Adhoc vote count started by DragonCobolt on Sep 19, 2021 at 4:21 PM, finished with 7 posts and 4 votes.
[X] "I want the squad. I have none of my usual retainers, but they will do once I have them broken to my whims." (-30 deception check, opposed)
-[X] Situations like this are exactly what your Foreshadow technique was made for. Trigger it before attempting this deception.
-[X] Assuming you successfully get them, there's two things you should address: one, the squad hates you and wants you dead, and two, these other Chaos fuckers aren't afraid enough of your power. Require a private space for a "ritual" of whichever of these fuckers look intimidatable. Jack, maybe. Then, after confirming you're unobserved to the best of your ability, put on a deliberately noisy psychic show (or just have Ryia do it) to cover - in fact, use TK or something to draw some random circles and shapes in the ground - drop the vocoder distortion of your voice, and quietly tell them who you are and that you have a plan to get all of them out, including the boy, and poke Karrad Vall in the eye while you do it. But, you need them to play along for it to work properly. Use the Foreshadow power here too, you really need this to work. Just act totally subservient and speak as little as possible and that should be enough. Then lead them back out, having "instantly broken them to your will." But before you leave, erase those random circles and such on the ground as if you're erasing your ritual markings so the locals can't use them (because "they aren't deserving," of course).
Well, it looks like we're going to need a deception check, a foreshadowing check, and a Charm check, but the charm check is at a -60 (this is a mixture of the Krieger's understandable trepidation and the fact you're trying to be kinda subtle about it.)
You point your finger at the squad as 99 is dragged out of sight. "I want the squad."
Jack gulps, looking at your finger, then at your forearm mounted triple barreled maglev accelerating assault stubbers, which had been augmented with some clever bits of wire and metal and paint to look rather more akin to bolters. In the flickering light of the green bonfires, you're not sure if anyone but a tech-priest could tell the difference.
"W-Well, they're...they're not broken," Jack stammered.
"Good," you say. "I will also need ritual space as well."
Jack gulps, then gestures and soon, the ten guardsmen are being pushed forward and Ryia takes their chains, and your guide, clearly hoping to be useful, steps forward.
"I-I know a ritual site! I know one, I can show you, Dread Sorcerer!" he says, nodding, and you give him the subtlest of nods. The slave pens begin to recede behind you as the man leads you to the switchbacks that lead from the lower regions of Skaarsdelve to the manufactorums and similar places of power that sit in the hills above. Beyond, you can still see the Citadel herself, her skull like edifice thrusting into the heavens with ominous portents, shrouded by clouds and smog.
"At the ritual site," you say over your private vox channel. "Ryia, um, can you put on a telekinetic show?"
"Heh," Ryia says. "Easily. But the question is, what are we going to do with the Kriegers who all look ready to die for the Emperor here?"
Em's voice is grim. "The Death Korps don't usually get taken alive for a reason, Tine."
"Oh good Emperor, they're Krigers? Well...I-I have an idea," you say, thinking quickly. "Just make sure our guide doesn't go into the ritual site with us."
"I'm on that," Em says, quietly.
You take a moment to glance over the Kriegers. They're an even mixture of men and women, and they have a strangely uniform face, despite some having dark skin, some having light, some being blond, some being red haired, and some being raven haired. It is something to the shape of their jaw, the curve of their noses, as if they're closer related than you'd expect form people with such disparate ethnographic features - it is like they were all supposed to be siblings, but someone shook the mixture and added just enough to make them different. You shake your head as your guide comes to a large flat plaza that has a kind of circular trough built into the middle of it. Men and women lounge on benches nearby, drinking and laughing, and you can see that there are roads leading off to different manufactorum - and each is active, spraying sparks and smog up into the air. The men and women are dressed as laborers, and they quiet down upon your arrival, pointing at you.
"This is where the coggies do their rites," your guide says, clearly quite eager. "There's a blood drain, there are chains, everything."
You frown, but figure...it'll have to do. Em steps between you and the guide and wordlessly points him back. Ryia, meanwhile, drags the Kriegers to the chains in question, locking them in and chaining up their hands. Over the private vox, she says: "Their chains are to keep them from trying to attack you - but, uh, better start explaining good and fast, Tine..." she says, as blue lightning beings to crackle along the ground. Frost gathers and you can feel your sisters focus - she is creating and generating a kind of...frozen aura, which itself produces blue sparks in the air.
