[BC] The Blackest Heart (IC)

[Necronaut]

Ukalegon

 

What in the name of Terra had the Executioners done here…?

 

The evidence spoke for itself: what had transpired here was less an assault upon a fortified position than a slaughter, a butchery. The mortals here had been woefully unprepared for their fates, though of the Howling Griffons who had once stood watch here, he could only assume accounted well for themselves against the Executioners. 

 

He glanced sidelong at Hagga as they sifted through the cloud of floating detritus, disturbed from its decades-long rest by the two tomb-robbers, while they walked down the passage. He had heard from one of Lord Huron’s slaves that his partner was sometimes called “Heart-Eater," a truly savage appellation which he knew would appeal greatly to his cousins in the Flesh Tearers or Flesh Eaters, those most afflicted by the Curse – a fate which he and his brothers had so far evaded, to his knowledge. He wondered what bloody-handed deeds his compatriot, still draped in the colours of the Executioners save for the crimson saltires on his pauldrons, had committed during the Badab War.

 

Ukalegon broke the silence first, now that they were in some semblance of atmosphere again.

 

"This place is a crypt. It would seem we are the first to visit in decades. What could be so valuable in these prisoner logs that Lord Huron would require us to retrieve it? Is this some sort of test?" 

Edited August 13 by Necronaut

[Mazer Rackham]

Crux'as:

 

Even as the words leave your mind, the intent carries them along strands of fate and into the warp. Tendrils of...purpose twang and flex as there is...somewhere - neverwhere? - an answer.

 

Around you, for approximately ten Imperial feet, a shroud of absence grows. Stablights flicker and die before reigniting, bulkhead lamps extinguish and flare at your passing, and even the mighty Astartes who look on from behind their gimlet, garnet lenses suffer a momentary impediment - although not as strongly, for are they not the seekers of truth?

 

It is not immediately obvious that you are the locus, for this is an Imperial prison, and under siege by the Red Corsairs, who bring with them the Enlightened and Profane.

 

Doth this not please you, my dearest friend?

 

It is a suggestion at the bottom of a well, the swell of a current in the abyssal oceans of ancient Terra.

 

Share thy Mirth with the world...that they know our...joy.

 

Unbidden, your cheeks pull ever harder in their grin, but the charm is absent. Only pain meets your eyes as the ancient pact ravages the flesh-muscle of neverborn tendons behind your living veil.

[Lysimachus]

Hagga:

 

Hagga shrugged, answering even as he looked around for where they might find their target.

 

“Half thought we'd find a Corsairs firing squad waiting for us,” he grunted. “‘Lord’ Huron isn't much fond of either of our Chapters, and doesn't trust those of us who did choose to stay and serve him. The Blackheart talks aplenty about honour, but I'm not so sure he really knows what the damn word means.”

 

He paused, considering.

 

“But if the logs are really here, they'll have come through the astropaths. If my memory's right, the main comms bunker had a records room, full of auto-quill servitors making physical copies of every transmissions the Griffons’ listeners picked up. Might be worth checking there?”

 

 

[Necronaut]

Ukalegon

 

"Hrm. Lead on then, Hagga," he replied warily. 

 

Ukalegon unconsciously looked over his shoulder, half expecting to see they were being followed by a kill-team of fellow Corsairs as the Executioner had described.

 

Something was decidedly not right with this place.

Edited August 13 by Necronaut

[A.T.]

Xerxes

 

A surge of power, for a moment he wondered if his escape was too late and that the adepts who had assembled the defences of this place had outdone themselves, but then the whispers of the noosphere began to echo and claw at the signal baffling he had worked to construct here. Without access to a workshop his efforts were incomplete and there were no more holes in this world in which to seek shelter...

 

Thundering of feet and weapons alike signalled the revival of the lesser prisoners of this ward and soon behind them those less subtle, an adequate distraction for now to draw the wardens from their posts. He had watched from afar these long months the paths taken and the doors unguarded as strength returned to his myriad dendrite blades and he reached up spearing and clawing at the nearby structure like a twisted mechanical spider.

[Lord_Ikka]

The Smiler

 

Pain in the grin, in the air, in the eyes of those around. Pain was necessary. Not for its own sake, such as the followers of the Dark Prince or the Lord of Rot, but to burn from the mortal to the immortal. Transformation was the goal, pain nearly temporary. For what is moments, weeks, years of pain compared to the ageless wonder of the Warp?

