Penny

Roguish Anomaly: A Warhammer 40K RP

The glib remark stunned me for a moment. The Emerald Sky divinations pulsed in my memory like a toothake and I was suddenly sure that this was the being to which they refered. I had sensed no taint of Chaos on him, but I supposed our conversation had been brief enough that I might have missed it. The ballroom was degenerating into pandemonium. At least three sets of guards were shouting and firing at each other. To make matters worse several of the nobles had returned fire with digital weapons or other augmetic concealments. A plump countess in an inadvisabley tight white body glove burst like a melon as she stopped what I took to be a minaturized plasma bolt, flying into a pillar and dropping onto the entree table that she had loved so much in life. I saw a panicky courtier slapping ineffectually at one of the arbites as though he were a pet cat, an act that was comic up until the point the arbite fired his shotgun into the man at point blank range and sprayed half his torso across dancefloor. The smell of cordite, urine, and burst entrails filled the room, somewhat degrading the sophisticated atmopshere of the affair.

The large sapphire inlaid doors at the side of the room flew open and a giant of a man, easily seven feet, with an armspan like a great bird of prey stormed in. He was cadaverously slender and dressed in an immaculately tailored suit of fine Lakian spider silk. A cloud of cigar smoke followed him and I could make out other figures in a private drawing room beyond. Even from here I could tell that this was my cult leader.

"What is the meaning of this?!" he bellowed and his voice had enough latent psy in it that it froze everyone in the room. One of the statuettes exploded into dust which rained down onto a waiter who sneezed violently in the near silence. Every eye was focused on the tall man, even a household guard who had previously been busy trying to staunch the blood pouring from a wound to his throat. He watched with rapt attention for a few seconds then slumped to the floor. The figure's eyes swept the room and fell on shattered case and the missing gemstone.

"Find the intruder and bring him to me. Alive," the man commanded and, as though on queue alarms began to whoop. The sound seemed to break the spell and armed men, guards and arbites alike, were spreading out. A man in a maroon doublet was pointing in the direction that this 'Edwards' had departed, guesiculating wildly. I stood indecisive for a moment, the heretic I was looking for wasn't thirty feet away, already turning and closing the door to his drawing room and yet... The heretic had seemed uninterested in the gem, he was interested in the thief. Why? The question bounced around at the back of my mind for a moment. If there is one thing that an Inquisitor cant resist, other than a leather storm coat, it is a mystery.

"Frak it," I said and started picking my way across the floor towards the door that Edwards had escaped through. Men were already streaming after him, to my surprise this included a number of the nobles and some of the servants, none of whom seemed to have any bussiness doing so. As I reached the door an arbite with a leg wound stepped into my way, grabbing me by the arm.

"Stay here ma'am, for your saftey," he commanded. He staggered back as I punched him in the throat, feeling the crunch of soft cartilage beneath my fist. I caught the auto pistol that he dropped as he staggered back cluthing a throat no longer capable of drawing breath.

"Don't touch me, for yours," I told him, then hiked up my skirts and ran down towards the first floor, trying to find this thief that everyone was so interested in.

Roguish Anomaly: A Warhammer 40K RP

"Why did the Rüstringen noble follow his chef's example?" I asked, then paused to allow a dramatic beat. "Peer pressure." The newcomer fround for a moment and then groaned. He was a handsome enough man, with a swagger and selfconfidence that would have been to gauche for any noble. Nobility as a breed believed they were superior to the common folk, but it isn't my experience that they know it deep down.

"Rasa Blanc," I introduced myself, thrusting out a hand. The newcomer took it and shook it firmly. He had a good grip but didn't try to crush my hand or any such foolishness. The callouses on his palms confirmed my initial impression that he wasn't some limp wristed nobles by blow. Or at least he wasn't only that.

"Nelson Beauford," he lied, so smoothly that I couldn't tell at the time. I released his hand and turned to look at the orb he had been pondering. It was a gaudy thing among a room of gaudy things and I wondered what his interest was in it. A waiter passed and I took a flute of wine and sipped at it. The anti-ethanol drugs I had taken before coming made it taste like mud, but then you couldn't be sure the natural flavor was much better than that. I suppressed a wince with practiced ease.

"Does it remind you a bit of the Illium Coteric form?" I asked. The Illium Coterie had been a wide spread cult in these parts during the Wyrdsmiths time, although the common name was the tragically unimaginative 'Circle of Bones'. Any adept beyond a street corner cultist would recognise the term though.

