she was in the dank memory of the Sanctionite's Polis on Terra - the screams of other initiates echoing through stone walls. Despite months of travel having crawled by between then and now, the cut on her back still bled, and the blond stitched her up, whispering.

"How are we going to get out of here, Shex?"

The dream...took a turn then. The blond kissed the scar on her back - it was healed now, impossibly fast. She whispered. "I'm sorry about what's going to happen to you."

Shexia jerked her head upright from the desk. She shook her head, scowling fiercely. She had not dreamed of the Sanctioning for...

For a long time. She brushed her hand through her hair, trying to wrack her memory of the blond. There...had been a girl in her cell. Hadn't there? She couldn't quite remember. Fatigue clouded her mind - and more, the sanctioning had involved so much it was better to have forgotten. She had been released from its hold, and blessedly freed to serve the Inquistion for nearly a century now. Juvinat and her own modest biomantic powers alike kept her hale and hearty. She clenched her fist, then unclenched it.

Later, before bed, she craned her head, trying to see the old scar.

It was gone.

She had used her talents to repress scars for so long - she couldn't remember if she had started with one on her back.

***
​

A week later and Shexia had still not found Olrax. His fellows in the Deathwatch and the Marines Malevolent had both started to square off around one another - and Shexia was not entirely sure what stance she should take. The Marines Malevolent were trying to, as usual, be as outrageous as possible and impress the Deathwatch squadron into their command - something that was flagrantly illegal and bound to bring the fury of the Deathwatch and the Ordos Xenos onto the heads of those blackguards, but she wasn't entirely sure if they cared. She rubbed her temples as she walked down the corridors of the governor's mansion...and was struck by the image of a beautiful blond, emerging from a sitting room with the governor's wife, laughing.

She was not an identical copy of the woman from Shexia's dreams - she had had two more in the time since the first, as if her mind was trying to tell her something. She had reinforced her wards and made sure to lay out psy-crystals that would detect sendings and visions. But they had remained dark and impotent. The woman in the dreams was younger, thinner, had a fierce light in her eyes, not the cringing whimpering Yolanda Puree.

Still...

Shexia frowned and with a tiny twist of their perception, she cloaked herself from their view. She walked past them, to her chambers - and heard Yolanda saying: "Oh, but I had that handsome Lord Hatoshi around again."

"Really? I hadn't heard - and how could my friends miss him?"

"He's quite...stealthy when he wants to be!" Yolanda laughed, softly.

Shexia froze, frowning. Hatoshi was meant to be staying on the ship. She narrowed her eyes, wondering...

She'd have to speak to either him or Yolanda. Or check on the ship's servitors. But Hatoshi had served for two centuries in the Scout Marines before he had been seconded to Deathwatch - he had been one of those marines who had simply enjoyed being a scout. The fact he was so stealthy was not shocking.

She frowned, then continued to consider.

And as she walked down the corridor, Yolanda smirked.

***​

In the dream, it made total sense.

"Guilty." The gavel came down and Shexia and her love both glared daggers at the judge - who wasn't even regarding them as the Arbites brought in the next one. The branding and the attaching of the nullifier collars went by so fast that the next thing Shexia knew, she was in the mines of Thedias, grunting as she worked a lasercutter next to her love.

There was little time for languidity and repose. In the scant time between shifts, her lover tore her rags off her, bit her, suckled her breast, caressed her. The pain of the world faded, and Shexia gasped and quivered in a sweaty bliss as her fingers tangled through blond tresses. She gripped her tightly and quivered as her lover's fingers delved into her sex, crooking, finding a center of pleasure Shexia hadn't even known she had. She arched her back and cried out in the tiny niche that they had claimed - voice echoing off the walls before she clapped her hand over her mouth.

"The Emperor...ah...still loves us if we're together, right?" Shexia whispered.

"Does he?" her lover had muttered. The memory was so fucking clear. "I...I can't even feel you, like we used too. Remember, when we were...mind to mind?"

