A single-use bailout? Bah! We're favoured by the dark gods.
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- Sep 25, 2012
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B. It's going to be a long slog getting off this shithole, better to get as much mileage out of our sacrifice as possible.
B. Vision of strength. We need all we can get.
There is muchhappening in this thread.
I vote for B, we will need as much help as we can escaping from this wretched place.
what's a little heresy between friends? Or even with a few brothers?
(also I totally missed your vote when I posted the update yesterday)
Andnjord
Arcane
what's a little heresy between friends? Or even with a few brothers?
hello friend
Arcane
B
Thanks for all the votes
Temporary tally:
A) Vision of Victory
Andnjord, Endemic, Baltika9
B) Vision of Strength
Azira, ERYFKRAD, vazha, Kalarion, Major_Blackhart, oscar, hello friend
I'll keep the vote open until the weekend
Temporary tally:
A) Vision of Victory
Andnjord, Endemic, Baltika9
B) Vision of Strength
Azira, ERYFKRAD, vazha, Kalarion, Major_Blackhart, oscar, hello friend
I'll keep the vote open until the weekend
Chapter 5: Wreck of the Mortis Ex Astra
Buoyed by the gift of the Dark Gods, you resume movement across the ship, this time toward the outside. While walking in silence, you contemplate how you received it: how you reached towards the vision promising strength, all the while continuing your prayers, declarations of faith, supplications and oaths to the Dark Gods, taking then from the Book of Lorgar. The moment you reached it, a multi-hued flash blinded you, accompanied by overpowering smells of ozone and burning metal. You felt as if you were flayed alive, each square centimetre of your skin torn away by the claws of ravenous predators and you fell on your knees with a grunt, before your skin tightened over your vast, transhuman frame, mutated by the energies of the warp as they course through you. Once you felt the transformation had run its course, you removed your helmet and saw that you skin had turned a dark grey colour, taking a leathery texture, less sensible to touch, more rigid, but adding another layer of protection against the myriad threats of the galaxy.
You cross pools of bilge water, spotting shapes furtively moving in the foul liquids, lighted by sparking electric conduits, move through rusted corridors and rooms which were already wrecked before the abrupt landing, until you reach the dorsal battery. This time you don't find more survivors, just the broken bodies of your crew and of a few boarders. The battery was home to macrocanons and their ammunition stowage, but thankfully most of the rounds had been spent in the months of intense combat of the Black Crusade, otherwise your ship might not had survived the crash. You find an exit through the mounting of a turret which had been blown off by a lance strike in orbit of the planet and make your first steps on the ground of Ripag's Watch.
You're standing on the flank of a steep valley, upon an incline of scree. The ridge to your right sports a titanic notch, where your ship had hit and broken through the rock face, leaving a trail of shattered rocks and blackened debris from there to your ship. Unlike the lush jungles of the septentrional continent where you had fought earlier in the campaign, before your botched retreat attempt, the land here is bare, slate-colored, rock with some hardy lichen.
The sky is crisscrossed by contrails from spaceships skimming the upper reaches of the atmosphere, various types of aircrafts and long-range missiles and debris falling and burning up in the atmosphere from the ongoing battle in orbit. The horizon is lined up with clouds of black smoke, the far away pounding of heavy artillery and closer gunfire can be heard. Despite the call for retreat, Ripag's Watch is still in the grip of conflict. Even with all the losses and your dire straits, such situation feels right, because as a space marine your true calling is war, endless and eternal and especially as Word Bearers, as the battlefield is the best place to preach the creed of the True Gods.
But your contemplations are interrupted when Zephus spots an Imperial Guard scouting party on a mud track below you. The group's composed of a sentinel followed by two light all-terrains vehicles covered in vox and auspex aerials. Around the vehicles are a few guards, observing the wreck. An instant later, the two groups jump into motion, the guards fearfully and the marines contemptuous of their enemies.
