As I said, "our most excellent QM"
WARHAMMER 40,000: ROGUE TRADER: FALLEN SUNS (40k roleplaying on the farthest frontiers)
- Thread starter DragonCobolt
- Start date
As I said, "our most excellent QM"
Fayhem
Definitely not an escaped SCP
- Location
- At large
- Pronouns
- He/Him
*she and *her, btw. And from a metanarrative standpoint yeah, as DC has noted himself probably nothing gratuitously gruesome or whatever would happen to Noceda if they got brought along thanks to our QM's narrative preferences. But that's metagaming, and I don't like that. IC, I don't think Em and co. are the kind of people who would bring a rookie nominally trained in CQC along on a hyperdangerous mission without a very good reason to, and definitely not just for their own amusement.
Having somebody on full-time "please watch Callie" duty might be, uh, prudent though, that's fair. I just don't think Noceda's qualifications in that regard are what you'd call unique, which is why I don't consider it to qualify as a "very good reason to" per the above.
Whoops... Somehow completely missed that... My deepest apologies to Noceda.
I actually can't argue with against any of what you're saying. Voting for Noceda to come along is metagaming for the purpose of gratuitous humour. And maybe it's just me pushing a joke too far (again, if I'm being honest).
I 100% agree with you about disliking metagaming when it's using OOC knowledge to gain an IC advantage. I don't think that's what I'm doing here, in that I don't think having Noceda in the party will give us an unfair advantage in the adventure. If anything, it's a party slot that could be filled by a combat/stealth specialist that would add a more obvious, game mechanics benefit to the party.
I don't think Em & Co. would bring Noceda along for their own amusement either, but they may consider the fact that she was one of "the chosen 17" to indicate that maybe she should be there (although I freely admit I haven't checked to see if all the other 17 have been included...).
But I am eager to see more Callie, Noceda & Xoti(?) interactions and am selfishly voting for the option that gives us that.
Fayhem
Definitely not an escaped SCP
- Location
- At large
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Fair enough. It's purely personal preference on my part inclining me against it, because I'm stubborn about the definition of metagaming even though Callie/Noceda/Xoti interactions do sound cute as fuck. But I can see that the distinction you're drawing re: varieties of metagaming has some merit to it even if it still feels like it's not for me.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Roll a charm check to assure Ryia that she IS gonna be okay!
10ebbor10
DON'T PANIC
- Location
- Present
I roll?
CHAPTER TWO: The Seventeen (1.6)
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Em placed his hand on his wife's shoulder, drawing her close, his other hand lifting her chin. He smiled at her, gently. "Ryia, Ryia, Ryia...I...I suspect that a psychic enemy from the Warp will be using psychic methods to enslave its victims, rather than physical means." He nodded. "If so, then Tine's subdermal armor would not shield her, but your psychic strength might. Perhaps our esteemed hosts could comment on the matter?" He glanced over at the two Farseers, who frowned, considering.
"I believe it is true, yes," Serradon said, hesitantly.
"See?" Em asked. "It's true that if they did enslave either of you, it could be an even greater catastrophe than if someone else fell prey to them. But... I have faith, that you could prevail if it came to such a contest. Or at least that we can protect each other, if needed. We have through everything else, after all." He kissed her cheek, gently, and Ryia blushed, then punched his shoulder, hard.
"Fuck you!" she said, laughing and sniffing, wiping at her face with her hand. "I worked myself up to be a big fucking adult about this and you fucking ruined it, you asshole." She kicked his shin, gently, and Em caught her hand, swung her around and kissed the top of her head, causing the terrifying Iluryia Rackamore Scourge, the Twice Scorned Pirate Queen of the Expanse, to squirm and mewl like an upset kitten in his grasp.
But not squirm very hard.
"...is this how all human marriages are like?" Callie whispered.
"I hope not, or else the mon'keigh are even more debased than we thought," Serradon grumbled.
The tome had been retrieved from Karrad Vall's Vault of Secrets - and it had been locked up tight and held in reserves, for there were many dangers that a tome could hold, especially if it was psychically active, or somehow enchanted by dark sorceries. But now they had a chance to at least open it in a place where...if anything came of it...they could be safe.
"Just a book..."
The voice that spoke caused Em, Tine and Ryia to startle and for Callie to scream and flail her arms. The Harlequin who had emerged silently from the shadows behind her ducked hastily before her arm intersected his masked face, and he caught her wrist in a vice-like, iron hard grip. He stepped to the side, then continued, his tone mocking. "There's no such thing as just a book when dealing with these kinds of things, oh Farseer." He chuckled. "Believe you me, we are more aware of that then most."
"I see," Em said. "Do you know what this book is?"
"Yes," the Harlequin said.
"...are you going to tell us?" Em asked, trying to sound guarded.
"No," the Harlequin said, and that mocking tone was back.
Ryia scowled. "So, are you just here to laugh when we fucking open it, then?"
"Yes," the Harlequin said, then chuckled. "Why, this was a near perfect recreation of Simple Lorn and the Waterfall, most impressive..."
Ryia scoffed, then turned and flicked her hand. Her telekinetic power popped the latch on the book - and the book flopped open, revealing script in High Gothic. Tine, who had been instructed in the use of the room's various functions, made a soft incantation to a machine spirit (clearly thinking 'better safe than sorry') and took hold of the focusing glass that ran along the outer edge of the window. The glass showed the view from within the room, allowing them to look down at the book without having to enter into it. She narrowed in the focus upon the first page, blowing the words up...and she blinked. Then she gaped.
Em read the title himself.