Shexia did. She ached with the need for feeling it again.

She ached as her eyes opened. Her bones felt the lack of touch as she shivered and then sat up. Shexia glared at the psy-crystals around her. They were useless. Baubles. Unless. She frowned. Her talents lay in telepathy and biomancy - but the Warp was fickle. More than a few psykers had found a new talent in divination, when their lives were in peril, when they was something vital to be missed. She frowned, then rubbed her hand along her throat, feeling the pure, perfect skin there. But under it, there were a dozen scars - the worst being when an orkoid had ripped her throat almost to her spine. Her biomancy had kept her alive, and later, she had taken great pleasure in glaring at the scar until it faded from her skin.

If only all her problems were so...

She blinked.

"Of course," she whispered.

When she was settled, dressed and breakfasted, she set out to pin down the wife of the governor, Louisa Opal Gemanite Corwin-Af Maru Von Xav.

***
​

"Prison records? Of course, what are you interested in?" Lousia Xav asked, politely.

"I am interested in the record of psyker prisoners condemned to Thedias," Shexia said, her voice cool. It was such an obvious truth, she kicked herself for not realizing it. She now knew why her dreams had been so...her cheeks heated. If there had been a Magus, there had to have been a genestealer corrupted child born of a psyker. Psyker talents that emerged in prison populations were killed nearly immediately, it'd have to be one who had been sent to Thedias for a crime.

"Ah! Genealogy!" Louisa said. "Only noble-born psykers ever had the pull to be merely sent to Thedias if they...acted out. You should talk to Yolanda Puree, she loves to study...are you all right, Shexia?"

Shexia realized she was frowning. "This...Yolanda Puree, she's a minor noble, why does she keep showing up?"

"Minor noble? Hardly!" Lousia laughed. "Her house is small, yes, but they're highly influential and have been for centuries. They're only a House Minoris as a custom - they're easily an equal to, say, the Marks." She shook her head.

Shexia's frown hardened ever so slightly. "I see," she said. Yet another noble inanity to make my life more complex. So, Yolanda was not simply a very minor noblewoman who happened to be everywhere. She was, in fact, one of the major power players in the entirety of Thedias noble society and no one had thought to mention it out of custom. This wasn't even the most annoying time this had happened, she still remembered the fiasco on Gornex II. Shexia nodded, then turned and started off.

"D-Do be gentle, Yolanda is a dear, my lady Interrogator!" Louisa called, nervously, after her.

Shexia found that calling on Yolanda was quite easy - for her, for Yolanda, it was clearly a trial as the woman needed to reorganize several meetings and kick out two nobles, nobles that Shexia saw walking across the parkways of Trustworthy Compromise. She smirked slightly as Yolanda, despite the shortness of the warning, had already gotten a tea party set up, poison sniffer at the ready. Shexia used her own tester ring and saw the tea was merely tea - though it was of a blend she had never tried before. It turned out to be as soothing as Yolanda promised - and as the conversation turned to records, Yolanda smiled impishly. "Interested in our hard-scrabble roots, eh Inquisitor?"

"Interrogator," Shexia said, dryly.

"Oh," Yolanda looked so terrified that Shexia actually laughed.

"It's not a faux pass worthy of murder," Shexia said, dryly.

"W-Well, that's a relief," Yolanda said, then paused. "Are..." She hesitated.

"Yes?" Shexia asked.

"Are you quite all right, Inquisitor? Er, Interrogator!" She blushed. "You just look...a mite...peakish."

"Peakish?" Shexia's voice remained dry.

"Tired," Yolanda said. "More tired than a woman of your stature should be, is the governor not treating you well?"

"I'm quite all right," Shexia said, a bit annoyed - not at this silly girl's concern, but at herself. She focused and her biokinesis wiped away the purple shroud around her eyes with a single wrinkle of power. SHe leaned in. "Now, I wish to know of every psyker prisoner that was brought to this planet."

