Warhammer 40K RPG - Game Turns

Zounds

"To live is to sin, and to be a sinner is to be cleansed. Only the fiery wrath of the Emperor, as pronounced and executed by His mortal followers, can save humanity from destroying itself in a morass of carnal wantonness and tolerant servitude to those who have been corrupted. The Redemptionists will bring fire and they will bring death, and those who oppose them are sinners themselves for they shield the dark and unholy from the righteous works of the Redemptionists. Repent and join, or be cursed and die."

Argeus' voice came from his body once more, unusually clear and calm for him.


"To live is to sin, and to be a sinner is to be cleansed. Only the fiery wrath of the Emperor, as pronounced and executed by His mortal followers, can save humanity from destroying itself in a morass of carnal wantonness and tolerant servitude to those who have been corrupted. The Redemptionists will bring fire and they will bring death, and those who oppose them are sinners themselves for they shield the dark and unholy from the righteous works of the Redemptionists. Repent and join, or be cursed and die.

May the Emperor cleanse me of these abominations!


To live is to sin, and to be a sinner is to be cleansed. Only the fiery wrath of the Emperor, as pronounced and executed by His mortal followers, can save humanity from destroying itself in a morass of carnal wantonness and tolerant servitude to those who have been corrupted. The Redemptionists will bring fire and they will bring death, and those who oppose them are sinners themselves for they shield the dark and unholy from the righteous works of the Redemptionists. Repent and join, or be cursed and die.

May the Emperor cleanse me of these abominations!"

He knelt on the cold steel floor, chanting to the ether, his face a cast of grim determination.


"To live is to sin, and to be a sinner is to be cleansed. Only the fiery wrath of the Emperor, as pronounced and executed by His mortal followers, can save humanity from destroying itself in a morass of carnal wantonness and tolerant servitude to those who have been corrupted. The Redemptionists will bring fire and they will bring death, and those who oppose them are sinners themselves for they shield the dark and unholy from the righteous works of the Redemptionists. Repent and join, or be cursed and die.

May the Emperor cleanse me of these abominations!


To live is to sin, and to be a sinner is to be cleansed. Only the fiery wrath of the Emperor, as pronounced and executed by His mortal followers, can save humanity from destroying itself in a morass of carnal wantonness and tolerant servitude to those who have been corrupted. The Redemptionists will bring fire and they will bring death, and those who oppose them are sinners themselves for they shield the dark and unholy from the righteous works of the Redemptionists. Repent and join, or be cursed and die.

May the Emperor cleanse me of these abominations!"

As he chanted he laid out his Imperial Tarot before him, surveying them with interest

Lemming

Arkerius feels some of the blur from his world clearing, but still lapsing in and out. He manages to discern Dominicus mentioning the generator problem over the coms.

Heeeeeeeeeeyyysh Domi!! Yeah!! Misaligned coils .... easypeasyjapineasy! All you have to do is interface with the power-distribution cogitator and issue a reset command to the coil-initiation and calibration subroutines. Howwsh don't youseeeknow that?!! Ssshcovered in t'firsssht two weeks of tech trainin'

Arkerius lifts his arm trying to connect with the computer interface with his spike, squinting and wondering why the port looks so small, of course not realising that he's sat about 10 ft away from teh thing and doped up to his eyeballs.

Losing his balance in his efforts to "reach" the data port, he falls over and starts trying to crawl slowly towards the port - left arm stretched out in front, reaching to the data port, an intense look of concentration on his face as he squints and tries to interface with it, still some odd 7/8 feet away and not realising it.

Raphael

Raph leaned against a bulkhead and slumped to the ground, his head in his hands

"This has not been a very good day..."

qwertz

"Alright, this is getting out of control." Using his rifle, Vollbart pushed himself up. Seeing Jarred lying on the floor Vollbart's anger just grew tenfold. He walked over there, pushed the barrel of his rifle into Jarred's forehead and said with a chillingly calm voice: "You have one chance and one only to help us get out of this mess. What will it be? And don't think I'm messing. It doesn't need much more to set me off and then nothing, nothing at all will stop me..." Dear reader, you cannot even imagine how mad good old Vollbart was at that moment in time.

Sarky

\o/

*Ahem*

Generators:
Raph despairs, while Argeus examines the Emperor's Tarot. The cards are very vague, with all manner of possible interpretations. Argeus' voice rings out hollowly: "The Titan. The Sword. Chaos. Conflict, certainly, but against who? Does Chaos imply the Ruinous Powers, or merely confusion? The All Seeing Eye inverted. What could this possibly mean? Bah! The future is too uncertain! The one constant is the card of Endings. Whatever the final outcome may be, that outcome is close, very close."