"Oh yeah, totally," Beauford lied, nodding his head. So much for a break through. Still I couldn't help but feel there was something familiar about the man. He glanced over his shoulder and I thought he was looking for an excuse to make his escape but when I followed his glance I saw he was looking at the main door where a pair of livered guards with force poles stood as motionless as statues. It occured to me that he was waiting for something to happen. As though on que the doors flew open and a phalanx of local law enforcement, or noble's toughs with the badges and kit of law enforcement. The music came to a screeching halt and all eyes turned towards the door, the haughty nobles looking at the armed intruders very much as one might look a turd found floating in the punch bowl. The leader of the group was silent for a second, obviously a little stunned. I watched him consider his options for a moment.

"We have intruders!" he shouted and he and his men shoved their way forward into the crowd.

Roguish Anomaly: A Warhammer 40K RP

I was working solo back then. Twenty five years old. Two years out of the tutelage of Eruzet Charbernau, Old Fuss and Flamers. Tall blond and slender. Green eyed, literally as well as metaphorically, and possesed of that sense of invincibility that comes with being young and successful. I suppose in our bussiness success is relative. To be alive and (mostly) sane is success by almost any metric. Well, sanity is valued among at least SOME of our bretheren. I had at this time, successful prosecuted the Emerald Sky Cartel and the Sorority of the Mirrored Wheel on Mindinaw. I was a woman on the make, particularly as Old Fuss and Flamers was well disposed to me and would continue to live and scheme, despite taking on the nastiest heretics of the galaxy, not to mention her ten pack a day lho habit, for another two hundred years.

Of my Faction and political leanings I will say little save that it is a good rule of thumb to never trust any Inquisitor. Except me of course. I had come to Rüstringen following a pipeline of chaotic artifacts. The Wyrdsmith on Tuteonburg had been smashed a generation before but his works continued to circulate among depraved artits and dangerous dillitantes, changing hands as they spread their poison across half the subsector. I spent patient months following the trails of individual items, meeting and where necessary terminating the poor fools faciliting the trade. The more I dug however, the more I came to believe that the trade wasn't organized per se, but rather the result of a single powerful individual whose wealth and esoteric tastes were functioning like a whirlpool, sucking tainted material towards it's hungry maw. It was the rarest of things, a case of shit actuallyf flowing up hill.

My cover was easy to establish. The University of Porcelain granted me credentials as a Xenoarchaology with a gratifyingly minimal amount of pissing themselves after I flashed my rosette, and it was a topic I could speak intelligently on. You would think that specialist covers like this would be hard to maintain, but you would be surprised. The average cultist is dumber than a lobotomized ogryn, even those that shower and wear silk. It must drive the Runious Powers completely to distraction, they learn one little binding and suddenly they are Magnus the Red. Make a few cryptic comments, remember a few names and they will sit at your feet for hours. I drafted up a couple of papers on the Wyrdsmith, you can read them if you have access to the Ordo Sector archives. They are actually quite good, though so wrapped up in technical mumbo jumbo as to drive one mad. Why call it a knife when an elongaged poinard with characteristic channeling and and athemic properties will do. This twaddle quite established my reputation and after a few months of tromping around the outworlds I recieved an invitation to a discrete do at Chateau Auclair where, it was to be supposed, I could add my erudition to the affair.

What a bunch of amasec soaked, potato eating, cologne drenched, misbegotten whore sons they were. I stood beside a pillar in an emerald green evening dress which I had tailored from academic shiek, which was to say it covered my cleavage with a net of lace rather than letting it flop around like the other ladies, and incoperated long white opera gloves for reasons which you presumabley need to be an academic to comprehend. There wasn't a great place to hide a gun, and they had scanners, but I had managed to bring in a few weapons. One was a pair of curved khukri knives that I had crossed in the small of my back, one was my mind, and the third was The Stone. Yes, you knew I'd get to it. More on that anon. I wore the Stone around my neck on a long gold chain, each link of which was micro engraved with a paper I had supposedly published. God Emperor protect me from Academia.

The hall itself was beautiful enough. Rüstringen was, and is, known for its stone masons, and the Dancing Room as it was called was carved out of a blue white fozzilized resin, somewhat similar to amber. It gave the impression that the whole chamber might be made of glacial ice, though it was warm and comfortable as plaster would have been The most incredible detail had been lavished on it, every pillar packed to the brim with cavorting nymphs, humanoid spiders, sporting fauns and every other metaphor the artists could ejaculate to score a few more credits from the rich idiots who paid them. Religious iconography was at a minimum, although the entire domed roof was carved into the face of the Emperor, cunningly wrought so as to appear almost three dimensional and gazing down at the gathering. I have to say I didn't care for it, no doubt from directly beneath it was a marvel, but from the sides the Master of Mankind did appear a trifle constipated.

