Campaign Diary: That which is made stronger - Concluded (Dec 4th)

[Delazar78 9]

This campaign diary is made of win wrapped in awesome.

Keep it coming!

[Raith 13]

And here we are again the concluding update to “That which is made stronger”. The final campaign session concluded two weeks ago but I have been too busy to properly write up the ending until now.

Despite this being an end there is still more to come, next year I will be beginning the next portion of my grand campaign that started with “What doesn’t kill you” this third part will most likely feature a new group of Acolytes though I hope some past ones will also continue, the next campaign will be called “The best laid plans of Xenos and Men” and should start up lat February in so stay tuned.

But for now enjoy this final update.

Act 2: Twilight
Sessions 27: Calixis Sector, Maccabeus Quintus 300.814.M41

In a surprisingly short time Atellus finished his ministrations to merge the machine spirits of his Auspex and the recovered Vox-unit dialling in upon the unit’s aetheric connection to its primary unit. The signal strength indicated its origin was in close proximity only an hours travel away at most.

While the Adept worked the rest of the group took the opportunity to rest briefly, while the waited Thorr ordered Sister Mira to contact Pontiff Mulcahy and the riot suppression forces and update them on the group’s progress. With so much earth and machinery surrounding the underground water system the message was a one way signal without hope of acknowledgement or response.

Mira finished her report and the group shouldered their weaponry setting off following Atellus’s sensor returns winding a reasonably direct route through the tunnels.

Just under an hour later Thorr called the group to a halt, for several minutes the sounds of a large gathering of people had filtered down the storm-water system. People called out in fear and despair which echoed of the metal and stone floors. The tunnel ahead split at east and west of the group’s position and with a quiet whisper the ex-guardsman summoned Jaleth.

After a brief conference the Assassin moved off to the east while Thorr hurried down the west tunnel, the rest of the group secured the meeting point as best they could, carefully taking up firing positions.

The eastern passage soon veered left and Jaleth found himself running past a number of smaller openings, too small for a person to easily pass through until he came upon a large opening formed from a broken pressure door leading into a cavernous room. The door opened to a rockcrete landing, wide steps descended to the floor of the room which appear to have once been a vast water storage tank but was now flooded with hundreds of people.

The milling crowd was made up of a variety of people dressed in a wide array of clothing from simple rags to complex gowns and elegant coats. A quick estimate tallied near five hundred individuals a third of which bore the strange xenos-insects upon their brow with another three hundred simply standing about in a mindless fugue. The remainder were making most of the noise the group had heard, in a crowded cage of crudely wielded steel and mesh a hundred people screamed and cursed ranting and demanding freedom from unresponsive guards.

At the far end of the room from the landing Jaleth could see a set of cogitator banks had been installed, a quartet of figures moved about a makeshift stage, the Assassin quickly identified two of the men, the first being Frederin Smam the Executive Officer of the Void-ship “Humanities Path” who had met the acolytes prior to the vessels sudden death. The other was the unnamed psyker last seen aboard that same vessel in the company of Alfredo Telequarin.

In addition to the two men a third person, clearly an Astropath was strung up on a simple crucifix of metal, his wrists and ankles bound by hexagonal clamps and his body hooked up with invasive tubes. The figures head lolled about in delirium apparently an unwilling participant in the activities.

The final man was unknown to the Assassin and kept his head down, gaze focused on the various consols spitting out data and the biological material being pumped into the astropath via dialysis machines and blood transfusers.

Watching over the men stood two tall figures concealed beneath black robes. Recognizing the Xeons-tech monstrosities Jaleth quickly retreated as his five minutes of scouting time was almost up.

Thorr and Jaleth returned to the meeting point and quickly sketched out what they had seen. Given their previous experience with the Xenos-possessed the group hashed out a rough plan. Thorr and Magnus would take the eastern tunnel Jaleth had seen a secondary entrance to the storage tank further along that side. The access would lead almost directly onto the stage where the heretics worked.

In order to distract the vast horde of Possessed, Mira, Cimbria and Diona would move out onto the landing the Assassin had scouted from. Mira would adopt an overwatch position with her Heavy Bolter while Cimbria and Diona would try to push a way into the gathered horde, they would try to cause as much damage as possible and attract all the attention away from the Noble and Guardsman.