"The earliest records didn't use pict-captors, it wasn't until our tithe quality was high enough to attract some of those tech-priests," Yolanda said. "Let me get the paintings - I kept so many of the noble prisoner paintings from those times, though a few are replicaes...I think one was actually replicated only a few months ago, the old one had torn in half..." She walked off, and returned with several tomes. Shexia settled in to look at them, listening to Yolanda's cheerful prattle about this and that ancestor - and then she froze, turning a page and looking at the woman in her dream. The painting was relatively recent, but...it was her, the same fierce look, the same bold eyes.

"Oh...that's a sad story...Lyiss" Yolanda said, quietly. "She was a noble prisoner - but she refused to be among us, she chose mining. Legends say she was waiting for a lover to come spirit her away - but the lover never came."

Shexia frowned.

"Did she have any children?" she asked.

"Well, the lover never came so...no?" Yolanda asked, shrugging. "Or at least, that's how the legend goes."

***
​

Shexia knew it was risky. To do this. The blocks in her mind were there to keep away dark secrets, secrets she didn't need to know. But the dreams were...growing more...

More...

Tantalizing.

In the last, she and Lyiss had walked, hand in hand, down a corridor, towards the sound of singing voices. Lyiss had smiled at her, and whispered. This never happened. But it could have.

Shexia felt the need for Lyiss when she dreamed, and when she woke, her heart raced. The magus, Lyiss, her visions, they had to be linked. And there was a truth she couldn't see. And so, she sat alone in her bedroom, surrounded by candles, her eyes closed, her hands on her knees. She centered herself and remembered the Sanctioning's teaching. There is no door. There is no weave. There is nothing beyond, save the Emperor. Willful blindness, lies, and hatred were your shield, your armor, your sword.

She breathed in.

Then she breathed out. Her own psychic talent felt around, gingerly here, gingerly there. The blocks were there. She felt them deep in her mind - hypnoindoctrination and psyker meddling both. She started trying to ease at them. Then push. Then shove. Her teeth clenched as pain tingled, then flared. Her fingers tightened as she tried to pry them open, just a hair. The candles around her flickered - then for a moment, turned purple. She tensed, eyes opening. Had...she felt another presence?

Then...a block popped open. She gasped, and shuddered as memories rushed into-

She was in the Sanctionite Hall, waiting for her assignment. Lyiss was there, next to her. And there he was, the inquisitor - though his face was oddly shrouded in her memory, as if she couldn't quite recall what he looked like, nor what he sounded like. "Her." He pointed at her. Lyiss threw herself between the two, shouting...shouting-

Shexia gasped and then slammed the block shut, hurridly. She didn't want to remember anymore.

Fury. Shame. Guilt. It all gnawed at her at once as she realized she had been chasing a dead end. It wasn't a lead. It wasn't her mind trying to reveal a clue. It was just pain. She growled, then stood, and waved her palm - the candles snuffed out in a wave of psychic focus. She threw herself into bed, burying her face against her pillow, and tried to retain the calm and detachment she had before.

She slept.

In the dream, she was with Lyiss. But she was aware she was dreaming. "Is this even real?" she asked.

Lyiss smiled at her. But the voice that spoke was behind her. "Of course not. It's a dream."

Shexia knew this. She sighed, then leaned into the arms sliding around her - and the connection was so pure, so bone deep. Mind to mind. Body to body. Soul to soul. The unfamiliar tongue traced a line along her ear, whispering. "But Lyiss? She was my great great great grandmother. She worked the mines, but she was part of the first mutiny. Her talents helped the Little Lord as he played his game." Those warm palms slid along her belly, up to her breasts and Shexia gasped as she was groped gently - she was naked, and she didn't know how. She squirmed and bit her lip.

"I'm...going to find and kill your...entire fucking cult..." Shexia's voice had no fury. Just the gentle sighs of pleasure.