You step forward, your arms spreading as you look down at the ten krigers. They glare up at you as you chin your vocoder off and speak as softly as you can. The voice comes from the grille of your helmet, and sounds excatly like your own. "I don't have time to explain fully - but I am the Lady Amaranthine Scourge - and we're here to bring this place down. Me and my fellows are in disguise, and we had to think quick to rescue you from that block. Will you pledge your arms to our Dynasty until we can get you back to your Regiment, men and women of Krieg?"
They look up at you, and you cannot see any change in their expression. For a moment, despair fills you...but then the one kneeling right before you gives you the rarest, most precious gift in the galaxy. You may not have recognized their uniforms, but you knew them by their name, and knew their stern, unflinching, fearless heroism. Their suicidal devotion. Their utter calm. And so, you knew what it meant when this woman with short red hair and warm bronze skin...gave you...the biggest, most wolfish smile you'd ever seen.
"Yes," she growls and that single word had more promise than a speech from a thousand churchmen.
You lowered your arms, chinned on your vocodor, and boomed out. "You will now SERVE ME!"
Ryia jerked the chains free and the Krigers stood, came to attention, and saluted.
***
You had to admit, marching through the manufactorum districts of Skaarsdevle with your sister, your husband, and ten Kriegers in freshly "purchased" (you had glared) flak armor and freshly rechambered hellguns (you had glared harder) felt damn good. The Kriegers had a physical and spiritual force that, even if the Chaos rabble around you thought they were corrupt and broken, they still cringed away from them, as if they feared that they might burst into flames upon getting too close. With this shield, you are unmolested until you reach the bridge to the Citadel itself.
The Citadel is built a solid five hundred meters away from the cliff that marks the edge of Skaarsdelve, and stretching across that cliff is a vast, fifty meter wide bridge of blood red metal that is covered with carvings of battles and wars. The edges have narrow railings, and the whole thing looks like a deathtrap for anyone leading an army across it towards the front gates, which are twenty meters tall and look like they're made of carven obsidian. They are covered with an etching of Horus standing above the fallen Emperor - similar to a thousand tragic paintings across the Imperium, save that this art framed the Emperor's suffering and Horus' gloating expression with clear relish. The Citadel itself was an interlocking series of star shaped bastions, creating interlocking fields of fire, and you counted dozens of lasgun and bolter emplacements, thick heavy artillery platforms, surface-to-space emplacements, and scrying aerials.
Lightning cracks across the smoggy sky, while your guide gulps. "T-This is the bridge, uh..." he says.
"You have done well enough," you growl, tempted to throw him over the edge and to the canyon below. Looking down, you do see several thick vents that are built down there - huge, slated entrances surrounded by razorwire and burbling greenish lakes of slag and slush. The citadel is drawing in air from outside, down there, and...venting smog out too, it seems, as you see a plume of superheated gasses spurt from one. By the time you glance back, the guide is hurriedly backing away.
"Nothing ventured, nothing gained," you say over the private vox - which is transmitted to microbeads you had secured for your new adoptees (you had glared a lot.)
The whole of your party began to walk across the bridge. As you come closer, your skin prickles and your hair stands on end, even inside of your suit. Quietly, the leader of the Kriegers - 78 - murmurs under her breath. "Void Shield."
You nodded to yourself as you felt yourself stride through one, two, three, four...five distinct rising and falling feelings of subtle energastic flows. It was like being near a live wire each time at the peak, and as you finished walking through the last, Em chuckled. "I'd hate to have to try and bomb through this while those long milleiums were firing up at us - they'd have a cyclic rate of nearly fifteen minutes, hooked to proper heat sinks-"
"Honey, are you nervous?" Ryia asks, so sweetly that it almost takes you aback.
"...a little, Tine, y-" Em stops, then snaps his helmet around to glare at Ryia as she lets out a giggling snort.
"Ryia's learning!" you say, trying to sound chipper, even as the immense, grotesque door looms ahead of you. The front doors open with a slow groaning creaking noise and several heavily armed and armored figures emerge.
