How's it going folks?
Anonymous Friend #1 here. Now that the
crazy scientist and his abomination of an assistant have been brought into the
fold of the MIC by BlackHawk(a.k.a Uber NPC #1), it's my turn to enter the fray. Now granted, my entry made a little
more...sense, than theirs did from a setting perspective (certainly not from a
realism perspective, as I actually survived the crazy shit below). But that doesn't say much in the grand scheme
of things. This will be long and wordy,
because I like writing stories with attention to detail that has been missed by
others. On with the show.
So, given the circumstances,
we'll call my character Rick for now.
Rick is from the Warhammer 40K universe and a member of the Death Korps
of the Krieg Imperial Guard. A little
backstory for those of you who don't know, Krieg is a toxic dump of a planet,
classified as a Death World/former Hive World.
Over the course of the planet's history, it was subjected to what
amounted to a revolt that ended in nuclear winter. Being in deep crap, Krieg focused its efforts
on providing fully trained regiments to the Imperium, tank growing soldiers and
implanting in them all the knowledge required to be functioning and obedient
members of the Imperial Guard. This
secured their position as an important supplier to the Imperium, where their
soldiers could enter environmentally hazardous combat zones unfit for any of
the normal regiments.
In this case, Rick was a
relatively new member of the Death Korps (we'll say a couple of months, it was
never really established), and being sent on a pretty much guaranteed suicide
run. A group of heretical cultists had
established a bunker on the planet, and the last four squads that had been sent
never reported back. So yeah, definite clusterfuck on the horizon, but the
Imperial Guard isn't known for being tactical on small scales like this. His squad was in a Chimera APC, rumbling
across the wasteland, each man carrying a standard loadout: one lasgun/angry flashlight with 4 spare
power packs, 2 krak grenades, a combat knife, and a standard issue full body
NBC suit (with a skin tight lining for better seal). After cresting the hill, and with the bunker
in sight, the driver confirmed weapons free.
That's when things got intense.
The APC started gaining
speed, barreling towards impending doom and the sounds of unfamiliar
weapons. When the APC kept going forward
with no changes, and the cabin started heating up, Rick went up to ask the
driver what was going on, only to find the driver missing and a big hole melted
through the front of the APC, with several more red energy bolts heading his
way. We never even got a chance to fire
the main gun (although I think we completely forgot that this model APC even
HAD a gun). Whilst screaming "Bail
Out!" Rick threw himself against the rear door, spilling out onto the
scorched terrain with the rest of the squad, a couple of them botched their
landings and ended up with broken necks.
Rolling into a crouch, the front of the bunker could be seen rather
clearly, with 4 windows and a fortified main door. There was a turret in each window, each one emitting
red bolts that impacted like grenades.
The APC had no driver and had been traveling at top speed, so it rammed
right through the front doors and turned into a twisted heap of scrap that
detonated as the fuel tank ripped apart.
What a great start, huh? Ten
seconds into the fight, the APC is down and the squad is pinned in open terrain
by four emplaced weapons and down a couple men...make that a few men, one just
got blasted in the chest. One hit kills,
definitely a bad day. Well, being a
typical Krieger with a will to go down fighting (and because I can be
semi-psychotic when playing combat characters, which is often :D ), Rick
charged forward past the rest of the squad who were firing their weapons to no
effect, and managed to make it up against the front wall without getting
hit. One Krak grenade later, and both
turrets on the left side stopped firing.
Standard sweep-and-clear procedure, Rick vaulted through the window to
survey the interior: two dead bodies,
two destroyed gun emplacements, two unusual rifles and several strange
grenades. Knowing his 1d6 lasgun was
pretty much a piece of shit, and after seeing what the turrets did to the APC,
I decided to confirm what we already knew about blaster rifles. So, rolling a WIS check, the GM says (paraphrasing
here), "It is MUCH better than your current weapon." Being bred and raised to Imperium standards,
Rick KNEW just as well as any other Imperial Guardsman that it was forbidden to
touch any form of technology not blessed by the tech priests. However, as with any manufacturing process on
a dump of a planet in the backwater region of the galaxy, every once in a while
a batch contains a defective product XD.
Rick knew just how screwed he was against these cultists and their
weapons, and not wanting to fall like the last four squads and thus continue
feeding the meat grinder, he said "Fuck it" and picked up the blaster
rifle (4d8 damage, 5d8 when double tapping) and the grenades (thermal
detonators, 6d10 AP1 at the time).
