41K RPG : Into the Eye

[Cynical Cat]

Hethor tapped a finger against his bolter as the Valkyrie neared the ground. "Boss, you know I don't have any love for any kind of xenos."

"That's true," Jolan said. The inquisitor was arrayed in power armour, courtesy of of Inquisitor Novum's apology offering. He knew his feelings about its inferior performance were mostly psychological, but that didn't make them any less real. Nor did it make the armour equal to the set he had lost. It was marginaly inferior. He flexed his shoulders again. The movements still felt sluggish.

"I don't have any use for the mincin' Eldar, I think the Tau should be greated with the hot end of a las, and every Ork should burn. The warp can take the Hrud and the rest of 'em. But the ones I hate the most are the Tyranids. And we're tryin' to take the bastards alive so we can't even use Hellfire rounds."

"True," said Gix. The Valkyrie was descending at final approach. Gix looked around at the visored stormtroopers around them. "But you can blow their legs off and listen to them scream."

Hethor cracked a smile and then slammed down his visor. "Hadn't thought of that."

[The Necrontyr Messenger]

Private Tanner was running. He was running from a tyranid.

This wasn’t as stupid as it sounded. He didn’t have to outrun the tyranid.

His legs burnt. So did his chest.

His abdomen also burnt, actually. He could see the nearest landing zone ahead. He only had to outrun the other members of his fireteam who’d been caught by a surprise attack by the monster. His lasgun was left somewhere behind him in the dirt, never once fired in anger. Another fireteam of the eighty third Sedrun was ahead, he could see their camouflage, dirt grey and shabby white – urban camoflage they’d not managed to replace before deployment – painfully obvious in the jungle, unlike the monster behind them.

He called out, feeling his legs beginning to slow down as he desperately pumped them up and down. The distinctive crackle of las-shots could be heard, and the beast behind him began to make sound as it pursued him from cylinder-tree to cylinder tree, smashing through the porous bark with its talons.


“Commissar!â€Â

[SirNitram]

With great ceremony, Malkamar donned his armour. It was a thing few outside an Astartes Monastery would see; the great care and respect each component of wargear was shown. The devout prayers to the God Emperor for a successful batte. The sense of every century of the ancient, revered equipment being unlocked for another grim battle.

A Mechanicus Techpriest, one of the more liberal ones in the fleet, assisted him in donning the complex Artificer suit, and linking the servo-harness to the suit and his own senses. The priest was sufficiently heretical to join in the prayers not to the Omnissiah, but to the Golden Throne and it's nigh-godlike inhabitant, a small comfort.

Images and thoughts brewed in his head, from his years away from humanity. When I don the aspect of the Banshee, I am no longer myself. I am but an extension of Khaine. My self vanishes, replaced with a hardened kiler. The words echoed as he lifted his helmet and looked into it's eyes. Then, carefully, he lowered it over his head. The techpriest ensured the hardseal was in place as the servum linked into his spinal column.

As the bolters were reloaded and slung into their harnesses and his poweraxe given a final polish, he spoke, his vox distorting his voice into that of a killer. "It is time. I will lead the Deathwatch Marines to a successful capture, and take the first step in my redemption." He uttered, and headed for the hangar for the descent into the hellish battle below. It was time to hit back.

[The Necrontyr Messenger]

The Lictor was being rather troublesome. In fact, it had taken two men down already. The first had fallen while he was bringing up the rear of the column, a pair of thuds the only clue to his decapitation by one of the killing beasts. The crackle of lasfire and whoosh of the flamer had shredded the area, but the spook, with the unnatural skill typical of its breed, had disappeared up one of the cylinder-trees.

Now, Commissar Hedeki found himself slashing out with a power sword at the beast. A gurgle to his left suggested that another of the fire-team had fallen. The distinctive ‘raark’ of close range bolter fire. Hedeki could feel sharp pains in his chest and shoulders, and he realised that the beast was connected to him by some kind of grapples.

