- Pronouns
- He/Him
If that is a concern, you can arrange hunting/watering parties in the wilderness far from the colony. It was just one settlement on an entire planet, there's entire ecosystems that haven't been touched by human hands.
WARHAMMER 40,000: ROGUE TRADER: THE CITADEL OF SKULLS (Roleplaying on the Farthest Frontiers)
- Thread starter DragonCobolt
- Start date
- Mature Sci-Fi Fantasy
If that is a concern, you can arrange hunting/watering parties in the wilderness far from the colony. It was just one settlement on an entire planet, there's entire ecosystems that haven't been touched by human hands.
Sir_Travelsalot
Never wakes up tired.
- Location
- At Home
[X] Bring down the Chirgeon to investigate the corpses
[X] Bury them and do the rites
[X] Find the cogitators and coax them to life
[X] Bury them and do the rites
[X] Find the cogitators and coax them to life
- Pronouns
- He/Him
it does! But if you wish to take the further precaution of foraging on the far side of the world, you can do that as well
- Location
- USA
[x] Bring down the Chirgeon to investigate the corpses
[x] Find the cogitators and coax them to life
[x] Find the cogitators and coax them to life
Just a thought @DragonCobolt
Should this be voting by plan? Given that some people will vote for more than 2 items?
Should this be voting by plan? Given that some people will vote for more than 2 items?
- Pronouns
- He/Him
oh yea it should be!
[X] Plan: take no chances
-[X]Bring down the Chirgeon to investigate the corpses
-[X]Find the cogitators and coax them to life
-[X]Bring down the Chirgeon to investigate the corpses
-[X]Find the cogitators and coax them to life
Happerry
Bat out of Hell
- Location
- Kanto
[X] Bring down the Chirgeon to investigate the corpses
[X] Bury them and do the rites
[X] Have Ryia do a divination (she's better at it)
[X] Find the cogitators and coax them to life
Hmm, the Green Light, lack of bodies, and 'Skulls' name of this thread made me think Necrons given their use of disintegration weapons, but the 'the colonists seem to have killed each other' evidence doesn't quiet fit that?
[X] Bury them and do the rites
[X] Have Ryia do a divination (she's better at it)
[X] Find the cogitators and coax them to life
Hmm, the Green Light, lack of bodies, and 'Skulls' name of this thread made me think Necrons given their use of disintegration weapons, but the 'the colonists seem to have killed each other' evidence doesn't quiet fit that?
Sir_Travelsalot
Never wakes up tired.
- Location
- At Home
Personally, I'm thinking Dark Eldar as an explanation. Because I'm somewhat doubtful that this one building contains 70k corpses without being stacked on top from floor to ceiling. As for the quest's name, we're in this system to rendezvous with the third ship of our little fleet and go kick the doors in at a heretical stronghold, which we learned the existence of in the last quest.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I'll go with the first plan, because it is the plan that got the most votes! Next time, I'll try and remember to say when you should use a plan vote so there's ~LESS CONFUSION~
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Oh, also, I need a roll using your crew skill with a +10! Since I'm lazy and haven't statted the fleet yet, know this: Your crew is a 40% skill, so that's a 50% check!
Sir_Travelsalot
Never wakes up tired.
- Location
- At Home
Alright, here goes.
CHAPTER ONE: A Ghost From the Past (1.4)
- Pronouns
- He/Him
"They're dead."
You feel your sister prickling and scowling, while Chigeon Ventris pokes and prods at one of the corpses.
"But how did they die?" Em asks as his chirgeon walks from the first corpse to the second. Shuttles scream down from overhead - bringing the secondary parties to police the bodies. Voidsmen, with their straw hats and striped shirts, worked to drag out more and more of the bodies from the bunker. Laid out, it looked like a horrifying amount of people, but...something about it struck you as wrong. As you swept your gaze along the rows of bodies, Ventris sighs.
"They weren't slain by asphyxiations, poison, radiological humoric imbalance, or cancers. There's no signs of neurological damage - the only ones that show any damage what so ever are the two, three percent that killed one another." She points at a woman who's eyes have been gouged from her head, apparently by someone else's thumbs. Your stomach does a slow flop, while Ventris adds. "From everything I can tell, they just...stopped."
