Escape From Ripag's Watch - A chaos Space Marine Quest

[Azira]

I'll go with the simple B

 

[ERYFKRAD]

B or hello friend's D.

 

[baud]

so the vote's a little wonky, but for now Hello Friend's idea is in the lead by one vote

 

[Kalarion]

Let's widen the lead, D.

 

[oscar]

B. Procrus seems the subtle, understated type.

 

[ItsChon]

B. Procrus seems the subtle, understated type.

The D choice that hello friend stated features armor that isn't really too gauche or overstated. Considering Procrus's devout nature, I can totally see him inscribing a ton of Chaos runes. It's important to note that Procrus has grey, leathery skin, which is one of our resistances that we received from the Chaos gods in the begging of the CHYOA. We received the boon because we decided to sacrifice one of our allies to the Chaos gods. I can totally see someone that gung-ho going a little overboard with the Chaotic liturgy.

 

[vazha]

B!

 

[Andnjord]

And I shall cast my vote for...D!

 

[Major_Blackhart]

D.

 

[baud]

Thank you for all the votes!
Procrus is now the owner of unadorned, bare and functional armour but festooned with all manner of proscribed texts

Next update will be up momentarily

 

[baud]

Part VI: In the company of traitors

You relish at the sensations that course through you as the ship makes its translation into the Warp, hearing capering deamons who roams around the ship, trying to find a chinks in its protective field to enter and wreak havoc. Or maybe it's in anticipation of what is going to happen? The parchments bearing the holy Words of Lorgar nailed to your armour flutter from an unseen storm and through your clasped hands, you feel your new recruit briefly convulsing from the effects she must be feeling as well.
A few parlour tricks and some easy rethorics had been enough to bring her aboard, though it had taken some preparation, stealing more information and even abducting and interrogating one of the crewmembers serving the junior officers, but it had been time well spent, what you had gathered making it easy to find the right words to convince her. She'd need some manoeuvring in the future and the fact that she doesn't seem ready to embrace the Dark Gods saddens you a little, but you're sure she'll come around to it and at the moment, her collaboration is more important than the correctness of her beliefs.

You let her go, noting how she carefully move her arm to avoid splashing blood on her uniform, before quickly dressing the wound with a rag; yours meanwhile has already stopped bleeding, your transhuman gifts easily sealing the slash.

"You should go back to finish your shift, we'll meet afterwards to plan."

"The summon I received from my superior…"

"Was a fake we've made, yes." You answer before she finishes asking.

"Understood. So I guess that you're not ready to take over the ship just yet?"

"Yes. But now with your collaboration, any plan that we might have had would have been redrawn anyway." You shrug. "Do you know of a place where we could meet discreetly?"

"Yes. There's a power converter below our quarters, you must have seen it if you skulked around there" at your assent, she continues "Let's meet in its maintenance room in two hours, no two and a half, that'd leave me some time to grab a few files."

"Understood. Now may the blessing of the Dark Gods descend upon you, as you walk under their gaze."

Just as she disappear behind the door, you turn towards Zephus

"Shadow her. If she betrays our presence, you know what to do."

"Yes." He answers, while idly inspecting the edge of one of his knives.

"In either case, we'll meet at the rendez-vous point she gave us. May the Changer give you cunning and the Corruptor speed."

After hearing your blessing, he leaves, falling into a crawlspace to follow his quarry. As you turn towards Frax, he asks "You don't trust her?"

"I trust her enough, she wouldn't have left if it wasn't the case. But some paranoia goes a long way in keeping our hides intact."

====✳====​

Three hours after Warp translation, you are in the maintenance room, the four of you around an empty crate strewn with dataslates and pieces of papers bearing lists, maps, charts, timetable and more, some written by you or the other space marines, taken from the crew or brought by Lupa.

"...So no, I didn't know about the servitors, keeping the lower decks rabble under control isn't something I had been ordered to deal with so far." finishes to explain Lupa.

"Good thing you went and met those mutants, Procrus. Running blind into those things would have been bad." says Frax

"Yes. But that might not be the last surprise the ship has in store for us." turning towards Lupa, you ask her "Going back to something you said earlier, all astropaths on board are out of action?"

"Dead meat, more like. It happened earlier as we were leaving for Subiaco Diablo, I'm not in the know of what is supposed to have happened to them, but scuttlebutt said that the aftermath was a bloody mess and the choir room's been sealed awaiting reconsecration."