"Lectitio Divinitatus..." he murmured. "By...Lorgar Aurelian..."
"Rejoice, for I bring you glorious news. God walks among us..." Tine read. "D...Do you...I...wait, wait!" she hastily used her own telekine powers - to flip a few pages back and forward. "T-The date! Look at the date, Em, Ryia, look at the date, you know what this means? What this is?"
"No, what is it?" Ryia asked.
Em and Tine slowly looked at her.
Ryia blinked. Her cheeks heated. "What?"
Quiet.
The warlocks ringed around the three Farseers - Callie and Serradon both carrying Anaris - while the Dark Reapers and the Fire Dragons came up behind them, their brightly and darkly colored armor contrasting somewhat intensely. Meanwhile, the Elysians and Kreigers both flanked the forward passage, making a chevron in the way of any danger that might come from the ship itself. Dr. Balthazar was looking about himself with undisguised fascination and excitement, while Badb Ra and Phi took up the flank, a pair of unlikely companions, created entirely because Badb Ra, more than any other Eldar, had interacted with humans...and was watching Phi with clear intention to do harm if Phi stepped out of his bounds.
The end of the corridor came with a shimmering of silver doors - and they entered into a bridge that was as familiar as it was alien. It had the same arrowhead shape as the Scourge's bridge, but rather than the familiar cogitators and servitors of an Imperial bridge, the whole place was a smooth bone white, with red gemstones set into the walls at regular intervals. Shimmering hololiths carved themselves into the air, creating the impression of consoles, while seats flowed from the floor, each of them inhabited by a suit of armor that moved its arms out and took up positions with eerie precision. Each of those suits of armor reminded Em, faintly, of the Wraithguard that the Eldar would use in land combat from time to time, but...they were lighter. Slimmer. More fragile.
"Wraithcrew," Callie explained, setting Anaris' soulgem into a socket on the center of the bridge. The whole ship shimmered and groaned - and then the ground shuddered. The view through the vista-plates at the front of the bridge showed the Eldar spaceport falling away, twisting away from them with remarkable speed for a ship of this size. The movement should have thrown each of them to the floor, but all Em felt was a faint shifting in his inner ear.
"Fascinating," Dr. Balthazar said, but Em felt himself taking up his normal position, standing beside the central plinth where the soul-stone had been placed. He gave a curt nod to one of the Wraithcrew.
"Can you bring up a vox transmission to my fleet?"
The Wraithcrew didn't give him an affirmative - but they did push several switches and buttons - and soon a hololith of Jessie had appeared before them. "M'lord," she said, inclining her head. "We have your orders and are preparing to make sail at half mast, with full stealth precautions at the distance proscribed."
"Very good, Captain Travener," Em said, nodding to her.
As the hololith cut off, he heard Tine asking a very simple question...that might lead to less than simple consequences.
"So, where are the bedrooms?" She was practically buzzing - Em knew that the needs of the mission had required her to shelve the decision on what to do with the pristine first edition of the Lectitio Divinitatus until they had dealt with the Lu'Nasad. But he also knew the instant they had some privacy, she'd be bending his ear about the possibilities.
"Oh, uh..." Farseer Callie said, coughing. "There are rooms! And...we can...find beds, I am sure!"
"Wait," Tine said, frowning. "What do you mean find beds?"
Callie clapped her hands together, the armor of her gloves clacking loudly. "Lets find some beds!"
And she was off, Tine following after, as Ryia chuckled. "And to think, Junie wanted to come with," she whispered to her husband as the Whisper cut through the void like a dagger - angling towards danger, darkness, and death.
She inputted the nine hundred and fifteenth cipher-prayer, turned away to pick up the next disk...
And heard a chirup.
She turned - and saw that the front of the stasis tank was flowing. The opacity that had made it impossible to peer in was draining away, and the contents were, at last, free to be seen.
The white skull-mask face. The skintight black armor-glove, clutching to steel hard muscles, so broad and powerful that the gender of the human in question was rendered almost impossible to determine. Thin wires, perpetually filled with a ferocious cocktail of combat drugs, so intense that a non-augmented human would have died from even a droplet of them. The shoulder mounted combat-rig, with weapon systems pre-rigged: Shoulder melta on an auto-tracking gimbal, forearm automatic plasma pistol, finger-glove flechette weapons, power swords strapped to the back, belt mounted combi-pistol loaded with micro-vortex submintions on the under-barrel and a heavy bolter with twin clips of acid-tipped Seeker bolt rounds. The ankles had a pair of throwing daggers, and even with all the armor and weaponry stripped away, the creature within the tube could have easily killed everyone onboard the Argent Scourge with their bare hands.
The young lexmechanic put her hand on her chest, to try and slow her racing heart, and waited for the shoe to drop, for the door to open.
For her life to end.
The Eversor Assassin remained still, frozen, between one killing instinct, and the next.
"...I...s-sho...should tell someone...a-about this..."
And she fled as fast as her feet could carry her.
---
CHAPTER TWO...
COMPLETE!
EM
[ ] Ability (+2 to each stat)
[ ] Enduring (+4 wounds)
[ ] Skillful (+10 to one skill)
[ ] Fated (+1 FP)
RYIA
[ ] Ability (+2 to each stat)
[ ] Enduring (+4 wounds)
[ ] Skillful (+10 to one skill)
[ ] Fated (+1 FP)
TINE
[ ] Ability (+2 to each stat)
[ ] Enduring (+4 wounds)
[ ] Skillful (+10 to one skill)
[ ] Fated (+1 FP)
"I believe it is true, yes," Serradon said, hesitantly.