This is when the birth of a
long running joke with my friends came about.
Someone in the squad saw this, and screamed aloud for all to hear
"Tech Heresy!" Then,
completely forgetting the two gun emplacements on the right side of the bunker,
they all started gunning for Rick, who took cover by the window. With cries of "I'm on your side
assholes!" and "Do you want to die like the others?" Rick
started getting pissed off at their complete idiocy and the increased chances
of them dying, and so lost it. "Fine, if that's the way you want it, no
problem!" Rick primed his last Krak
grenade and chucked it out the window, which the squad didn't even bother
trying to dodge. Oops, looks like that
actually killed off the entire
squad. "Well shit. Fucking idiots." For many sessions after this, my friends
would randomly call out "Tech Heresy" when I did something with any
form of technology.
Quick recap: Stranded in the enemy base, squad down, now
labeled a Tech Heretic. Rick was having
a VERY bad day. But, he/I was a stubborn
bastard that refused to lose, so on with the mission: Kill Everyone (sounds pretty reasonable if I
do say so). With who knows how many
enemy personnel left, Rick goes into stealth mode (another inside joke, feel
free to laugh along). Jumping back out
the window and crouching low, Rick hugged the wall and proceeded around the
left side (facing the front) of the bunker.
There were another two windows with turrets on this side of the
building, so Rick quietly tried sneaking by.
One botched stealth roll later, and a cultist noticed Rick and called
out to the others. Given the situation
being the same as before, Rick went to chuck a grenade before realizing all he
had left were the strange ones he'd picked up, completely unlike anything he or
any enemy he'd encountered had used.
Still not knowing how to work it, and in a pinch (rolled INT), Rick
remembered that he had heard how it was a VERY bad idea to let the contacts of
two power packs touch each other. He had
four left. "Well, let's try
it." So taking two of them and
jamming them together like two 9V batteries, he chucked it through the window
and backed off as the explosion blew a portion of the outer and inner walls
apart. "Damn, they should have just
issued those as grenades" ("Tech Heresy!" hehe).
Running over to the next
window, Rick popped up and hit the turret operator in the chest with his
blaster, sending him flying back (which was embellishment on the GM's part, but
funny) with a huge cauterized hole in his chest. "Fuck Yeah!" Moving on to the next set of windows, Rick
jumped in, taking down two more cultists with the rifle. With only the clip in the weapon and the
unusual grenades left, Rick quickly policed the bodies for ammo, reloading the
rifle since he didn't know the capacity yet.
There was a small hole far corner of the room, which when peered
through, showed the adjacent outer room for the bunker's first two rear
emplaced weapons...and a cultist approaching after hearing him gun down the
last guy. Jamming the barrel through the
hole, Rick fired repeatedly, overkilling the poor bastard. There was another guy in there who returned
fire, so Rick primed his last two power packs and threw them through the hole
before diving out the window. Making his
way around the corner to the rear as the packs detonated, Rick jumped through
the first window to survey the damage.
Most of the wall to the left which housed the door leading into the
interior of the base was missing as was a portion of the rear wall to the left,
so the interior of the base could be surmised as a ring of outer rooms, an
inner hallway ring, and then a big room in the center. There were also a couple dozen men
approaching his position.
At this point, the sequence
of events gets a bit fuzzy. The
novelization of this encounter that the GM put together was done to make the
story flow better, but left out/put in several different sequences. I will say at this point that Rick DID in
fact decide to chuck one of the strange grenades he had, a quick overview
noting to slide the switch forward then release. So yeah, looks of horror across their faces
as the grenade hit the ground and then erupted in a contained ball of red light
that that was then sucked back in to nothingness. No remains but a few body
parts and the remain scared cultists.
"Holy Shit! What the hell are these things?" No time to gawk, they were falling back to
cover to engage from. The closest turret
was damaged from the power packs, as was the power supply although to a much
lesser extent, but the further turrent was still intact. With a Strength check,
Rick dragged the turret as close to the hole in the wall as the power cord
would allow and started hosing the bunker interior with blaster fire. He had no ranks in emplaced weapons, and so
was rolling raw DEX, but with that much fire spewing forth in a confined space,
it didn't matter. Several cultists were
killed off, but a few survived long enough to hit the power supply, causing the
turret to lose power, and for it to start sparking menacingly. A quick WIS check to know that it was going
to blow, and Rick once again dove out a window and ran around the corner to the
left side as the thing went off, apparently killing the remaining cultists that
tried to follow him.