"Who the bloody, bloody, bloody, bloody hell-" one of them starts. You give a tiny twitch of your finger. Ryia points at him, then points over her shoulder. The heavily armed and armored Chaos worshiper yelped as he was picked up, then screamed as he was pitched head first over the edge of the cliff a few meters before. His scream vanished as you turned your head to the next man with slightly less advanced rank pips. He came to attention.
"Welcome to the Citadel of Skulls, sire!" he says, bowing hurriedly as his friends all slung their lasrifles. "Our master, Karrad Vall, did not tell us to expect any visitors. Shall we call for, uh, the Castalan? Or did you have a meeting with any of Vall's lieutenants?"
--- What is your next move?
[ ] Demand a room, you need rest (and to get out of this armor and plan.)
[ ] Demand a meeting with Vall's lieutenants. Maybe you can learn something. Or kill them! Or both!
[ ] Demand to be taken to the Vault of Secrets. It's WHY you're here, after all.
[ ] Write In
Tine rolls to spot ???: 87. Not a thing noticed...
but so does Ryia: 78, still nada
Ryia rolls a 37 on her TK, and the guy gets a 67. So, she got 5 DOS versus 2 DOF, for 7 DOS in total, throwing the dude 13 meters
I think demanding to go to the vault of secrets straight up is going to raise too much fuss for even Tine to bluster away and sitting in a room won't help us learn anything.
[X] Demand a meeting with Vall's lieutenants. Maybe you can learn something. Or kill them! Or both!
Rather better than that, actually. The Foreshadow succeeded and Dragon's using the unerrata'd version, so that gave us a +30 to the roll. 68 (Fellowship) + 10 (from a talent) + 30 (from Foreshadow) - 60 (*gestures broadly at the entire situation*) = 48. So that was actually four Degrees of Success.
You had to admit, marching through the manufactorum districts of Skaarsdevle with your sister, your husband, and ten Kriegers in freshly "purchased" (you had glared) flak armor and freshly rechambered hellguns (you had glared harder) felt damn good. The Kriegers had a physical and spiritual force that, even if the Chaos rabble around you thought they were corrupt and broken, they still cringed away from them, as if they feared that they might burst into flames upon getting too close. With this shield, you are unmolested until you reach the bridge to the Citadel itself.
They are covered with an etching of Horus standing above the fallen Emperor - similar to a thousand tragic paintings across the Imperium, save that this art framed the Emperor's suffering and Horus' gloating expression with clear relish.
The Citadel itself was an interlocking series of star shaped bastions, creating interlocking fields of fire, and you counted dozens of lasgun and bolter emplacements, thick heavy artillery platforms, surface-to-space emplacements, and scrying aerials.
You nodded to yourself as you felt yourself stride through one, two, three, four...five distinct rising and falling feelings of subtle energastic flows. It was like being near a live wire each time at the peak, and as you finished walking through the last, Em chuckled. "I'd hate to have to try and bomb through this while those long milleniums were firing up at us - they'd have a cyclic rate of nearly fifteen minutes, hooked to proper heat sinks-"
Welp. Never mind that "lance it from orbit idea." Unless... hm. We'd want to bring the void shields down first, at least for the round (which probably still wouldn't exactly be great fun), but could Phi maybe jury-rig something up where we put our vortex warheads in, idk, some of our Courier boats, put servitor pilots in them and have them just scream down the gravity well at maximum acceleration once the Citadel's void shields are down? @DragonCobolt is that potentially viable, or is it too MacGuyver-y?
"Who the bloody, bloody, bloody, bloody hell-" one of them starts. You give a tiny twitch of your finger. Ryia points at him, then points over her shoulder. The heavily armed and armored Chaos worshiper yelped as he was picked up, then screamed as he was pitched head first over the edge of the cliff a few meters before. His scream vanished as you turned your head to the next man with slightly less advanced rank pips. He came to attention.
Welp. Never mind that "lance it from orbit idea." Unless... hm. We'd want to bring the void shields down first, at least for the round (which probably still wouldn't exactly be great fun), but could Phi maybe jury-rig something up where we put our vortex warheads in, idk, some of our Courier boats, put servitor pilots in them and have them just scream down the gravity well at maximum acceleration once the Citadel's void shields are down?