One by one I made the aquaintice of the 'great and the good' of Rüstringen. Mostly these were boozy attempts at flirting, easily defeated by the application of enough academic buzzwords. Once their eyes glazed I dropped in a few actual occult references to see if it snapped them out of it. Eventual each vicitim would make some excuse and stumble away in search of easier prey with less syllables and bigger breasts and I crossed them off my list. I was starting to lose hope of finding my man when the Stone alerted me to a slight stir at the door. A young man with a slightly crooked tie had entered the room. He made breezy small talk while heading towards the collection of artifacts which was the nights primary attraction. I had inspected them of course, been compelled to by several of my gentleman callers in fact. They were old and some where undoubtely Xenos in origin but even brushing them with my mind I was unable to detect any taint of Chaos. I made a few comments about pre-killocretian astetic traces and moved on. This young man seemed interested though, and though he accepted drinks and flirted with women, it didn't deter him for more than a few minutes. He stopped casually infront of a case containing a strange orb and I drifted unobtrusively closer. Something about him tugged at me and the Stone got warmer against me. It almost seemed as though we might have met before but that couldn't be the case. I never forget a face, I AM an Inquisitor afterall.

What kind of RP mood are you in?

Mil-fi

Heroes of The Guard: A Warhammer 40K RP

“The court will come to order,” Commissar Petrovska snapped. The background russel of conversation died immediately and the chapel in which the drumhead court was being held grew eerily silent. The chapel had been decommissioned at some point and much of the devotional art had been removed, giving it an unfinished but severe look. A large table, perhaps the original altar, had been draped with a red cloth to create a bench for the three judges. A copy of Imperial Field Regulations, battered and much thumbed through, lay on the table, alongside a bolt pistol and an honest to God-Emperor powersword. Together the three items represented Petrovska's right to serve as judge and executioner. There was no jury in a case like this, two other commissars were empaneled to aid her in her duty. She was bound to take their counsel although regulations imposed no requirement for the senior woman to follow it. One of the commisars was a bald fussy looking man attached to the 68th Straken Armored, the other was a very irritated looking Commissar Sobek. Sobek no doubt thought he should be handling this case, and indeed he would have been, had the accused - scout-sniper first class Browning, not requested the trial be held by the Fleet rather than Sobek. A request he had been politely encouraged to make when Sel visited the brig one night after paying the naval ratings to be someplace else. It had been an easy case to make, especially when accompanied by both the pistol in her hand and the unrelated observation that they would soon be alone together in a warzone.

Petrovska waited several heartbeats before settling, straight backed, into her chair and adjusting the cap on her head. It bore the winged sword of the Imperial Navy rather than the Guard equivalent. The rest of the room followed suit, judges first, then the rest of the assembled officers and NCOs. The Fleet Commissar opened a folio of notes and flicked through it. Then closed them and addressed the shackled Browning who sat to the side in a witness chair. The sniper looked terrified, as anyone would if they had spent the last several hours hearing testimony about how he had negligently loaded a live powerpack into his long las for the exercise, then fired a shot which might well have killed a superior officer. Kayden remained in the med bay, sedated under doctors orders which Sel suspected had as much to do with Sobek and Lieutenant Marcone as they did with any medical necessity. How the foppish Lieutenant had predicted that might happen she had no idea. Sel had little respect for officers, but she was grudgingly coming to feel something very much like it for Kayden, who it seemed could operate despite the silken latrine paper he was used to.

“Trooper First Class Browning,” Petrovska began. Her voice was clear and carried a hint of Valhallan chill that seemed to lower the temperature in the room.

“We have heard evidence from the armorers and range masters that yesterday, being the one hundred and thirty sixth day of the year 999, you illegally brought live ammunition onto the training field in contravention of the orders of the range master and your superiors. You then used said ammunition to shoot, and grievously injure, Lieutenant Kayden Caradwalden, commanding officer of the second platoon, second company of the 2nd Imperial Gendarmes. The previous action being considered the assault upon and attempted murder of a lawfully appointed superior,” Petrovska’s word were crisp and precise with the ring of legalese which was the mark of a court martial, which this wasn’t technically given that the judges were Commissar’s rather than Guard Officers. The legal distinction was no comfort to Browning who looked as though he were about to either explode or collapse depending on how the light caught the sheen of sweat that slicked him.