Em shakes his head as, from the latest shuttle, Phi comes out. The many tentacled, amorphous mass of Tech-Priest that you had all grown to know and love flowed along the ground, and the servo-skull you had rescued from Xoti earlier flew over to them, bobbing and chirruping, then immediately falling in with the flock of other skulls that whirred around them. You leave Ryia and Em to their quiet discussion about what to do with the bodies and hurry over to Phi's side.
"Heya Phi," you say.
"GOOD MORNING, TINE," they say, and then, in techno-lingua, chittering and buzzing through your head: [Good Omnissiah, it's a frightful mess over here. So many untended servitors. Such a terrible waste!] You purse your lips, hearing the agitation in their posh, high cultured techno-lingua vocodations and shake your head subtly.
"And the colonists..."
[Oh, of course!] Phi catches themselves as they come to the adamantine doors. [Excellent cut - that xenos sword of yours?]
[Ryia helped!] You send with your interlac, so that she cannot hear you complimenting her. The two of you duck into the musty interior of the bunker and make, immediately, for the omnisiah's shrine.
[Ah, ever helpful, our little heretic...] Phi shakes their head. [You are a promising member of the laity, but I am going to need you to step back. Unlike most, you can actually see the rites I am about to preform.]
You pout. [How can I ever become a Tech-Priest if I never get to watch?] You send, stepping back to the doorway leading into the shrine, standing beneath the cogwheel and skull icon of the Machine God, your hand resting against a crumbly, much loved purity seal.
Phi slowly turns to face you. [Are you willing to become celebate?]
"What!?" you exclaim.
Phi somehow contrives to lift an eyebrow above an eye knowingly, despite having neither brow, eye, or eyebrow. It's really quite impressive. You scowl at him, then back away, giving him space. "Uuuuuugh!" You close the door by thumbing down on one of the seal-switches, murmuring a soft prayer to ensure it locks.
"You all right?" Em's voice brings you around.
"Yeah, just Phi being Phi," you say, sighing as you brush your palm along the door. "They're doing some cogitation rites - to see what datum they can pull out."
"One the hands, Jak Darby, has noticed something," Em says, his voice dropped low. "We've told him to keep it under his hat, but the rumor's going to spread. That's just the way of things."
"Oh?" you ask.
"The grox are gone," Em says. "And the canids - we found the kennels. The felids, too, Darby found one of their collars." He pursed his lips as you frown, that unsettling, creepy feeling digging deep into your belly again.
"And the plants?" you ask.
"Also gone," Em says. "We're not sure how far the desolation spreads, but Ryia guesses it can't be more than a hundred miles, if carrion birds have started to arrive from elsewhere on the planet."
You shiver from your head to your toes.
The door opens and Phi sticks their head out. "CAPTAIN," they say with their electronic vocodor, their voice emotionless and cold. "YOU WILL WANT TO SEE THIS."
Em whistles. "Ryia!" he says -and the three of you follow into the shrine. The warm comforting blanket of the binary hum makes you feel more at ease than anywhere else on the planet - the servo skulls have done a good job coaxing the machine spirits here back to life and they are responding to having real company again with a warm, happy glow. It's like being before a great big comfortable fire and you drew your arms around your shoulders and shivered happily in the place - even as Phi's dendrites click and clack against the cogitation console, bringing up a crackling, buzzing topographical map of the colony and the surrounding area.
"ACCORDING TO THE DATUM SLICE, EVERY PICT CAPTOR AND AURAL SNIFFER ON THE COLONY DETECTED THE SAME THING OUR FRIEND THE SERVO SKULL DID," they say. "FIRST, AN EERIE SHRIEK. THEN A GREEN FLASH. THEN THE SIGNAL IS DISRUPTED, LEAVING NO USEFUL INFORMATION. AND, AT LAST, THERE IS NO SIGN OF COLONISTS, SAVE FOR THOSE INSIDE OF THIS BUNKER AT THE TIME OF THE INCIDENT. THOSE PEOPLE DIE WITHIN TWO MINUTES OF THE EVENT."
Em nods, while Ryia points at the topographical map.
"What's that?" she asks.
"THAT IS THE OTHER INTERESTING DATUM: THERE IS A SIGNAL COMING FROM THREE HUNDRED AND TWENTY SIX KILOMETERS FROM THE COLONY. IT APPEARS TO BE FROM A SAVIOR POD. AND THE SIGNAL ENCODING APPEARS TO BE FROM A PILGRIM CLASS MERCHANTMAN REGISTERED AS LOST WITH ALL HANDS IN MID M38, DESIGNATED THE PRUDENT MAIDEN."
