BCTheEntity

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure - Operation: Ground the Harpy

'Précisément,' she replied, in response to Taras' statement regarding the ghouls, only to be a bit blindsided by Chloe's explanation. The Speedwagon Foundation? They were... well, she was enthusiastic about them, in any case. Frankly, though, the rest of the group didn't seem to share it, at least until Miss Cakebread explained further; ultimately, though, she sighed with relief rather than exasperation.

'I do know them, yes,' she explained, smiling gently. 'Whatever their reasons or methods for acting here, I know they would not help the Germans, not after such atrocities. Very well.'

Moving around the room, she began working to help sterilise and bandage any stray cuts the others had, looking them over as she spoke to them. 'My name is Alouise. When the war started, and France was first occupied, I was sadly content to rest on my laurels as the Boche took over the nation. Fool that I was... one day, perhaps a year and three months ago, members of my family were accused of hiding or being malcontents. Jews, homosexuals, slavs, I'm not sure exactly. The point is, my entire family on my mother's side was taken away. Great grandfather, grandfather, grandmother, mother, uncle, even my cousin Jeanne. I escaped their attentions only by proving openly that I had done no such thing, and that was but barely.

'Part of me wonders if I ought to have let myself go with them. I miss them greatly...' She took a second, dabbing the tears from her eyes and sniffling. 'Pardonnez. But it was my inaction that lost my family. I couldn't let that happen to others.' Now determination welled in her eyes as she concluded her business, not pain and grief. 'I did my research, found my way into this rebellion, and was assigned to a cell here in Orléans, by order of... my boss, shall we say. I don't know how significant she is to the counterattack as a whole, but she is certainly a major organiser - I apologise, I only have her codename: Lily the Pink.'

Putting the supplies back in the cupboard, she took a seat again, looking over the mixed crowd with some consideration. 'If you wish to help us, you have two routes by my consideration. First, stay here and help rebuild the local resistance. We have lost a lot of manpower; if you are Stand Users, even one of your number would be incredibly useful. Or, second... seek her out. I can send a message forward, and a meeting can be arranged, if you don't mind somewhat of a trek. That may be more useful for expunging the Germans in their entirety, perhaps, but...' She leaned back in her chair, a grimace crossing her face. It'd be dangerous either way - though, she suspected they knew that much, and were of all people prepared for it most.

@Zoey Boey@Yankee@OwO@Lady Selune

Warhammer 40k: Beyond the Pale - A Rogue Trader Adventure

Astropath Transcendent, Choir-Master

Name: Tecca Nina

Age: 51, if she was counting correctly.

Gender: Female

Race: Human psyker

Appearance: Tecca Nina is quite an imposing figure, and through her value to the Imperium and consequent rejuvenat treatment seems much younger than her true years. Tall and slender, she is pale-skinned and in possession of dark hair down to her shoulders, a combination of traits that many men would find highly attractive - were it not for her eye sockets, empty and permanently seared black by the scorching light of the God-Emperor's soul that once coursed through her. For politeness' sake, she tends to cover the hollows with a black blindfold bearing the symbol of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica on its front in pale blue, a neat and tidy covering for a gruesome disfigurement. Additionally, she wears long black robes that cover her body, themselves bearing both the symbol of her Adepta in pale blue on the front, the Imperial Aquila in white on her back, and the Aquila again in white on the hood.
Privately, these items of apparent cloth in fact double as protection from harm. Woven into them is a mesh of thermoplas cells that stiffen when subjected to kinetic energy and heat, dissipating that energy and keeping her safe from harm whilst remaining quite lightweight. Additionally, to those who might somehow think she is easy prey and are not deterred simply for being an astropath, she carries on her person both a hellpistol and a mono-edge sword, evidence of her importance as the master of Edmund Livingstone's Astropathic Choir and indicators of her own lethality if provoked.

Personality: To say Tecca Nina is a severe woman is not exactly incorrect. The life experiences of a psyker once their powers awaken, and especially an astropath, are rarely positive in nature; hers have shaped her into a woman who will not tolerate being made light of by anybody, as in her mind she has gone through too much and come too far in spite of the odds stacked against her to allow such a thing. Consequently, those of higher rank than herself who disrespect her are generally treated with coolness, the bare minimum of civility required and no more, whilst those outright beneath her who do the same will receive naught but passive-aggressive insults, or indeed outright warnings if they go too far - never threats, though, because a threat is uncivil, and implies the possibility that you won't follow through when push comes to shove.
To everyone else, though, she does her best to be helpful, understanding, and occasionally even kind. The God-Emperor's mercy works in strange ways - those who are most harmed are often most belittled, a circumstance she is personally well-aware of, and whilst she does not look back on her past with fondness or indeed grace, it has informed her quite a bit. Thus, she tries to show empathy to those in need, even the rare alien that the Imperium has seen fit to welcome into its fold, albeit tinged with pity and stern recommendations for the many. It is but rarely that this folds to naught but empathy, almost always for her fellow sanctioned psykers such as the small choir she now leads, and to them she truly does act graciously, for it is a crushing sort of kindred that they share.
Her relationship with the God-Emperor is... complex. Every psyker soul-bound to Him experiences the process in different ways if they do not die outright, from indescribable sensations to an enlightening discussion with Him. Some even expand their faith as a result, becoming the self-proclaimed Transubstantial Initiates that irk the Ecclesiarchy so. Nina falls into the somewhat broader category of astropaths who merely experience agony, though the sensation was certainly indescribable, and as a consequence she is of two minds. Was it necessary? Certainly; even her particular strategies would not have worked forever. Did it help her? Arguably; having a shard of the Emperor's soul tied to hers has certainly kept it safe from harm. Is she less enthused with Him as a result? Entirely - but then, she can hardly blame the God-Emperor directly. His agents are far more culpable as sinners, after all. To that end, when she does talk about her faith in Him, she tends to keep her statements modest, largely espousing kindness to others as she herself displays, if only to offset but slightly the cruelties both necessary and needless of the Imperium's more questionable servants.
That being said, to the heathen, the heretic, and especially the witch, she of course has nothing but contempt. Even now, coming to terms with a traumatic past has been a cripplingly hard task that often keeps her up until the late hours, but she at least accepts that the sanctioning process and the Soul-Binding that blinded her was a necessity to keep her safe from worse things. They who would avoid either or both, and ultimately they who would act against the God-Emperor Himself, are unworthy of His grace; at best to be directed to the Black Ships, at worst to be eliminated and forgotten, for that is the greatest kindness one can do them. Most xenos also fall into this category, but she is at least able to acknowledge that if her employer has taken them on board, there is likely a good reason for it.

Relationship to the Dynasty: Tecca Nina has spent the last few years working in the astropathic choir of one of the ships of the Falcon-Cook family; it is fair to suggest that time has been an interesting one. It transpires that her power as a psyker is yet to be fully realised, or so it seems to her; aside from anything else, her skill in astrotelepathy has been tested time and again, pushing her to the forefront of the choir, and ultimately into the position of leading a fresh choir under Rudyard once the Warrant of Trade passed to him. They are large shoes to fill, but Rudyard has been highly accommodating thus far, helping to make them feel much smaller in a way that is steadily earning her gratitude and respect. This has done wonders for her confidence in a fairly short timeframe, but to say she is not still haunted would be entirely incorrect. In many aspects of her being, she still has a very long way to go.