“Don’t kill it!â€Â

[Cynical Cat]

"I hate fuckin' Lictors," Hethor grumbled. "Even more than other 'Nids. Sneaky bastards and they won't fuckin' die. Heavy fuckin' artillery, that's the answer, praise the Emperor." The veteran raised his bolter.

The burning Lictor plunged into view. Emperor have mercy. It was covered in burning promethium and it was still alive. And it was coming not quite straight at him. He aimed low and fired bursts at the Tyranid's killing machine charged.

Most of the bolter rounds missed. Several struck one of the Lictor's rear leg's severing the limb in a spray of fluids and chitin fragments. The Lictor kept moving, only slightly slowed by losing another limb. It did change course though. It was now moving directly at Hethor. "Oh Throne," Hethor swore.

[The Necrontyr Messenger]

Bursting into the clearing, not that it truly deseved such a title, behind the inhuman beast, were three guardsmen, preceeded by an almost continuous stream of fire from a laspistol and two lasguns. The rear leg, bleeding, wasn't the problem as much as the fact that the abomination was also apparently moblile on its upper four appendages.

With a snap that sounded more like dried wood than something living, one of the legs came away, and a guardsman cheered, gunfire - less accurate than Hethor's bolter, of course, no one could accuse the Sedrun training regime of being good - splattering about and igniting some of the tinder that wasn't already burning from bolter shots and the blazing beast. Wild shots knocked a few craters in the wide boles of cylinder trees, exposing suprising reserves of sugar rich sap that steamed and smouldered from the wounds.

And the Lictor carried on charging, scything talons kicking up clods of earth as it moved.

[SirNitram]

Their arrival was preceeded by a storm of bolter rounds, hailing at the Lictor. The three warriors wore black suits of armour; two in the stylized suits of Deathwatch Space Marines, the leader in the pitch-black Artificer armour that marked the Exile-Captain. Two stabilized heavy bolters and a pair of boltguns roared like a litany of the Emperor's praises, pouring fire at the Lictor's legs.

"Stand fast and aim true!" Roared the vox of the Techmarine. "Guardsmen, to me! We will cover you!"

[The Necrontyr Messenger]

A squad of guardsmen?

A lictor could handle that.

A skilled veteran Inquistorial Operative?

Maybe...

An entire squad of deathwatch?

Not really.


The creature pushed itself up on its scything talons, and snarled something through the mass of feeder tendrils that made up its mouthparts, turning its head into something disturbingly squidlike. The creature sprayed bits of ichor around as bolter shells opened up craters in its flank and pelvis, and rolled onto its back, extinguishing some of the already mostly-spent prometheium that covered it as it thrashed about in incapacitance, an arm breaking off and falling beside it.

The guardsmen were astonished by the prescence of the black armoured, mythical giants of course, and too slow to react beyond continuing to pour fire into the beast's hindparts.

[Pcm979]

"Sir, contact." Deuce's voice rang over the vox system. Pater peered at the tactical map inside his helmet and nodded, despite the fact that no-one could see it. "They have it in hand." He said confidently. "Move our troops... Here." He indicated another, seemingly arbitary point on the grid. "Search pattern Sator five. Deathwatch are to 'beat the brush'." Deuce nodded, and switched to another channel, relaying the orders quickly. With a whirr of jump-packs, Pater's strike team leapt out of their deployment vessels and hit the canopy below.

[The Necrontyr Messenger]

There were some properties that psykers had which were beyond the ken of normal mortals. And some, such as clairvoyance, that were simply explained. The souls of lictors were rather prominent, and easily enough detected, most often at a subconcious level, by an appropriately... attuned... psyker.

The 'nid in question was busily feasting on a guardsman's innards when it heard the distinctive 'woosh' of prometheium, something it recognized instinctively. The lictor dropped its prize into the bole of an opened cylinder tree, causing a loud 'plop' as he dropped into the mixed water reserve and sap in the middle, resting on a bed of spongy, fatty and starchy tissue - the core of a mature cylinder tree was good, if repulsive to humans, eating, and one of the reasons they had evolved thick bark to protect that food reserve.

It skittered down the far side of the tree, and waited.