"That's one less thing to worry about. So now that we're in the Warp and they can't turn back or call for help, we'll start recruiting among the common crewmembers, with an eye on rising up within ten days. But while I'll focus on that, you'll have time to do your own actions, now directly, not just information gathering."

"Like assassination or sabotage? Good. After all that crawling around, I itch for some action." hisses Frax.

"Same. Though when the fighting starts in earnest, you'll have your fill of violence anyway." Points out Zephus. "But we'll have to stay discreet, as much as you want to spill blood. If the crew realise we're onboard…

"Yes, in case of discovery, we'd have to start the takeover early and it would be a mess, to say the least. We'll have to try to find a balance between preparation and staying under the auspex." Then you turn towards Lupa: " Some of the officers and among your subordinates might follow you in our takeover?"

"There are a few that I should be able to convince. Some would follow out of personal loyalty. Some out of hatred and lust for violence." she answers, checking a list of names scrawled on the back of a work order.

"You'd have to make sure they can stay quiet until we strike."

"That'd take me some time before I can get them onboard anyway, but I'll do what I can. On that matter, I am having an idea: instead of joining you in fighting to take control of strategic points throughout the ship, I could strike at the bridge right from the start: with the other officers we'd take position there or just next to it." As she speaks, Lupa points to the location on the map "That way we'll be able to take out one of the main strategic locations and potential nexus of resistance. We'd strike before they have any chance of locking down the access and that'd prevent the command crew from coordinating against our attack."

"Could be good, don't you think, Procrus? Cutting the head of the snake right from the start." asks Frax

"There's more than one snake on this ship, we'll also have to deal at the very least with the Inquisition contingent, the Sororitas and quite likely the cog-heads before we can consider the ship ours." you point out. "And that means Lupa and anyone you can recruit wouldn't help us in the other fights across the ship, especially your group is likely the only fighters we can get who are going to be correctly armed and with a modicum of training."

"I'd say it's a fair trade." answers Lupa. "But that'd require more preparation, we'll need to move weapons and make sure we can all be there at the right time."

"Well, good thing we're here to discuss this, then. Now…"

So while Procrus will start recruiting in earnest among the crew, the rest of the group will have some time to prepare for the takeover. Choose as many as you want, but each will have a chance of randomly revealing your presence, so the more you do, the more likely you are to get discovered, which would be Bad.

A) insert heretical tracts in Ecclesiarchy broadcasts, to make recruiting easier
B) Help Lupa to prepare her coup on the bridge (otherwise she leads a group of loyal underling alongside the rest of your group)
C) Sabotage communication lines from the bridge
D) Sabotage murder servitors, so that they won't be used against you (can not be taken with takeover murder servitors)
E) take control of murder servitors and send them against a target of your choosing (can not be taken with sabotage murder servitors). Much more risky than just sabotage; choose target:
-E1 Bridge (only if Lupa isn't doing her coup)
-E2 Quarters of the Inquisition agents
-E3 The Sisters of Battle in the main temple
-E4 Enginarium
F) Steal weapons from armsmen, which would require to infiltrate one their stations
G) assassinate one or more of the junior officers you had selected as potential targets, even if you didn't spend that much time preparing for that:
-G1 Able Montsara, master at arms
-G2 Scythia Lethe, internal security ensign
-G3 Sigismund Gazer, slave pen lead enforcer
H) help the mutants to infiltrate out of the dark holds for a diversionary attack at the start of the takeover
… Write in (subject to my approval)

AN: So for this vote, I'll count the votes by groups of options, not individual options, if that makes any sense. So if there's votes ABC, BCF and ABC, I'll be counting two votes for ABC and one for BCF, not three for B, three for C and so on. I've seen this method called a vote by plan on other websites if you're familiar.

 

[hello friend]

CE2H

 

[Demo.Graph]

CE2H

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

Alright, how about we go Maximum Civil War on this?

I call it "Plan to Make Everyone Kill Each Other"
AE3G2

We increase Heresy on the ship. Send the Servitors against the Inquisition. Kill the Internal Security Ensign who would be the person who would likely stop our recruiting. Ship recruits will be more useful than diversionary mutant attack.
I want them to be killing each other the moment we start.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

We increase Heresy on the ship

Too overt, especially with Inkies onboard.
C is vital, no question.
We can take over the murder servitors, but I'm not sure they can't be overridden.
BCD is my call

 

[Kalarion]

ACF.

 

[Demo.Graph]

CE2H seems to be the winning option, but I'll write some propaganda.

What do we need for the coup to succeed, brothers?
According to the teachings of Word Bearer chaplain Lenin

a recognized expert in the art of revolutions, A, F and G are false goals since

masses would never be able to shake off the chains of the false emperor by themselves from within the system.

