Wulf Ratbane
Adventurer
A WARHAMMER 40K DARK HERESY CAMPAIGN
Important Note:
I'm running this game using Fantasy Grounds, using the recorded chat log to create the story. I want to be VERY clear up front that most of the text you will read here is taken directly from the published adventure by Alan Bligh (Black Industries). Most descriptions of scene, setting, and NPC dialogue are wholly his; I think you'll agree with me that they are fantastic.
Back-and-forth banter between myself and the players, of course, is ours.
After being singled out and inducted into the service of the Inquisition, things had not quite gone as they had imagined them. Removed from their past life, they had been tested and measured, questioned and interrogated.
But aside from a few lectures given in darkened chambers that left them sick to their stomachs, and a seemingly endless stream of codes and ciphers given them to memorize and destroy, they had been left largely to their own devices.
Lodging under a false name in an anonymous hab-block in Hive Sibellus, on Scintilla, the capitol planet of the Calixis Sector, they had bided their time for weeks waiting for the call from their masters, and perhaps, their verdict.
At last that call had come and a blank-eyed courier delivered to them a note featuring the cipher of the Holy Ordos. The message within was simple and perfunctory, containing a time, a date and a location. The instruction to come prepared and expect company was signed off with a single epithet-"The Emperor Protects.”
At the appointed hour, they made their way through the bustling faceless masses of the Administratum quarter to an unmarked service elevator platform set in the rear of a vast and imposing building covered in bas-reliefs of skulls, half draped urns and other symbols of death, crowned by an immense statue of a weeping saint.
It appeared that they were expected: the wizened face of the platform's inbuilt servitor studied them and pronounced, "Pass" as they climbed on board. As the note implied, each was surprised to find that he was not the only person called, and the three of them made for an uncomfortable and diverse looking group standing in tense silence as the crowds thronged by.
The servitor control chimed active as the last of them boarded the platform, and the elevator descended as the hatchway closed above them with a thunderous boom. The platform continued downward for some minutes through maintenance levels, deep into the bowels of the government district.
The hive was as alien to them, each in his own way, as the home worlds they had left behind. Gunner was void-born, and has spent most of his 58 years as a police officer on the Imperial warship Nebula Eater. Although he seemed at ease in the cramped, industrial corridors of the hive, it was clear that the unfamiliar gravity was taking its toll on his gaunt frame.
Beside him stood Grim, a newly-inducted tech-priest of the Adeptus Mechanicus. Grim was born on a feudal world, recently subjugated by the Imperium. While most of the population fled or cowered in abject terror before the technological horrors of the Imperium, Grim was irresistibly drawn to them. Once, he had toiled as a serf, with nothing more sophisticated at hand than a plow and a milling wheel. Now, his entire body was a temple to the Machine Cult; flesh gave way to steel and circuitry. Given willingly and eagerly…
A bestial exhalation caused the two men to start, and from the shadows of the lift stepped the last of the companions. Steam from his nostrils preceded him, and his hooves rang on the metal flooring. Cutter was tall, rangy, almost a head taller than either of the others. Grey fur covered his goat-like body; a mutant: a beast-man. He bared a mouth full of sharp teeth designed to tear flesh, and his hands hovered over his gun belt.
The two other men started back involuntarily--at first, nothing more than the natural reaction to the mutant. But more than that, it was the collar around Cutter's neck that had their attention. With a loud click and an ominous whine, it came to life. Lights flashed around its surface, illuminating scores of devotional runes inscribed around its surface. Such collars were commonplace among the penal legions, and while they were clearly most effective on the unfortunate bearer of the collar, the blast radius was enough to kill everyone in the lift.
Cutter's lips curled one last time, then his ears drooped, his shoulders hunched, and he chuffed dispiritedly. The adrenal-sensors eased and the collar sank into sleep again.
At the end of the elevator's slow decent, they were deposited at the end of a wide grey corridor, lit by pale lumen globes in the shape of cherubs holding torches. Only the first part of the corridor was lit and the rest trailed off into darkness. As they stepped off the platform, more globes illuminated to show them the path and, as they walked forward, yet more flickered into life before them-- while those behind them extinguished.
There was but one path. The corridor was featureless and smelled faintly of chemical disinfectant.
After about five minutes, the corridor ended in an armoured metal door, which unsealed and unlocked with a hiss of pressurised air and opened with a loud grinding of heavy gears.