The Tau radio chatter continues for a moment, and then cuts off abruptly.

Engineering:

Jarred's eyes go wide, and he looks around at the doped-up tech-priest trying to plug into a socket ten feet away. He jumps up, grabs Arkerius by the shoulders and steers him towards the interface. Grabbing his hand and guiding the spike into the socket, Arkerius suddenly goes rigid, the brainwasted grin on his face instantly disappearing, replaced by a completely emotionless stare into a machine world the rest of you know nothing about, and fear. His voice rings out, flat and metallic, through his own throat and through the surrounding ship's speakers, in an unsettling near-harmony.

"++++Interface with power-distribution cogitator complete. Praise the Omnissiah. Standby++++"
Outside, below, the others hear heavy metallic thumping sounds, like some kind of walker, like the Sentinals you remember from the Imperial Guard.

"++++Coil recalibration subroutine accessed. Issuing reset................ Reset complete. Glory to the Machine God. Accessing Coil Initiation subroutines.....++++"

The metallic sounds are definately getting closer, and someone is shouting instructions in an alien voice.

"++++Access granted. Sacred is the Device, the Machine, the Construction. Issuing reset.++++"

Dominicus, watching the doorway, is the first to see the contraption advancing towards the remains of the stairway. It appears to be some sort of elevator. There's a whole squad of troops on board, slowly rising into the air. Given the speed of the machine, they'll be level with the control room in less than a minute. There's no way the four of you could survive against all of those guys. Game over, man, Game-

"++++Reset complete. Hail the Machine.++++"

Arkerius jacks out of the system, triggers his comm-link, and speaks in an eerie calm voice. "Raphael, there is a red button on the side of each generator. It should be flashing. Push it, and power will be restored."

The drugs then catch up with him and he collapses to his knees. Jarred puts an arm over his shoulder and hauls him upright. "There's an access panel in the corner we can escape through, it leads straight to the hangars. One of you get it open, I'll carry the tech-priest. You'll need both of us to get past the bay doors."

Raphael

Raphael lifted is head as Akerius voice came through his vox-bead. "Thank feth you sobered up." He looked around and, spotting the red button, dashed towards it and pushed it in. The generator began to hum and LED's flashed. "Alright, now we're rolling!" he shouted, punching the air.

The demolition man quickly busied himself with the rest of the generators.

Lemming

Arkerius feels the groggy blur of the drugs kicking back in, although not as strong as before. The time inside the ships cogitators have helped focus his mind better. He moans as Jarred picks him up, whincing with pain, but keeping the presence of mind to reach for his rifle and clasp it limply. He shuffles as fast as he can towards the access panel with Jarred's help.

Somehwere nearby, he swears he can hear Cyrel chuckling to himself and mumbling about surviving.

thegogz

Dominicus quickly turns and dashes for the access hatch. First he attempts to pull it open but no go. Then he struggles to slide the door still nothing, looking around in panic for an access button he looks down at his trusty heavy bolter picks it up and fires at the access hatch blowing it open. "Come on guys Lets get out of here." He then turns around providing cover fire for the rest of the guys to get through the hatch. Also trying to take out at lease one or two of the tau scum.

Sarky

Right, sorry about the mix up in last turn. Silly work shifts leaving me without sleep or memory and stuff. Anyway:

Generators:

The correct repairs completed, Raphael quickly restarts the other errant generators. The red emergengy lighting is drowned out by fluorescent tubing blazing to yellow life, and a rising hum reverberates through the ship. Bingo.

Argeus finishes his reading of the tarot, muddled as it is. Even the final card, Endings, was in an odd position, leaving him wondering if it was indeed an ending he foresaw, or another beginning.

The ship's intercom system chimes in as you get ready to leave. It's a Tau voice, speaking in the Imperium's native High Gothic.


"Attention, Imperial agents. We are well aware of your position in the Engineering section of this vessel, and we are aware of your destination. The diversion outside has been dealt with, and even now reinforcements are on their way to both Engineering and the hangar bays. You are trapped, outnumbered and outgunned. Surrender, and we will spare your lives. You will be indentured to the Tau Empire until such time as you earn freedom through citizenship. Resist, and we shall not hesitate to kill you. We will give you one minute to decide before opening fire."

No mention of the generators. Maybe they think the Tau engineers are still alive and fixed the machinery. Whatever the reason, nobody seems to be paying attention to the two of you. It's not far from here to the hangar bays, but there's no way in without the access codes. Perhaps you can hide, or set up an ambush for the Tau reinforcements, or something...