"Your fire is why I love you already, Shexia." The voice whispered in her ear.

The dream continued then. She was led, gently...and seemed to watch herself from outside of herself. She and Lyiss walked into the light - into silks and gentle bedrooms. The she came before a bald woman, her eyes fierce, her smile gentle. Her voice was amused as she gestured for Lyiss and Shexia to kneel.

"The Imperium stole you from your home. Brutalized you. Locked away your own memories, so you might not even know that you had been hurt. Then...they used you to hurt others." Her eyes were gentle. "How many have you killed, Shexia?"

"I...don't know..." Shexia's voice was soft and as she watched herself, she could see her own features. Shame and confusion filled them - just as shame and confusion filled her. She watched her own hands slide along her own shoulders as she ducked her head forward. "M-My mind is blanked between certain missions. I...I have to...the...the Imperium must stand. It must be protected. It must-"

"Must it?"

She realized, then, that she didn't know.

The dream shifted. She was in the Sanctioning chamber again, her body her own. The finger aimed at her. She still had time to choose. She looked at the Inquisitor, and she started to form a word...

Shexia woke from the dream. Her skin was drenched with sweat and she trembled in her bed, her breath coming short and shallow. She was being sent. Someone was fucking with her - and she knew she should be angry. She should be furious. She should be...but...but...she bit her lip. The pain of the Sanctioning was fresh in her mind. She had been plucked out of the pit, and made an acolyte...and...and...used as a weapon. She slid from her bed, sweat making her nightclothes cling to her. She walked to the small wine cabinet in the room, pouring herself a shot of amneisac. She drank it straight down, hissing as her throat burned.

Shexia closed her eyes. "There is still a Magus. You just need to find her."

She considered her options.

Her...shields weren't as strong as they should be. But...that just meant that she could...

Yes.

Yes. She could lead the Magus into her little trap. She smiled.

And I thought the Inquisitor was the only one who tried to work in bed.

***
​

Shexia prepared herself before sleeping. She stripped her body naked, then gently poured sacred oil over her back, her shoulders. She closed her eyes and breathed softly as she felt the sanctifying tingle rushing along her sides. She brushed her hands along her skin, and once she felt entirely purified, she began to inscribe her flesh with the wards and the runes. She used a small knife, hissing as she sliced the bloody lines into her flesh - pain stinging as she focused and sealed the wound up. The scars left formed a growing barrier of pain and sturdiness. She worked along one arm, up the other arm, then sliced an aquilla into her forehead, gritting her teeth.

Protected by pain and by purity, she laid in bed, eyes closed, breathing slowly. She fell to-

In the cultists warren, she and Lyiss were told...interesting things. "The Imperium is built on pain, hatred, and fear. But those emotions are not the only things that can craft a society - in fact, they are quite possibly the most fragile. There is also what has kept you together, what has kept you alive, in the face of everything." The Magus caressed along Shexia's cheek. "Love." She smiled. "Love for your family, for your friends, for your people. That love is what we promise - a better world, a better future."

Shexia shook her head. "Love is weak."

"Is it?" The Magus smiled. She was so familiar, now that Shexia was looking into her eyes. She had hair now. She bit her lip, slightly, as she knelt before the other woman. "Why is it that the Imperium must lie to you, again and again, to keep you in your role? To wipe your mind away every time you succeed? If your successes are so terrible, why must they be hidden so fiercely?"

Shexia looked down. She...was speaking worries Shexia had known for so long. But the Magus murmured. "And there is more to life than strength."

Lyiss leaned in. She kissed against Shexia's neck. Her tongue slid up to her ear, whispering. "I've been Kissed, my love. You have no idea what it's like." Her hand caressed along Shexia's belly, her fingers sliding up to her breast. Shexia shivered and bit her lip. She shook her head from side to side - but the Magus kissed her other cheek, whispering in her other ear - her voice just as liquid, just as warm.