Moreover, the main goals for the military stage of the coup are

combining forces to ... capture and hold a) communications and b) logistical centers. ... Best forces should be targeted at ... centers of command and ideology.

So.
B is good, but the fighting might get protracted. Who knows what enemy might do given time. Doing C we ensure that command center is rendered harmless.
D and E are almost equal in effect. E is riskier, but potentially more effective. By doing E2 we should disable their main ideological center, leaving the masses without spiritual guidance. E1 is made redundant by C. E3 and E4 are of lesser priority than E2 (again, according to brother Lenin).
H assures that the most dangerous group, bolter bitches, should be occupied with purging our meatshields. It would give us time to take control of the ship. We'll deal with them later.

We would also likely need to take control of engineering section as to prevent a possible rerouting of the ship's course, but I'd say it's of secondary importance to destruction of command chain.

 

[ItsChon]

Here is my question, how effective will the murder servitors even be against the Inquisition agents? baud how many murder servitors can we send? If they will only serve as a momentary distraction, then perhaps it isn't worth the risk of potentially getting found out when we could just sabotage them with far less risk. Also, I'm shocked that no one has mentioned F yet. Without guns, how can we expect to mount an effective offensive against the guardsmen on the ship, much less the agents of the Inquisition/Sisters of Battle?

For now I will tentatively say,

CE2FH

 

[oscar]

ACDH

This isn't something we want to get too greedy on I suspect. A isn't as flashy as the rest but I do think we want some (relatively) normal people other than our mutants on-board with us too. Also Procrus happens to be rather good at it. C is utterly essential unless we do Lupa's coup or hack the servitors. D and H are strong options but I feel four actions should be our absolute max (maybe fewer if we go for any of the E-plans).

TBS's civil war plan is interesting but generally a coup works on being hard and fast. We also may not have the time for a protracted insurgency.

I think F is the only weak option here (is stealing a dozen lasguns gonna make a huge difference?) but recall that E has the risk factor of at least two other options.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

is stealing a dozen lasguns gonna make a huge difference?

Without flashlights, these dudes can't see in the dark.

 

[ItsChon]

What's going to happen if someone decides to remotely shut off the lights? Now we have a bunch of people that can't see shit, while the ships guardsmen will be able to use nightvision goggles and flashlights on their weapons to easily handle whoever we recruit. Will a few dozen lasguns make a huge difference? I think they most definitely will, as without the lasguns, how do we expect our recruits to deal any damage at all?

Can you confirm baud, what types of weapons our recruits will have if we don't raid the armory.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

flashlights on their weapons

Bro their weapon is the flashlight

 

[Major_Blackhart]

BDG1H

 

[baud]

Word Bearer chaplain Dark Apostle

FTFY

I do think we want some (relatively) normal people other than our mutants on-board with us too.

Procrus is already doing that, it's just that with this option Procus plans to have more of the 'nomal' crew population joining him on the takeover.

Here is my question, how effective will the murder servitors even be against the Inquisition agents? baud how many murder servitors can we send? If they will only serve as a momentary distraction, then perhaps it isn't worth the risk of potentially getting found out when we could just sabotage them with far less risk. Also, I'm shocked that no one has mentioned F yet. Without guns, how can we expect to mount an effective offensive against the guardsmen on the ship, much less the agents of the Inquisition/Sisters of Battle?

For now I will tentatively say,

CE2FH

the murder servitors will kill most of the combat capable Inquisitorial contingent and the survivors will be quite weakened. These things are nasty in close quarter combat, especially in the tight confines of a spaceship.

Can you confirm baud, what types of weapons our recruits will have if we don't raid the armory.

the weapons stolen by F (a mix of shotguns, autoguns and lasrifles) would be for all the cultists you'll recruit, who otherwise would be fighting with improvised weapons and whatever they can steal/scrounge around (so shivs, industrial equipment and a few stolen/smuggled hanguns). The three space marines (and Lupa's group) are already armed
But honestly Procrus is more counting on the number of converts to drown the armsmen/SoBs/Inquisition with bodies than their martial skills to win the day.

 

[baud]

well, that vote is pretty split

CE2H
hello friend, Demo.Graph

AE3G2
TBS

BCD
ERYFKRAD

ACF
Kalarion

CE2FH
ItsChon

ACDH
oscar

BDG1H
Major_Blackhart

I think I'll close the vote at the end of this week

and if there are thing that aren't clear, don't hesitate to ask more questions