"See?" Em asked. "It's true that if they did enslave either of you, it could be an even greater catastrophe than if someone else fell prey to them. But... I have faith, that you could prevail if it came to such a contest. Or at least that we can protect each other, if needed. We have through everything else, after all." He kissed her cheek, gently, and Ryia blushed, then punched his shoulder, hard.
"Fuck you!" she said, laughing and sniffing, wiping at her face with her hand. "I worked myself up to be a big fucking adult about this and you fucking ruined it, you asshole." She kicked his shin, gently, and Em caught her hand, swung her around and kissed the top of her head, causing the terrifying Iluryia Rackamore Scourge, the Twice Scorned Pirate Queen of the Expanse, to squirm and mewl like an upset kitten in his grasp.
But not squirm very hard.
"...is this how all human marriages are like?" Callie whispered.
"I hope not, or else the mon'keigh are even more debased than we thought," Serradon grumbled.
***
"I'm not sure why you need this much security, it's just a book, right?" Callie asked as she stepped out of the psy-wardened room and closed the door with a wave of her hand. The Eldar, during the preparations to make sail, had been more than willing to grant their temporary human allies momentary use of one of the psy-warded rooms of their space station. Upon learning this, Em, Tine and Ryia realized that they had a change to finally solve a mystery they had been waiting to uncover for months now...and now, they all gathered around the window, looking in at the warded chamber...at the tome.
The tome had been retrieved from Karrad Vall's Vault of Secrets - and it had been locked up tight and held in reserves, for there were many dangers that a tome could hold, especially if it was psychically active, or somehow enchanted by dark sorceries. But now they had a chance to at least open it in a place where...if anything came of it...they could be safe.
"Just a book..."
The voice that spoke caused Em, Tine and Ryia to startle and for Callie to scream and flail her arms. The Harlequin who had emerged silently from the shadows behind her ducked hastily before her arm intersected his masked face, and he caught her wrist in a vice-like, iron hard grip. He stepped to the side, then continued, his tone mocking. "There's no such thing as just a book when dealing with these kinds of things, oh Farseer." He chuckled. "Believe you me, we are more aware of that then most."
"I see," Em said. "Do you know what this book is?"
"Yes," the Harlequin said.
"...are you going to tell us?" Em asked, trying to sound guarded.
"No," the Harlequin said, and that mocking tone was back.
Ryia scowled. "So, are you just here to laugh when we fucking open it, then?"
"Yes," the Harlequin said, then chuckled. "Why, this was a near perfect recreation of Simple Lorn and the Waterfall, most impressive..."
Ryia scoffed, then turned and flicked her hand. Her telekinetic power popped the latch on the book - and the book flopped open, revealing script in High Gothic. Tine, who had been instructed in the use of the room's various functions, made a soft incantation to a machine spirit (clearly thinking 'better safe than sorry') and took hold of the focusing glass that ran along the outer edge of the window. The glass showed the view from within the room, allowing them to look down at the book without having to enter into it. She narrowed in the focus upon the first page, blowing the words up...and she blinked. Then she gaped.
Em read the title himself.
"Lectitio Divinitatus..." he murmured. "By...Lorgar Aurelian..."
"Rejoice, for I bring you glorious news. God walks among us..." Tine read. "D...Do you...I...wait, wait!" she hastily used her own telekine powers - to flip a few pages back and forward. "T-The date! Look at the date, Em, Ryia, look at the date, you know what this means? What this is?"
"No, what is it?" Ryia asked.
Em and Tine slowly looked at her.
Ryia blinked. Her cheeks heated. "What?"
***
The interior of Anaris' Whisper was as quiet and eerie and bone white. The walls lack a faint edge of color that were on the Eldar space-station - the ship...despite the fact that it flies smoothly through the void, and it has the terrible killing power of her weapons at the ready, is dead. That is the inescapable fact, the all encompassing truth of the Whispers and it was why the Eldar that flanked the party of humans that walked aboard her and through her corridors...were so...
Quiet.
The warlocks ringed around the three Farseers - Callie and Serradon both carrying Anaris - while the Dark Reapers and the Fire Dragons came up behind them, their brightly and darkly colored armor contrasting somewhat intensely. Meanwhile, the Elysians and Kreigers both flanked the forward passage, making a chevron in the way of any danger that might come from the ship itself. Dr. Balthazar was looking about himself with undisguised fascination and excitement, while Badb Ra and Phi took up the flank, a pair of unlikely companions, created entirely because Badb Ra, more than any other Eldar, had interacted with humans...and was watching Phi with clear intention to do harm if Phi stepped out of his bounds.
The end of the corridor came with a shimmering of silver doors - and they entered into a bridge that was as familiar as it was alien. It had the same arrowhead shape as the Scourge's bridge, but rather than the familiar cogitators and servitors of an Imperial bridge, the whole place was a smooth bone white, with red gemstones set into the walls at regular intervals. Shimmering hololiths carved themselves into the air, creating the impression of consoles, while seats flowed from the floor, each of them inhabited by a suit of armor that moved its arms out and took up positions with eerie precision. Each of those suits of armor reminded Em, faintly, of the Wraithguard that the Eldar would use in land combat from time to time, but...they were lighter. Slimmer. More fragile.
"Wraithcrew," Callie explained, setting Anaris' soulgem into a socket on the center of the bridge. The whole ship shimmered and groaned - and then the ground shuddered. The view through the vista-plates at the front of the bridge showed the Eldar spaceport falling away, twisting away from them with remarkable speed for a ship of this size. The movement should have thrown each of them to the floor, but all Em felt was a faint shifting in his inner ear.
