[BC] The Blackest Heart (IC)

[Mazer Rackham]

+ THE RPG NOOK, IN ASSOCIATION WITH THE CABAL OF DEAD INK, PRESENTS +

 

+ A BLACK CRUSADE RPG ADVENTURE +

 

++ THE BLACKEST HEART ++

 

 

'From the Maelstrom's deepest pit, I do spit at thee! Should my chest be fit with cannon,

Wouldst I fire both my Hearts upon it! My vengeance knows not the cold of mercy,

Nor does it shrink with terror in the dark, for wherever you should hide my due,

Even buried in your in your souls, e'er will I rake for it...until the stars burn out.'

 

- Lugft Huron, The Blackheart, Tyrant of Badab, Master of The Maelstrom.

 

+++++

 

PROLOGUE:

 

Assault on CARTHAGE XIII:

 

When the siren begins, it is a klaxon heard by all as it screams a shrill warning across the surface, skies and subterranean vaults of the planet. Purpose-built as a wilderness of violence and wickedness, decorated with oases of Imperial sanity, power and civility built deep into bedrock, shudders. This is not the ruckus of expected supply drops; or the harsh tocsin of a prisoner transfer, but something altogether more alarming still. Weapons emplacements pan and traverse across the prison yards, the gears of a machine grinding - a mighty shrugging of the Imperial pinions contracting.

 

+ PENITENTS, REMAIN CALM, FOR SALVATION IS AT HAND. THE EMPEROR’S MERCY HAS BEEN GRANTED TO ALL. AVE IMPERATOR. +

 

A serene, controlled statement, given in a firm, calm voice. In juxtaposition, it merely stirs the populace into paroxysms of glee and terror, depending on the severity of heresy in their soul, their expectation of punishment or release a heady mix of personal poison. It is an announcement never made before on this scale.

The inmates of this network of dungeons know the voice, for it is the judgement of those on high, the Word of the Master of Mankind himself. It is said by Judges, by Imperial Soldiers, by Commissars, by the Guildmasters of the Forges and Workhouses.

 

By Executioners.

 

Normally, death is rooted to a sector or block, where the culling of the wicked sinners is enacted through neutron bombardment, their belongings, cybernetics and chattels all used for the next raft of prisoners, or sent off-world to pay the debts of the incarcerated.

 

++ PENITENTS IN BLOCKS A, B, C, D, SHALL RECEIVE THE EMPEROR’S WILL ++

 

The guilty and innocent shriek in howling wails as the Penitentiary rouses for a mass slaughter, but the wise amongst the old hands, the few lowly trustees, that something else is wrong. There is threat not just from within the walls, and the souls dwelling there, but from without.

 

Some of the inmates go berserk. They run at the walls, the gates in a mass panic, attempting to overwhelm the security, to breakout via a press of flesh and tide of blood. The throaty roar of emplaced weapons cut them down, exploding bolt rounds tossing charred gobbets of flesh in minced, bloody confetti. The grisly perfume of burned meat clogs throats and nostrils, even as the thunder of giant hammers resonates on the walls outside, causing huge blocks of masonry – plascrete and rockrete, painted dark with grime and blood over the pocked surface – to spall onto the huddled, broken masses beneath, crushing many and ending their cries for mercy, for forgiveness or curses brooking damnation to end with a brutal, gavel thump of finality.

 

In the open segments of the prison, Perdita squads of the Adeptus Arbites swing into action, shotguns bellow, flamers cough in throaty swathes as many of the prisoners outside the Purgation Zone are cut down or boiled alive in blessed promethium. In the skies above, glimpses can be seen of Imperial Lightnings duelling with angular blades zipping around the skies.

 

Bulk landers crash hard into the prison walls, making breaches in the low-level security zones. A guard tower crumples, and a neutron array fires prematurely, obliterating all living within its deadly caress and scope, before dying a heartbeat, and firing again. The sentries within are flung against the armaglas with such force, they lie broken and staring from the collapsed Babellian* overwatch, now brought low.

 

Miraculously spared by the momentary pogrom, an old man, wearing nought but tattered rags, exposes himself obscenely to the crashed tower and Prison Judges therein, cackling at their fate, his tattoos of the Eightfold marking him as a true believer. He tears the mouldering garment free, and capers in wanton abandon.

 

‘Hahaha! Take that you fu-’

 

The tower explodes, tearing a crater in the pit of the prison earth, slaying friend and plucky, rude foe alike, punching great runnels in the ground and plascrete. It is then, and only then, when the squalid prison carcass is broken open for the straggly innards to be devoured, that giant shapes punch through the choking dust to feast. Dark figures cleave through the miasma of floating silt, in a cacophony of thunder - explosions billowing amber in the murk - and the skirl of whirring, chainsword teeth. Black and red, a melange of gold and steel, titans come with guns and blades.

 

Almost as one, the hordes of darkness unleash, the Black Hand, the Ravaged Claw of Badab tears at the walls, raking out the charnel pit in a long harrow of screams and pleading, eager for fresh meat and raw victims to clutch to his cause.

 

+++++

 

+ [ AVE REGNIS CREUI ] +

 

 

Edited Wednesday at 05:29 PM by Mazer Rackham
*Babelian. It's like Astartesian.