In the meantime Jaleth would position himself in an old run-off pipe Thorr had found on his sweep. The pipe opened near the roof of the room and was an ideal point of concealment from which to snipe at those gathered on the dais, hopefully sewing even more confusion. It would be Jaleth’s first shot that would give the go signal. He was to try and dispatch the bound Astropath.

With a prayer for successes the Acolytes moved towards their position, as Magnus and Thorr slipped up to the secondary entrance point a wave of nausea spread over the acolytes around the room the Acolytes could feel an influence press against their mind the psychic dampeners given to them earlier by Thorr indicated their activation for the Acolytes and the sheer determination of the Adepta Sororitas kept them on their feat. Only Magnus fell to his knees as the world seemed to fall away suddenly, the mission, his life, the Imperium and his faith all seemed so remote and unimportant.

Hoping that Jaleth would swiftly react to the sudden psychic assault Thorr readied himself to breach the room when a pair of red robed figures almost seven foot tall swept into the room and onto the raised stage where the heretics worked. For a moment it looked as though the newcomers where priests of the machine god but they moved with a strange fluidity and unnamed purpose which instantly alarmed the group gathered on the stage. In response the two black robed guardians moved to intercept the figures in red.

Barely acknowledging the closing threat one of the two red robed strangers drifted to the front of the stage and stared out at the milling horde of possessed a baleful red glow spread from beneath its hood and Jaleth caught sight of the figures hidden mechanical nature. While the first appeared to simply gaze at the mass of humanity the second moved towards the black robed figures interrupting their approach.

Frederin called out an order to his allies and the first of the Black Robed Xenos creations threw off its robes deploying a quartet of power-blade weapon limbs, it floated towards the nearest intruder which simply stood its ground a moment before similarly doffing its robes revealing an almost identical machine equipped with a pair of similar blades as well as a pair of the plasma-lances limbs the acolytes had fallen to on Palind.

The Xenos machines halted an arms length apart, the blades of each raised high but not descending, the firing ports of weapons glowing but not firing, an unnerving stillness settled on the machines as a ripple of discord spread across the crowd of victims gathered in the room.

Beneath the drugs and chemical inebriants the crucified psyker suddenly groaned than the field of energy assailing the Acolytes wavered and vanished, freeing Magnus from his illusion with such shocking speed his body trembled in terrible ecstasy. The glowing eye of the Xenos creation staring at the horde of possessed glowed with renewed brightness and as one the people marked by the strange bugs suddenly turned towards those in the fugue-like state and started to rend them apart with bare hands, teeth or whatever weaponry they possessed.

In response a painful cry escaped the lips of the bound Astropath and a moment later the mindless men and women retaliated, their superior numbers making up for the difference in strength. Not wanting to loose any advantage Jaleth took aim, not at the Astropath but at the unnamed psyker from the Humanities Path the hunting rifle bucked in his hands and for a moment it looked like the shot was a success until the Psyker took a single step backwards somehow sensing the bullet coming despite the sudden commotion.

With the signal made and the dreamlike fugue effect on Magnus over the priest and Thorr stepped into the room, the multi-limbed guardsman primed a pair of his plasma pistols for maximum and fired that the remaining black robed machine, the sun-fire disintegrating its concealing clothes and badly damaging one of its weapon limbs while the priest hurried forward regretting giving his flamer to Cimbria but deciding that it would be best to try an capture a prisoner rather than face the Xeno-tech abominations in hand to hand.

Following their orders the Sisters of Battle took up position and began to fire indiscriminately into the mobs of possessed the one-human bodies bludgeoned by heavy calibre bolter fire, those that survived found themselves immolated by promethium fuelled fire or cut down by Diona’s bolter as she kept her meltagun in reserve ready to deal with any of the Xenos machines should they turn in their direction.

Again and again Jaleth fired at the unnamed psyker but each bullet was dodged before it even left the barrel of his rifle. The unnatural skill infuriated the Assassin who quickly changed tactics returning his gun towards his original target and with a smooth action Jaleth sunk a bullet into the skull of the Astropath.