 

Crux'as sighs slightly as his gaze noticed the blessing. His patron, and the further lords of the Pantheon, had noticed him and given a minute mote of favor. This day was truly a blessed one. What further sights would soon be seen?

Edited August 11 by Lord_Ikka

[Mazer Rackham]

Ukalegon/Hagga:

 

The complex is more damaged the further inside you go. As you enter the lower strategium, where the data would be collected, orders scrivened and recorded for posterity, several cogitators are upended. The slave-servitors manning the print-ejecta and ink cisterns for the autoquillus lie broken or blown in half. Here is where the real fighting occurred, tidemarks of battle, where a front was made and then stalled. Another advance, then another defiant halt. Deck plating is battered, split. The deep well of the conduit-space below the decking glints every now and again with brass and steel from bolt shells and spent, deformed buckshot from Naval weapons.

 

More corpses lie, sit or trapped - trussed by awkward angles betwixt seat and console, under fallen barricades and bulkhead rebar. Chest cavities are destroyed, skulls sheared to flinders of jagged bone. Bolter and chainblade were employed manfully here, snarling and snaring, disrupting the carefully structured order of what essentially is an Adeptum office with panic and slaughter. Scorched marks, las-burns. All betray that should you remove your helms, there would be a long, stale perfume of seared meat and burned metal.

 

The operations centre desks are haphazardly clad in ceramic astro-plating, improvised flakboard reinforcements, plasteel doors torn from hinges, and even lectern pillars overturned for cover against a brutal assault. It could have happened a decade ago, or yesterday. Fragments float and tumble through the meagre air, gently plinking and pinging from the command dais, whereupon sits a king of this desolate tomb, surrounded by his treasures.

 

A sable giant amongst these smaller minions, his ebon warplate battered beyond repair still sports the scarlet and amber quarters on the pauldron, a black griffon ever rampant in a silent, defiant shriek.

 

Around him are piled broken weapons, an ancient, thick silk banner across his knees in victory and tribute. A pair of matched Axeheads on a red shield.

 

It is obvious he was the commander here, and just as obviously he fought to the end. A fractured power sword sits with pommel under his right palm, dust gathered on the aurumite hilt and his knuckles showing the stillness of his powerful arm.

 

Dead emerald eye-lenses regard you, cracked and flaking crystal shards hovering in orbit of his cheekbones, an aura glimmering about the blank snout of a Mk VII helm as the stare somehow follows you about the room.

[Necronaut]

Ukalegon

 

The ex-Lamenter stalked around the command centre, careful not to disturb the deceased. Hagga and his brothers, in the way of any astartes strike force, had turned the place into a charnel house. He eventually made his way amongst the wreckage and corpses to the dead Howling Griffon, seated in eternal vigil over his dismembered charges. The heaped mound of broken weapons and the faded banner of Hagga’s former chapter painted the picture of a defiant last stand, and a glorious death hard-bought.

 

"He must have accounted well for himself, eh Hagga? It is clear your kinsmen honoured his sacrifice. I should hope for such a death." 

 

Ukalegon continued past the dead astartes towards a cogitator bank, sheathed his chainsword and carefully laid its operator to the side. He depressed a key on the command terminal input and waited for the display to flicker to life.

 

"Now, what have we here…" 

Edited August 13 by Necronaut

[Machine God]

Kraggan:

 

Yes the power that leashed him into the triangle of torment had ceased. 

 

Although it seemed maybe a hairs breadth too late, the ceiling and walls had buckled to make this accursed cell his tomb.

 

Yet not for a man of his gifts, the rage of inaction propelled him out as he pulled the broken cell door off of its hinges by ferric lure. At the same time his mind stabbed into the remains of the noosphere to grab the prison layouts. A search for exit and weaponry. It was fortuitous that his potentia coil was at full power. 

 

The red ball bounced and bounded through a trio of PDF Guards faced off against a group of other convicts. Two of the guards he slew by slamming them repeatedly into each other by using their metallic possessions. The third he assaulted with his optical mechadendrite performing a violent colonic examination. 

 

Heedless of the other convicts he raced onwards, towards the Armoury that he had located on the plans. 