“Do you have anything to say in your def…”

“SELDON!” Browning shouted in a voice so shrill with panic that he sounded like an adolescent girl. Petrovska’s lips compressed to a frown of puzzlement.

“Seldon?” she repeated, as though trying to make sense of it.

“Corporal Lorica Seldon!” Browning shouted, imbuing the name with all the desperation a drowning man spares for the slender root which he snatched for. A few eyes from the 2nd had already turned to Sel, and the rest of the court room followed as she stood. Much like a marriage ceremony, the chapel was divided into Gendarmes on one side and Langeroth on the other. The fact that the Gendarmes had so recently been amalgamated meant that four different dress uniforms were in evidence, a marked contrast to the solid red and gold of the Langeroth. Sel had never owned a dress uniform that she knew of, and was dressed instead in the neatest, cleanest set of fatigues she could scrounge. Captain Rubio, seated a row in front of Sel, looked nearly apoplectic, his eyes bulging and his complexion almost exactly the same shade of scarlet as the Langeroth uniforms. Before he could shout at her to sit down however Petrovska extended a black gloved hand an and beckoned with the twitch of two fingers.

“Come forward Corporal, the Court recognises you as a witness,” Petrovska declared, nodding to the robed Administratum adept seated opposite Browning. The man flipped a pair of inbuilt looking glasses infront of his eyes and began to clack away on an archaic dataslate. An implanted unit where his mouth had once been began to express a roll of parchment that looked grotesquely like a tongue. Sel ignored the hard looks that assailed her from all side as she approached the bench. Very slowly, she had no weapon but it never paid to make a killer like Petrovska jumpy, she reached into her jacket and produced a very expensive holoprojector, set it on the desk.

“What is the meaning of this?!” Sobek demanded, “Corporal Seldon is a known trouble maker and her…” Petrovska silenced him with a raised hand and nodded at Sel to continue. Reaching forward, Sel toggled the unit on and a grainy holo pict appeared to hover before the judges. She waited the sacred three seconds, then pounded her fist on the table in the ritual of invocation. The picture cleared to show an armory with racks of power packs marked with the white stripe of training munitions. For a few seconds nothing happened and then a man in the field kit of the Langeroth, complete with Lieutenants pips, stepped into frame. Marcone looked around, then drew a power pack from his jacket. It looked identical to the training pack, complete with the white stripe of low power. He put the long las pack into the rack and hurried out of frame. The holo sped up and the time numerals flew by for a few seconds before slowing to show Browning, joking with his mates, take the disguised pack down and slot it into his rifle. The recording froze artfully on the innocent expression, Browning looking for all the world like the innocent dupe he was.

“It is a lie, this is a fraud!” Marcone screamed, leaping to his feet amid his fellow Langeroth officers. These later seemed to open around him, as though fearing fire or contagion.

“He cooked it up! He must have…” Marcone’s head burst like a ripe melon as a las blast punched into his mouth, spraying those nearby with blood, brain and teeth. Sobek lowered his smoking pistol. Petrovska hadn’t moved, though now she reached down and took a sip of water from a battered tin cup.

“I suppose that more or less terminates proceedings,” Petrovska said, and the words seemed to free everyone from a spell that had lain over them. Men yelled and cursed and backed away from the grisly corpse. Sobek holstered his pistol and smoothed his coat.

“My apologies Commissar,” Sobek said to Petrovska. The Fleet Commissar gave him a long look that seemed to suggest that this matter wasn’t over but didn’t immediately respond to him. Instead she turned to the court.

“Trooper First Class Browning, you are free to go. The case is dismissed,” she declared and Browning slumped in stunned relief. Sel reached for the holo unit but Petrovska leaned forward and pinned it down with a slender finger.

“Leave that Corporal, I’ll see it is returned to Lieutenant Caradwalden when the Commissariat is done with it. No doubt it is on loan from him as it would be far too expensive for a corporal.” It wasn’t a question so Sel saluted as best she could, performed an about face and marched from the room.

Sobek caught her on her way to the hospital wing, stepping out of the shadows and straightening his cap. Sel had been drinking and was pleasantly buzzed after a number of toasts from the Langeroth, all of whom were delighted that a popular trooper like Browning had been snatched from the hangman. That act alone had done more to heal the enmity between the two regiments than anything the officers or Commissars could come up with. That too had been part of Kayden’s plan and Sel had to admit that it was working better than she had hoped. Her intoxication might be a problem, but she was off duty so it wasn’t technically improper.