"Fascinating," Dr. Balthazar said, but Em felt himself taking up his normal position, standing beside the central plinth where the soul-stone had been placed. He gave a curt nod to one of the Wraithcrew.
"Can you bring up a vox transmission to my fleet?"
The Wraithcrew didn't give him an affirmative - but they did push several switches and buttons - and soon a hololith of Jessie had appeared before them. "M'lord," she said, inclining her head. "We have your orders and are preparing to make sail at half mast, with full stealth precautions at the distance proscribed."
"Very good, Captain Travener," Em said, nodding to her.
As the hololith cut off, he heard Tine asking a very simple question...that might lead to less than simple consequences.
"So, where are the bedrooms?" She was practically buzzing - Em knew that the needs of the mission had required her to shelve the decision on what to do with the pristine first edition of the Lectitio Divinitatus until they had dealt with the Lu'Nasad. But he also knew the instant they had some privacy, she'd be bending his ear about the possibilities.
"Oh, uh..." Farseer Callie said, coughing. "There are rooms! And...we can...find beds, I am sure!"
"Wait," Tine said, frowning. "What do you mean find beds?"
Callie clapped her hands together, the armor of her gloves clacking loudly. "Lets find some beds!"
And she was off, Tine following after, as Ryia chuckled. "And to think, Junie wanted to come with," she whispered to her husband as the Whisper cut through the void like a dagger - angling towards danger, darkness, and death.
***
Deep within the Argent Scourge, a solitary tech-priest continued to try the cipher-prayers that she had been left by her mentor Phi. She was a young lexmechanic, and didn't really expect any of the cipher-prayers to work. Phi had been quite blunt about that. The device she was laboring was ancient and these prayers would only have worked on the slimmest of chances. However, even the slimmest of chance had to be tested...and so, she was here, rather than doing what she'd want to do.
She inputted the nine hundred and fifteenth cipher-prayer, turned away to pick up the next disk...
And heard a chirup.
She turned - and saw that the front of the stasis tank was flowing. The opacity that had made it impossible to peer in was draining away, and the contents were, at last, free to be seen.
The white skull-mask face. The skintight black armor-glove, clutching to steel hard muscles, so broad and powerful that the gender of the human in question was rendered almost impossible to determine. Thin wires, perpetually filled with a ferocious cocktail of combat drugs, so intense that a non-augmented human would have died from even a droplet of them. The shoulder mounted combat-rig, with weapon systems pre-rigged: Shoulder melta on an auto-tracking gimbal, forearm automatic plasma pistol, finger-glove flechette weapons, power swords strapped to the back, belt mounted combi-pistol loaded with micro-vortex submintions on the under-barrel and a heavy bolter with twin clips of acid-tipped Seeker bolt rounds. The ankles had a pair of throwing daggers, and even with all the armor and weaponry stripped away, the creature within the tube could have easily killed everyone onboard the Argent Scourge with their bare hands.
The young lexmechanic put her hand on her chest, to try and slow her racing heart, and waited for the shoe to drop, for the door to open.
For her life to end.
The Eversor Assassin remained still, frozen, between one killing instinct, and the next.
"...I...s-sho...should tell someone...a-about this..."
And she fled as fast as her feet could carry her.
---
CHAPTER TWO...
COMPLETE!
EM
[ ] Ability (+2 to each stat)
[ ] Enduring (+4 wounds)
[ ] Skillful (+10 to one skill)
[ ] Fated (+1 FP)
RYIA
[ ] Ability (+2 to each stat)
[ ] Enduring (+4 wounds)
[ ] Skillful (+10 to one skill)
[ ] Fated (+1 FP)
TINE
[ ] Ability (+2 to each stat)
[ ] Enduring (+4 wounds)
[ ] Skillful (+10 to one skill)
[ ] Fated (+1 FP)
- Pronouns
- It/Its
What was the book? I don't know a ton of 40k lore outside of some specific topics
Sir_Travelsalot
Never wakes up tired.
- Location
- At Home
...Well, then. A first edition Lectitio Divinitatus, and an Eversor. Certainly made the right call on which one to crack open, though I'm having trouble deciding which one would put us at greater risk for possessing.
[X] Plan: Geared for War
-[X] EM: Skillful (+10 to Awareness)
-[X] RYIA: Skillful (+10 to Dodge)
-[X] TINE: Enduring (+4 wounds)
[X] Plan: Geared for War
-[X] EM: Skillful (+10 to Awareness)
-[X] RYIA: Skillful (+10 to Dodge)
-[X] TINE: Enduring (+4 wounds)
- Pronouns
- He/Him
It's the first book to lay out the basics of worshiping the Emperor, penned ten thousand years ago, by the Primarch Logar
Sir_Travelsalot
Never wakes up tired.
- Location
- At Home
The Lectitio Divinitatus is basically the Bible-equivalent of the Imperial Creed, the single most defining holy book on Emperor-worship. And it was written by the first Primarch to be corrupted by Chaos, Lorgar.
Hahahah an Eversor. That's fantastic. Can we drop it on the corrupted Craftworld and give it a 15 minute head start before we go in?
The first puts us at risk if discovered, while the second can put us at risk if wakes up, even if nobody outside knows about it...
im afraid to ask whats to be done with the eversor, though... unless we decide to send the stasis with the assassin into collision an meeting path with korrad val, programmed to release at the right time, while away from anything we dont want destroyed, and from us...
What if either the corruption or the eversor survive the clash? idk which is more dangerous. and thats if the enslavers fail to possess the assassin.
