Austronaut

Blood, Steel, and Gunpowder (Austronaut & POOHEAD189)

@POOHEAD189
“Some,” Hilde admitted, thinking of the days in the Shallyan convent. They had spent as much time learning how to tend wounds and maladies as they did praying and learning the catechisms. She ran her fingertips over the more prominent wounds. Given what Cedric had been through in the last few days it was miraculous he wasn’t in much worse condition.

“I’m not a barber surgeon or anything,” she explained further, her fingers probing a particularly large bruise, looking for an underlying break. There was none. The familiar routine was oddly calming after the chaos and terror of the last day and a half.

“Wait here,” she instructed, heaving herself back to her feet and crossing the hall to the larder once more. She picked up a small cask, pulled out the bung and sniffed the contents. The familiar burn of apple brandy burned her nostrils. Idly she wondered if the knights had bought it with them, or if they had an orchard somewhere nearby. Dismissing the thought she went back to Cedric.

“When I was a girl my mother was very sick,” she went on. Glancing around the room she decided that Isolde’s clothing was the cleanest and tore a strip from the mages underskirt. She heaved one of the lighter crates into position so she could sit behind the soldier, then poured some of the brandy over the cloth.

“My father travelled to one of the Shrines of Shallya and prayed for her recovery.”

“This might hurt a bit,” she advised and began to clean the cuts with the brandy.

“There is only so much I can do without needle and thread,” she went on wiping each of the wounds clean. She really needed bandages to cover the burns, perhaps when she had the energy she could shred some of the gambesons, or find linen of some sort in the jumble of supplies. Silk would be best, it was possible Isolde had silk undergarments of some sort but without a needle the point was moot anyway.

The prayers to Shallya came to her lips reluctantly, like a foreign language she had nearly forgotten. The thread of her conversation was disjointed , her mind too overburdened by the terrors of the last few days.

“When she recovered, he gave me to the sisters as a sort of payment I guess,” her voice didn’t hold any passion or anger. She had been too young to remember and had heard the story from the Sisters who had cared for her and a few other female orphans gathered in under similar circumstances. Cedric’s wounds cleaned she put down the cloth and drank a mouthful of the powerful spirit. She was no judge of spirits but it warmed her stomach and made her mouth tingle.

“You should find something to cover that with, or use as bandages. Something other than your shirt I mean.” She sank back against the cool stone wall of the chamber too drained to move or speak further.

Blood, Steel, and Gunpowder (Austronaut & POOHEAD189)

@POOHEAD189
Hilde staggered forward into the darkness. The sound of beast was screaming in fury and each blast of intense noise was like ice pumping in her veins. The air was thick with dust and the smell of burnt hair, the fine hair on the back of her neck was gone and her neck was hot as though she had spent too long in the sun. She looped an arm around the apparently unconscious Isolde and helped Cedric drag her down the hallway.

“There must be a bolt hole,” she croaked hoarsely. It was a hopeful statement. If Vitas had only been planning to get underground to hide, they might never dig their way out of here. The darkness was intense and they had no light. Reaching into her pouch Hilde retrieved the strange flask. Its faint silver shimmer hardly seemed to help but it was better than nothing.

The sound of destruction was distant and muted by the time they began to pass rooms small rooms off the main hallway. By the feeble light of the flask Hilde searched the room and found several torches. It was the work of a few moments to spark the oil soaked cloth alight with her pistol flints. With the much better illumination of the torches it was obvious they were in store rooms somewhere beneath the castle proper.

“We’d better rest,” she declared, nearly sagging under the mage’s slight weight.

“I’m about played out and you can’t be any better.” She felt slightly sick from the adrenaline she hadn’t been able to burn off.

They found some cloth gambersons in a crate and with Cedric’s help she made a small bed for Isolde and lay the unconscious mage down. One of the rooms across the hall seemed to be a small lader. She gathered up several apples, some hard cheese and two skins of wine. There were casks of smoked herring and salted beef too but she left those for the moment. To tired to consider the future.

With bone deep exhaustion she rejoined Cedric, giving him one of the wineskins and some of the apples and cheese.