 

"Twenty Fours!" 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited August 11 by Machine God
Tidy-up

[Mazer Rackham]

Kraggan:

 

There comes a rejoinder, ribald with sibilant calls from half a dozen throats.

 

'Twenty-Fours!'

 

It is followed by hash, crude and carefree vulgarity, laughter and abandon. Perhaps it is even the case they don't care whose side you're on. Violence erupts as Judges, Serfs and Adepts are caught in running battles through the complex. Desperate struggle has given over to the bloody work of resistance as the black hand of the Blackheart begins to tighten its grip.

 

The hard bangs of bolt rounds soon follow - not the harsh crack-snap of a human sized weapon, but the clatter and boom of something bigger...

 

Ukalegon:

 

For a moment, there is nothing. The cogitator is suffering such power starvation, even the awoken cursor blinks at you in a surly manner. The gentle amber hue of the  text on-screen swims in a shiver of silver flickers and then dies out altogether with a petulant click as the screen goes off.

 

GM: You may make a Difficult (-10) Perception Test.

[Lysimachus]

Hagga:

 

In truth, Hagga hadn't been looking forward to this part.

 

The Howling Griffons had been spread out across the Khymara system, and only a handful of their Astartes had actually been present to defend this particular listening post. The rest had been Chapter serfs and auxiliaries.

 

Brother-Adjunct Sabin Andillo had been their commander.

 

Hagga remembered fighting his way into this final sanctum, his brothers of the 5th Company around him. It had taken only a matter of minutes to tear through the mortal defenders, but Sabin had fought back mightily. That golden hilt had flashed and shone as he battled, cutting down Brother Garn in what seemed like a heartbeat. Old Sergeant Kutha had fallen too. The veteran's battered chain-axe had pride of place atop the pile of trophies that now surrounded Andillo's corpse.

 

Hagga had got there just in time to parry away a strike that would have taken Jayr's leg. Then he and Sabin had traded blows for more than a minute, two swordsmen testing one another's strengths, skills and reflexes. It had ended when Hagga crashed the greater weight of his powered claymore against Andillo's blade, shattering the point and sending fracture lines like forked lightning down towards the hilt.

 

Hagga remembered the only words they ever shared.

 

“Yield, Griffon, and stand aside,” he'd offered gruffly as he pointed his long blade at the defeated warrior, “and you'll live.”

 

Andillo had raised the broken, useless sword in equally pointless defiance.

 

“My name is Sabin Andillo, traitor, and I spit on your offer of quarter.”

 

He'd darted forward then, to attack with the jagged edge of what was left of his sword. Hagga had reacted immediately, batting the shortened weapon aside long before it could reach him. Instinctively he'd followed up with a counterattack, a straight thrust that lanced forward and just slightly upward between the lower lip of his opponent's breastplate and the top of his abdominal plate. The width of the powered blade and the strength of Hagga's arm made it a killing blow, cutting deep into both hearts. Then they'd stood for a moment, MkVI helm staring into MkVII until the Griffon exhaled his final breath and his last, whispered words.

 

“Emperor damn you…”

 

It had been Hagga's first kill of the Badab War... and not his last. He looked down at the seated warrior.

 

Maybe He did...

 

Then the Lamenter began playing with one of the cogitators. Hagga gave himself a mental shake and forced his attention back where it belonged.

 

 

Edited August 11 by Lysimachus

[Necronaut]

Ukalegon

 

The Executioner offered no response, perhaps lost in thought or reliving old memories from the War. No matter, something had caught his eye in the brief moments the terminal had sputtered to life and then winked out again.

 

 

Perception Test:

Per39 + 10 (autosenses) + 10 (heightened senses: sight) -10 = 49

D100: 35; 2 DoS

Edited August 11 by Necronaut
Corrected difficulty modifier

[Mazer Rackham]

Ukalegon:

 

You notice in the tangle of conduits and fibre-bundles a loose, armoured, power cable. It appears to have a STC interface jack which is compliant with a myriad of sockets on the cogitator bank. Others leading into the bank have frayed or cut. It could be that some trial and error may allow for the requisite machine spirit fodder to manifest the secreted comms data.

 

GM: No Tech Use needed here, it's a plug. Perception is satisfactory. Don't get 4 or more DoF. This would be bad.