====✳====
Lacking any weapon with a range longer than a bolt pistol, you were forced to rush at the enemy under their desperate fire, with Frax's plate being cracked by the multi-laser mounted on the sentinel, burning the flesh beneath, though that didn't stop him from toppling the walker and smashing its driver. Zephus and you killed most of the rest of the party, though one of the vehicles got away. Standing next to the remaining vehicle, burning from a botched grenade throw by one of the guards.
Frax runs back towards you, coming from the ruined sentinel and pointing toward the fleeing vehicle:
"We have to go after them, before they warn any more of those dogs!"
"Considering their vox equipment, the emperor's lackeys already know we're here. But before we move forward, we need some intelligence on the situation on the ground." you says, before cracking open the skull of a dying guards and gobbling on the exposed brain matter, activating your omophagea with a though.
As you chew, a jumble of foreign memories, feelings and experiences jump at the forefront of your mind, but you quickly shift through them, discarding a lifetime of drudgery, recent impressment in the Imperial Guard and final moments of terror to keep only the relevant facts about your situation.
"Seems like they're coming from an Imperial Guard base not far in the mountain range, called Makrimalli." you explain, spitting bone fragments, "It seems it's closer to a muster and training camp than a fortress, but it still has an adequate garrison and few units are currently regrouping there, but I don't know if they've arrived or not, the wretch down here", you continue, nudging the cooling body at your feet "didn't paid much attention."
"The reinforcements already on their way will likely be rerouted to cordon off the ship. What else?" asks Zephus
"It also has an airfield which should have crafts able to reach orbit. Which would be our target."
"So we go there, grab a flier and fly to orbit. And then?"
"We board a ship in orbit, either one of ours or one of them and we continue from there." you answers Zephus, while wiping away the various body fluids dripping from mouth.
"The three of us against a full Imperial base? The Dark Gods will have to be with us if we're to get off that planet. Not that I'm seeing a better way."
"The Dark Gods ARE with us! The unbelievers shall fall, as we teach them the weakness of their false idols!" you declaim, while pondering how to reach the base.
The easiest way would be to follow the track taken by the scouting group you've confronted, but, according to visions offered by the omophagea, it takes the long way around the massif but it should arrive next to the airfield when you reach the base. A most direct route would be to cross the massif, across broken and difficult terrain. Lastly, you're hearing a firefight not far away in the mountains, not in the direction of the base, but it still could be worth investigating.
A) Cross the mountain range
B) Follow the road
C) Move towards the sound of fighting
AN: Didn't feel like writing the combat scene and since it wasn't that important, I didn't force myself it.
Andnjord
Arcane
That's cool, it reinforces just how casualy the traitor marines see the killing of a few humans.
I'm voting for A, the
I thought about voting for C, but we are in a hurry to leave the crash site, and if we were to find more allies it would make sneaking around the planet harder than it would be for a small trio.
Edited to clarify my reasoning.
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Well, the more time you spend on the planet, the more soldiers there's going to be around the crash site and in the base. For example if you had left the ship more quickly, you wouldn't have met the scouting party outside (or see it coming and could have avoided fighting it). I think I should have been more explicit about that.
A. Recruits and random IG shouldn't be any problem when confronted by three Legionnaires who will undoubtedly come up with a cunning plan (that cannot fail!) once we get there.
Andnjord
Arcane
Actually, I feel like you shouldn't have told us that at all. This is the sort of thing that us, the players, should be able to figure out on our own, especially since it's something that's so intuitive and logical to the setting.
C. Press gang survivors, force them to kill one another until only a handful remain, and use them as your newest recruits.
Maybe. I'm really not sure whether I'm giving enough information or not. Well, now the cat's out of the bag and you'll be able to take that into consideration
A) Cross the mountain range
Andnjord, Kalarion, oscar, Azira, Endemic
B) Follow the road
ERYFKRAD (B>c), Baltika9
C) Move towards the sound of fighting
Major_Blackhart, vazha, Hello Friend
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