[Cynical Cat]

"There," said Gix pointing. "Ready yourselves. Its in hiding and alert." The guardsmen fanned out with perfect obediance but less than perfect enthusiasm. Jolan couldn't blame them. He wasn't looking foreward to this either and he had power armour.

He cautiously advanced, bolt pistol drawn. It would be funny if after all he had been through he died here on the claws of Tyrannid scout. He smiled grimly. He was planning to go into the Eye of Terror. Getting shredded by a Lictor was one of the most pleasant ways he could expect to die on this expedition.

[The Necrontyr Messenger]

Lena Novadlorian breathed in the perfumed air of the censors being swung by the cyber-cherubs – repulsive little things she felt, though she couldn’t quite tell why – the governor had laid on for her arrival at his mansion. He needn’t have bothered. He had, it was plain, no clue what was coming. Hulking space marines of the Salamanders chapter followed after her, as well as two dozen members of the Ecclesiarchy, there to transcribe her every word.

The governor prostrated himself, a great corpulent balloon of a man, he was dressed up in more finery than she had in her entire wardrobe. “I am most honoured by your presence noble saint,â€Â

[The Necrontyr Messenger]

“Greetings Admiral.â€

[The Necrontyr Messenger]

Memories flitted through Lena’s conscious – her unconscious, perhaps, of times past. Her own childhood, academy training, the terraforming of Adraxis, the Cyrus Gamma campaign – lances of fire burning through a sacred cathedral, insanity and mayhem, living statues of the Emperor possessed – parenthood, earning the Obscurus Honorifica, the Thirteenth Black Crusade, and other things, thousands of them. Millions.

Beyond the confines of her mind, however, even as this storm, in its way, as violent as those on Cyrus Gamma when she had last been there, broiled inside, she seemed inert. Unresponsive. Dead, almost. Almost but not quite. For as chirugeons and apothecaries tended to her, and as the saint, only moments ago so uncompromising and even brutal, lay inert as a corpse, still as a contemplative hermit, other probes, of a more arcane nature, gave hints as to the strength and perverse power of the goings on in her mind.

Nevertheless, she lay there, guarded but unresponsive, eyes staring into either bright light or utter darkness with indifferent lack of reaction.

Xeno-forms were rounded up by the dozen, and woodlands put to the torch to rouse them from their hiding places, into waiting nets, stasis grenades, Webbers and grav guns, and of course, dependable old laser-amputations. Perhaps some of the Inquisitors would break off their hunt when news of this reached them, perhaps not.

Hours passed, until she finally awoke from this lethargic unconsciousness. She was looking at the ceiling of a devotionally inscribed bed, and it struck her as amusing, in a way, they’d gotten their Saint Sabbat quote wrong. She lifted a hand up to regard it with a curious look of bemusement. Turning it this way and that in the golden light provided by flames in ornate golden and glass chalices of perpetually burning incenses and oils, which were piped in from the servant’s quarters far below. A metaphor for much of the Imperium, “This is wrong…â€

[Cynical Cat]

The death of the guardsman didn't go unnoticed. Lasbolts flickered through the undergrowth at the half seen Lictor. Jolan Gix responded with brute force. Waves of psychic power slammed into the Tyranid, forcing inhumanely powerfull muscles to contract. The Lictor froze and writhed and then screamed as its own spasming muslces and tendons broke its own bones.

The monstrosity screamed and thrashed. "Keep your distance," Gix warned. "It can't run but it still has its tail and jaws." Flesh hooks, cartiligious barbs at the end of muscle strings, fired and seized an unwary trooper, pulling him to the deadly creature's jaws. Blood sprayed and bone crunched. "And flesh hooks," Jolan finished weakly.

[The Necrontyr Messenger]

Even as it rolled about in agonising pain, the lictor bit the head off a guardsman. There are times when it's hard not to admire the skill of the tyranid hive mind as a designer. The Lictor rolled onto its back, and stopped moving, pretending it was dead in order to try and get one of its captors to come closer so that it could kill them, too.