[Necronaut]

Ukalegon

 

Perception Test:

Per39 + 10 (autosenses) + 10 (heightened senses: sight) = 59

D100: 07; 6 DoS

Edited August 11 by Necronaut

[Machine God]

Kraggan

 

Buoyed on by the chants he raced forwards to the armoury, lest he found it looted.

 

The prison plans he'd uploaded showed it to be close, he barged into some cowering Judges.

 

"Get up Biter Dogs!"

 

One he slew with a punch and his extended data-spike which released a jet of blood as he withdrew it.

 

"He cares not from where it flows!" he laughed.

 

He grabbed the other as a meat-shield as he charged through the hail of a stuttering kill-crazy heavy bolter sentry, then ducked around a corner.

 

The armoury however lay in the direction of the intense fighting and the reports of hard bolter explosions.

 

Still he surged forwards purposefully, no cowards death awaited he. He followed the powerful path of might, that hate that tempered logic, As he got closer it was as if he could hear his power axe sing to him. It had after a fashion, he found the door ajar and two convicts were wrestling his axe from the weapon rack.

 

The convicts had caused the machine spirit of his power axe to emit an alarm klaxon. He dove through the door knocking over the squabbling convicts, as he stood up he used ferric lure to retrieve his power axe and he shut off the alarm. 

 

It was at that moment that a large shadow blocked out the light behind him.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited August 12 by Machine God
Tidy-up

[Mazer Rackham]

Hagga:

 

As you stare at the dead warrior, a thought slithers into the base of your spine, crawling up the knotted muscle and rugged cartilage with gentle, arachnid feet until it drops around the back of your skull, bony fingers from a disembodied hand scraping at the plasteel covering your pate.

 

What grieves you traitor?

 

What doom haunts your heart more? That you kill; or kill not?

 

You can hear the moist lips speaking, as though right by your flesh ear, as if you were not armoured for battle, gird by thick laminate.

 

Ukalegon:

 

Your efforts are not in vain. Finding the right jack and sockets, you manage to restore power to the cogitator. It fires up with more vigour, although it still seems mired in resentment, like a human adept manning a reception desk, who cannot attend a beautician's appointment because you have turned up.

 

>Input Query?

 

Kraggan:

 

The shadow spills from a hulk of a man, a towering sprawl of wargear and adornment. His raiment is such that it evokes the hint of Ancient Norsca, draped in ragged pelts and battle-scarred armour of strange grey-blue hues. The stark red crosses of his kin are absent, but are judiciously complementary where the clawed hands stand upon his shoulders. His laughter is readily given, a deep bass rumble of icy floes crunching together under a a skein of frost.

 

+Ha! What have we here? A Gearguts? Well met!+

 

The Space Marine slams his chainsword into the chest of a particularly energetic Twenty-Four, laying him open.

 

+Stop, you swine! All herein belongs to Lord Huron.+ He points his chainsword at you, bloody feast still ripe on the serrated teeth. +Get to the landers. Five minutes. Take these lusty louts with you!+

 

He smacks the flat of the blade against a man's backside and sends him sprawling from the armoury, capering which only elicits more laughter from the giant.

[Lysimachus]

Hagga:

 

Hagga almost turned around to look for the speaker, but he knew they were alone. What in hell was happening in this ill-omened place?

 

Besides, the spectral voice asked meaningless questions. He was a killer. It was what he had been made for. It was what Sabin had been made for too, regardless of whether the Griffons tried to put a nobler sounding skin over it than the Executioners did. They'd fought, he'd lost, Hagga had won. Simple.

 

Had he though? Had he won? Was Andillo better off? Would Hagga Rykaz receive the same kind of honour when he finally fell?

 

The thought was… uncomfortable. Hagga muttered a Stygian curse-word under his breath.

 

Get your damn mind back on the job, fool.

 

He looked over Ukalegon's shoulder and spoke brusquely.

 

“Apologies for silence, meant no dishonour. Try ‘Prisoner transfer transcripts’?”

 

 

[Machine God]

Kraggan:

 

"Gearguts you say" answered Kraggan. "You the eight foot tall immortal with two hearts, a fused rib-cage and the ability to spit acid at his foes!"

 

"Well met indeed, Reaver!"