Engineering:

About this time, you hear the same message as the guys in the generator section did.

You all pile in through the access hatch, first Jarred with Arkerius on his shoulder, then Vollbart, and finally Dominicus, who backs into the tunnel. His suppressive fire causes the Tau on the far side of the walkway to duck for cover, and even wings one of those troops on the lifting contraption, causing it to halt. The last thing he sees as he turns and runs after the others is a small grenade flying into the corner of the room. With everyone safely in the tunnel, it explodes harmlessly.

Between Jarred's legs and Arkerius' directions, you all make swift progress through the tunnels. However, your method of escape is obvious, so the Tau are certainly not far behind. The moment you stop, they'll be on you. Unless you can... Slow... Their pursuit somehow.

According to the blueprints Arkerius downloaded, the objective hangar isn't far away, but there's almost certainly going to be a bunch of alien soldiers waiting there for you.

Raphael

Raph grins, then turns to Argeus. "Looks like they don;t know we're here. Let's get a move on before they figure out they've got it wrong." The demolition man starts to walk across the room, then pauses.

"Um, Padre? Don't suppose the tarot told you how the feth we're supposed to get to the hangar..."

Zounds

"The messengers of the Holy Emporer does not trouble himself with such trivialities"
Argeus snipes with an air of distaste engineered to appear bearly disguised.
"I on the other hand would imagine a good start would be through that door"

Shouldering his chainsword and hefting up his oil stained flame-thrower Argeus makes his way towards the door, casually stepping over dismembered Tau as he goes.

qwertz

"Move it, traitor. These Tau-friends of yours look pretty unhappy. You must have done something really bad to upset them," Vollbart shouted laughingly to Jarred, who was a bit ahead of him, carrying that lunatic priest over his shoulder.

"Nothing but ballast. We should rid ourselves of that mental-case to pick up some speed. Well, maybe he will prove useful, we'll see..."

"Don't poke your head out when we come to the end of this service tunnel, stay well inside. We still need your skills!"

Behind him, big guy was doing what he does best, shooting others. Laughingly Vollbart said: "Dominicus, got some grenades left? What do you think about arming them all to collapse the ceiling of this tunnel, best onto these Tau scum." There must be something in these drugs he'd had administerd by the "nurse"; he had no other explanation for his good mood and constant laughing in this dire situation.

Without waiting for an answer, he activated his comm-link to the other team: "Guys, how are we holding out in there? Did you get rid of your alien-playmates? We will be joining you soon, don't shoot when we come out the hatch. Well, don't shoot us - continue shooting the enemy, though!"

Lemming

Arkerius grits his teeth and stiffles back a moan every now and again as Jarred's movement sends jolts through his body. He focuses on moving, staying quiet and clasping his rifle with his spare hand.

thegogz

Dominicus looks over his sholder with a grin "Thats Not a bad suggestion my friend we'd want to get a little further down this tunnel though. I think if we blow it here all we'll do is create a bigger door for them to shoot us through. I'll arm the grenades and drop them here we'll have about 20 secs to get as far down the tunnel as we can." At that Dominicus removes 3 crude grenades from his belt dropps the pins and arms them. "Ok guys lets move, Now!"

Sarky

Raph and Zounds:

You leave your handiwork in the Generator sections and head off through the abandoned corridors. You occasionally have to backtrack because some routes are demolished from the crash, some are writhing with severed electrical cables spitting and crackling with lethal power, and occasionally because both of you lose your bearings from dealing with the first two problems. It takes a little time, but you make your way up the five decks to where the personnel access to the hangars is located. You hear Tau voices up ahead. Peeking around the final corner, you see a squad of 12 Tau soldiers standing by a large maintenance hatch in a large open junction about 20 feet across. It's safe to assume that this is the only way the others can get to the hangars from Engineering. The door is currently open, and a human is visible just inside, placing what looks like explosive charges on the walls. The human walks out, pushes a button on his datapad, and the charges inside blink green twice, then fade from view, like they have some cloaking technology. The hatch shuts and the human scampers off. The "sergeant" of the Tau squad barks a few short sentances, and points to each corridor off the junction in turn. The squad splits up into groups of four and each heads to a corridor. They are obviously setting up what will be a very effective killing ground. The folks in Engineering must have pulled something REALLY interesting to warrant attention like that!

A group of the soldiers is heading towards the corridor Raphael and Argeus are hiding in, one of the three leading off the junction.