Now, if it was culexus instead, it could have been a great idea
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- Pronouns
- It/Its
What's an eversor?
Sir_Travelsalot
Never wakes up tired.
- Location
- At Home
Officially, an individual temple of the Officio Assassinorum, a subtype of Imperial Assassins. Namely, the one that focuses on the ideal of Malfean Stealth ie. it counts as stealth if everyone is too dead to raise an alarm. They're less an assassin and more like a person-shaped missile you fire and forget at the enemy, with a payload of pants-wetting terror that will kill anything in the vicinity of where it was dropped off, including the target, until their organs liquify from the combat stress and concentration of drugs they were juiced up with.
Fayhem
Definitely not an escaped SCP
- Location
- At large
- Pronouns
- He/Him
As a poster above noted, that's how we wind up fighting an Enslaver-possessed Eversor on top of the rest of the Craftworld's bullshit. Hard pass. Now, Vall might make a good target on the other hand, assuming we could actually figure how to target the Eversor versus just releasing them.
Largely accurate. The two points I'd correct are that 1), as long as the assassin's brain and hearts (yes, plural) remain alive/functioning their enhanced immune system prevents them from being killed by their own drugs and enhancements, because you don't spend this much making somebody into a weapon to only use them once. And 2), if their brain and/or hearts do fail, their organs don't liquify, exactly. No, instead their entire body explodes like a bioplasma bomb from the biomeltdown process. Eversors will occasionally trigger this on purpose as a last-ditch method to remove a target, which should tell you everything you need to know about their mental state.
So, uh, yeah. All in all quite the party favor for us to unwrap, and I'm quite pleased we yoinked it from Vall as at least we've taken it out of his hands. We also should not let on that we have one to anyone in the Imperium, because legally Imperial Assassins (as opposed to common, everyday assassins) can only be sent on missions with the express and specific consent of the High Lords of Terra. So one being in the hands of a private citizen would raise more than eyebrows.
The first edition of the Lectitio Divinatus is actually even more politically dangerous, though, since officially Lorgar had absolutely nothing to do with writing it. So if it got around that we had a historical artifact suggesting otherwise... well, imagine how the Catholic church in the Middle Ages would have reacted to somebody having evidence that the Bible was actually written by Satan, then dial it up by a factor of grimdark.
[X] Plan Locked and Loaded
-[X] EM: +4 Wounds
-[X] RYIA: Skillful (+10 to Dodge)
-[X] TINE: Skillful (+10 to Dodge)
Em already has +20 to Dodge, and he has much lower soak than either of the ladies. So an increase to his Wounds is called for IMO. Both Ryia and Tine don't even have a +10 to Dodge, so I'm taking that for both of them. Because at this power level, enemies can hit so hard that the best defense is to not get hit.
Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Wanna know something funny?
I actually, for the first time in reading 40k lore, read an evesor's wargear list and actually thought they were being too restrained with sheer number of murder-tools and their over the top killiness. That's why I gave this lady, like, 40 more guns and one of them fires MICRO-VORTEX BOMBS.
I always thought the evesor was intended as a mostly melee murder-blender. Less having lots of guns and more perfectly capable of ripping you in half just for gits and shiggles.
As I've stated before though, my information is pretty out of date (3rd/4th edition 40k).
As I've stated before though, my information is pretty out of date (3rd/4th edition 40k).
- Pronouns
- He/Him
My own understanding of the setting (I.E, the way the setting should be) is that, despite what you may think, having incredible strength and superhuman reflexes are good for both melee *and* ranged combat. If you can bend steel, you can also have a fucking ludicrous shot grouping with your pistol even if it kicks like a mule, cause it's not kicking like a mule in your grip.
What Evesors don't do, though, is *reload* - hence why they have so many guns and swords and knives and stabbers.
Cause reloading is time where they can be killing.
What Evesors don't do, though, is *reload* - hence why they have so many guns and swords and knives and stabbers.
Cause reloading is time where they can be killing.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Em got slightly tougher!
It was super effective!
CHAPTER THREE: The Soul Shrine (1.1)
- Pronouns
- He/Him
In the quietest part of the eerily quiet Argent Scourge, a young girl was brooding and an even younger child was doing their best attempt to be sneaky.
Junie thought of herself as being pretty skillful - but she knew, faintly, at the back of her mind that she still wasn't quite her parents. Not yet. But she did think she was close enough to be able to hear a sneaky little sib sneaking up on her - and in that comforting place, she sat and she brooded. There were few windows in the bilge decks and the ones that did exist were small and narrow and pitted. She still liked to look out this one, the one nearest to the site of her little 'duel' with the Eldar, and...
Think.
She had a lot to think about now.
Her eyes drifted from the stars, down to the parchment in her hands. She bit her lip - and felt tears prick at the corners of her eyes. She wiped at her eyes with her thumb, thinking: Stupid, Junie! Stupid, you're almost seventeen, you can't cry anymore-
"GOTCHA!"
Zeph's hand slapped her back and Junie screamed, jumping almost a foot into the air. She spun around and saw her little sib laughing as he backed away from her. "ZEPH!" she shouted, glaring down at them - but Zeph kept giggling - which made her...want to cry even more. "You little brat! You hullghast! You walking squid! You orkspore!" That last one she'd picked up from the Elysians. Zeph stuck their tongue out at her, then did the worst thing that Zeph could have done at this time.
They noticed the letter.
"What's that?" they asked.