 

 

With a practised swing he decapitated the wounded Twenty-Four. "Killing is his way, torment and torture isn't! That's the only mercy you get as your brain-case now adorns his throne."

 

"Twenty-Fours, we march for Lord Huron now" he shouted as he rushed past the Astartes giant. "To the Landers, tis the only way off of this rock! Come on ye hearties, or do you wish to experience Ursula's Kiss once more."

 

 

"Twenty-Fours!"

 

 

 

 

 

[Mazer Rackham]

Kraggan:

 

The group rush headlong behind you, shooting and shouting wildly. As they do so a bellow from the rear as the severed head you recently cut bounces off the wall.

 

+Nine feet tall, you irreverent, municipal conglomerate of scrap iron!+

 

The giant continues to laugh before you hear him admonish the men around him, well-armed and equipped, he berates their sluggard ways and begins to heap crates into their arms, and pallettes.  It is not long until a loader passes you. Across the block, you can see more Space Marines herding frightened and morose mortals into groups by what seems to be fitness or fighting spirit.

 

It is a mystery what fate will become them - slaves, pit-fodder, or sacrifice.

[A.T.]

Xerxes

 

Atop the outer compound now, amongst the pipes and conduits normally buried but here held aloft out of reach of any who would burrow to freedom. Only the watch towers stood taller and they had been the first targets of the sporadic weapons fire while the rest of the defenders moved lower into heavier cover where they would be less exposed to crossfire and improvised projectiles.

 

Most of the mob below flowed like water either blindly rushing towards the gates or dragged along with the rest, those few that pushed against the throng more likely fleeing than enacting any true plan while those who stood tall without succumbing to the wave of humanity likely thought themselves leaders. Targets of opportunity should the defenders think anyone had true control over this madness.

 

Somewhere here though, somewhere near, a faint signal called to him. His axe, his key, hubris to think that he would not come for it.

[Xin Ceithan]

The dead were everywhere. 

 

Or to be more precise, what remained of them. 

 

There was something disturbingly …beautiful …about it, Cyrandras thought as he made his way deeper into the ruins. 

He’d further followed the un-smear left by the emotional detritus of this past atrocity across the lunar wastes into the actual location of the former listening post until he’d happened unto a breach in it’s outer shell where something huge and angular had forced itself inside back then and thus provided an easy way of ingress even for something the size of an Astartes. 
 

For a moment, the Warlock watched as slices of light speared  through drifting clouds of pulverized rockcrete and armaplast he’d just disturbed, breaking upon veins of crystallized sprays of blood,  casting ever changing patterns around them. The remains of the slain lazily slump-drifted around him, caught in the glacial memory of the final movements. Unbidden, it called up a fragment of something from his past, somewhere long forgotten, of dancers performing under the fake stars of vast dome, held up by cunningly placed fields of counter-grav. He could almost make out the song…

 

He blinked the memory away angrily, focussing  on the present as Bhael-Four drifted by, it’s  whisper-song cutting through  the melody from his memory just as surely as it cut through the mirror-echo wails which remained of those who’d been cut down here by the Executioners. These mourners had been barely audible out in the wastes, but here, at the site of the battle, the aetheric shadow cast by those suffering through their final moments, they were becoming more and more pronounced. 
 

But there was something else. Something else… as if they’d been already been disturbed. More recently. Something familiar…

 

He was obviously on the right track. 

 

Cyrandras took a moment and watched  as the Servo Skull prowled around. On one hand, he knew that it was  just following its imprinted rituals, passive augurs scanning through the wreckage. But, especially in moments like this, the thingseemed  much more … eager.. to sift through the wreckage, as if drinking in the reflections of pain and misery around them. As he watched, Bhael -Four bumped into the frayed ruined of the robed torso of some hapless adept cut in half by whatever had ploughed through the chamber, which sent the frozen carcass spinning. Gleefully, Bhael-Four bobbed up and down, then  bumped into the wrecked torso again, watching it increase its spin…

 

Something shrieked from the other side of the veil. 

 

Bhael-Four zigged away, evoking a sense of feeling positively smug about itself.

 

~ Cut it out~ 

 

The Warlock canted the thought at the mischievous servo-skull and began making his way towards the looming gap leading deeper into the listening post. 