Thegogz, Lemming and Qwertz:


Dominicus primes the grenades and drops them behind as you race through the maintenece tunnels. 20 seconds later they go off with a bang, accompanied by a few screams and the hiss of ruptured pipes. That'll certainly slow them down, but not forever. But you've got a minute or two on them now, and they'll surely be cautious when they finally catch up. You proceed through the winding tunnels, turning left or right at as Arkerius grunts directions. The final stretch of tunnel appears quickly.

Zounds

"Come heathen, we will purge this scum and fufill the Emporer's holy mission!"

Argeus gathered his robes, hoisted his chainsword and was preparing to charge when Raph's arm shot across his chest, holding him back. A look of fury spread across his face.

"Traitorous dog! Fight with me now or I will put you down before the xenos-filth"

Raphael

"Look Padre, just let me try something, then we'll get to the killin'. If this works, we may survive this to clenase xeno filth another day"

As he spoke Raph drew his Meltapistol, pulled it open and deftly rewired its internals. He pulled the trigger and then slid it out in front of the oncoming Tau. "Come on, in about half a minute that things gonna go critical" he hissed in Argeus' ear as he pulled the unhappy preacher back around the corner.

Lemming

As the final stretch of tunnel starts to pan out before him, Arkerius spots a working terminal interface through the hazy mix of pain-killing drugs and pain. It's not far off, on the wall up ahead.

Guys, hold up. I've .. *cough* .. had a .. had a thought. There's a working terminal up over there on the wall. If I jack in, I could cut the lighting to the hanger bay. If there's any xenos filth waiting for us, it might buy us some time. Just get me over there.

Sarky

Lemming et al. :

Arkerius is helped over to the access terminal, and hooks in as before. He stiffens as new electrical charges flow through him, opening his mind to the ship and everything plugged into it. It takes the merest fraction of a second to find the power grids controlling the lights in the hangar bay, and those outside it. with a thought, you cut them off. As he prepares to withdraw, something in the data streams catches his attention. It appears that the sentry gun just outside is Imperial! It's been programmed to fire on humans, but badly done, as if the Tau either knew little about how to talk to the machine spirit of the gun, or as if they were in a hurry. Either way, it is working off the ship's power grids and sensors, and can either be turned off or quickly reprogrammed to fire on the Tau themselves.



Raph, Zounds:

You hurry off behind the corner as the meltapistol heats up, rewired to keep the firing chamber shut, the ammunition canister recieving constant power with nowhere to go. the Tau head straight for it and adopt firing positions slightly in front of it. a few seconds later you both hear a large explosion and the meltapistol explosively vaporises all its ammo at once. The backwash of heat is impressive for such a small device. Amid the pained and confused shouts, suddenly the whole area plunges into darkness, and the sentry gun starts beeping in a fashion you recognise as data transmission...

Lemming

Arkerius sifts through the data streams and reconfigures the sentry gun to fire on any xenos infesting the ship, chanting in that dull, flat, eerie metallic monotone as he does so;

++ Praise the Omnissiah. Cleanse the machine spirit of taint ++ To exterminate the defilers of the Omnissiah's grace is to cleanse the machine spirit of taint ++ To cleanse the machine spirit is to give glory to the Omnissiah ++

....

++ Stand by ++ Reconfiguration data transmitting ++

....

++ Transmission complete. Sentry Gun reconfigured. New targets acquired ++

Arkerius feels the brief disorientation of both data and reality both colliding at once as he jacks out of the terminal and sags slightly under his injury.

Nnnghh .... ok I've killed the lights to the area. But I also discovered a working sentry gun that had been defiled by the xenos filth. I restored it to it's proper glory and it will target and kill any it spots.

Zounds

Argeus stepped out in the corridor, the screams of the Tau set the blood thumping in his ears. With a grim determination and a sadistic pleasure the preacher raised his flamer, pointed it at the nearest, still moving Tau and let loose his holocaust.

"Those who oppose the Emperor shall crumble beneath his wrath!"

He crushed some unindentifiable debris beneath his boot.

"The traitor, the witch and the alien" He spat the word "Will burn in His brilliance!"

He took another, determined step forward, the heat from the flamer raising sweat on his brow.

"The filth will be purged and His glory shall be supreme!"

Each new shout or cry from the writhing Tau fuelling his manic fury as he moved, slowly, down the corridor, cleansing it the name of the Emperor.

Raphael

"Crazy sonofabitch is gonna get himself killed," Raphael muttered "and not a moment too soon if you ask me."

He leaned around the corner with his laspistol in his hand, and then froze. The flames danced in his eyes and he stood spellbound, enthralled by the fire washing over the Tau.

thegogz

"Thanks, That should take care of that scum."

Moving to the end of the tunnel and looking around the corner Dominicus can clearly see the Preacher standing in the middle of the corridor Flaming anything that comes within range.