History

Born on the civilised world of Arteus III, Tecca Nina's early life was not precisely remarkable. Her family was middle class, they worked middle-class jobs for the Imperium, she went to a middle-class school, and under most other circumstances, Tecca Nina would have found herself a similarly middle-class job to work in until her old age. It was therefore unfortunate that one day, in her early- to mid-teens, she began to hear and see things at the edges of her senses - never coherent, but always distressing, and somehow goading in the process. What they goaded toward eventually became clear, as one day whilst being confronted by a bully, she lashed out with her mind, a blunt fist of psychic power knocking the girl unconscious against a locker in full view of a lot of terrified students and teachers. Not three days after that incident, she was taken into custody by squads of black-armoured individuals who would cuff her round the mouth if she so much as whimpered.
The next thirty years of her life could be accurately described as "Hell".
Seven or so years were spent in what could more or less be described as the worst jail in existence. The relative freedom of expression her planet supported was a myth in that grey bunker, as were any other rights the people supposedly had; instead, Nina was kept in a bland grey outfit, in a bland prison cell, utterly isolated from others like her, those who were kept in this place for the sole crime of possessing psychic powers. The guards, at least, had no interest in the prisoners save when they tried to use their powers, promptly being beaten into submission, or in too many cases shot dead and incinerated, but at the same time, they refused to account for the prisoners' needs beyond food and water, a state of affairs that was especially gruelling for a pubescent young girl for reasons that need not be elaborated on.
Socially, therefore, most people in there were not well-adjusted, if she even had any idea about their personalities at all. Nina had only a couple of friends throughout that time, the first a forty year old in a nearby cell who had developed in secret a form of telepathic communication. That friendship lasted all of three months before he was discovered and killed - arguably for the best, considering that every time she used her own abilities, the whispering in her mind grew stronger. She learned the cause of this a couple of years after that, when she grew daring enough to develop her own form of telepathic connection with the thirty two year old two cells over from hers. Their communication lasted a week before he admitted that he'd felt something probing at his mind lately, attempted to convey an image of what it was, and suddenly had his psyche ripped asunder by a monstrosity that Nina herself barely avoided being targeted by too. After seeing what it had twisted the man's body into as the guards carried away the evidence, she no longer attempted to train her abilities.
She was, of course, lucky. She could have spent much longer in there. Instead, the Black Ship arrived not too long after she turned twenty- or was it twenty one?- and took her and every surviving psyker in for transport to Holy Terra. This took ten years in total, and somehow, inexplicably, wound up being an even worse prison than the last - one made of black metal lit by red lamps, a hellish combination that played havoc with her vision; one where the silver-armoured guards standing at every juncture seemed to physically crush her whenever they passed by, even though she knew she was lucky enough to never be subjected to their wrath personally; and yet they and others didn't ignore her, but rather dragged her and others away time and again for the sake of unspeakable testing, probing, and punishing of both mind and body, processes that would have left any sane person traumatised, let alone the psychological wreck she became as the whispering and imagery grew ever more pronounced when the silver guards weren't present.
She was, of course, lucky. Luckier than most, anyway, for her wardmates never degraded into monsters, nor was her section of the ship ever forcibly cleansed with fire to erase a single threat. So, too, could her journey to Terra have taken far longer, and left her truly shattered rather than simply cracked, good only as fuel for the Emperor's dying soul. As it was, however, she remained on the cusp of sanity by tracking her time in there, precise mental markers that anchored her enough to let her keep some sense of self.
A worse fate lay in store for her. Not minutes after she first saw something resembling sunlight for the first time in nearly two decades, she and many others were marched back into an obsidian fortress by men clad in the same sort of black armour she'd first come to know as terrifying, and told that they were to be used for the Imperium's greater benefit, and that they would be trained to use their powers in the name of the God-Emperor, a process that would take a full five years before they were deemed ready. These five years were, thankfully, nothing like as awful as her time on the Black Ship, but to say they were easy was fallacious - her teachers were unreasonably cruel, even having been through the same nightmares she had, and every mistake she made in learning to apply her abilities was punished with beatings and restriction of "privileges" - up to, for the first time, both food and water if they were feeling cruel. All the while still being targeted by unspeakable whispering and imagery, somehow worse than before despite being in such a holy place. Again, she was forced to rely on her internal clock to keep her psyche intact, adding to it with strict and regimented creative activities of a sort - picturing a blank page in her mind, imagining herself writing upon it, and in time generating an entire fantasy trilogy that, when one teacher noticed it, was judged amateurish and naive. That teacher promptly copied the whole thing down word for word behind Nina's back, published it, and made a relative fortune on her efforts.
The exercises, however, did their job. Combined with the data from those tests performed upon the Black Ship, the examination of her talents in the Scholastica Psykana, and examination of her own coping mechanisms, she was unbeknownst to her graded at the level Zeta Secundus - decently strong, not quite capable of protecting her own soul from harm as a Primaris might, but nor a mere sheep to be sent to slaughter and soul syphoning with the massed Tertius psykers. At the end of those five years, she was taken into the core of the Imperial Palace, a golden twisting morass she could never hope to navigate alone protected by giants themselves clad in gold, to what looked like some sort of throne room, and forced to kneel in front of a corpse that she recognised as important for reasons that escaped her in the moment, alongside ninety nine other unfortunate souls like herself.
Not long after that, the God-Emperor touched her mind.
It is quite fortunate that the human brain contains no nerve endings directly, at least for the purposes of sensation. If it did, it would be likely that the electrical and chemical signals coursing through it would induce a constant headache at best, and an unbelievable agony at worst. For Nina, as with most of the astropaths-to-be, her Soul-Binding could not quite be described with realistic metaphors - the closest she could come would be to suggest that it felt very much like her brain had just been crammed full of said sensation-inducing nerve endings, and then shoved into an acid-filled blender with super-heated blades. To say it was pleasant, as some of them purported after the fact, was a strong statement. So too was calling it modest, or distressing. Even words like "excruciating" and "traumatic" were a little weak. If anybody ever bothered to ask, she would likely say it was the single worst experience she had ever had, before or since.
As it was, the teachers merely described it as "graduation". When she came to, she realised very quickly that, whilst the whispering in her mind and vague appendages in the corner of her eye were finally quelled, so too was literally everything else about her sight and vision - even though feeling remained, something made very evident when she was strapped down and the remnants of her melted eyeballs scraped out of their blackened sockets without anaesthesia. Nonetheless, she was practically crippled, and it took another month after that fateful event for her psychic-abilities to take over the role, translating the vibrations in the air into mental patterns she could recognise as sound, and the surfaces about her into images she could position herself relative to. Her telepathy even offered full colour awareness by the time the ship she was on found its way to her very first role as an agent of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica: a component in a major astropathic relay.
For most other astropaths, this would be where their story ended. Whilst a necessity for rapid information flow, the astropathic relays were constantly flooded with psychic messages from across the galaxy, and they were notorious for inducing the phenomenon called burnout: the crippling of an astropath's psychic powers, be it temporary or permanent, often accompanied by braindeath after however many years of replacing indecipherable whispers and visions with an indecipherable torrent of maddening ciphers in all forms. Only those of particularly strong will could hope to survive for any significant length of time.
Once more, Tecca Nina's tendency to develop psychological coping mechanisms saved her: this time, she simply found a way to turn off the part of her mind that was, for want of a better word, "human". Those in charge of the relay didn't want her to be human; they wanted her to be a wire. So, when she was in the immense choir that made it up, she was effectively no longer human, but a wire of thought and spirit, not taking in the messages passed to her, merely letting them move on through her being as fast as possible, and all the while maintaining that mental clock to draw herself back to when she was allowed a break, though by then she was assailed with reminders of her disturbing past so frequently that she often preferred not to revert at all. She burned out sixteen times in the first year before this mechanism took hold; once it had, she burned out once in the next six, and then only because she let that mindstate slip due to a bout of negative memory interfering with her focus.
This improvement did not go unnoticed. By now, she was in her early forties, and looked very much like she was in her late sixties, so major the toll of her life and powers had taken on her. It came as a great surprise, then, when she found herself recommended for work at a much less strenuous choir somewhere near the outer edge of the Imperium's holdings, and an even greater surprise when that work proposal came with a free rejuvenat treatment to ensure her ongoing service there. All at once, she reverted from looking and feeling like an elderly lady back to more or less her physical prime, complete with renewed hair growth. All this, however, would only serve to be the introduction for another trial entirely - granted, not one that would be at all comparable to the horrors she had faced thus far, but something difficult to overcome nonetheless.
At first, her approach into the deeper, less inhabited parts of the void left her wondering if her Soul-Bond was failing. Whispering she had thought banished for good returned steadily, growing louder the further from civilisation she went. It didn't take overly long, once she had taken up her position in the astropathic choir of that region, for her to recognise them for what they were: not the monsters of her past, but the dying screams and nascent dreams of aliens from far before her time, maddening to contemplate even compared to those other monsters of the Warp. They, after all, had at least some basis in human emotion. Nonetheless, her old coping mechanisms kicked in once again: shut down needless emotion, keep track of the passage of time, use the mind to craft creatively- this time, actually delving into and practicing her telepathic powers, to see what creative fashions she could use them in- all serving to keep her on track toward the eventual title of Astropath Transcendent... somehow, though, she found a sort of magnetic pull despite those mechanisms. Week after week, month after month, she kept being drawn back to contemplating, not the voices coming from the darkness, but the very darkness of the void itself, and this fascination manifested one day in the form of a deep chill filling her private quarters. After that, she found she didn't need to lose herself in her coping mechanisms anymore, though she continued to work on her telepathy where she could.
Again, this did not go unnoticed. Not long after this revelation, perhaps three years since joining the choir, she was requested by name by a member of the Falcon-Cook Rogue Trader lineage. A Praetorian family, the patriarch offered her a position in his own choir aboard his ship. It would be quieter still than the one she'd grown used to, and perhaps a touch more dangerous at times, but then excitement was part and parcel of the life of a Rogue Trader! Excitement, freedom, and of course wealth beyond measure, more than Nina herself might ever have access to in the alternate course of her life. Wealth, in truth, wasn't too impressive to her, but the freedom to expand her abilities, and perhaps see just how far they could go...

