Session 6
Written by Jason (jymmijamz)
Game – Rogue Trader
(Run by) GM – Chris
Altius (Astropath Transcendent) – Jason (jymmijamz)
Victris (Navigator) – Will
Admiral Winter (Lord Captain) – Tanya
Gnothics Sexxophin (Explorator Tech Priest) – NightUlf (Darren)
Chapter 6
Panic runs rife throughout the ship, the Gellar field still holds, but the power fluctuations are getting worse. The ship all but vibrates with the sound of the faithful, chanting and screeching their prayers to the god emperor, beseeching his protection.
Gnophics frantically attempts to stabilize the flow of power, going to the field generators, and keep a small amount of power trickling into the zenos device. Flicking switches, rerouting power supplies, Gnophics soon realises that the problem is not with the power supply, but with the Gellar field’s machine spirit. The spirit itself seems to be off kilter, very nearly burning out, before calming to the point of near complete shutdown.
Altius, on hearing the commotion and sensing the rising tide of panic, lifts himself out if his meditation and makes his way towards the bridge, in an attempt to ascertain the full situation.
Lord Captain Winter looks out over the bridge, taking in the scene before her. Seeing a rising tide of terror, she flicks on the holo projectors. All over the ship Winter’s image appears, and she sets about haranguing the crew into action. If anyone pauses at their duties, even for a moment, of is seen to show fear, she berates them, ordering them back to their work.
Focusing his mind through his third eye, Victris opens himself to the warp, trying to find the course of least resistance, giving the Gellar field the best chance.
Meanwhile Gnophics Sends a shunt through the Gellar fields cognitor systems, in an attempt to shackle the machine spirits erratic behaviour.
On his arrival at the bridge Altius finds a scene of semi controlled chaos, asking around he gets a picture of what’s happening. Settling down at an empty station Altius focuses on his pendant, kissing the Aquila engraved on its surface. As his mind clears he sends it out into the warp, but disturbed by the commotion around him, sends it out too far, and connects directly with the warp. There is a moment of true terror as Altius inadvertently channels his sense of the creatures, and denizens of the warp, throughout the ship. Prayers stutter to a stop, crewmen stop in their tracks, their tasks forgotten. Fortifying her mind Winter activates the ship wide vox and chants a prayer to the emperor, washing the crew clean of their rising terror. Snatching his mind back from the brink, Altius refocuses his mind. Drawing on his knowledge and experience, sends out the rites and rituals best suited to fighting the warp, but things don’t have quite the desired effect. Around the bridge there are mutterings of the touch of the witch, the warp closing in. In temples and chapels all over the ship, crewmembers drop to their knees and announce their faith in the gods of chaos. Only to be torched by the flamer toting chaplains and preachers.
In desperation Victris tries to pull Boadicea’s wrath out of the warp, but the warp is fighting him. With his third eye, he can see that their struggles have attracted the attentions of several warp spawned creatures, unwanted attention. We need to get out of here, and quickly.
Seeing the drop in faith across her craft, Winter decides that something needs to be done to turn things around. Looking around the bridge, she spots a female crewmember that has stopped her prayers. Walking over, she forces the woman to her knees, pulling her plasma pistol she presses the barrel to the side of the crewwoman’s head and pulls the trigger. There is a stunned silence on the bridge, as the horrified crew watches on, nothing seems to happen for a split second, and then her head just seems to melt from the inside. As the now headless body lumps to the floor, there is a bright flash and an intense wave of nausea sweeps over the ship, as with some effort Boadicea’s Wrath rips its way out of the immaterium and back into real space.
Focusing on space around the ship, Victris is surprised to find that they have reached their destination.
Meanwhile back in the engineerium the Gellar field coughs and dies. As the power fades, Gnophics is aware that one of the cognitor screens is still active. Scrolling across it are runes of an ancient type. Running though his records of old languages, it takes him a few moments to decipher them.
“See you soon!” They say.
Turning from the screen, wondering what they could mean, the tech priest spots Shiroigin and Joshua approaching. A huge grin splits Joshua’s face. “Yay, Gellar field baby. We did it.” Pausing, he hi fives a surprised and bemused Tech priest. Shiroigin on the other hand looks at Gnophics with suspicion, and his augmented face shows the closest it can to a frown.
Victris consults the Emperors Tarot, in the hope of finding out something of the planets around them. The cards give him a strange result, and as he tries to understand them, something is pressed into his hand. Looking around, he recoils slightly from the sight of an unkempt woman standing beside him. “We know who saved us from the warp. We have kept the faith, those of us who are left.” Looking down, Victris examines the object in his hand. Realising it I a heretical idol of himself, he quickly closes his hand and looks around the bridge to make sure no one had seen it. Keeping his face neutral, Victris thanks the woman and sends her back to her duty, making a mental note of where she heads as she leaves the bridge.
Winter orders her crew to run augers on the cluster of planets around them, the planets are so different that they look like they should not be in the same galaxy, let alone sharing the same star system. The planets seem to be maintaining their distance from each other, but their orbits are erratic. The auger of one of the planets brings back a reading of extreme cold, colder even than the space around it, the auger then flags up deposits of materials and minerals at the valuable end of the spectrum. But is unable to clearly ascertain exactly what they are. The planets around it are affected by its radiating cold to some degree or another.