Ryia stiffens.
Em and you look at her.
"...it's the Jolly," she says, softly, looking at the two of you. "Captain Sly's ship. She...got a bit of a refitting tween the 38th and 41st. Half her dorsal removed, her prow redone, extra guns laid in..." She shrugs. "By the time I served her, she barely looked like a merchantman."
Em gives a curt, immediate nod, then puts his finger to the vox. "Corporal Lidda-"
"No!" Ryia grabs onto his hand, yanking it down, her eyes wide. "Em, no. If...if it's Sly, if...he's still alive-" she chokes off, and you can feel her agitation radiating from her. Her old Captain had been a pirate...not a worshiper of Chaos. But the Orks had been sent to Damaris by a worshiper of the Ruinous Powers - and if Sly was, say, bedecked in Chaos symbols and regalia, then...well, you could see why Ryia would want the number of people seeing in him such a state brought to a minimum.
Em look uncertain.
---
Do you...
[ ] Side with Ryia - she literally can kill a Gargant single handed, Em is a master swordsman, and you have maglev impellers strapped to your arms. You'll be fine.
[ ] Side with Em - this whole colony is just one big shoe, and this feels like it's about to drop. Having extra hands never hurts.
[ ] Write In
You feel your sister prickling and scowling, while Chigeon Ventris pokes and prods at one of the corpses.
"But how did they die?" Em asks as his chirgeon walks from the first corpse to the second. Shuttles scream down from overhead - bringing the secondary parties to police the bodies. Voidsmen, with their straw hats and striped shirts, worked to drag out more and more of the bodies from the bunker. Laid out, it looked like a horrifying amount of people, but...something about it struck you as wrong. As you swept your gaze along the rows of bodies, Ventris sighs.
"They weren't slain by asphyxiations, poison, radiological humoric imbalance, or cancers. There's no signs of neurological damage - the only ones that show any damage what so ever are the two, three percent that killed one another." She points at a woman who's eyes have been gouged from her head, apparently by someone else's thumbs. Your stomach does a slow flop, while Ventris adds. "From everything I can tell, they just...stopped."
Em shakes his head as, from the latest shuttle, Phi comes out. The many tentacled, amorphous mass of Tech-Priest that you had all grown to know and love flowed along the ground, and the servo-skull you had rescued from Xoti earlier flew over to them, bobbing and chirruping, then immediately falling in with the flock of other skulls that whirred around them. You leave Ryia and Em to their quiet discussion about what to do with the bodies and hurry over to Phi's side.
"Heya Phi," you say.
"GOOD MORNING, TINE," they say, and then, in techno-lingua, chittering and buzzing through your head: [Good Omnissiah, it's a frightful mess over here. So many untended servitors. Such a terrible waste!] You purse your lips, hearing the agitation in their posh, high cultured techno-lingua vocodations and shake your head subtly.
"And the colonists..."
[Oh, of course!] Phi catches themselves as they come to the adamantine doors. [Excellent cut - that xenos sword of yours?]
[Ryia helped!] You send with your interlac, so that she cannot hear you complimenting her. The two of you duck into the musty interior of the bunker and make, immediately, for the omnisiah's shrine.
[Ah, ever helpful, our little heretic...] Phi shakes their head. [You are a promising member of the laity, but I am going to need you to step back. Unlike most, you can actually see the rites I am about to preform.]
You pout. [How can I ever become a Tech-Priest if I never get to watch?] You send, stepping back to the doorway leading into the shrine, standing beneath the cogwheel and skull icon of the Machine God, your hand resting against a crumbly, much loved purity seal.
Phi slowly turns to face you. [Are you willing to become celebate?]
"What!?" you exclaim.
Phi somehow contrives to lift an eyebrow above an eye knowingly, despite having neither brow, eye, or eyebrow. It's really quite impressive. You scowl at him, then back away, giving him space. "Uuuuuugh!" You close the door by thumbing down on one of the seal-switches, murmuring a soft prayer to ensure it locks.
"You all right?" Em's voice brings you around.
"Yeah, just Phi being Phi," you say, sighing as you brush your palm along the door. "They're doing some cogitation rites - to see what datum they can pull out."
"One the hands, Jak Darby, has noticed something," Em says, his voice dropped low. "We've told him to keep it under his hat, but the rumor's going to spread. That's just the way of things."