Skills:

• Astrotelepath - By far Nina's most notable skill is her aptitude in astrotelepathy. Though she sacrificed her vision, hearing, and much of her former self in the process of transformation- not all of which was due to exposure to the Emperor's soul, and none of which was pleasant to experience- what she has gained in return more than makes up for it. She experiences the world psychically now, as if she were in full retention of her former senses, and she can send messages across vast stretches of Imperial space in relatively short timeframes, a vital process for the Imperium's ongoing functionality, with even further distances made possible in the presence of an astropathic choir. Granted, sending even one relatively brief message is not nor ever will be a short process for any distance greater than orbital, especially with how much effort goes into encoding the most important and sensitive information packets to ensure prying Warp creatures and scions of heresy can't intercept it, but the capacity to do so at all is a rare and rightly-prized ability.
• Sanctioned Psyker - Beyond mere astropathy, Nina is a reasonably skilled psyker in other areas too, sanctioned as she is. All psykers can detect the soul-aura around an individual, so-called Witch-Sight, and may make use of it to elucidate certain pieces of information about them, though not much without explicit training. The majority of sanctioned psykers thus focus their efforts on learning to make use of a relatively selective pool of psychic abilities called a discipline, most practicing with one particular discipline above all others, and mastering two or maybe three distinct disciplines in their lifetime if they are exceptional; Nina may not even have had that much opportunity if she had never risen from the rank and file of the Astropathic Relay, for many astropaths in a choir never have the time to develop beyond their basic telepathic sending and astropathy.
  As it is, though, she is an adept when it comes to Telepathy, wielding both communication- and domination-style abilities for their respective roles of information relay and compelling others to act in certain ways, and has started to delve into the Voidfrost discipline that a number of astropaths find themselves dredging up when isolated from other human minds, with the capacity to shield herself from the void's icy grip in a bubble of air and warmth, plummet her own metabolism or that of a willing target into a form of life-preserving stasis, and even seek out and locate the minds of other sentient beings from many Void Units away, up to and including xeno races. There is evidence to suggest that she could progress much further still in these regions and perhaps others, if she gets the opportunity to continue mastering her abilities.
  Granted, none of this comes without cost. Though she is soulbound to the Emperor, warding her mind and rendering her far more resistant to the whispers at the edges of her sanity, effectively inaudible by this time, whisper they nonetheless do - and every so often, the ward will be strained by over-enthusiastic use of her abilities and the resulting eddies of the Immaterium, generating a disturbing effect in the local environment. Ever since she first accessed her Voidfrost potential, this has almost universally manifested as a sharp but brief temperature plummet, seeding hoarfrost across every surface in a wide area about her. She remains ever-vigilant for more explicit Warp manifestations, however - rare as they ought to be, they are by no means impossible, and if worst comes to worst, old brainwashing is likely to lead to an almost-instinctive suicide attempt even so many years after leaving the Scholastica Psykana behind - assuming another crew member doesn't attempt to kill her first, that is.
• Weaponplay - Naturally, it is rarely appropriate to wield psychic abilities recklessly, least of all those based on altering the mind directly. It is therefore a good thing that she has grown at least reasonably skilled in making use of both pistols and melee weaponry - far more direct is the damage of a pistol than an urge to run out of cover, and far less risky to make use of unless she runs out of ammo. Melee combat is rather more of a concern, in truth, but with proper protection and, occasionally, making use of her powers to support her in combat, she can usually get through a fight unscathed - assuming she's allowed into the fight at all, anyway.
• Trauma Response - Nina's past is one filled with the worst sorts of disturbances, most of which weren't even produced by her power directly. To say she has some serious PTSD is an understatement, and it is likely that this will affect her for her entire life; however, she has developed the means to at least withstand future horror as it comes, especially for long-term situations like prolonged torture and imprisonment. The major component of this at present is essentially to turn off her human emotion and relegate her response to logical and creative thought alone, rendering herself nearly unbreakable as far as further harm goes, but the first aspect of it, developing at some point in her teenage years, was to essentially keep an internal clock and calendar to track how much time has passed, and she has become very good at keeping track of time even under severe stress.

Equipment: Nina's gear is mostly basic but highly functional, focused on quality over quantity in a way assisted by her relatively privileged position:

• A hellpistol for ranged combat, good for 20 shots per hotshot charge pack, and with extra packs carried on her person when it runs dry;
• A mono-edged sword for melee combat, granted typically more of a last resort than intended for standard use;
• Thermoplas mesh armour, woven into her robes for protection;
• A blessed necklace charm in the shape of an Aquila, for purposes of faith and psychic focusing both;
• A void suit, generally stored on-ship in case she needs to head into the void unprotected by her powers;
• Various utility items: micro-bead for short-distance comms; chrono for timekeeping; flashlight and glowbulb for light in different circumstances; pict recorder for vid captures; dataslate for sending, storing, and receiving information.

Miscellaneous: There are a wide variety of directions Tecca Nina's powers could develop in the future, setting aside her ongoing advancement of the Telepathy and Voidfrost disciplines. Most are derived either from her soul-bond to the Emperor, namely the Warp-banishing Theosophamy and divinely-inspired Soul Ward, or from the usual mentally-charged disciplines of Divination and Telekinesis. Technically speaking, however, nothing explicitly prevents her from taking them in more offensive directions via Pyromancy, Biomancy, or perhaps even stranger options, though it is likely these would not be strictly optimal choices given her position.
It is also worth noting that the damage done to her flesh and nervous system by the Soul-Binding ritual is such that standard bionic replacements could not hope to restore either her vision or her hearing. However, such augments capable of it do exist - they are expensive beyond standard measure, and so heavily engineered as to be works of unparalleled artifice in most circumstances, but not unattainable for a Rogue Trader whose fortunes trend toward the stars...