"I can already tell how curious you are. You still have memories of learning the first xenobestiary - of seeing the diagrams, the...descriptions..."

"J-Just...ah...to kill you..."

"Of course..." Her hand cupped Shexia's ass. ANother stroked Shexia's belly. Another...her head. One of them was scaled. Clawed. There were too many arms. Her body squirmed in revulsion and horror and...and-

Shexia's eyes snapped open. She had the thread, burning against her hexagramatic wards. Her body tingled and she hissed softly as she clenched her fists and her mind alike. The thread followed...followed...there. She scrambled from the bed, throwing robes onto her body. She snatched her arms belt and without even throwing it around her hips, she stalked down the corridors. Her eyes blazed as her skin tingled. She had nothing but her shield ring, her force sword, her talents. She was nearly naked. She knew it was a mistake to not call Lot and the armsmen but...but...

She came to the basement and slapped the opening button with a palm - and there, she stepped into the softly humming generatoria and quietly hissing recyclers. There, standing in the center of the room...was Yolanda Puree. Her dress was as beautiful and fine as spun gossamer and she stood in the basement, her head tilted back, her eyes looking up at the ceiling. Fury exploded inside of Shexia...

That was how!?

The psy-crystals had been evaded through the most blunt, simple method one could imagine - and yet, it was utterly impossible for anyone but Yolanda, was it? By standing directly below her room and sending upwards, she had simply threaded a needle. It made Shexia furious...and made her feel a twinge of genuine respect.

"Magus..." She said.

"Interrogator," Yolanda said, without fear. She turned to face her and smiled, gently.

"You've...been fucking with my dreams for the entire month," Shexia said, glaring at her. "Threading lies. Falsehoods."

"Was it...I who broke your blocks?" Yolanda asked. "No. Did I lie? No. Lyiss truly lived. Her memory lives on through me - and through you. Everything else, every connection you made, every doubt you felt, was entirely you own." She stepped forward, her eyes flashing as she did so. "I saw, for just a moment, what was behind those blocks - just as you, for a moment, saw the truth of our cult."

"There are no Star Children," Shexia growled, clenching her teeth. "The hive fleet...would kill you all."

Yolanda smiled, gently. "Our people speak truth to one another. Yours implant blocks in your mind. Does it not make you think...?"

"No," Shexia said, shaking her head. "No."

And yet, she found it hard to draw her sword. She clenched her jaw, while Yolanda took another step forward. "There is a world where we don't need to fear mutants nor heretics, xenos nor psyker - where we work together as one. Allies against the forces of darkness." Her fingers gently brushed along the back of Shexia's wrist. They were so warm. The connection throbbed deep inside of Shexia's bones as she quivered and drew the blade an inch, two. The soft purple runes that shone along the blade cast a pale, killing light along Yolanda's gentle features, making them seem alien.

And beautiful.

So...

So beautiful.

Yolanda smiled, sadly. "What was done to you was a crime, my love. What you've been made to do to others was a crime. But we can stop it. Here. Together."

"Liar..." Shexia whispered. She felt the blocks in her mind, fierce staples between memories and mercy, missions and madness. She trembled. "Liar. Liar."

"You can find out," Yolanda said. Her finger brushed up along Shexia's arm, to her cheek. Her power throbbed against Shexia's mind - but waited, slowly. Shexia felt that trust, that paitence, and it was what truly broke her. Her eyes closed and she allowed Yolanda to guide her fingers. The power of two telepaths drove into the blocks, bursting one after the other after the other. The past bloomed in Shexia's mind - and her force sword, still in its scabbard, fell to the floor with a soft clatter. She sagged against Yolanda, collapsing into the dresses and the gentle embrace of shockingly strong arms. Fingers, tipped with claws that had been concealed, stroked along her hair and Yolanda whispered in her mind and in her ear alike. "Shh, shh, shh. It's okay. It's okay. It's not your fault."

A racking sob tore its way out of Shexia's throat as she remembered, with brutal, agonizing clarity, not simply the Sanctioning. No.