If we knock down the teleportarium scrambler before bugging out, we could just teleport the vortex munitions, jury-rigged as bombs, inside the place. If that doesn't result in a full 'to whom it may concern' obituary, it should at least leave the place open for our fleet's lances to make it a 'dear grid coordinates' type of spectacle.
Welp. Never mind that "lance it from orbit idea." Unless... hm. We'd want to bring the void shields down first, at least for the round (which probably still wouldn't exactly be great fun), but could Phi maybe jury-rig something up where we put our vortex warheads in
You are taken through winding corridors and vast sepulcher halls, past ornate artwork and windows that look out over foundry halls where men and women slave on assembly lines.
Making shells.
Macroshells.
By the thousands.
You are led past a servitor factory, where limp bodies of the recently slain are thrown up on meat-hooks by white robed, blood splattered mockeries of the tech-priest's arts and then swung towards burbling vats of froth, where hanging dendrite like arms are waiting, hooks and buzzing saws and drills at the ready. The place makes you overwhelmingly glad for your helmet and the recycled breath, which you are able to focus on, and the prayer, the mental prayer to the Emperor to see you through this place. Here, the perversions to the Dark Gods are more overt. And here, the image of Vall's goals become terrifyingly clear. Combat servitors. Macromunitions production at Imperial scale and to Imperial technical specifications...combine that with the vast starport you had captured, the massive berths for repair and refit, far larger than even your fleet could use, with his well armed and well trained militia core...
You saw nothing but darkness coming from Inequity - a darkness that you weren't sure even the damage you had caused doing much to stem, not unless you left here with Vall's head on a platter.
Something, I think, we'd all be in favor of, Aria murmurs, quietly. This place...reeks of something befoul and...searching. For me. I know not what.
You nod, then square your shoulders.
The guards open a pair of gilded doors ahead of you and it leads into a large, ornate dining room. A crackling fireplace provides warmth and you can see two other figures here, both looking out of sorts. The first is a woman, seated at a table, sipping from a wineglass that she holds in the tip of her gleaming claw, irritation clear in her purple shoulders - and you can tell, at once, that if she had ever been human, she had long since passed that point. Daemonic energies infused her from her head to her toes and simply standing in her presence made your back prickle. She was dressed in an incongruously pleasant slinky black cocktail dress, showing off her ample chest and her generous hips. The man, though, is more clearly irritated: He is standing by the fire, holding his glass in a fisted grip, and is dressed in a mockery of a naval uniform, with rust red coloring and tattered hems for his greatcoat. His left eye is covered by a bolted patch and his hair is drawn back into a thick que, his face rough and craggy and cold.
"I present you, Sorcerer Ur, of the Thousand Sons, and associates," the guard who had escorted you proclaimes.
"Ahhhhhhhh, the thousand sons, how delightful," the woman says, her voice bitter and barbed. "I regret to inform you, oh Sorcerer, my mistress, the Lady Euryale Ceto, will not be dropping everything at hand to attend to your whims. She has sent me in her..." She trails off, looking at you oddly. Hungrily. "...place..." she licks her lips.
You frown behind your helmet. "I see..." you look to the man, trying to ignore the daemonic woman. "And you?"
"Captain Havelock Sorrel," he says, gruffly. "Commerce raider for the Pack, captain of the Perfidious." You don't recognize the ship, but are comfortable placing him as a mass murdering bastard like the rest of these mass murdering bastards.
The daemonic woman, though, sniffs the air, then, standing up with a languid, serpentine grace. "Master Ur..." sniff sniff. "Did..." She begins to advance, but the Krigers move to bar her way. She almost looks as if she's about to try and bull through them, but instead, she draws back, hissing and licking her lips, her eyes gleaming with an almost manic hunger. "You did, oh my Master, my most powerful Sorcerer, I wish you had sent word ahead, my Lady would have made time knowing you brought her such a gift! I shall tell her right now!" she says. You can trace the line of her eyes and see that she has only eyes for your sword, strapped firmly to your back.
"You presume much," you rumble, but the daemonette is already beginning to hurry away, not even bothering to wait. She's out the door faster than you expect.
"Oh great," Ryia says. "What the fuck was that about?"