Warhammer 40k: Beyond the Pale - A Rogue Trader Adventure

Astropath Transcendent, Choir-Master

Name: Tecca Nina

Age: 51, if she was counting correctly.

Gender: Female

Race: Human psyker

Appearance: Tecca Nina is quite an imposing figure, and through her value to the Imperium and consequent rejuvenat treatment seems much younger than her true years. Tall and slender, she is pale-skinned and in possession of dark hair down to her shoulders, a combination of traits that many men would find highly attractive - were it not for her eye sockets, empty and permanently seared black by the scorching light of the God-Emperor's soul that once coursed through her. For politeness' sake, she tends to cover the hollows with a black blindfold bearing the symbol of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica on its front in pale blue, a neat and tidy covering for a gruesome disfigurement. Additionally, she wears long black robes that cover her body, themselves bearing both the symbol of her Adepta in pale blue on the front, the Imperial Aquila in white on her back, and the Aquila again in white on the hood.
Privately, these items of apparent cloth in fact double as protection from harm. Woven into them is a mesh of thermoplas cells that stiffen when subjected to kinetic energy and heat, dissipating that energy and keeping her safe from harm whilst remaining quite lightweight. Additionally, to those who might somehow think she is easy prey and are not deterred simply for being an astropath, she carries on her person both a hellpistol and a mono-edge sword, evidence of her importance as the master of Edmund Livingstone's Astropathic Choir and indicators of her own lethality if provoked.

Personality: To say Tecca Nina is a severe woman is not exactly incorrect. The life experiences of a psyker once their powers awaken, and especially an astropath, are rarely positive in nature; hers have shaped her into a woman who will not tolerate being made light of by anybody, as in her mind she has gone through too much and come too far in spite of the odds stacked against her to allow such a thing. Consequently, those of higher rank than herself who disrespect her are generally treated with coolness, the bare minimum of civility required and no more, whilst those outright beneath her who do the same will receive naught but passive-aggressive insults, or indeed outright warnings if they go too far - never threats, though, because a threat is uncivil, and implies the possibility that you won't follow through when push comes to shove.
To everyone else, though, she does her best to be helpful, understanding, and occasionally even kind. The God-Emperor's mercy works in strange ways - those who are most harmed are often most belittled, a circumstance she is personally well-aware of, and whilst she does not look back on her past with fondness or indeed grace, it has informed her quite a bit. Thus, she tries to show empathy to those in need, even the rare alien that the Imperium has seen fit to welcome into its fold, albeit tinged with pity and stern recommendations for the many. It is but rarely that this folds to naught but empathy, almost always for her fellow sanctioned psykers such as the small choir she now leads, and to them she truly does act graciously, for it is a crushing sort of kindred that they share.
Her relationship with the God-Emperor is... complex. Every psyker soul-bound to Him experiences the process in different ways if they do not die outright, from indescribable sensations to an enlightening discussion with Him. Some even expand their faith as a result, becoming the self-proclaimed Transubstantial Initiates that irk the Ecclesiarchy so. Nina falls into the somewhat broader category of astropaths who merely experience agony, though the sensation was certainly indescribable, and as a consequence she is of two minds. Was it necessary? Certainly; even her particular strategies would not have worked forever. Did it help her? Arguably; having a shard of the Emperor's soul tied to hers has certainly kept it safe from harm. Is she less enthused with Him as a result? Entirely - but then, she can hardly blame the God-Emperor directly. His agents are far more culpable as sinners, after all. To that end, when she does talk about her faith in Him, she tends to keep her statements modest, largely espousing kindness to others as she herself displays, if only to offset but slightly the cruelties both necessary and needless of the Imperium's more questionable servants.
That being said, to the heathen, the heretic, and especially the witch, she of course has nothing but contempt. Even now, coming to terms with a traumatic past has been a cripplingly hard task that often keeps her up until the late hours, but she at least accepts that the sanctioning process and the Soul-Binding that blinded her was a necessity to keep her safe from worse things. They who would avoid either or both, and ultimately they who would act against the God-Emperor Himself, are unworthy of His grace; at best to be directed to the Black Ships, at worst to be eliminated and forgotten, for that is the greatest kindness one can do them. Most xenos also fall into this category, but she is at least able to acknowledge that if her employer has taken them on board, there is likely a good reason for it.

Relationship to the Dynasty: Tecca Nina has spent the last few years working in the astropathic choir of one of the ships of the Falcon-Cook family; it is fair to suggest that time has been an interesting one. It transpires that her power as a psyker is yet to be fully realised, or so it seems to her; aside from anything else, her skill in astrotelepathy has been tested time and again, pushing her to the forefront of the choir, and ultimately into the position of leading a fresh choir under Rudyard once the Warrant of Trade passed to him. They are large shoes to fill, but Rudyard has been highly accommodating thus far, helping to make them feel much smaller in a way that is steadily earning her gratitude and respect. This has done wonders for her confidence in a fairly short timeframe, but to say she is not still haunted would be entirely incorrect. In many aspects of her being, she still has a very long way to go.