Rick retreated back up the
left side, approaching the hole that had been blown open from the first set of
power packs. As he climbed through the
outer hole to sweep the interior and hopefully flank any remaining cultists,
the door to the center room (which was in line with the remains of the APC at the
main entrance) was blown off it's hinges and sent flying. What stepped out was a massive creature that
had to duck to fit through the door frame, with armor like scales covering its
body, razor sharp claws of which one was holding a spiked/bladed metal chain,
evil looking horns, and rows of sharp teeth.
Reaction: toss a grenade. One thermal detonator took off scales at
several points to reveal raw flesh, and a crater in the concrete floor that
allowed the thing to stand better.
"Oh shit." Taking cover
around the hole in the inner wall, Rick got his blaster ready, when a figure
lunged from the shadows and slashed at the thing's back with a sword. Blood
everywhere, the creature started going for him.
Rick fired off a few blaster bolts at the thing's bleeding back, as it
tried to hit the figure but kept missing.
The figure cut an X into the monster's chest, which the monster followed
by stabbing him straight through the chest with his chain. He pulled it free and then came after
Rick. Priming a thermal detonator and
dropping it right around the corner, Rick jumped out of the bunker and just
cleared the blast radius. At this point
the monster lost most of its scales, and was looking pretty bad. It never got the chance to attack me, though,
because the figure somehow managed to recover and attacked from the rear. The monster turned its attention towards him
instead.
What follows is what I
distinctly remember taking place, both due to its level of badassness and
potential stupidity, regardless of what was stated in the novelization. With the monster distracted, Rick primed a
thermal detonator and drew his combat knife, ran up and lunged towards the
monster, stabbing deeply into the upper back and dragging it down so as to open
a big gash, which he promptly then shoved the thermal detonator into. Jump off, run away, boom. No more ugly hellspawn. Mission Accomplished, fuck off cultist scum. Here, it is revealed that the figure is
BlackHawk, who a quick spot/awareness check reveals he is still bleeding
slightly from the chest wound. He
introduces himself, and inquires as to why Rick would commit heresy and pick up
an enemy weapon. Rick replied with
something along the lines of "I wanted to live, I wasn't going to die like
the others because of some bullshit rules." The realization at this point is that I'm an
enemy of the Imperium now, sure no one survived to report me, but the "all
powerful Emperor knows" (*heave*, that bastard makes me sick). BlackHawk commends Rick for fighting against
a cornugon with the little training he's had, and that it's a shame he would
not be welcomed back. Rick replies,
"I'll think of something. I
survived this, didn't I?" BlackHawk
then offers Rick a job at the MIC. End Scene.
As you can see, this session
went fairly smoothly. Mostly because it
was designed as a pure combat run which I wholly obliged to roll with, albeit
much better than the GM had hoped for since I did kill off every cultist
without taking much damage (or none at all, I don't remember for sure). Rick wholeheartedly accepted the job at the
MIC, as it was a chance to escape the Imperium's wrath and actually fight for
something worthwhile. While OoC, the
idea of a job where you preserve canon is quite silly, in character it is the
preservation of the space-time continuum, which seemed as good enough of a step
up in the world as any. But yeah, there
you have it, next time we'll get to see the initiation of crazy scientist,
crazy abomination, and crazy soldier into the MIC. Stay Tuned! Same URL! Whatever
time we get around to it!
ZeRoller again. If you want the GM's story version of those events, here you go:
The APC bounced and jostled as it sped off. Reichardt clutched his lasgun to his chest as
the completely shock-less vehicle topped a crest, crashing back down on the
other side. He swore, the low gothic
adding colorful punctuation to his distaste.
He glanced around, watching the grim determination of his fellow
soldiers. This is what they were bred
for, what they all were bred for, to fight and die for the Emperor on his
far-off throne.
They were being sent out in this piece of shit to try to
retake a bunker. They were the fifth
such team to do try to do so. …In the
same loadout. Reichardt swore
again. Why the fuck were they being sent
into certain doom? He glanced out the
turret opening next to him, watching the terrain rushing by.
The in-vehicle PA crackled to life. “We’re approaching the base. Weapons free.”
The APC began to accelerate.