“Sir!” Sel shouted, coming to attention but not attempting a salute. Sobek glared at her, his eyes searching her up and down, perhaps suspecting a pict recorder or some such.

“I suppose you and your master think you are terribly clever,” he half snarled.

“Sir!” Sel repeated, eyes focusing a practiced three inches above Sobek’s right shoulder.

“I don’t supposed it occurred to you that I might… redress the situation?” he asked, his voice low and dangerous. Sel had been almost certain he had killed Marcone not as justice, but to cover up his own involvement with the business.

“It occurred to Lieutenant Caradwalden sir,” Sel responded woodenly, “He said to consider the fact that a trooper under your charge asked for trial by a Fleet Commissar rather than his own. He also stated that his favorite regicide gambit was the Hooded Yael.” Sobek’s face went pale with rage at the words and his fingers flexed on the hilt of his chainsword.

“And what…” Sobek forced out through clenched teeth, “Does he mean by that?”

“The hell if I know sir,” Sel replied truthfully, “What the frak does a grunt like me know about regicide?” She left the spluttering Commissar without a further word and headed for the hospital wing to check on her Lieutenant.

Wealth and Warpstorms

"As it happens," Camilla half shouted through her scarf "I do have a good cogitator. A really good one."

"Throon abuv," Alcander breathed as the shuttlecraft swept around the arm of the Godfarthing orbital station. There were several freighters at dock, a pair of shift ships and a half dozen intra-system haulers. The vessel at the furthert docking arm put them all to shame. She was over four kilometers in length, long and dagger shaped from her vast engine to her ivory and gold chased prow. Cathedral sized spires rose gracefully from her spine, crested with sensor towers or gargoyle mouthed weapon emplacements. The hull gleamed white, the result of a oozlite ceramic bonded to her armored hull plates, subtle veins indistinguishable from this range save as a soft shimmer at the edge of vision. She looked like a queen visiting some slum in her domain to distribute arms on Emperor's Day.

"Thes is yoor shep?" Alcander asked in obvious amazement. There were ships, and then there were ships. Camilla bobbled the controls slightly, feeding more power into the drive than she shallow dive required. It was an unusual error for her but the idea that this was her ship now... she recovered, lifting the shuttle in a burn that put her back on trajectory for the main docking bay.

"The Navarre," she said with pride, "a Bilbao class heavy frigate, laid down in the Royal Yard at Aragon nearly two thousand years ago." The naval history meant nothing to the detective. The Bilbao class had been created in the dark days of the Jericho Collapse, when fleet doctrine had put a premium on fighter craft. Stadling the line between a destroyer and a light cruiser, she was overgunned for a destroyer with hanger bays of a light carrier. Like most something for nothing designs, it hadn't prospered in action. They were too expensive and complicated to produce, when the same resources could create a dedicated cruiser or carrier vessel which would do each job more efficiently. Mostly they had ended their lives as picket units out on the edge of the Ultima Segmentum but the same traits that made them poor fleet units, the oversized engines, the hangar bays, the ordinance magazines, made them exceptional far traders and explorers. Official legend had it that Ramone Belchite himself had won her in a duel, though the patch historical records on the onboard cogitattors suggested it was more likely a card game.

"An she yoors," Alcander pressed.

"She soon will be," Yvraine said proudly, clapping Camilla on the shoulder as she came forward from the rear of the shuttle, having set up clearances with the station and the world below and coordinated their arrival with the Navarre. Far ‘below’ them Camilla could see the beacons of lighters as they ferried salt from the planet below into the Navarre’s ventral hangars. Business had to continue, regardless of the death of the Old Man. By now the Navarre had expanded to fill the viewport and Camilla swept down her length, through a maze of spires and weapon mounts until they reached the dorsal hangers. Beyond the magnetic containment field lay a hanger bay that would have been the envy of many a planetary aerodrome. Sleek lightning fighters lay in long rows, behind them the bulk of starhawks and assault boats. Two detachments of leigemen stood with rifles at port arms as the shuttle settled down on the deck with hardly more than a clink.

The shrill of Bosun’s pipes blasted as Camilla came down the ramp, and the troops snapped to attention with commendable precision. Camellia, slightly embarrassed, reached for her sword to offer a salute, but remembered at the last minute what would happen if she drew it. Instead she lay her hand on her chest and bowed.

“Welcome back boss,” a perky young women with shockingly green hair and bright golden input augmetics on her arm, each fashioned so it appeared the gem at the center of an armlet. She touched her finger to her brow in a salute that would have given a drill instructor an immediate heart attack.