The change was immediate, all those men and women drugged on Twilight ceased fighting as did the Xenos-possessed. The Xenos-tech armed with plasma weaponry suddenly opened fire its cannons demolishing its unmoving opponent almost at the same time as Thorr burned his way through the chest of his adversary.

The chaos had afforded Magnus enough cover to make his way across the platform and over towards the unnamed technician who had abandoned his duties to cover behind an overturned table, his attempt to capture the whimpering man was thwarted as the now unoccupied floating Xenos-Tech advanced on the heretic its upper blade limbs flashing in a trio of cuts severing the screaming mans arms and slicing his torso and head clean in two.

With the first heretic down Magnus headed towards Frederin instead, the Cammander drew his sidearm an ornate laspistol of Archeotech design, taking aim he fired off several shots at the charging priest who let his armour take the blasts until he was close enough to tackle the former XO.

Without a mind opposing its own the red robed Xenos-Tech focused its attention upon the crowd, ingnoring the brutality occurring around it, one by one and then in droves the crowd quieted, the fighting ceased and as one the massed crowd turned to face the stage and the Sisters of Battle in the midst.

As the possessed horde swarmed the Sisters of Battle and rushed towards the raised stage the last robed Xeno-Tech turned to address the conflict behind it, its robe slipped from its body revealing a new form of Abomination, it lacked the smaller manipulator arms of its companions and upon its back hung four large curved blades hanging like some form of metal cloak.

With a whir of releasing clasps the four blades detached from the machines back rising to hover a shoulder height in defiance of gravity. The blades revolved around the Xenos-Tech like the orbit of a moon for several long moments as the machine selected a opponent. Without pausing the four blades flashed across the stage striking at Thorr before he could turn his pistols on another target.

The Inquisitors aide parried the oncoming blades using the metal of his master-crafted arms to take the blows but even the machine-god-blessed implants suffered beneath the attack as one blade sheered straight through the guardsman’s wrist. Despite the loss of a hand and a light injury to his thigh from another blade Thorr brought up his remaining guns, flipped them to maximal and fired, the ferocious energies punched into his opponent but the Xenos-Tech simply took the shots with little more than some blackened armour to indicate it had been struck.

Seeing Thorr under assault Diona pressed forward into the horde, unlimbering her meltagun she struggled to close to firing range while Jaleth crawled from the ancient overflow pipe and clambered up into scaffolding and beams near the room’s roof. The Assassin drew his boltpistols and quickly scurried along the beams positioning himself above Thorr’s attacker and firing straight down.

A shadow passed over Magnus as he struggled with Frederin trying to forcing the voidsman to the ground and into a submission hold, glancing up the priest saw the flash of a metal blade and rolled to the side, Frederin screamed as the blade retracted seeing the floating Xenos-tech hovering above him its plasma cannons still smouldering from blasting the unnamed psyker to bits a moment earlier. The alien machine swept its blades down again at the man quickly stopped screaming as blood poured from his head.

Scrambling Magnus could do little other than dodge the swift strikes from the Xeno-Tech’s blades. As the priest quickly back-pedalled away from his opponent the sustained fire from Mira, Jaleth and the injured Thorr finally brought down the new variation of Xenos-Tech.

With the tide of battle apparently in their favour the group sighted in on the final machine blasting it apart in a final barrage only to find that the destruction of the previous entity had triggered a surge of chaos among the corrupted horde, they no longer moved with a mindless purpose but torn into each other with renewed violence or charged at the exhausted Acolytes and their Sororitas allies.

Hip deep in the horde Cimbria and Diona were quickly overwhelmed and dragged down their power armoured ripped apart until the possessed could get at the women inside.

Thorr quickly ordered a retreat, there was no way they could stand before the tide of possessed, they would return later. Dragging the injured and firing over their shoulders the Acolytes retreated past sister Mira’s position, the Sororitas had abandoned her heavy bolter which had spent its last rounds and was falling back using her bolter and then pistol and knife.

The running withdrawal raced back down the storm water tunnels with the Xenos-possessed following close behind, ducking around a blind corner a harsh voice yelled out a command and the metallic clatter of weapon being armed forced the Acolytes to dive to the ground, a moment ahead of a massive barrage of fire. Advancing a step at a time a full squad of Sororitas marched down the tunnel firing above the prone acolytes and gunning down their pursuers.