History

Born on the civilised world of Arteus III, Tecca Nina's early life was not precisely remarkable. Her family was middle class, they worked middle-class jobs for the Imperium, she went to a middle-class school, and under most other circumstances, Tecca Nina would have found herself a similarly middle-class job to work in until her old age. It was therefore unfortunate that one day, in her early- to mid-teens, she began to hear and see things at the edges of her senses - never coherent, but always distressing, and somehow goading in the process. What they goaded toward eventually became clear, as one day whilst being confronted by a bully, she lashed out with her mind, a blunt fist of psychic power knocking the girl unconscious against a locker in full view of a lot of terrified students and teachers. Not three days after that incident, she was taken into custody by squads of black-armoured individuals who would cuff her round the mouth if she so much as whimpered.
The next thirty years of her life could be accurately described as "Hell".
Seven or so years were spent in what could more or less be described as the worst jail in existence. The relative freedom of expression her planet supported was a myth in that grey bunker, as were any other rights the people supposedly had; instead, Nina was kept in a bland grey outfit, in a bland prison cell, utterly isolated from others like her, those who were kept in this place for the sole crime of possessing psychic powers. The guards, at least, had no interest in the prisoners save when they tried to use their powers, promptly being beaten into submission, or in too many cases shot dead and incinerated, but at the same time, they refused to account for the prisoners' needs beyond food and water, a state of affairs that was especially gruelling for a pubescent young girl for reasons that need not be elaborated on.
Socially, therefore, most people in there were not well-adjusted, if she even had any idea about their personalities at all. Nina had only a couple of friends throughout that time, the first a forty year old in a nearby cell who had developed in secret a form of telepathic communication. That friendship lasted all of three months before he was discovered and killed - arguably for the best, considering that every time she used her own abilities, the whispering in her mind grew stronger. She learned the cause of this a couple of years after that, when she grew daring enough to develop her own form of telepathic connection with the thirty two year old two cells over from hers. Their communication lasted a week before he admitted that he'd felt something probing at his mind lately, attempted to convey an image of what it was, and suddenly had his psyche ripped asunder by a monstrosity that Nina herself barely avoided being targeted by too. After seeing what it had twisted the man's body into as the guards carried away the evidence, she no longer attempted to train her abilities.
She was, of course, lucky. She could have spent much longer in there. Instead, the Black Ship arrived not too long after she turned twenty- or was it twenty one?- and took her and every surviving psyker in for transport to Holy Terra. This took ten years in total, and somehow, inexplicably, wound up being an even worse prison than the last - one made of black metal lit by red lamps, a hellish combination that played havoc with her vision; one where the silver-armoured guards standing at every juncture seemed to physically crush her whenever they passed by, even though she knew she was lucky enough to never be subjected to their wrath personally; and yet they and others didn't ignore her, but rather dragged her and others away time and again for the sake of unspeakable testing, probing, and punishing of both mind and body, processes that would have left any sane person traumatised, let alone the psychological wreck she became as the whispering and imagery grew ever more pronounced when the silver guards weren't present.
She was, of course, lucky. Luckier than most, anyway, for her wardmates never degraded into monsters, nor was her section of the ship ever forcibly cleansed with fire to erase a single threat. So, too, could her journey to Terra have taken far longer, and left her truly shattered rather than simply cracked, good only as fuel for the Emperor's dying soul. As it was, however, she remained on the cusp of sanity by tracking her time in there, precise mental markers that anchored her enough to let her keep some sense of self.
A worse fate lay in store for her. Not minutes after she first saw something resembling sunlight for the first time in nearly two decades, she and many others were marched back into an obsidian fortress by men clad in the same sort of black armour she'd first come to know as terrifying, and told that they were to be used for the Imperium's greater benefit, and that they would be trained to use their powers in the name of the God-Emperor, a process that would take a full five years before they were deemed ready. These five years were, thankfully, nothing like as awful as her time on the Black Ship, but to say they were easy was fallacious - her teachers were unreasonably cruel, even having been through the same nightmares she had, and every mistake she made in learning to apply her abilities was punished with beatings and restriction of "privileges" - up to, for the first time, both food and water if they were feeling cruel. All the while still being targeted by unspeakable whispering and imagery, somehow worse than before despite being in such a holy place. Again, she was forced to rely on her internal clock to keep her psyche intact, adding to it with strict and regimented creative activities of a sort - picturing a blank page in her mind, imagining herself writing upon it, and in time generating an entire fantasy trilogy that, when one teacher noticed it, was judged amateurish and naive. That teacher promptly copied the whole thing down word for word behind Nina's back, published it, and made a relative fortune on her efforts.
The exercises, however, did their job. Combined with the data from those tests performed upon the Black Ship, the examination of her talents in the Scholastica Psykana, and examination of her own coping mechanisms, she was unbeknownst to her graded at the level Zeta Secundus - decently strong, not quite capable of protecting her own soul from harm as a Primaris might, but nor a mere sheep to be sent to slaughter and soul syphoning with the massed Tertius psykers. At the end of those five years, she was taken into the core of the Imperial Palace, a golden twisting morass she could never hope to navigate alone protected by giants themselves clad in gold, to what looked like some sort of throne room, and forced to kneel in front of a corpse that she recognised as important for reasons that escaped her in the moment, alongside ninety nine other unfortunate souls like herself.
Not long after that, the God-Emperor touched her mind.
It is quite fortunate that the human brain contains no nerve endings directly, at least for the purposes of sensation. If it did, it would be likely that the electrical and chemical signals coursing through it would induce a constant headache at best, and an unbelievable agony at worst. For Nina, as with most of the astropaths-to-be, her Soul-Binding could not quite be described with realistic metaphors - the closest she could come would be to suggest that it felt very much like her brain had just been crammed full of said sensation-inducing nerve endings, and then shoved into an acid-filled blender with super-heated blades. To say it was pleasant, as some of them purported after the fact, was a strong statement. So too was calling it modest, or distressing. Even words like "excruciating" and "traumatic" were a little weak. If anybody ever bothered to ask, she would likely say it was the single worst experience she had ever had, before or since.
As it was, the teachers merely described it as "graduation". When she came to, she realised very quickly that, whilst the whispering in her mind and vague appendages in the corner of her eye were finally quelled, so too was literally everything else about her sight and vision - even though feeling remained, something made very evident when she was strapped down and the remnants of her melted eyeballs scraped out of their blackened sockets without anaesthesia. Nonetheless, she was practically crippled, and it took another month after that fateful event for her psychic-abilities to take over the role, translating the vibrations in the air into mental patterns she could recognise as sound, and the surfaces about her into images she could position herself relative to. Her telepathy even offered full colour awareness by the time the ship she was on found its way to her very first role as an agent of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica: a component in a major astropathic relay.
For most other astropaths, this would be where their story ended. Whilst a necessity for rapid information flow, the astropathic relays were constantly flooded with psychic messages from across the galaxy, and they were notorious for inducing the phenomenon called burnout: the crippling of an astropath's psychic powers, be it temporary or permanent, often accompanied by braindeath after however many years of replacing indecipherable whispers and visions with an indecipherable torrent of maddening ciphers in all forms. Only those of particularly strong will could hope to survive for any significant length of time.
Once more, Tecca Nina's tendency to develop psychological coping mechanisms saved her: this time, she simply found a way to turn off the part of her mind that was, for want of a better word, "human". Those in charge of the relay didn't want her to be human; they wanted her to be a wire. So, when she was in the immense choir that made it up, she was effectively no longer human, but a wire of thought and spirit, not taking in the messages passed to her, merely letting them move on through her being as fast as possible, and all the while maintaining that mental clock to draw herself back to when she was allowed a break, though by then she was assailed with reminders of her disturbing past so frequently that she often preferred not to revert at all. She burned out sixteen times in the first year before this mechanism took hold; once it had, she burned out once in the next six, and then only because she let that mindstate slip due to a bout of negative memory interfering with her focus.
This improvement did not go unnoticed. By now, she was in her early forties, and looked very much like she was in her late sixties, so major the toll of her life and powers had taken on her. It came as a great surprise, then, when she found herself recommended for work at a much less strenuous choir somewhere near the outer edge of the Imperium's holdings, and an even greater surprise when that work proposal came with a free rejuvenat treatment to ensure her ongoing service there. All at once, she reverted from looking and feeling like an elderly lady back to more or less her physical prime, complete with renewed hair growth. All this, however, would only serve to be the introduction for another trial entirely - granted, not one that would be at all comparable to the horrors she had faced thus far, but something difficult to overcome nonetheless.
At first, her approach into the deeper, less inhabited parts of the void left her wondering if her Soul-Bond was failing. Whispering she had thought banished for good returned steadily, growing louder the further from civilisation she went. It didn't take overly long, once she had taken up her position in the astropathic choir of that region, for her to recognise them for what they were: not the monsters of her past, but the dying screams and nascent dreams of aliens from far before her time, maddening to contemplate even compared to those other monsters of the Warp. They, after all, had at least some basis in human emotion. Nonetheless, her old coping mechanisms kicked in once again: shut down needless emotion, keep track of the passage of time, use the mind to craft creatively- this time, actually delving into and practicing her telepathic powers, to see what creative fashions she could use them in- all serving to keep her on track toward the eventual title of Astropath Transcendent... somehow, though, she found a sort of magnetic pull despite those mechanisms. Week after week, month after month, she kept being drawn back to contemplating, not the voices coming from the darkness, but the very darkness of the void itself, and this fascination manifested one day in the form of a deep chill filling her private quarters. After that, she found she didn't need to lose herself in her coping mechanisms anymore, though she continued to work on her telepathy where she could.
Again, this did not go unnoticed. Not long after this revelation, perhaps three years since joining the choir, she was requested by name by a member of the Falcon-Cook Rogue Trader lineage. A Praetorian family, the patriarch offered her a position in his own choir aboard his ship. It would be quieter still than the one she'd grown used to, and perhaps a touch more dangerous at times, but then excitement was part and parcel of the life of a Rogue Trader! Excitement, freedom, and of course wealth beyond measure, more than Nina herself might ever have access to in the alternate course of her life. Wealth, in truth, wasn't too impressive to her, but the freedom to expand her abilities, and perhaps see just how far they could go...