"Nothing!" Junie said, jerking the letter back. If Junie was a bit wiser, a bit more mature, she might have realized that this was the exact wrong thing to do. Zeph snatched for it, and they both began to swirl around one another, Zeph darting around and Junie spinning - and then Junie felt the letter getting yanked from her hands, slipping between her fingers. She cried out - but Zeph had the letter, grinning wickedly.
"Is it from a boyyy?"
"Give that back, squig!" Junie snatched for it - but Zeph was already reading it out loud.
"Honorable and A...Agu...Agoost Lady June Sun Lee Ma'ko, Protector of the Imperium-" She snatched for it and they ducked away from her, still reading. "-Princess of the Opal Stars, Guardian of the Ma'ko Realm, Emperor, you haven't done anything, why do you get so many names?" They stuck their tongue out at her as she got up behind them, reaching down...but they were already reading out the rest of the sentence: "...we regret to inform you of the passing of...your...grandfather..."
The paper yanked from his hand and she crumpled it up, careless of the words on it. Zeph spun to face her.
"Y-Your grandfather's dead?" they asked, quietly.
"He's not my grandfather!" Junie shouted. "He's some old guy I've never met, who does nothing but write me long letters about how I have a duty to take over some dynasty I never heard of and I don't care about and n-now he's dead and that means I have to leave Moms and Dad and that...that...sucks!"
And, the worst thing in an already terrible evening happened to June Sun Lee Ma'ko, Protector of the Imperium, Princess of the Opal Stars, Guardian of the Ma'Ko Realm, and current Rogue Trader-Elect of the Ma'ko Dynasty happened.
She burst into tears before her younger sibling.
Thus, to the humans aboard the Whisper, the travel through the Webway seemed to be no travel at all. Simply a pale gray state of not-quite wakefulness, not-quite sleep. The air itself was rich and heavy with a stasis, and the windows remained open, showing a...pale...something. They could rouse themselves to move, if they wished it, but such movement felt as if it was in a dream. Languid. Slow. Careless. Memories did not quite want to form - conversations hung, half forgotten, and a single blink could cause the passage of time to stutter forward at unpredictable amounts. For some, a single moment was a timeless eternity of tranquility. For others, a sigh could carry them hours forward into the future.
Emil Vendigroth tried to hold onto the time most of all - to focus and think about the possibilities and ramifications ahead of them. But he was the one least able to focus. Instead, he merely had silvery flashes of the time, suspended like marble carvings. While he knew, intellectually, that the time lost to this curious mental state wasn't really his fault, he still felt nothing but annoyance that...while he tried to remember the planning discussions he had with Tine and Ryia, his mind skittered over those, but kept instead the lazy slowness of Tine slithering from her dress, or the wicked grin as Ryia crawled towards him, her dark hair framing her dark features, her eyes like to glittering gems, her augmetic arm drawing silver arcs through the air...
If there was one thing that humans found themselves exceptionally suited to in the strange mental state of the webway, it was sex.
But, like all dreams, though it seemed to last forever...
It had an ending.
The Whisper emerged from the Webway only a few days after entering it - and in that time, it had crossed more space than the rest of the fleet could have crossed in months. As the crew collected themselves on the bridge, Serradon was glaring out the window, his hands clasped behind his back. Callie, ever his opposite, bounced towards the three Scourges. "Hey!" she said. "Your fleet should be arriving through the webway a few hours after - if they followed the directions we beamed to their ships."
"I'm worried about how the crews are handling it," Em said, shaking his head.
"Oh, your geller fields will cut down on the side effects and, with the windows closed, it...it should be fine," Callie said.
"We must work quickly, before your clumsy ships alert the enemy of our presence," Serradon snapped. "The fact you demanded we bring them-"
"Is done, so, no sense arguing about it!" Callie clapped her hands. "Scan, please!" She spoke that to the ceiling - and the hololith projection that dominated the center of the bridge flared to life and depicted the system they had entered. It was not one that Em recognized from the charts - but that was far from unexpected, considering how much space remained unexplored within the Expanse. But it did not take a genius to notice one major problem right off the bat.
There was no Lu'nasad.
"Where is it?" Tine asked, frowning.
Ryia pointed at the center of the hololith, towards the inner edge of the innermost planets - a pair of dwarf worlds that orbited within the reach of the unusually active looking red giant star that was this system's beating heart. "What's that?" she asked. Em stepped forward, but the ship responded to Ryia's question and expanded the auspex scan. He shook his head in wonder, and tried to beat back a superstitious thrill at what he saw. The ship had managed to identify these targets from this distance...at such speed, without slide rules or dozens of people working visibly at the consoles to bring it into resolution. He tossed that feeling aside, though, at what he saw: Two starships.
Two Chaos starships.
"Those look like Hades class heavy cruisers - those things are usually flagships, what are they doing by themselves?" Em murmured, stroking his chin.
"Look at that, those are tow lines," Tine said.
"The...Isha..." Callie whispered, then clapped her hand to her mouth, her eyes wide, horrified. Tears began to brim in them as Serradon let out a ragged breath. His hands fell to the side of the projector, gripping the railing in a death grip.
"They...they...ripped her heart out," he whispered as Em finally grasped what he saw.
The two Hades were dragging a half kilometer wide, ragged chunk of wraithbone. Immense tow-cables connected their forecastles and hullcastles and spars to the chunk, and their wakes were directed to blaze past it so that they could drag without being slowed. This allowed them to put kilometer per second after kilometer per second into the chunk, moving its orbit bit by bit despite the immense size and mass of it. The bottom half of it was easily visible from their perspective, and he could see the still sparking cable-wires, the trunklines, the shattered pipes that bled water and air and who knows what else into the void. The upper half was...bizarrely still intact, the windows still glittering with backup power and whatever remained within the chunk of craftworld. Despite the fact it had been torn from the bosom of Lu'nasad, it was still immediately recognizable as being the half kilometer wide soul-shrine of the entire place.