The hive planet, they are there to explore, appears to be devoid of humanoid life, but there are significant returns from machine spirits, that register as archaeotech.
The furthest planet from the ship is the warmest, and there seems to be small village sized humanoid responses spread across its surface. As the information comes in Admiral Winter invites Vitris to join her to discuss their next course of action, but as they turn to leave the seneschal Markus steps in front of them blocking their path. “Whilst I agree with making a decision on where we go from here, may I suggest that you invite all the senior department heads.” Winter looks him up and down, a slight smirk on her face. “Okay, I will go along with that. Set the meeting in one hour, all senior staff are to attend.”
Focusing his mind Altius sends the tendrils of his mind out over the planets, searching for signs of astropathic activity. He can only feel old, residual sending’s, there does not seem to be any active astropaths in the area. On the ice planet though, he locates a psychic presence. Focusing on it his mind is filled with a heat, not unlike being uncomfortably close to a fire.
Gnophics Sexxophin returns to his zenos device. Making his way into his inner sanctum, past its secreted security measures. On arrival all is not as he left it. The mechanical skull looks different, the damaged eye is sprouting crystals, and as Gnophics enters he becomes aware that the machine seems to be looking at him. Sending out a short burst of binary, Gnophics tries to communicate with the skull. In response the things jaw opens, and inside its mouth is a smaller, more ornate, skull of an unidentified zenos. A string of binary emits from a minuet vox-caster in the smaller skulls mouth.
“60 revolutions, 59 revolutions…” Gnophics interrupts with a binary burst of his own. “Identification.” “Identification… Julius pattern, omega. Hadriun Pattern, nemesis.” Gnophics processes this new information. “What is your purpose?” he asks. “In 29,335.345, placed on Adelphi. In the year 29,859.213.. “ It then spits out a string of chemical compounds, that Gnophics is able to identify them as the makeup of a hallucination drug. “The prophecy,. Plague comes… Plague comes… Plague comes… hiss, hiss, hissssss.” Thanking the skull, Gnophics turns and heads back out of the isolation that is his sanctum. On re-entering the body of the ship he is bombarded by a string of messages, each one a more irate demand for him to join a senior staff meeting. With a sigh he heads for the designated meeting room.
As Gnophics arrives Lord Captain Admiral Winter is storming around the room raging, seeing Gnophics slink into the room she throws him a vicious look and taps her vox-bead. “At last, everyone’s here. Lets lock this down, I want no interruptions.” Dressed in full dress uniform, Winter strikes a pose. “Some of us are new to this, some not so. We have been through a lot already, and it’s not going to get any easier, now that we are at our destination.”
Victris pipes up. “So Captain what is our situation.” He asks.
Winter runs through the augers responses. On hearing the reports, Victris looks around at the gathered department heads. “I think that, in light of the possible riches on the ice planet, we should get down there and claim it in the name of the Emperor.” Winter nods, before turning to the ships chief chaplain. “So what does our priest think?” She asks.
“I think that there is a whole planet that has never heard the holy truth of the god emperor. This should come before any base mercantile considerations, my lord captain.” After a brief pause Winter replies. “We will get to them, but we must gather minerals as well. What does the tech priest think?” With some reluctance Gnophics addresses the room, using the baser language of man. “I feel that the archaeotech is a priority, we need to claim it before someone else does.”
As they talk and discuss options, the cognitor screens around the room start to flicker, and images of potential tech from the hive world starts to appear on them.
Seneschal Marcus interrupts the debate before it deteriorates in to an all out brawl. “If you have all finished comparing dicks, we need to make a final decision.” “We have not heard from our astropath.” Victris says turning to Altius. “So what do you think Altius.” Slowly Altius lifts his head, the flaming psychic impression still on his mind. There is a brief pause as Altius gathers his thought before answering. “I think we should investigate the ice planet, it seems to be the one holding this cluster together.” Winter looks thoughtful before seeming to come to a conclusion. “Yes, that makes sense. If we are all in agreement, then we shall land on the ice planet and see what we shall see.”
“Right.” Marcus interjects. “Lylith, what are the security issues?” “Security issues? A security issue, security is fucked. We can’t fight on that planet, we will freeze.” Victris turns to her. “Have we got anything on board that will help?” Throwing her hands up Lylith all but snarls back at him. “I don’t know, why don’t you ask the tech priest?” she replies Victris turns to Gnophics with a questioning look on his face. “Well?” Gnophics consults his data slate, and after checking the lists of supplies looks back to Victris. “No, I don’t think there is.” After a little thought Victris turns back to the Lord Captain. “Maybe we should visit the hive world first; some of the archaeotech may be of use.” Winter rests her chin on her steepled fingers as she considers the implicsations of this course of action. “I think you are probably correct.” Standing she addresses the whole room. “That decides it, I think we need to get our gear together. Prepare yourselves for any eventuality, meet in the cargo hold in say 45.” Meeting the gaze of each of her senior staff in turn, she nods to each of them.
“Okay, dismissed!”
GAMING TALES 