Skills:

• Astrotelepath - By far Nina's most notable skill is her aptitude in astrotelepathy. Though she sacrificed her vision, hearing, and much of her former self in the process of transformation- not all of which was due to exposure to the Emperor's soul, and none of which was pleasant to experience- what she has gained in return more than makes up for it. She experiences the world psychically now, as if she were in full retention of her former senses, and she can send messages across vast stretches of Imperial space in relatively short timeframes, a vital process for the Imperium's ongoing functionality, with even further distances made possible in the presence of an astropathic choir. Granted, sending even one relatively brief message is not nor ever will be a short process for any distance greater than orbital, especially with how much effort goes into encoding the most important and sensitive information packets to ensure prying Warp creatures and scions of heresy can't intercept it, but the capacity to do so at all is a rare and rightly-prized ability.
• Sanctioned Psyker - Beyond mere astropathy, Nina is a reasonably skilled psyker in other areas too, sanctioned as she is. All psykers can detect the soul-aura around an individual, so-called Witch-Sight, and may make use of it to elucidate certain pieces of information about them, though not much without explicit training. The majority of sanctioned psykers thus focus their efforts on learning to make use of a relatively selective pool of psychic abilities called a discipline, most practicing with one particular discipline above all others, and mastering two or maybe three distinct disciplines in their lifetime if they are exceptional; Nina may not even have had that much opportunity if she had never risen from the rank and file of the Astropathic Relay, for many astropaths in a choir never have the time to develop beyond their basic telepathic sending and astropathy.
  As it is, though, she is an adept when it comes to Telepathy, wielding both communication- and domination-style abilities for their respective roles of information relay and compelling others to act in certain ways, and has started to delve into the Voidfrost discipline that a number of astropaths find themselves dredging up when isolated from other human minds, with the capacity to shield herself from the void's icy grip in a bubble of air and warmth, plummet her own metabolism or that of a willing target into a form of life-preserving stasis, and even seek out and locate the minds of other sentient beings from many Void Units away, up to and including xeno races. There is evidence to suggest that she could progress much further still in these regions and perhaps others, if she gets the opportunity to continue mastering her abilities.
  Granted, none of this comes without cost. Though she is soulbound to the Emperor, warding her mind and rendering her far more resistant to the whispers at the edges of her sanity, effectively inaudible by this time, whisper they nonetheless do - and every so often, the ward will be strained by over-enthusiastic use of her abilities and the resulting eddies of the Immaterium, generating a disturbing effect in the local environment. Ever since she first accessed her Voidfrost potential, this has almost universally manifested as a sharp but brief temperature plummet, seeding hoarfrost across every surface in a wide area about her. She remains ever-vigilant for more explicit Warp manifestations, however - rare as they ought to be, they are by no means impossible, and if worst comes to worst, old brainwashing is likely to lead to an almost-instinctive suicide attempt even so many years after leaving the Scholastica Psykana behind - assuming another crew member doesn't attempt to kill her first, that is.
• Weaponplay - Naturally, it is rarely appropriate to wield psychic abilities recklessly, least of all those based on altering the mind directly. It is therefore a good thing that she has grown at least reasonably skilled in making use of both pistols and melee weaponry - far more direct is the damage of a pistol than an urge to run out of cover, and far less risky to make use of unless she runs out of ammo. Melee combat is rather more of a concern, in truth, but with proper protection and, occasionally, making use of her powers to support her in combat, she can usually get through a fight unscathed - assuming she's allowed into the fight at all, anyway.
• Trauma Response - Nina's past is one filled with the worst sorts of disturbances, most of which weren't even produced by her power directly. To say she has some serious PTSD is an understatement, and it is likely that this will affect her for her entire life; however, she has developed the means to at least withstand future horror as it comes, especially for long-term situations like prolonged torture and imprisonment. The major component of this at present is essentially to turn off her human emotion and relegate her response to logical and creative thought alone, rendering herself nearly unbreakable as far as further harm goes, but the first aspect of it, developing at some point in her teenage years, was to essentially keep an internal clock and calendar to track how much time has passed, and she has become very good at keeping track of time even under severe stress.

Equipment: Nina's gear is mostly basic but highly functional, focused on quality over quantity in a way assisted by her relatively privileged position:

• A hellpistol for ranged combat, good for 20 shots per hotshot charge pack, and with extra packs carried on her person when it runs dry;
• A mono-edged sword for melee combat, granted typically more of a last resort than intended for standard use;
• Thermoplas mesh armour, woven into her robes for protection;
• A blessed necklace charm in the shape of an Aquila, for purposes of faith and psychic focusing both;
• A void suit, generally stored on-ship in case she needs to head into the void unprotected by her powers;
• Various utility items: micro-bead for short-distance comms; chrono for timekeeping; flashlight and glowbulb for light in different circumstances; pict recorder for vid captures; dataslate for sending, storing, and receiving information.

Miscellaneous: There are a wide variety of directions Tecca Nina's powers could develop in the future, setting aside her ongoing advancement of the Telepathy and Voidfrost disciplines. Most are derived either from her soul-bond to the Emperor, namely the Warp-banishing Theosophamy and divinely-inspired Soul Ward, or from the usual mentally-charged disciplines of Divination and Telekinesis. Technically speaking, however, nothing explicitly prevents her from taking them in more offensive directions via Pyromancy, Biomancy, or perhaps even stranger options, though it is likely these would not be strictly optimal choices given her position.
It is also worth noting that the damage done to her flesh and nervous system by the Soul-Binding ritual is such that standard bionic replacements could not hope to restore either her vision or her hearing. However, such augments capable of it do exist - they are expensive beyond standard measure, and so heavily engineered as to be works of unparalleled artifice in most circumstances, but not unattainable for a Rogue Trader whose fortunes trend toward the stars...

Persona ~ The Beholder

Interacting with Kirsty @Lugubrious, Liam @CriticalHit, and The Raven @LetMeDoStuff

Alina Sanford

She'd done nothing.

'Worthless. Useless.'

She had seen Kirsty fight off those creatures, and she'd done nothing. She'd seen her trapped by flames, watched Liam save her, seen them both run back to fight the cow angel thing, and she'd done nothing.

'Cowardly Alina. You're awful.'

Eventually, the sounds of fighting died down. Eventually, Alina couldn't sit idly by any longer, now that it was over. She forced herself to stand, to slide up the wall and walk back around the corner where combat had been taken.

'You could have helped. You should have- should-'

That. That was Kirsty. She'd lost an arm. She. Oh.

'Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God.'

Suddenly, Alina was running to her side. This was what her lack of support did. She could have stopped this from happening. Kirsty's arm, she reckoned the real Kirsty, was - it was meat. It didn't look like it could be fixed, that was for sure.

'Do you two have any ice?'

Stupid question. Worth asking. She knew it needed to be kept cold. If a body part was lost, it'd die quickly unless they were kept cold enough. That wasn't a chemistry thing, but it was in every bit of media she could think of that featured it, and it wasn't a stretch to say it was due to nerves more than anything else.

And for the stump, she needed to stop the bleeding. How did she... yeah, okay. She had to put pressure on it, right? That wouldn't work- oh, wait, there was a knife right there! Could she... maybe. How did they do a torniquet on TV? Cloth, and something to tighten the cloth before the point of blood flow?

Well, they had both. Taking the knife, she cut off the excess sleeve on Kirsty's destroyed arm, and wrapped it around the arm above where it had been ruined. Shit, how would... twist the cloth until it's tight, she supposed, then wrap it around the knife handle, turn that in the same direction as the first twist... was that working? Maybe? She was twisting a knife around to try and stem the bloodflow on somebody's arm, shiiiit. She had no idea what she was doing here. Fuck it, she'd just use her hands to keep it twisted, the knife had done its part there.