The beating heart and thinking mind of Lu'nasad, ripped from her body and...
"Plot trajectory on those ships!" Em barked. The ship responded immediately and drew a silvery line. Em grunted with solemn satisfaction as he saw he was right with his immediate guess.
They were dragging the soul-shrine towards the sun. To dispose of it like garbage.
"How does Karad Vall think he can control Lu'nasad without the Infinity Circuit?" Serradon growled. "How dare he imagine it?"
"H...He must have decided this was easier than dealing with the Enslavers..." Callie whispered. "B-But if he ripped it free, then...then Lu'nasad may already be under his control!?"
Em rolled his shoulders.
Command came easily to him - it had for years now. Xenos ship or no, in this moment of despair and horror, the Whisper's bridge was his. He felt it in his bones that even Serradon would not hesitate to follow his orders at this moment.
---
What say you?
[ ] This travasty must be stopped. We cannot risk them pulling too far ahead. We will plunge into the inner system like an avenging angel and strike them from ambush. Let us see what these pulse lances can do.
[ ] Two heavy cruisers cannot stand against a fleet. We'll pace them until the rest of the Scourge fleet arrives, and we shall obliterate them with bomb, shot and lance.
[ ] Write In
Also...a trivial detail, for now...
[ ] Junie burns the letter and instructs the astropath to pretend that she never got it.
[ ] Junie mopes in her room, not sure what to do
[ ] Write In (but remember, Junie is a teenager. She's getting more mature, but not THAT much more mature.)
Junie thought of herself as being pretty skillful - but she knew, faintly, at the back of her mind that she still wasn't quite her parents. Not yet. But she did think she was close enough to be able to hear a sneaky little sib sneaking up on her - and in that comforting place, she sat and she brooded. There were few windows in the bilge decks and the ones that did exist were small and narrow and pitted. She still liked to look out this one, the one nearest to the site of her little 'duel' with the Eldar, and...
Think.
She had a lot to think about now.
Her eyes drifted from the stars, down to the parchment in her hands. She bit her lip - and felt tears prick at the corners of her eyes. She wiped at her eyes with her thumb, thinking: Stupid, Junie! Stupid, you're almost seventeen, you can't cry anymore-
"GOTCHA!"
Zeph's hand slapped her back and Junie screamed, jumping almost a foot into the air. She spun around and saw her little sib laughing as he backed away from her. "ZEPH!" she shouted, glaring down at them - but Zeph kept giggling - which made her...want to cry even more. "You little brat! You hullghast! You walking squid! You orkspore!" That last one she'd picked up from the Elysians. Zeph stuck their tongue out at her, then did the worst thing that Zeph could have done at this time.
They noticed the letter.
"What's that?" they asked.
"Nothing!" Junie said, jerking the letter back. If Junie was a bit wiser, a bit more mature, she might have realized that this was the exact wrong thing to do. Zeph snatched for it, and they both began to swirl around one another, Zeph darting around and Junie spinning - and then Junie felt the letter getting yanked from her hands, slipping between her fingers. She cried out - but Zeph had the letter, grinning wickedly.
"Is it from a boyyy?"
"Give that back, squig!" Junie snatched for it - but Zeph was already reading it out loud.
"Honorable and A...Agu...Agoost Lady June Sun Lee Ma'ko, Protector of the Imperium-" She snatched for it and they ducked away from her, still reading. "-Princess of the Opal Stars, Guardian of the Ma'ko Realm, Emperor, you haven't done anything, why do you get so many names?" They stuck their tongue out at her as she got up behind them, reaching down...but they were already reading out the rest of the sentence: "...we regret to inform you of the passing of...your...grandfather..."
The paper yanked from his hand and she crumpled it up, careless of the words on it. Zeph spun to face her.
"Y-Your grandfather's dead?" they asked, quietly.
"He's not my grandfather!" Junie shouted. "He's some old guy I've never met, who does nothing but write me long letters about how I have a duty to take over some dynasty I never heard of and I don't care about and n-now he's dead and that means I have to leave Moms and Dad and that...that...sucks!"
And, the worst thing in an already terrible evening happened to June Sun Lee Ma'ko, Protector of the Imperium, Princess of the Opal Stars, Guardian of the Ma'Ko Realm, and current Rogue Trader-Elect of the Ma'ko Dynasty happened.
She burst into tears before her younger sibling.
***
The webway was ancient beyond human conception of time. It had been ancient beyond imagination when their people had only barely crept from the gravity well of their home system, and made beautiful and elegant by the work of countless millions of Eldar over thousands upon thousands of years of careful refinement. It was a system so finely tuned and so beautifully constructed that now, even eleven thousand years after it had been shattered and left to rot...it remained unparalleled in efficiency and grace and power.
Thus, to the humans aboard the Whisper, the travel through the Webway seemed to be no travel at all. Simply a pale gray state of not-quite wakefulness, not-quite sleep. The air itself was rich and heavy with a stasis, and the windows remained open, showing a...pale...something. They could rouse themselves to move, if they wished it, but such movement felt as if it was in a dream. Languid. Slow. Careless. Memories did not quite want to form - conversations hung, half forgotten, and a single blink could cause the passage of time to stutter forward at unpredictable amounts. For some, a single moment was a timeless eternity of tranquility. For others, a sigh could carry them hours forward into the future.
