Search the Community

Here follows a record of Heresy, treachery and misfortune.... A VULGAR DISPLAY OF POWER Episode I: Manifest Decimation You all felt it. First it gnawed at your mind, then your bones, and then your flesh. The great hollowing that no sustenance could satiate, no libation could quench. Then you heard the wailing, the terrible wailing. It drew you in like a moth to the flame, hounding you across the stars, giving you no respite in your dreams. Corruption. Your fall was inevitable, perhaps. Dragged into Heresy by your brethren, your commanders, your fallibility as humans, or a thousand other reasons. Or none at all. Some of you were born to it, came to it as naturally as breathing. Perhaps, in your delusion, you even still believe yourself to be a loyal servant to the Golden Throne and Undying Emperor on distant Terra. But no matter your circumstances, you have all strayed from the Emperor's Light to tread the road of Damnation, whether by choice or by circumstances of birth, turning your backs on the rotting husk of your Imperial birthrights forever. In the Hell-realm of the Screaming Vortex, time has a tenuous consistency, a fleeting connection to reality at the best of times. Years may pass like grains of sand falling through an hourglass, while days may span veritable eons. And yet time marches on; the grist-mill of inevitability continues to grind down all in its path and feed the only constant in the universe. The Screaming Vortex is a benighted, hateful canker-sore upon reality, upon whose desolate rocks the dregs of the galaxy may wash upon and cling to like so much flotsam. It is here that many servants of Chaos congregate, building new homes for themselves amongst the detritus, eking out a cruel existence before they are devoured either by their gods or their fellows, and the cruel wheel of fate turns on and on, uncaring, perpetually in motion. You each have your own reasons for coming to the Vortex: some maybe for glory, others for the promise of war and bloodshed, and for some the Vortex may have sung to you in your dreams, its maddening cries of anguish a siren song calling to you from across the cosmos. By one contrivance or another you have all arrived at Desolace, a way-station for pirates, raiders, mercenaries and merchants of all stripes. The hollowed out asteroid base is one of the largest in the Ragged Helix, a massive asteroid belt within the Vortex, and serves as a sort of neutral ground for the various warbands and corsair fleets which call the region home. It is a cruel and miserable place, but as ever humanity has found a way to thrive and eke out a living in such a grim and wretched demesne, alongside xenos and worse besides. It hangs in space like a great, rocky tumor, its myriad docking spires jutting out from its surface at odd and horrible angles relative to one another, servicing a number of corrupted ships of Imperial make and xenos alike. Further out, other larger vessels of various provenance lie at anchor, warily eyeing one another like great predators in a treacherous ocean. You have each made a short low-gravity transit down one of these spires from whichever ramshackle transport dumped you here, and ended up in one of the dingy and dimly lit halls of the hollowed-out asteroid. Grime seems to encrust every surface, a pervasive miasma of competing, noxious scents pollutes the air, and there is an ever-present dripping sound coming from somewhere indistinct but nearby. The air recycling system wheezes, gasps and rattles like a man with advanced consumption as it toils unceasingly, but with great futility, to purify the almost toxic atmosphere of the place. The huddled masses of mutant and human descendants of the original mining crews sent to this great rock shy away from you into their shanties, terrified by the newest, heavily-armed arrivals to their cold and dank home, their forebears dead and forgotten for many dark centuries. Elsewhere, motley pirate crews and xenos mercenaries travel the halls like swaggering hive gangers, shabby merchants hawk their corroded wares, and other sights and sounds, each more tantalizing and disgusting than the last emerge from the foetid gloom. Despite its outward appearance of squalor and degeneracy, Desolace is a veritable hive of activity. Welcome to Hell. GM: Welcome to the Screaming Vortex, lads! Your new port-of-call awaits you! Desolace is a large asteroid base within the Ragged Helix, and a natural jumping off point for adventure within the greater Vortex. Numerous pirates, mercenaries, soldiers of fortune, merchants and artisans call Desolace their home, whether permanently or temporarily. The asteroid itself is a heavily pock-marked and meteorite-blasted spheroid approximately 10 km in diameter, riddled with an uncountable number of halls, passageway, chambers and nooks courtesy of the original press-ganged miners who toiled to hollow out the great rock. It has been ruled most recently by a cruel and cunning warlord named Vaarsaal for the past two decades, or at least as near as one can reckon in the hellish realm of the Screaming Vortex, where time and the physical laws of our universe are but playthings to the Ruinous Powers. Each of your characters has received, fairly recently, a summons of sorts, to travel to Desolace. Strange dreams have haunted you for many long nights prior to and during your voyages to this way-station for all manner of detritus and scum: dreams of blood and iron ships sailing upon dark tides and a decrepit fortress floating amongst the stars. Your first post should introduce us to your character, offering a glimpse into their background, what drew them to the Vortex and their most recent voyage upon the warp-tides to Desolace. You may end your post detailing what manner of delights your character might seek out in Vaarsaal's realm, for there are many, and they are as varied as they are terrible and blasphemous.