Havelock snorts. "Wow, amazing. We're going to actually see the Archivist out of the damn Vault for..." He drops his glass in shock, his eyes wide, pointing. "WHO IS THAT!?"
You almost refuse to turn your head - it feels so much like a trick or a trap, but there are heads enough for one of the Kriegers to snarl out a loud 'holt!' and for there to be a sudden struggle. You turn and see that there was a figure pressed against the wall, and your newly minted bodyguards were doing precisely what they had been paid to do. Two of them, in a trice, have the figure away from the wall and have dragged her before you, Havelock, Em and Ryia. The firelight shone along them as you took them in - and heard their voice, female and nervous.
"T-This is all a big misunderstanding!"
The woman is young, with brunette hair and dark brown skin. She is also dressed in the most curious uniform you had ever seen: It was essentially nothing more than a simple golden tunic with black leggings, tight enough each that it almost looked like the chemise people wore under heavier armor, but she wore no additional armor on her person. Her belt was tight and leather and had a silver rectangle protruding above her left hip, and a holster on her right, holding what looked like, for all the world, like a stablight wand rather than a weapon. Other than that, she was unadorned in insignia, ranking, symbols, or...ah! No! You saw she had two golden pips on her collar, and a name sewn onto her shoulder, and a curious tree-bladed intersecting logo on her chest - three tines, interlocked around a silvery orb, that looked like a service patch. The new wasn't in High or Low Gothic, nor any language you recognized.
"A big misunderstanding, eh?" Havelock snarls, drawing his knife. "A pretty little thing, sneaking in here, I think I understand-" you put your hand on his head and don't quite squeeze.
"Shut up," you growl, then take your hand from his head and point tot he woman. "You? Talk."
The woman gulps, then stammers. "Q'uiren S'alass, Lieutenant Expeditionary, Q'Sal Free Navy."
"Oh gods, she's from Q'Sal!" Havelock looks furious. "Kill her now."
"Oh fuck you, materium sucking dipshit!" Q'uiren spat back, then flushed. "A-Anyway, we have a treaty, us and the Sons, so...you know!" She smiled, shyly. "We can put this little espionage thing bygones and I can teleport back to the Excalibur?" She laughs, nervously. "C-Cause, technically, I wasn't spying on you, I was spying on Vall. You were just a useful way to get the doors open without needing to risk beaming in!"
You...have...no idea...what the fuck...she is talking about.
--- What do!?
[ ] Take her prisoner and interrogate her with Havelock
[ ] Send Havelock off on some pretext, interrogate her alone
[ ] Kill Havelock, take off your helmet, and ask her what her deal is honestly
[ ] Write In!
Tine rolls paranoia: 88! Come on Tine...
Tine rolls on scrutiny with a +20: 33, success!
The damonette wins the intiative toss and is out the room (she's FAST)
Captain Havelock Sorrel rolls on paranoid: 18, 3 DOS
roll to ID the perfidious: nah, no one makes it
Two kriegers roll to takcle, one gets a 2, the other gets a 10, and the mysterious woman gets a 90!
No one in your party has the requisite forbidden lore to even have an IDEA of what Q'sol is
Well, there are worse things to haunt our shadow then an oddly dressed lady. Though she may still turn out to be some kind of space ghost or something. There's still time.
[X] Send Havelock off on some pretext, interrogate her alone
I'm loathe to murder Havelock while we still have the deception on place, even though not breaking it on our terms means it will be broken on theirs.
Interrogating her with Havelock could be interesting if he lets something slip, but I doubt he will. Interrogating her without Havelock gives us the opportunity to plot with her.
We definitely want to make sure this turns into as big an incident between Vall's forces as possible. Hopefully we can even get that mistress the daemon lady was talking about to rudely barge in the middle of the interrogation and get into it with Havelock. The best part is that this shenaniganry would all still be 100% in-character for the Thousand Sons.
[X] Take her prisoner and interrogate her with Havelock
-[X] "If you are so keen to call upon sworn pacts and oaths, you would have done well to do so before presuming to use myself and my entourage as a shield. Once from watchful eyes, and now from the consequences of your own failure. But no matter, I'm certain that shortly, we'll hear all about what wondrous gifts you have to barter your life with."