'We need to find a doctor. Or a hospital or something.'

That was stupid too. There weren't doctors in here. This place was devoid of anyone other than themselves and the death dogs from earlier, and whatever Kirsty's evil version had summoned. But they had to do something - she'd already maimed Kirsty by proxy by not helping, it was the least Alina could do to keep her from dying outright.

Abysstide: New Atlantis (high-powered apocalyptic urban fantasy RP) [CLOSED DUE TO INACTIVITY]

@Garet More or less, yes. Feel free to talk about your character ideas in there as you so wish, of course.

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure - Operation: Ground the Harpy

The French woman watched as the group went over their abilities, to an extent. The sight of two spoons hovering in midair was, surprising to be sure, but no more than her gun spontaneously falling apart - and that thanks to the other woman, of course. "Disassembly" indeed; by the strange voice that echoed out, harsh but not unlike that of the German in her house, Till seemed capable of doing such by himself already. She even got a sample of Taras' power more directly; though she'd meant to bandage the poor girl's wounds as soon as she was reminded, oh yes, these people were quite sorely wounded, by the time she'd reached the cabinet containing her medical supplies, they seemed to be healing up by themselves.

What a queer collection of individuals. "Stand Users"...

'I have heard that term before, "Stand Users",' she confirmed, licking her lips in hard thought. 'They might be that too. But, you saw what I meant, surely? They were, ah... Not alive? Their spark is gone? Not conscious, not like you.' She anxiously hoped her point was getting across: whatever was controlling them, it was not a sentient human mind. 'If they can do such things to as great an extent as they showed, no wonder they are nearly invincible. Our latest encounter aside, the only other one I know who's-' Abruptly, she stiffened up and slammed her mouth shut, eyes widening as if she'd come close to revealing something confidential.

'...I should not be so blasé. I still do not know that you are with us, of course,' she explained, words somewhat spilling from her even as her accent thickened with mild annoyance. 'Or, indeed, who you are with, if not the Germans, because there are several different nationalities in here at once. Would you care to explain that, mes amies, or am I to expect that the power to flail my cutlery is a sign of good faith?'

@Zoey Boey@Yankee@OwO@Lady Selune

RPGC#29 - The Village (Voting and feedback)

I dare say I'm a sucker for good SPAG, and I believe most of the entries in this manage it fairly well. However, I think I'd argue that of the stories, the one that offers the best atmosphere is The Light That Leaves No Darkness, followed closely by Piety. The former offers a very solid foundation of the world itself, the main character and her adversary, and the sort of person you need to be to carry the metaphorical light- or indeed, the literal flame- to flush out darkness from the world. The latter, meanwhile, paints a very disturbing picture of something between a mental break and the demoniac masquerading as pure, and the consequences thereof - not to mention the uncertainty of what's about to happen to the perspective character in its ending.

I think, however, that I prefer the consistency of The Light That Leaves No Darkness, given that it goes without introducing said perspective character in the last few paragraphs, and therefore that would be the one that gets my vote in this case.

Persona ~ The Beholder

I exist, yaes.

The Emperor's Duty: A Warhammer 40K RP

Justicar Hektor Autark

No positive response. What a pity.

The order to fire was taken by the Assassins; consequently, their leader's death was taken poorly by the Enforcers, and Hektor and his two companions were engulfed in a storm of autocannon fire. This was not precisely what they were designed for, but it was nonetheless more than sufficient to keep them alive and well for the time being, even if shooting back was tricky. The Repressor, by contrast, was quite well-suited to enduring modest weapons fire, and those within retaliated accordingly: it pressed forward just behind the infantry formation even as that moved to one side to let it pass, unleashing a storm of autopistol fire and shotgun shells from its sides, and a combination of tear gas grenades launched over the walls and disorienting blasts from the water cannons, not to mention both the Marshal's heavy stubber and the Magistrate's bolt cannon unleashing hell upon those on the wall.

What really did the trick, at least from Hektor's perspective, were the Judge's homing Executioner shells - no shotgun was precisely engineered to hit targets with both a height and distance advantage, but the Judge sharing a locked formation with him managed to get several clean shots in, taking out at least three Enforcers before reloading. Not to say either himself or the Arbitrator failed in their positions either, the Arbitrator's shotgun offering a fairly wide spread to at least ensure damage, if not precisely kills, whilst his own bolt pistol hammered out rounds that, more often than not, pierced armour and blew apart flesh.

But they couldn't get all of them. Suffice to say, the Guard's support was much appreciated here even if it was as good as covering fire, and the Assassins handling both enemy snipers and dealing with their own targets would be an easy enough procedure for them. The problem was that, even after the Lockshield formation moved to take proper cover behind the Repressor, and even as that moved in close enough for the cannons to stop being merely confusing and start being enough to push targets back and to a fatal drop, there was far too much firepower coming their way even if it was slowing gradually. They had to be much more efficient: if they moved that lascannon over to this side, then never mind the Lockshields - it could very well eradicate the vehicle and everybody inside it with contemptuous ease in very short order.

Which made it a very good thing when the sound of mechanical baying began to be heard, followed not long after by yells of surprise, and then screams of pain and fear. The cavalry had found a way on to the barricade.

---

Cyber-Mastiff Handler Victoria Ceras

Victoria had to be honest: Michael's relative lack of talk with her was annoying. He and his fellow Verispexii had a vox connection running, and he was using the opportunity to chat with them a lot more than he was chatting with her. She liked having people to run her mouth with when she wasn't actively controlling the hounds, and somebody doing so without her was, honestly, frustrating.

But, it did leave her with plenty of room to keep her eyes open for a doorway into the facility, as well as keeping the cyber-mastiffs on track alongside the bike. She had to keep a good deal of distance and a few buildings between the Rumbler and the estate proper, just to make sure she wasn't pinged along the way, but that made actually finding a door-like object that much harder. It was armoured, but it wasn't perfect.

Then again, Mikey was apparently just an expert when it came to peripherals - quite abruptly, mid-sentence even, he called out 'Stop!', and by the time Victoria had slammed the brakes on the bike and called the mastiffs to a stop, they'd gone an alley past where they wanted to be, seemingly. It didn't take too long for her to bring the Rumbler back around, though, and... well, there it was. A door. Heavily reinforced, and clearly difficult to break into, but it was a weakpoint! They had their in!

Now they just had to break it open. That would be the job of the assault cannons. But with Enforcers already beginning to mill up top, they'd have no time to do this even semi-subtly... busting through it was, apparently.

'Hold on tight, love,' she suggested rather than ordered, giving Michael a chance to cling to her waist before she slammed down on the accelerator, charging the closed-off opening with increasing exhilaration and ever more gunfire aimed toward them. To any layperson's eyes, this would just look like a suicidal charge - but as they got in range, she pressed a button, and unleashed hell in the form of a wall of sound and light, and hundreds of assault cannon rounds per second straight toward the doorway.

Michael screeched. Vickie laughed. The door... well, it might have been made of adamantium for all she knew, but assault cannons had been known to melt Guard-grade armour for sheer output, and she had two going at once. The door stood no chance - though it was still standing as she drew close, it was riddled. One more big impact...

'Wait NO- WUAAGH!'

She'd slowed a little bit before halting the fire and pulling the bike back on one wheel. That was so she didn't just crash straight into a wall. Or, for that matter, the door. But with all the Rumbler's energy focused at the top, crashing through it was less a matter of brute force, and more of extremely potent leverage. It snapped off the top hinge like a gunshot, and the bottom like a lawbreaker's arm being twisted beyond integrity. The end result was a very heavy bike smashing through a perforated door, skidding sideways and barely slowing itself in time to turn a fatal impact with the wall not far opposite into an unpleasantly hard knock for the passengers.