Emil Vendigroth tried to hold onto the time most of all - to focus and think about the possibilities and ramifications ahead of them. But he was the one least able to focus. Instead, he merely had silvery flashes of the time, suspended like marble carvings. While he knew, intellectually, that the time lost to this curious mental state wasn't really his fault, he still felt nothing but annoyance that...while he tried to remember the planning discussions he had with Tine and Ryia, his mind skittered over those, but kept instead the lazy slowness of Tine slithering from her dress, or the wicked grin as Ryia crawled towards him, her dark hair framing her dark features, her eyes like to glittering gems, her augmetic arm drawing silver arcs through the air...
If there was one thing that humans found themselves exceptionally suited to in the strange mental state of the webway, it was sex.
But, like all dreams, though it seemed to last forever...
It had an ending.
The Whisper emerged from the Webway only a few days after entering it - and in that time, it had crossed more space than the rest of the fleet could have crossed in months. As the crew collected themselves on the bridge, Serradon was glaring out the window, his hands clasped behind his back. Callie, ever his opposite, bounced towards the three Scourges. "Hey!" she said. "Your fleet should be arriving through the webway a few hours after - if they followed the directions we beamed to their ships."
"I'm worried about how the crews are handling it," Em said, shaking his head.
"Oh, your geller fields will cut down on the side effects and, with the windows closed, it...it should be fine," Callie said.
"We must work quickly, before your clumsy ships alert the enemy of our presence," Serradon snapped. "The fact you demanded we bring them-"
"Is done, so, no sense arguing about it!" Callie clapped her hands. "Scan, please!" She spoke that to the ceiling - and the hololith projection that dominated the center of the bridge flared to life and depicted the system they had entered. It was not one that Em recognized from the charts - but that was far from unexpected, considering how much space remained unexplored within the Expanse. But it did not take a genius to notice one major problem right off the bat.
There was no Lu'nasad.
"Where is it?" Tine asked, frowning.
Ryia pointed at the center of the hololith, towards the inner edge of the innermost planets - a pair of dwarf worlds that orbited within the reach of the unusually active looking red giant star that was this system's beating heart. "What's that?" she asked. Em stepped forward, but the ship responded to Ryia's question and expanded the auspex scan. He shook his head in wonder, and tried to beat back a superstitious thrill at what he saw. The ship had managed to identify these targets from this distance...at such speed, without slide rules or dozens of people working visibly at the consoles to bring it into resolution. He tossed that feeling aside, though, at what he saw: Two starships.
Two Chaos starships.
"Those look like Hades class heavy cruisers - those things are usually flagships, what are they doing by themselves?" Em murmured, stroking his chin.
"Look at that, those are tow lines," Tine said.
"The...Isha..." Callie whispered, then clapped her hand to her mouth, her eyes wide, horrified. Tears began to brim in them as Serradon let out a ragged breath. His hands fell to the side of the projector, gripping the railing in a death grip.
"They...they...ripped her heart out," he whispered as Em finally grasped what he saw.
The two Hades were dragging a half kilometer wide, ragged chunk of wraithbone. Immense tow-cables connected their forecastles and hullcastles and spars to the chunk, and their wakes were directed to blaze past it so that they could drag without being slowed. This allowed them to put kilometer per second after kilometer per second into the chunk, moving its orbit bit by bit despite the immense size and mass of it. The bottom half of it was easily visible from their perspective, and he could see the still sparking cable-wires, the trunklines, the shattered pipes that bled water and air and who knows what else into the void. The upper half was...bizarrely still intact, the windows still glittering with backup power and whatever remained within the chunk of craftworld. Despite the fact it had been torn from the bosom of Lu'nasad, it was still immediately recognizable as being the half kilometer wide soul-shrine of the entire place.
The beating heart and thinking mind of Lu'nasad, ripped from her body and...
"Plot trajectory on those ships!" Em barked. The ship responded immediately and drew a silvery line. Em grunted with solemn satisfaction as he saw he was right with his immediate guess.
They were dragging the soul-shrine towards the sun. To dispose of it like garbage.
"How does Karad Vall think he can control Lu'nasad without the Infinity Circuit?" Serradon growled. "How dare he imagine it?"
"H...He must have decided this was easier than dealing with the Enslavers..." Callie whispered. "B-But if he ripped it free, then...then Lu'nasad may already be under his control!?"
Em rolled his shoulders.
Command came easily to him - it had for years now. Xenos ship or no, in this moment of despair and horror, the Whisper's bridge was his. He felt it in his bones that even Serradon would not hesitate to follow his orders at this moment.
---
What say you?
[ ] This travasty must be stopped. We cannot risk them pulling too far ahead. We will plunge into the inner system like an avenging angel and strike them from ambush. Let us see what these pulse lances can do.
[ ] Two heavy cruisers cannot stand against a fleet. We'll pace them until the rest of the Scourge fleet arrives, and we shall obliterate them with bomb, shot and lance.
[ ] Write In
Also...a trivial detail, for now...
[ ] Junie burns the letter and instructs the astropath to pretend that she never got it.
[ ] Junie mopes in her room, not sure what to do
[ ] Write In (but remember, Junie is a teenager. She's getting more mature, but not THAT much more mature.)
- Pronouns
- It/Its
[X] This travasty must be stopped. We cannot risk them pulling too far ahead. We will plunge into the inner system like an avenging angel and strike them from ambush. Let us see what these pulse lances can do.
[X] Junie burns the letter and instructs the astropath to pretend that she never got it.
[X] Junie burns the letter and instructs the astropath to pretend that she never got it.