“There is food enough for us to stay down here a while,” she reported. Sitting heavily on an unopened crate. She unstoppered the wineskin and took a grateful mouthful, sluicing the dust and fear out of her mouth. She spat the wine into a corner and took another long drink. It tasted sour and resinous but it was refreshing. Maybe there was brandy in the larger casks. She took a bite from one of the apples and found herself suddenly ravenous.

“Take your shirt off,” she instructed, her voice muffled around a mouthful of apple.

“I’ll see to your wounds.”

Blood, Steel, and Gunpowder (Austronaut & POOHEAD189)

Hilde crawled backwards away from the door to the great hall, scrambling over corpses and pumping into the few living knights in a mindless compulsion to get away from the door. The momentary flash of exaltation she had felt when the chieftain died a distant and bitter memory. Isolde was beside her pale faced and shaking, her mouth seemed to work over a word she couldn’t quite speak.

With a crash like mountain screaming the stone wall of the great hall exploded inwards in a cloud of lethal stone and choking dust. The sound of snapping bones and squashing flesh was like a rain of apples. Hilde couldn’t breath for the dust in the air. She kept scrambling back untill she bumped into something she assumed was the back wall of the room. She turned and saw the pale faced scribe trying to lug a heavy chest towards a side door. Following his eyes she realised that it was a stairwell that went down into the earth.

“Cedric!” she shouted, her voice hardly audible over the screaming chaos. There might be a way out of this yet.

Isolde stumbled forward through the carnage. Her whole body burned from the magic she had expended, it was far beyond anything she had ever attempted, gold flecks danced in her eyes. She found herself infront of Cedric and she grabbed the big man by the shoulder.

“We have to get out of here,” she screamed.

“It will kill everyone it finds in this place!”

@POOHEAD189

Warhammer 40K: Beyond the Law - A Mercenary Adventure

I don't want to make this the "Austronaut geeks out about books she has read" thread but there are a couple of scenes in Eisenhorn in particular which I think are some of the best action/adventure scenes I have ever read.

Blood, Steel, and Gunpowder (Austronaut & POOHEAD189)

Hilde felt a horrible sense of de ja vu. Less than a day before she had been in a similar situation, surrounded by beastial enemies and expecting death. The pressure of the beastmen was a physical thing, squeezing the defenders lines so tight it was nearly impossible to swing a weapon.

One of Isolde’s golden blasts scythed past her and for a moment she had a clear view of Cedric. The tough sergeant was on his knees, the heretic chieftain raising his strange fluid blade to end his life. Hilde raised her pistol and pulled the trigger. The flint flew forward with a disappointing click, too late she realised that she hadn’t reloaded the weapon. In desperation she hurled the empty weapon at the heretic, it clattered feebly off his embossed armor. The warrior turned his head slowly to regard her for a moment.

Hilde snatched her second pistol from her belt and leveled it. Something hard hit her from behind and she sprawled forwards over the corpses of two gor and a knight which were tangled together, the weapon flying free of her hand and rattling across the flag stones. A blast of golden energry flashed over her head and struck the chaos champion but his armor seemed to drink the energy in without visible damage. Hilde scrambled forward over the corpses and grabbed the pistol firing it one handed.

*Click*

The flint struck and sparked but the weapon failed to ignite. For a horrifying moment she thought she had fired this one too. Realisation dawned. The firing pan had emptied as the weapon hit the ground. Frustration was almost hot enough to taste as she reached into her pouch and found that she had run out of cartridges.

“Shyalla please,” she all but wept.

Her fingers brushed something cold in the bottom of the satchel. With a surge of hope she pulled the strange silvery flask of powder free. The Chaos Champions sword was already coming down towards Cedric’s kneck as she poured a shaking pinch of powder into the firing pan, snapped shut the frisson, pointed and fired.

The resulting shot was like nothing anyone in the hall had ever seen. Rather than a dull smoky bang, the little pistol seemed to ring like a bell, pure and clear. No smoke belched forth, instead a strange blast of silver energy seemed to leap from the muzzle, striking the reaver in the shoulder. His pauldron buckled and a strange sound that was either a hiss of pain or a curse slid from his helmet. Most astonishingly the sword, still arching towards Cedric’s neck flickered and went out like a distant lantern, a moment before it severed the soldier's head. Instead the Kurgan stumbled forward, thrown by the lack of contact, nothing more than an ornate hilt remaining in his hand.