“Jo,” Camilla acknowledged. She made a broad gesture to encompass the parade.

“Was all this strictly necessary?” she asked, a touch of acid in her voice. The green haired woman shrugged.

“This is the first time you have come aboard as the heir to the dynasty. It is tradition and you know what the Old Man used to say. Jo struck a pose and when she spoke it was in an imitation of the Old Man’s deep basso that was so good it made Camilla’s heart twinge.

“In the end, what allows us to conquer the stars is not our weapons, but our traditions, our honor, blah blah blah,” She dropped back into her normal speaking voice. “Speaking of which are we going to stop fracking around and…” Jo cut off midspeech and gave Alcander a searching look.

“Who is this? Is he a cop? He looks like a cop, he has to tell me if he…” Jo babbled but Camilla raised a hand to stop her.

“This is Alcander, he is helping us investigate the Old Man’s death,” Camilla explained.

“Alcander this is Jocasta ap’Gwyn, our… my master at arms,” she admitted a trifle reluctantly.

Gold & Glory: AU thread

Rum and chocolate both helped but neither the cocoa bean or juice of sugar cane could do much about the ship. The Hammer lay on her side, scantlings and broken rigging scattered in all directions. It was a blessing that the cannons and supplies had been unloaded to lighten the ship otherwise the tons of loose metal careening about might have smashed her to pieces.

“We can raise her cap’n,” Sketti declared as they sat beneath the shadow of the hull around their camp fire. Exhausted and dispirited sailors sat at their own fires, though a fair number were forming a perimeter around the ship, insurance it was to be hoped against another ghoul attack. Markus arched any eyebrow at the first mate, though it must have been what he wanted to hear.

“Be no different than carreen’er,” Sketti insisted stubbornly. Emmaline had seen the ship careened once before, where the Hammer was run up on a beach so the barnacles and sea weed could be scraped from her bottom. One of her few contributions to the ship had been to work an enchantment that prevented ship worms and sea weed from taking hold.

“When you are careening you have the incoming tide to float her Sketti,” Markus said, not quite contradicting the prickly dwarf but making a good point.

“RANALD’S BALLS!” Emmaline screamed as she leaped to her feet. Less than five feet away stood a creature out of nightmare. It was perhaps Sketti’s height though reptilian in aspect, its head was long and narrow like the iguanas Emmaline had seen at the imperial zoo. Surely no iguana had such intelligence in it’s large glassy eyes, nor did they walk upright. A great crest surmounted its head and it rose and fell in time with the inflation of its throat. The skin of the thing looked black in the firelight, though it was probably a very dark green in the sun. Patches of it’s bare hide had been covered with red ochre and small charms of obsidian or some other dark stone hung from a gold torc around its neck. It carried a staff, or perhaps a spear in one hand, a leather bag of some kind tied around the end with braided rope.

“Cccallm yoursssselves,” the thing croaked as Markus leaped to his feet and whipped his sword up almost as fast as they eye could follow, his boot striking a timber and spraying sparks up into the tropical dark.

“Ssemmaline,” the creature hissed and the word alone paused Markus all but mid thrust. There was a moment of frozen silence broken only by the crackling of the damp firewood.

“What did you say?” Emmaline asked, voice shrill and more than a little worried she was going out of her mind. The creature cocked its head at her in a disturbing alien gesture.

“Your ssscoming isss foretold, Ssemmaline,” the creature said. Emmaline became aware of the huge effort the lizard was exerting to make it’s vocal cords produce the human sounds, braids of tough muscle vibrating in its neck. Markus touched the tip of his sword to the things breast bone.

“Ok, what do you want with her?” Markus asked, his voice deceptively calm, like a sea in which the swell was building. If the lizardman was afraid he didn’t show it.

“Nossssing… ssshe issss a problem wherever ssshe goess.,” the lizard replied.

“Hey!” Emmaline objected. Sketti snorted and Markus’ lip quirked upwards.

“Ssshe bearsss the mark of the…” the lizard man made a sound that none of them could translate. The lizard lifted a taloned hand and pointed at Emmaline. By now a gaggle of sailors armed and nervous was gathering, though none seemed willing to move to violence without Markus order. Emmaline looked down at herself, then raised an arm on which the strange tattoo she had picked up in Estillea seemed to write.

“Yesssss it isss time,” the lizard replied, averting his eyes from the tattoo as though it shone a bright light. Emmaline covered the tattoo with the sleeve of her tunic feeling oddly subconscious.

“Time for what?” she demanded angrily.