 

~ I dare say Lord Blackheart didn’t sent us here just so you can have some fun with the locals. And you know how he gets when things aren’t going his way… Now, cut it out and help me find what  we are looking for ~ 

 

Bhael-Four halted, seemingly annoyed. He remained stationary for a moment.

Then, with a burst of counter- grabs, he bumped into the wrecked adept again, driving it into a collision with another corpse.

 

There was another echo-shriek.

 

Satisfied, the  Servo-Skull turned and picked up speed, darting ahead.

 

Inside his helmet, Chrandras rolled his eyes and followed it into the darkness

[Necronaut]

Ukalegon

 

The ex-Lamenter nodded in agreement with Hagga’s suggestion.

 

"Prisoner Transfer Receipts, machine." 

 

He drummed his fingers on the desk impatiently while the cogitator processed his command and looked about uneasily.

 

"Be vigilant, Executioner. I know not how many lives I have left in me, and I do not wish to start counting higher,"  he said with a hint of amusement or maybe gallows humour.

Edited August 13 by Necronaut

[Lysimachus]

Hagga:

 

Rykaz grinned suddenly beneath his beaked helm, pulled away from the grim memories that this place represented.

 

He'd always taken the Lamenters as their name suggested - gloomy and dour. This one, despite the ruinous state of his armour, seemed to actually have something of a sense of humour.

 

“Aye, one good death should be enough for any man,” he replied, “More than that is just greedy.”

 

With a low, earthy chuckle, Hagga deactivated and sheathed his claymore and turned away to stand guard at the only entrance to the chamber.

 

He stepped out into the prefabricated corridor… and immediately stepped back into the cover of the doorway, his plasma pistol raised and ready to fire, the actinic pink-purple of its coils blazing in the darkness.

 

That had been movement, he was certain. Something small. Floating?

 

“Contact,” he said calmly to Ukalegon, before addressing whatever had been moving towards them.

 

“You out there, identify yourself.”

 

 

[Mazer Rackham]

Xerxes:

 

The key, ironically, is behind a lock. Searching for the axe has led you to a well-contained Prison Arbites bunker armoury, guarded by a maniple of the Omnissiah, no doubt sheltering here from the wayward, following the same logic as yourself.

Far from the madding crowd.

 

Even though you share the common cause of technology, they startle as your shade goes forth, backing away from you. One threatens with a laspistol, but her hands shake, knuckles white where they grip the weapon. Sweat beads, and they shuffle back into an auxiliary office.

 

No, they are not the threat here, but the very complicated security layers keeping you from your prize stand defiant.

 

GM: You will require Three (3) Tech Use Tests of increasing Difficulty to open the bunker door and reclaim what is yours. There are a triskele of defence, and may be attempted in any order. Challenging (+0), Difficult (-10), and Hard (-20). If you fail, you may attempt again - however, it will take several moments to reset, which the authorities may benefit from. There are no other entrances or ducts immediately available. It is your will versus the challenge.

 

Ukalegon:

 

The cogitator does not respond via vox, instead giving you a data dump.

 

At first glance, it reads:

 

COMMUNICATIONS TRACKING:

1 XX93-BB47-FN11 CORRUPTED

2 DD45-M4D3-TT33 CORRUPTED

3 AK47-PP19-SG12 YOU ARE LOST

4 OI34-RU12-GGM8 YOU ARE CORRUPTED

5 SPG1-KK09-LK15 CORRUPTED

6 D34D-KI11-D00M CURSED.

 

When you blink and look again, all lines appear...normal...Line 4 changes to the following:

 

4 OI34-RU12-GG88 HOLOCRYSTAL IN DATA VAULT #114

 

Once this happens, every cogitator screen still intact explodes in sequence with a pistol-shot-pop, a rapid fire riot of blasting crystalline and phosphorescent dust in a storm across the comms centre.

 

GM: All players (Ukalegon/Hagga/Cyrandras) require an Easy (+20) Test (Either Willpower or Intelligence).

[Necronaut]

Ukalegon

 

Ukalegon snatched his gauntlet back reflexively as the bursting terminals showered him with glass and he jumped backwards while sweeping his infernus pistol around the chamber in search of a target. Were they under attack?! He needed to find the data vault!

 

Willpower Test +20:

WP46 + 20 = 66

D100: 50; 2 DoS