She remembered Tyana. She now knew when the memory of Lyiss was given her, when thoughts of her heroic survival and fortitude was brushed into her mind, her own guilty conscience had plastered Lyiss' face onto Tyana. When she had been hustled aboard the Black Ship, Shexia had watched as they beat Tyana to death. She had been sixteen cycles old - too terrified to do anything but watch, frozen in spot. That shame had nibbled at the back of her mind for a century...and it was joined by the others.

When they burned the island-cities of that unnamed world...

You watched.

When the ten thousand were put to death under suspicion of xenoheresy on Uldar.

You watched.

"I'm sorry...I'm sorry!" Shexia sobbed into the woman's arms as clawed fingers clung to her. Yolanda kissed her cheek, and again, she offered forgiveness. Her mind was gentle, enfolding Shexia in warmth, radiating gently. Shexia found her nose nuzzling against Yolanda's neck. She kissed a bead of sweat - a hint that Yolanda had been concealing fear that would have sent most mortals running. That tiny kiss, that little spark...and it seemed to set loose a blazing inferno in Shexia. She kissed along Yolanda's neck, to her jaw, to her ear, then to her lips. Yolanda kissed her back, and her clawed hands shucked off Shexia's night clothes, tossing them aside. Shexia was naked and bare, and her scarred skin gleamed in the pale blue glow of the generatoria.

Yolanda drew her mouth back, her eyes pure black as she whispered. "The scars..."

Shexia looked down at herself, then focused. Her power throbbed and her skin was perfect once more. She whispered. "I-I shouldn't be doing this," she whispered. "I...I should-"

Yolanda undid a few buttons and rolled her shoulders. Her body was impossibly beautiful beneath her dresses. The ridges along her shoulders, the chitin that cupped her hips like armor, the way that a bony support structure of tyrannic organic growth surrounded her breasts, accentuating their curves, was everything that Shexia knew to hate. But...it being so forbidden, so wrong, so impossibly vile, drew Shexia like a loadstone. Her mouth closed around one of Yolanda's nipples as Yolanda gasped softly. She grinned and caressed her, voice soft. "It is good to be with someone I don't need to use my...talents...to hide around."

Shexia's hands stroked along Yolanda's body, feeling the smooth join between the human and alien. She broke her kiss to her breast, then whispered. "A-are you going to...Kiss me?"

"Yes..." Yolanda murmured. "Does that make you happy?"

"I..." Shexia shivered. She looked away. "D-Does it...hurt?"

"You know the answer to that." Yolanda's voice was so warm. "Where do you want it?"

"...here..." Shexia pointed. her cheeks burned furiously as she looked away.

"My favorite place," Yolanda said, then grinned. She gently brushed her dress around, making a makeshift bed, then laid Shexia upon it. The agony of the next moment could not be overstated - Yolanda kissed her way from Shexia's lips to her throat, licking the skin, teasing her with the sharp edges of her teeth. Shexia reached down, her fingers stroking through the Magus' blond tresses, but she did not push her away, even as Yolanda took an eternity worshiping her breasts. She kissed and sucked on her with the tender neediness of a young lover, and Shexia had to bite her knuckle to keep from crying out.

Yolanda paused then. Her breath was soft against Shexia's thighs. She used her hands to spread her, then focused. Shexia felt the psychic call - and heard the thumping sound of something moving in the darkness. Her blood ran hot and cold alike as she saw the dark shape slipping from around the corner of a generatoria. Razor sharp claws glittered and the extra limbs were used to caress wall and ceiling and floor alike. The sleek, almost human head with glittering, fierce eyes crept closer and closer. Shexia felt disgusted and...attracted to it at the same time. It was so...

Right.

"T-This was the only way I'd ever end...isn't it?" Shexia whispered.