"Oh?" you ask.
"The grox are gone," Em says. "And the canids - we found the kennels. The felids, too, Darby found one of their collars." He pursed his lips as you frown, that unsettling, creepy feeling digging deep into your belly again.
"And the plants?" you ask.
"Also gone," Em says. "We're not sure how far the desolation spreads, but Ryia guesses it can't be more than a hundred miles, if carrion birds have started to arrive from elsewhere on the planet."
You shiver from your head to your toes.
The door opens and Phi sticks their head out. "CAPTAIN," they say with their electronic vocodor, their voice emotionless and cold. "YOU WILL WANT TO SEE THIS."
Em whistles. "Ryia!" he says -and the three of you follow into the shrine. The warm comforting blanket of the binary hum makes you feel more at ease than anywhere else on the planet - the servo skulls have done a good job coaxing the machine spirits here back to life and they are responding to having real company again with a warm, happy glow. It's like being before a great big comfortable fire and you drew your arms around your shoulders and shivered happily in the place - even as Phi's dendrites click and clack against the cogitation console, bringing up a crackling, buzzing topographical map of the colony and the surrounding area.
"ACCORDING TO THE DATUM SLICE, EVERY PICT CAPTOR AND AURAL SNIFFER ON THE COLONY DETECTED THE SAME THING OUR FRIEND THE SERVO SKULL DID," they say. "FIRST, AN EERIE SHRIEK. THEN A GREEN FLASH. THEN THE SIGNAL IS DISRUPTED, LEAVING NO USEFUL INFORMATION. AND, AT LAST, THERE IS NO SIGN OF COLONISTS, SAVE FOR THOSE INSIDE OF THIS BUNKER AT THE TIME OF THE INCIDENT. THOSE PEOPLE DIE WITHIN TWO MINUTES OF THE EVENT."
Em nods, while Ryia points at the topographical map.
"What's that?" she asks.
"THAT IS THE OTHER INTERESTING DATUM: THERE IS A SIGNAL COMING FROM THREE HUNDRED AND TWENTY SIX KILOMETERS FROM THE COLONY. IT APPEARS TO BE FROM A SAVIOR POD. AND THE SIGNAL ENCODING APPEARS TO BE FROM A PILGRIM CLASS MERCHANTMAN REGISTERED AS LOST WITH ALL HANDS IN MID M38, DESIGNATED THE PRUDENT MAIDEN."
Ryia stiffens.
Em and you look at her.
"...it's the Jolly," she says, softly, looking at the two of you. "Captain Sly's ship. She...got a bit of a refitting tween the 38th and 41st. Half her dorsal removed, her prow redone, extra guns laid in..." She shrugs. "By the time I served her, she barely looked like a merchantman."
Em gives a curt, immediate nod, then puts his finger to the vox. "Corporal Lidda-"
"No!" Ryia grabs onto his hand, yanking it down, her eyes wide. "Em, no. If...if it's Sly, if...he's still alive-" she chokes off, and you can feel her agitation radiating from her. Her old Captain had been a pirate...not a worshiper of Chaos. But the Orks had been sent to Damaris by a worshiper of the Ruinous Powers - and if Sly was, say, bedecked in Chaos symbols and regalia, then...well, you could see why Ryia would want the number of people seeing in him such a state brought to a minimum.
Em look uncertain.
---
Do you...
[ ] Side with Ryia - she literally can kill a Gargant single handed, Em is a master swordsman, and you have maglev impellers strapped to your arms. You'll be fine.
[ ] Side with Em - this whole colony is just one big shoe, and this feels like it's about to drop. Having extra hands never hurts.
[ ] Write In
- Location
- USA
[x] Side with Em - this whole colony is just one big shoe, and this feels like it's about to drop. Having extra hands never hurts.
The warboss in the previous adventure was just one person, and he came close to killing all three of them. I'd really prefer having more guns.
The warboss in the previous adventure was just one person, and he came close to killing all three of them. I'd really prefer having more guns.
Sir_Travelsalot
Never wakes up tired.
- Location
- At Home
[X] Side with Em - this whole colony is just one big shoe, and this feels like it's about to drop. Having extra hands never hurts.
- Location
- Virginia
[X] Side with Em - this whole colony is just one big shoe, and this feels like it's about to drop. Having extra hands never hurts.