@POOHEAD189

Warhammer 40K: Beyond the Law - A Mercenary Adventure

OMG @POOHEAD189 stop what you are doing and go and read Eisenhorn and Ravenor. Easily the best of the admittedly spotty warhammer cannon (although I have a personal soft spot for Caiphas Cain HERO OF THE IMPERIUM!). Some of the short stories are ok too I guess.

Warhammer 40K: Beyond the Law - A Mercenary Adventure

I dont want to speak for everyone obviously but I think the more human characters the better.

Hmmmm maybe I'll think about that Co-GM spot...

Characters I am considering:
Disgraced Naval Officer
Low grade psyker (astropath?)
Pariah/Blank/Blunter
Heretic Gun Slinger - I love Leyla Slade from the Ravenor books (a shock to no one who has ever rped with me)

If I was the naval officer I could give us all sorts of logistical stuff without playing a staring role. Might be a good match for co-gm
@Jbcool
@POOHEAD189

Warhammer 40K: Beyond the Law - A Mercenary Adventure

I have a few ideas but ill wait to see how the rest of the party fills out.

Blood, Steel, and Gunpowder (Austronaut & POOHEAD189)

Hilde heard the Kurgan warlord laugh and it was like knives in her mind. He was a figure out of nightmare, nearly seven feet tall and swathed in ornate black iron armor inscribed with sanity rending glyphs that seemed to twist and turn when you looked at them. Upon his head sat a vast helm with curling horns sprouting from either side, baleful blue lights gazed through the T shaped visor piteously. The chaos champion raised his sword in challenge and Cedric leaped to the attack.

“For Sigmar!” someone yelled and suddenly the two forces were charging together across the great hall. Hilde levelled her pistol and fired, the heavy balls smashing the jaw of a charging gor with a great stone axe. Then she was fighting for her life. Gripping her sword with both hands she battered away a rusty sword wielded by a beastman with snakelike tendrils hanging from his bovine face. While it was off balance she slicked a hard backhand stroke across its belly, spilling forth blood and entrails. She jabbed at another brute with an open wound for a face and ducked under the stroke of a third. Her guts roiled with fear, she was’t a swordsman and she knew she couldn’t last long in this mess.

Off to the left she saw a knight smash the rib cage of a gor to pulp with a mace before two smaller beasts tore his shield from his arm and fell on him with long dripping knives. Golden blasts lit the hall like distant thunder and she knew that Isolde was in action somewhere. The noise and stink was incredible. Men and beasts screamed as the died and howled their mutal hatred. Suddenly she was face to face with another of the armoured chaos worshipers. He swung his rune encrusted weapon at her in a hugee glittering arc and she felt the passage of it sweep through her hair as she ducked. Desperately she thrust at the heretics crotch but her blade rang harmlessly off the thick plate, nearly jarring itself free of her hand. A lance of golden light struck him in the chest as he aimed his killing stroke and he fell to his knees, armor deforming and warping like cracking ice. Hot pain exploded up her arm and she shried. A smaller ungor had caught her a glancing blow with a rusted cavalry saber. She slashed a backhand stroke across its face, sending the thing crashing into its fellow, spitting blood and teeth.

The battle had lost all semblance of order now as the opposing sides hacked and killed. Hilde saw a disarmed knight snatch hup a heavy teak chair and parry a sword stroke before bludgeoning his opponent into the ground. Isolde followed her closely. The wizard’s hands light the hall with blasts of light which burned and killed indiscriminately but her face was pinched and the pace of her attacks was slowing.

“Save it for the warriors,” Hilde tried to shout but her throat was dry and her voice cracked. A fish faced beastman lunged at her with a spear and she barely managed to parry the blow she kicked ineffectually at its knee but the brute twisted out of the way. Another of the men at arms split its head open with an axe, showering those nearby with pus and maggots.

“Sigmar!” the scribe was shouting, standing atop his precious chests and wielding his sword with a ferocity that compensated for his lack of skill.

“Sigmar!” screamed the knights, but it seemed more a prayer than a war cry.

Warhammer 40K: Beyond the Law - A Mercenary Adventure

Female eldar was going to be my pitch too. Maybe female dark eldar ;)