“A sstrade,” the creature replied, unperturbed or simply not noticing Emmaline’s anger.

“A trade?” Emmaline suggested with an arched eyebrow. The lizard man nodded, the charms on his golden collar jingling slightly as he did so.

“You will recover the idolsss that were ssstolen by the dead that do not die,” the lizard hissed, making a vague gesture to the north with his spear/staff.

“And what do we get?” Markus asked, prodding the creature with the point of his sword.

“We will get your sssship to the sssunset sssea,” the creature replied, making a broad gesture to point towards the west. Emmaline glanced at the half destroyed hammer skeptically.

“Who is we?” she asked. Rather than responding the creature leaned back, stretching to its full height and extending his crest. He let out a weird series of hooting hisses that echoed off the nearby hull. A moment later the same cry came from the darkness, dozens or hundreds of cries that stifled the caws of native birds and rustled the jungle all around.

Heroes of The Guard: A Warhammer 40K RP

"Unit was within normal paramaters at time of disconnection," the tech adept declared. The being, its sex was rendered indetermite by the encrustation of augments and mechadendrites. His crimson robe was augmented by a white plastec apron which kept the majority of the biofluid and lubricants from him as he disected the servitor. Magos Panageas was the master of a dingy servitor servicing bay that Sel had walked passed every day but never actually noticed, so ornate and festooned with chambers was the voidship. The corpse of the servitor was laid out on a large grillwork table that allowed blood and biofluid to collect in slucies below for the Mechanicus to reuse for Sel knew not what.

"Normal parameters?! It tried to kill me," Kayden growled.

"Termination of a biological unit is within normal parameters for this model," the the Magos replied through his voice synthesizer, still managing to convey the slight hint of contempt for the unchurched in these matters. Sel arched an eyebrow.

"Uhh ok so can you tell us who sent it?" Sel asked, perplexed.

"Cyber autopsy has has deleted that function," the tech priest replied.

"So why did you do it?!" Sel demanded as she realised that the priest had destroyed the very information they were looking for.

"Your request was to determine why it was acting strange. I have determined it was acting within normal parameters as per your request," the priest responded flatly. Sel and Kaiden exchanged a look and she opened her mouth to say something that one really shouldn't say to an adept of Mars. Kayden cut her off with a look.

"So who could have given such an order?' Kayden asked. The techpriest cocked his head to the side.

"Any holder of theta level clearence on the ship, such individuals include but are not limited to: the captain, the Chief Technomagos, the Navigator, the Helm..."

"Anyone in the guard, uh starting with the lowest rank," Kayden cut him off.

"A lieutenant with an administrative clearance of theta-one-seven, or a commisarial over ride," the Magos supplied helpfully. Sel and Kayden exchanged another look.

"I think that is as much as we can hope for," Kayden admitted as they left the servitor morgue and headed back towards Kayden's office. The problem was it didn't prove anything. It seemed likely that at least the Langerok Lieutenant was involved, perhaps even Sobek himself.

"We need a way to prove it, perhaps I should just call out that cur," Kayden mused. Sel gave him a look, then realised he meant challenge the other man to a duel. Bloody officers and bloody aristocrats.

"Commissar Sobek would never let it happen," she told him dashing the plan.

"Do you have any better ideas?" Kayden asked, a touch of offended hautre to his voice. Sel wracked her brain for a few moments, then a slow, and singularly unfriendly smile, spread across her face.

"How would you feel," she asked, "about getting shot?"

De Trop Disgrace: Warhammer Fantasy RP

Emmaline felt her skin crawl slightly, though whether from the oily feel of the necormantically charged air, the nearness of the walking dead, or the presence of Kasimir, a man who she was pleased to see despite having very recently cursed him for getting her into the mess she wasn’t sure. Perhaps it was having to keep up this ridiculous accent. Where on Taal green earth had he found a legitimate Brettonian knight? That presented her some real problems, but those problems would be solved too quickly if a zombie ripped out her heart and ate it so she decided not to look a gift griphon in the mouth.

“Wé should get oot of haire, befairé Julian recovairs,” she told the two men, leading the way towards a side door that opened towards the stables. She cursed herself for the fact that the two men would prevent her from doing a little light looting on the way but she supposed you had to sort out priorities at times like this.

“Julian?” Reynard asked as he brought up the rear sword raised in guard.

Le necromancair ai 'ow do you sai… l'a frappé au visage avec une bouteille,”she explained, switching to Brettonian as though forced to do so by the stress of the situation. She was close enough to fluent that any small mistakes might be excused, and demonstrating she spoke it would convince Reynard she was who she said she was. There was an agonized cry from behind them and Emmaline stepped quickly to the door and threw it open.