'Attack mode, lethal force! Go go go!' Victoria yelled back through the doorway, instinctive command rather than any conscious will, the cyber-mastiffs charging into the ruined doorway even as both humans struggled to regain their bearings after such a heavy impact. Had Michael been knocked out? She knew she hadn't, he was more lightly armoured though... her arm felt like it had been hit with a sledgehammer even through the carapace, though. She hoped he didn't die on her account, the Justicar would have her head for that.

Nonetheless, as the carnage audibly began, and the mastiffs began to kill, Victoria smacked herself once across the jaw, then leapt out the clear side, shotgun in hand and firing over and over at the first Enforcers she saw, managing to clip one's arm before she took cover behind a nearby pillar. Thank the God-Emperor most of them were occupied with the defense from the forces out front right now, because it made her job so much easier! Even Michael was getting involved with his own weapon from inside the bike, bless him, but the real force multiplier was the hounds. Busker and Vaudeville were top of the line when it came to cyber-mastiffs - top-end tracking equipment, sure, but more pertinently a good deal of armour for their size, enough agility and posture to become very difficult targets for incoming fire, and an array of incredibly lethal hidden "teeth". Right now, both had the chain-threshers out, easily capable of gnashing through carapace, muscle and bone in one fell swoop. And that was a huge psychological factor as well: these untrained clowns could barely handle a single real Arbitrator, she suspected, which made a pair of mechanical mutts with chainsword maws all the more insurmountable, not to mention all the more terrifying for them.

They'd started with five opponents in the hallway. It took maybe fifteen seconds to take that down to zero, but with more coming from the right-hand corridor. Ordering the mastiffs to heel, she dragged Michael out of the bike and carried on left of the Rumbler's entry point. The key, of course, was with her, and any Enforcer stupid enough to try and force it to start would be unpleasantly surprised when the engine blew out on them. Not that having it blow was a good thing, but then who would try to drive a bike through a pretty narrow corridor?

'Alright, Michael, we need to find some stairs,' she announced, reloading the shotgun swiftly. 'Any idea where they-'

'One hundred seven meters ahead, spiral stairwell, likely accesses the top wall.' Oh, wow, she didn't know she had a Tech-priest for a partner now. What was with that emotionless voice, anyway?

Sure enough, about a hundred meters into that corridor, they spotted another doorway, this one connected to a conspicuous half-tower embedded in the wall. And, yep, it opened on to a spiralling staircase, an ascending square running up the inside of the embankment, to what looked like somewhere up the top of the wall. And from up top... that sure did sound like the enemy starting to come down.

'Stealth mode, combo pin-execute, up the stairs,' she murmured. The dogs went silent very quickly - unnervingly so as they charged up, actually. For this one, Busker got the piercing spikes, whilst Vaudeville took out the monoblade; SOP was for the former to snare the target's limbs and drag them down, whilst the latter went for the throat, almost always a poorly-guarded weakpoint between helmet and chestplate. And they'd still need a distraction - luckily, Victoria had Enforcers to shoot up at.

She did, but not before climbing to the point that she and Michael were first noticed. Or was that the mastiffs? Didn't matter; the Enforcers were quickly distracted by a minor fusillade of autopistol fire, their own rounds being deflected by the lockshields she and Michael put between them and their foes. And not long after that, the cyber-mastiffs found their way to their targets, starting to turn them into mincemeat one by one. She trusted Vaudeville to take out the weapon hands of anyone trying to aim at them directly, of course, just as much as she trusted Busker to keep the body he was wrangling between himself and the enemies trying to shoot him; after all, that's how she's programmed them to act in a scene like this.

Suffice to say, only one Enforcer was left by the time Handler and Verispex made it to the top; Vaudeville had taken some hits to one side, but he was still raring to go, snapping at the hand of the last opponent even as he desperately tried to keep it away from the dog and aim at it at the same time. A burst of autofire to his face quickly put an end to those aspirations, and no further resistance met them before they made it up.

They were there. The top of the wall was visible - and so too were quite a lot of big gun installations.

'Lascannon spotted,' Michael intoned, pointing off in the mid-distance of the wall. Yep, that was big and heavy and sure looked like it had a big honking energy pack moving with it. Toward the bulk of the fighting, at that.

'Michael, shields up, cover our back,' she announced, before turning to the cyber-mastiffs again. 'Attack mode, full lethal, prioritise heavy weapon operators. Forward!' With those orders, out came the thresher-maws again, the mastiffs charging ahead along the wide passage, Victoria charging along with them with her autopistol raised and ready to open fire, and Michael taking up the rear with the lockshield in one hand. He'd know before she did if they were about to be attacked, either way. She'd just focus on taking out the heavy weapons.

Warhammer 40k: Enemy Without, Enemy Within - an 'Ecclesiarchal' RP [Mature][High Casual/Low Advanced]

Alexa wasn't certain how she ought to react to her superior's statement about Dominica. She wasn't incorrect, of course, but at the same time if there were issues with her conduct, they ought to be relayed directly, should they not? So, she simply nodded, and with plenty of time to consider that matter and no set role in Lisbeth's plan, her thoughts gradually drifted back toward Athega Tertius. A lifetime ago, that felt like, but even then Sister Dominica had shown a great deal of violence in her conduct, especially after the death of her fellow Sister at the time.

That had been a simple mission, though. Defeat the local forces and acquire information that found itself unforthcoming. What they did now felt... complicated. Part of her seemed to shy away from conflict, a part she'd believed seared out by the Schola and Convent alike, but which saw freedom to emerge when facing social interaction and stealth. Perhaps seeing a fellow Sister perish without her being able to do a thing, or else losing contact with many of her fellows, had damaged her somehow?

Or was she merely losing faith? Not even in the God-Emperor, but in her own ability. She'd need to submit herself for internment to the Sisters Repentia if it were the former... and yet, surely the latter was tied to the former? It was an unnerving question, and part of her wondered if it'd be better for her to be more like Sister Lisbeth in kind... but, she wouldn't have been installed as part of Inquisitor Horacio's coterie if she was incapable. She knew she had plenty of skill, in giving and taking life, and she'd proven both were solidly capable; it was just a case of trusting her prior experience, ensuring proper compassion was not lost on those who required it, and delivering the Emperor's justice to those who had forsaken compassion.

Soon, the time came for the ambush. Sister-Celestian Victorine's went swimmingly; Sister Lisbeth's, not quite so much. She'd secured a mortal blow, at least.

Which meant what she did next, gruesome as it was, was utterly needless. The sort of sickening end she'd expect a heretic to bring to another person, not a fellow Sororitas. Worse, it was loud, too loud, the impacts seeming to be quiet indeed next to the deafening sound of Lisbeth forcibly lobotomising him. By the time Alexa rounded the corner, she could do no more to help than stare bewildered at the sight.

And without further comment, she simply took his weapon, and looked to Sister-Celestian Victorine for further instruction.

No. This could not stand. Torture was a necessity, barely enjoyable only in how it brought proper safety to the Imperium both by the information brought and by terrifying others into spilling their secrets and repenting. Now Alexa agreed more thoroughly with the Sister-Celestian, for surely something was wrong with doing this to the Emperor's enemies.

'Sister Lisbeth. We have sarissas. It'd be worth using yours to finish the fallen quickly.' For once, she'd have appreciated the faulty helmet vox; as it was, she had to restrain her usual alliance, and set her voice firm as she could when murmuring, and grind her teeth afterward about needing to put herself in as an apparent blockade. A longer discussion of Lisbeth's faith and anger ought to be merited, as they had had back at the Hive Spire so long ago, but they didn't have the time or the safety for it.

It'd have to wait, then. For now, Alexa turned in kind to the Sister-Celestian, seeking her orders once more.

@Jb@Andreyich@jbeil