Important Note:
I'm running this game using Fantasy Grounds, using the recorded chat log to create the story. I want to be VERY clear up front that most of the text you will read here is taken directly from the published adventure by Alan Bligh (Black Industries). Most descriptions of scene, setting, and NPC dialogue are wholly his; I think you'll agree with me that they are fantastic.
Back-and-forth banter between myself and the players, of course, is ours.
After being singled out and inducted into the service of the Inquisition, things had not quite gone as they had imagined them. Removed from their past life, they had been tested and measured, questioned and interrogated.
But aside from a few lectures given in darkened chambers that left them sick to their stomachs, and a seemingly endless stream of codes and ciphers given them to memorize and destroy, they had been left largely to their own devices.
Lodging under a false name in an anonymous hab-block in Hive Sibellus, on Scintilla, the capitol planet of the Calixis Sector, they had bided their time for weeks waiting for the call from their masters, and perhaps, their verdict.
At last that call had come and a blank-eyed courier delivered to them a note featuring the cipher of the Holy Ordos. The message within was simple and perfunctory, containing a time, a date and a location. The instruction to come prepared and expect company was signed off with a single epithet-"The Emperor Protects.”
At the appointed hour, they made their way through the bustling faceless masses of the Administratum quarter to an unmarked service elevator platform set in the rear of a vast and imposing building covered in bas-reliefs of skulls, half draped urns and other symbols of death, crowned by an immense statue of a weeping saint.
It appeared that they were expected: the wizened face of the platform's inbuilt servitor studied them and pronounced, "Pass" as they climbed on board. As the note implied, each was surprised to find that he was not the only person called, and the three of them made for an uncomfortable and diverse looking group standing in tense silence as the crowds thronged by.
The servitor control chimed active as the last of them boarded the platform, and the elevator descended as the hatchway closed above them with a thunderous boom. The platform continued downward for some minutes through maintenance levels, deep into the bowels of the government district.
The hive was as alien to them, each in his own way, as the home worlds they had left behind. Gunner was void-born, and has spent most of his 58 years as a police officer on the Imperial warship Nebula Eater. Although he seemed at ease in the cramped, industrial corridors of the hive, it was clear that the unfamiliar gravity was taking its toll on his gaunt frame.
Beside him stood Grim, a newly-inducted tech-priest of the Adeptus Mechanicus. Grim was born on a feudal world, recently subjugated by the Imperium. While most of the population fled or cowered in abject terror before the technological horrors of the Imperium, Grim was irresistibly drawn to them. Once, he had toiled as a serf, with nothing more sophisticated at hand than a plow and a milling wheel. Now, his entire body was a temple to the Machine Cult; flesh gave way to steel and circuitry. Given willingly and eagerly…
A bestial exhalation caused the two men to start, and from the shadows of the lift stepped the last of the companions. Steam from his nostrils preceded him, and his hooves rang on the metal flooring. Cutter was tall, rangy, almost a head taller than either of the others. Grey fur covered his goat-like body; a mutant: a beast-man. He bared a mouth full of sharp teeth designed to tear flesh, and his hands hovered over his gun belt.
The two other men started back involuntarily--at first, nothing more than the natural reaction to the mutant. But more than that, it was the collar around Cutter's neck that had their attention. With a loud click and an ominous whine, it came to life. Lights flashed around its surface, illuminating scores of devotional runes inscribed around its surface. Such collars were commonplace among the penal legions, and while they were clearly most effective on the unfortunate bearer of the collar, the blast radius was enough to kill everyone in the lift.
Cutter's lips curled one last time, then his ears drooped, his shoulders hunched, and he chuffed dispiritedly. The adrenal-sensors eased and the collar sank into sleep again.
At the end of the elevator's slow decent, they were deposited at the end of a wide grey corridor, lit by pale lumen globes in the shape of cherubs holding torches. Only the first part of the corridor was lit and the rest trailed off into darkness. As they stepped off the platform, more globes illuminated to show them the path and, as they walked forward, yet more flickered into life before them-- while those behind them extinguished.
There was but one path. The corridor was featureless and smelled faintly of chemical disinfectant.
After about five minutes, the corridor ended in an armoured metal door, which unsealed and unlocked with a hiss of pressurised air and opened with a loud grinding of heavy gears.
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I swear she spent her first week as moderator "stretching her wings" on my ass. (Yes, the "Send Wulf Ratbane a Private Smackdown" button works.)