"That idiot is going to get himself killed, if I can see him so can the scum"

Taking position at the end of the Tunnell Domicus waits with his Heavy Bolter in hand waiting to catch a glimpse of the Tau Scum to take a shot at.

Quckly turning his head to his comrades "I can make out the preacher and alot of gunfire but its very hard to see where the enmies are, any ideas to help me get a better shot or will we just wait til things calm down?"

qwertz

Vollbart leans himself against the wall and brings his rifle up to eye-level.

I will be damned...

He turns around to address his fellow fighters.

"No hurry, let the boy have some fun with the flame thrower. We move on once he's finished playing with his "foreign" friends."

Sarky

Arkerius:

You quickly remind the sentry gun's machine spirit who the real enemy is, and watch through its eye with satisfaction as it begins targetting multiple Tau outside. Emperor's teeth, but there were rather a lot of them. A flash in the corridor grabs your attention and you see Argeus stepping out of the darkness, flamethrower spraying liquid fire liberally...

Argeus:

The Tau are clearly unprepared for the approach of a shrieking maniac spewing flaming death at them. They die quickly, but not before a stray shot clips your head, vaporising the skin on the right of your face, destroying your ear, and knocking you flat.

The bleeping on the gun turret stops and it abruptly jumps to life, immediately targetting the remaining aliens and wiping them out in a storm of laser fire. As soon as the last one dies, its tracking camera makes one full circuit of the room and it shuts down as sharply as it started up.


Raphael:

OMG PRETTY FLAMES!


Dominicus:

You move down the corridor, heedless of the others' warnings. You get to within about 10 feet of the door when something underneath your left foot goes *BEEP* ominously. Oh, crap. Looks like you stepped on a pressure mine. If you take the pressure off, chances are everybody dies.


Vollbart:

You wait for the fuss to die down. You can't help but smile a little as Dominicus steps right on a mine, despite the danger to the rest of you...

Raphael

Raphael steps gingerly over the prone and bleeding Argeus, and surveys the damage, letting out a low whistle. "Doncha just love it when a plan works" he said to himself, then continued to the door and hammered on it.

"COAST IS CLEAR GUYS, BUT YOU BETTER STAY PUT FOR A WHILE TILL I CAN FIND THE BOMBS THEY SET"

Lemming

Arkerius feels nagging apprehension start to claw at his gut once again as the seconds seem to stretch into eternity waiting for the inevitable maelstrom to hit once the Tau see that insane Padre and the sentry gun opens up.

He senses someone standing right behind him, almost on top of him, breathing against his neck. "Hehe ... time to fiiiiiiight little Tau ... time to bleed". He suddenly realises that Cyrel is standing next to him grinning like a maniac and playing with a baynet. "Oh feth!! Cyrel! What are you doing here you little piece of sh*t?! Don't do anything rash and get us all killed trying to bail you out"

Sarky

Raphael:

You're searching away for a bunch of nearly invisible mines. It's very difficult, until you notice that the dancing flames are giving the cloaking technology difficulty. You manage to find all of them out of the corner of your eye. The human who armed them is lying on the floor, the data pad is cracked and hissing with static, but you have enough between that, your own training, and a certain reckless gut feeling to disarm them, which you do, until the last one, which you accidentally switch from motion sensing to timed. You're not an expert with Tau munitions but the countdown looks like it's about 5 minutes away. But hey, you got the rest of them...


Arkerius:

The area outside is now a mess, carpeted with twitching corpses slowly cooling out of sight of your sensors, except the ones Argeus got, they'll be burning for some time to come. The flames are currently the only light outside. There's something slightly appalling about the scene, but your mind is pretty cushioned by the cold embrace of the machine, as well as lots of drugs. The hangar doors are shining digital beacons, the encryption keeping them shut is a veritable fortress the likes of which you've seen only back in the training colleges of the Adeptus Mechanicus. Something VERY important is clearly being kept there. Raphael deals with the mines outside. The door is safe to open.


Argeus:

The pain throbbing through what's left of your face in incredible. You see everything through a red haze, and your right ear is gone. It takes you three attempts to get to your feet, the first two times you flop back down from pain and dizziness. The third time you stay upright. Certain select hymnals are ringing in your head, mostly on the the joy to be found through the gift of pain. Looking around you, you see only one person moving. Raphael is holding a datapad and fiddling with, well, nothing you can see. You can plainly see the alarm on his face, however, at the last stop.


Dominicus:


Still stepping on a mine.


Vollbart:

Still grinning at Dominicus, Until you hear sounds of pursuit behind you, distant now but getting closer...