"My love, this isn't an ending..." Yolanda caressed her head gently as the genestealer, the purestrain genestealer, knelt down, respectfully almost. Its claws were so gently as it took hold of her legs. Shexia took hold of Yolanda's hand, squeezing fiercely. Her breath was sharp, short, rapid. She panted and clung to Yolanda as Yolanda stroked her hair. "Here. Let me show you how I see her."

The gentle pressure of Yolanda's talent into Shexia's mind was like slipping into warm bath. The glistening perfection of the genestealer's body was suddenly evident - the curve of her talons, the muscular broadness of her shoulders. The length of her tongue, growing out and out and out of that delicate mouth. Warm drool dripped onto Shexia's belly and she whimpered softly in eagerness, her thighs falling even farther open as she whispered, softly.

"She's...beautiful..." Shexia whispered.

The genestealer lowered her head and her tongue thrust deep, deep into Shexia. The pain was momentary, and the bliss?

The bliss radiated through her afterwards.

Then, slowly, she blinked.

A realization, clear and crystal perfect as a bell, sang inside of her head. It was something that took her a few moments of gentle consideration to realize.

"...huh," she whispered. "I was wrong."

Yolanda chuckled as the purestrain slid back, tongue sliding into her mouth. Her eyes glittered with amusement as she started to scamper towards the shadows - to begin lurking among the ductwork of the floating city again. Yolanda stroked Shexia as she focused, using her powers to retract her signs of blessings with a bit of biomancy. Her voice was pleased. "It's okay, I still love you."

"No, I...I'm not enslaved to a hive mind..." Shexia said, hesitatingly.

"It's no good to fight for revolution with a bunch of slaves." Yolanda said, her voice amused.

Shexia frowned.

I'm damned, she thought. I...I am damned and...oh...oh I need...I need to have a baby in me. The thought was hot and fierce, tingling along her skin. She...she had...oh wow. She had thought she had been aroused before. She panted softly, her voice a soft whine. "D-Do you know any males?"

"Ah, the first glow of the implantation, right," Yolanda said, chuckling. "Yeah, the baby fever passes in a few weeks. Or after you get knocked up."

Shexia closed her eyes. Breathed to steady herself. Then she focused.

I am damned. I am fallen. But I was also wrong.

The question was when to tell the Cult that they were quite possibly the luckiest genestealer corruption to have ever been spawned? To tell them that they, and they alone, had the ideology without any of the lies?

Then the question became entirely secondary as she whispered to Yolanda. "...c-can someone please put a baby in me, please please please?"

Yolanda laughed.

---
You now have an Interrogator who is a part of the cult! She'll direct her company to do whatever you want...HOWEVER! If you direct it to do things that the members of the company will have an issue with, they will lose Sovereignty. If their Sov hits 0, then poor Shexia will be found out and likely killed in a hail of gunfire.

[ ] Attack BLANK (Might + Treasure VS Might + Territory)
[ ] Being Informed (Influence + Soverignty vs Diff 1)
[ ] Spying on BLANK (Influence + Treasury vs Influence + Territory)
[ ] Influence BLANK to do BLANK (Influence + Treasury vs Influence + Territory)
[ ] Increase your Sovereignty (Territory + Treasure vs Diff [Current Sovereignty])
[ ] Police BLANK (Might + Sovereignty vs Influence + Might)
[ ] Rise in Stature (Sovereignty + Treasure vs Diff [Current Influence]
[ ] Train and Levy Troops (Sovereignty + Territory vs Diff [Current Might]
[ ] Unconventional Warfare (write plan in)
[ ] Wait and Recover

THE SISTERHOOD OF THE LEVITHAN
(Cycle 1, Month 3 - the Month of Scampering)

MIGHT: 2 | TREASURE: 5 | INFLUENCE: 4 | TERRITORY: 1 | SOVEREIGNTY: 4


Shexia's Lackys
MIGHT: 2| TREASURE: 3 | INFLUENCE: 3 | TERRITORY: 0 | SOVEREIGNTY: 4​