For the next two hours three units of Adepta Sororitas moved through the tunnels gunning down any opposition and resecuring the heretics lair allowing the Acolytes to return, the earlier message from Sister Mira had encouraged the Pontiff to send in reinforcements and new reports indicated a sudden chaos within the possessed attacker on the surface giving the defenders a chance to push them back and secure vast portions of the beleaguered city.

In the aftermath of the Sister assault the Acolytes returned to the heretics lair, much of the equipment had been damage in the conflict but Thorr was already calling for Tech-Adepts to be sent to catalogue and identify the technologies and decrypt the data. Whatever had happened in the room it was clearly an important step in the heretic’s plans and the information derived from the cogitator units and logic engines would be invaluable to Inquisitor Thrakis’s investigation.

As the acolytes help examine the rooms contents Magnus looked over the body of Frederin to his surprise the man still lived the vicious wound in his head bloody but no fatal, quickly the priest secured the prisoner and summoned a Medic, the man would survive to answer some questions…

+++++

A squeal of metal heralded the arrival of a new questioner, for a moment Frederin blinked a light fell through the open hatch casting the visitor in shadow. At a half heard command fluorescent illuminators flickered on inside the empty room caused the voids-man to squeeze his eyes shut. He had been in the cell for a week, before that he had been in a medicae facility uncounscious from a several head injury.  Once recovered enough he had been unceremoniously fragged to his new quarters.

As the commander of a void-ship Frederin knew he was aboard such a vessel now, probably a destroyer or similar class vessel, the lack of sub-audible rumbling in the deck plates told him the ship was most likely in orbit around a planet rather than underway. The “quarters” he had been placed in was an empty storage bay. Twenty meters square its sealable hatch providing a perfect cell. Originally Frederin had expected he would simply be locked in the vessels brig but that was before the questioning.

Eighteen times in the past weeks at irregular intervals a man with four metal arms had come to question him, twice more he had been subjected to deep mind scans by a haggard Astropath who reeked of scorched carbon and ozone from his barely concealed warp-powers, six times men had come to beat and cut his flesh, never questioning but stoically doing their duty. He had shed blood and tears, soiled himself and vomited his agony around the room, no one came to clean the mess it was a reminder to Frederin of how little his life was now worth to his captors.

Swallowing dryly Frederin raised his head to gaze at the visitor, again it was the man with metal arms, he had four limbs two protruding from each shoulder, one of his cybernetic limbs was missing its hand, a sleeveless long-coat clung to him, he was a big man, tough, gritty, a killer, just as the Imperial Guard likes them, but he never inflicted any pain directly, he simply asked questions or demanded answers for hours on end.

Frederin tried to speak, his throat so raw after the purgative given to him a hour before. Again he swallowed dryly before managing a week noise.

“You… again?” the ex-executive officer almost choked on the words. Thorr stood in the doorway for another moment as a pair of ships crew hurried into the room with a pair of chairs and a collapsible trestle table.

The Ratings blanched at the smell but hurried to fasten the chairs to the floor, affixing the table between the two before man-handling Frederin into one of the chairs and locking the restraints about his wrists and ankle. Thorr sat down as the men raced from the room.

“Good Morning.” The ex-guardsman spoke levelly pulling out a battered notepad and a pencil. “Before we begin you will provide me with some information.”

Frederin tried to move his hands to cover his ears, knowing what was going to come next, those same questions spoken over and over is such a disinterested voice.

“Do you have any allergies or illnesses I need to be aware of?”

“Are you currently on any medication?”

“Do you have any problems with your heart?”

Thorr paused briefly after each question quietly awaiting a response before continuing.

“You will answer any questions asked of you, resistance will bring punishment and cooperation will bring relief.”

Again there was a pause this one long enough for the man’s voice to finish echoing about the steel walled room before Thorr spoke once more.

“Do you have any allergies I should be aware of…”

Frederin began to weep.

+++++

- Raith

postscript 1: Sorry Delazr 78 but it looks like you'll have to wait a bit before anymore entries.

Delazar78 said:

 

This campaign diary is made of win wrapped in awesome.

Keep it coming!