“ELEANOR!” Julian roared, his voice filled with a dark menace that overlay his youth weirdly.

“She is charm she is grace, most of all she needs to get the hell out of this place,” Kasimir observed wryly. Reynard gave him a look, as though slightly offended on Eleanor’s behalf. Further discussion was forestalled as a ring of figures emerged from the darkness. The reek of death, new and old preceded them like a bow wave. Some were ancient skeletons with witchfire eyes, others were grooms, servants, tenant farmers who just this morning had risen to their daily labors expecting nothing more than an average day of toil. Some held weapons, improvised peasant tools for the most part, and they moved in eerie unison, drawing tight like the string of a bag. Horses were screaming, spooked by the smell of death or the more metaphysical reek of dark magic on the air. The stable door exploded outwards and a half dozen horses bolted down the valley eyes wide an rolling. One of them came too close to an ancient moss encrusted skeleton which, according to whatever arcane logic animated it, hacked down with a rusty reaping blade. The grubby metal punched into the horses neck like a meathook going into a side of bacon. The horse screamed and flinched away, ripping the hook out of the skeletons bony grasp. It staggered a half dozen feet, shook its head furiously and managed to dislodge the weapon with a colossal spray of bright arterial blood. It staggered a few more feet, sank to its knees and then toppled dead, steaming in the chill air. Emmaline shut her gaping mouth and then closed the door with surprising calm.

“Zé 'airses might not be such a good plin,” she admitted, taking a step back from the door a moment before the rusty blade of a trench mattock punched through the thin timber.

“N'ayez pas peur, madame, je vous défendrai au péril de ma vie,” Reynard declared grandly, thrusting Emmaline back behind him, apparently in happy ignorance of the fact that at any moment Julian or more of his undead minions would be coming up behind them.

“Lets make our last stand somewhere else, closer to our own horses maybe,” Kasimir suggested, which was good because it would have been out of Eleanor’s character to offer tactical advice after such a chivalrous gesture.

“Eleanor!” Julian roared, appearing at the far end of the hallway with a swarm of zombies.

“All I wanted to do was keep you safe, we were friends!” he ranted, then he drew back his hand, dark energy gathering around it. Emmaline felt her body prickle and tried desperately to think of a counterspell.

“I can’t let you go, I can’t let you tell anyone, don’t you see what you have forced me to do!” he all but wailed, then, like a striking snake he whipped his hand forward and hurled a bolt of pure darkness at her. Emmaline had just enough time to scream before Reynard thrust her aside and gripping his shield with both hands parried the bolt. To everyone's surprise the spell reflected from the shield, smashing upwards into the roof. The plaster molding yellowed, blackened then fell into dust pouring down into the hallway in a chalky cloud. Julian roared with anger and hurled another bolt, which was similarly deflected. The smash of tools against the outer door reminded them that Julian didn’t need to kill them with his spells, merely hold them in position long enough for his minions to gather.

“For Ulric!” Kasimir shouted but instead of charging like a lunatic, he hacked into the plaster wall with all his might, carving a great gash into the plaster. Emmaline whispered a few words of her own and crooked a surreptitious finger. When Kasimir next struck a three foot section of wall exploded to powder, carving a hole into the adjacent hallway. Emmaline ducked through, climbing past the ancient wall timbers and into the drawing room on the other side. Kasimir was shouting at Reynard to follow, something he was more likely to do now that the noblewoman he had come to rescue was gone though Emmaline’s action had been more to save her own skin than to advance any such agenda. The knight backed out keeping his shield up to ward of spells as he came. Emmaline picked up a chair and hurled it through the window that lead out into a courtyard, following the shattered glass by only as long as it took her to brush away the jagged shards with the foot of a stool.

“Whaire do we go we cannot leavé zis veehlian aliv,” Reynard objected as he joined them, his eyes cutting back over his shoulders for any more spells being flung their way.

“The safety of Madmoiselle De Courcy is our paramount duty,” Kasimir said quickly, “We cannot put her in danger no matter how much we might wish to stay and fight.” Emmaline nodded in enthusiastic collaboration with this line of thinking.

“Oui aii supposé you aré righ,” Reynard admitted.

“We 'avé to go whaire are yur steeds?” Emmaline demanded, even as she headed out of the courtyard and into the apple orchard beyond.

Heroes of The Guard: A Warhammer 40K RP