Reichardt swore at the recklessness of the dumbasses around him. A raucous noise, like that of dozens of
lasguns being rapidly turned on and off, arose in front of the vehicle. Heat wafted from the front, causing the air
to visibly ripple.
“What’s going on up there?” Reichardt demanded, calling
through the armored wall.
No response came. The
APC jostled as it continued flying along the ground, the weapons fire
nearing. He stood, bracing himself with his
free hand against the ceiling. As he
watched, the wall to the cabin began to glow red.
“BAIL!” Reichardt
threw himself to the rear door, pushing it open and jumping out as the wall
began to melt. He hit the ground,
rolling with the fall. Following his
example, his squad mates leapt from the APC.
He rose to a crouch, ignoring the pain of the bruises
covering his body despite his armor. Taking
in his surroundings, Reichardt could see 4 windows along the wall, and a door
along the wall. Gun emplacements, tripod
mounted, pointed out of each, spewing forth a torrent of red energy.
The APC, the half of it that hadn’t melted into slag under
the withering barrage of red energy pulses, continued on its haphazard course,
no longer being steered by the long-dead drivers, but still travelling forward
under its own momentum. As he watched,
the wreckage of the vehicle crashed through the front doors, its momentum
smashing the reinforced hinges. The
heat, the impact, and the generally shoddy construction of the APC combined in
that instant, igniting the fuel inside with explosive force.
Reichardt ducked and ran, dodging a dead comrade, who no doubt
broke his neck after jumping from the back.
Shrapnel ripped across the field, bouncing off of metallic debris left
in the kill-zone, likely from the APC’s that had come before.
The energy bolts flying hit the dirt and terrain with the
force of grenades. He couldn’t help but
swear. His own lasgun wasn’t nearly that
powerful. Hell, he remembered hearing it
called an ‘angry flashlight’ on more than one occasion. “Fuck.”
He skidded to a halt, slamming against a wall outside of the
firing arc. Several of his squad mates
had been gunned down, they others seemed to be aiming their weapons at the
turrets, to little effect.
“Fuck.” Reaching
down, Reichardt grabbed a grenade from his belt, chucking it through the
opening from which the rain of energy still came. He grimaced against the expected shock of the
detonation. Running over, he jumped
through the opening.
He glanced over the two bodies, the damaged mounted weapons’
operators. Unusual weapons, rifle
format, and a series of unusual looking grenades lay under their dead
owners. His mind briefly battled with
itself. His upbringing had drilled into
him again and again to never use, nor even touch, any technology not blessed by
the tech priests.
“Fuck that,” he said to himself. He had no intention of being outgunned. “There’s no way I’m dying like the last four
squads if there’s something I can do to even the odds…” He dropped his lasgun, scooping up the odd
rifle, and the grenades as well.
“Tech Heresy!” The
shout came from one of his squad mates.
Reichardt ducked as lasgun fire struck out over the top of his
head.
“You idiots! These
weapons’ll even the odds! Do you wanna
die?” Reichardt called out back.
“Tech Heretic!”
He sighed, cursing their idiocy under his breath. “Fine, if that’s how you want it…” Reichardt grabbed another grenade from his
belt, hurling out toward the squad.
Landing in the middle of them, they barely tried to dodge as it
exploded, ripping through their flesh and armor.
Slinking out of the room, he swore at his dead ‘comrades’. “Fucking morons.” He moved quietly around the wall. His squad may have failed, the other squads
may have failed, but he was NOT going to fucking fail. He swore again, seeing more turrets poking out
of the next side of the building. He
continued forward, crouching to move under the windows and remain unseen.
As Reichardt slipped under the window on the far side of
that wall, an enemy soldier, cultist by the look of him, noticed him, calling
out an alarm. Reichardt’s hand
immediately went to his grenades, finding only the strange weapons so unlike
those used by himself or his traditional enemies. Whoever these guys were, they were equipped
with shit he’d never seen or heard of before.
Acting quickly, he grabbed two spare lasgun power packs. He’d heard that it was very bad to let the
contacts of the power cells touch…
“Well, let’s try it,” he muttered, jamming the two leads together,
making sure they’d stuck, and throwing them into the room. He stepped back as part of the wall itself
blew out from the force. “Hell, they
should have just made the grenades out of that…”
He ran then, hugging the wall to keep out of range of the
heavy guns’ firing arcs. He popped up at
the next window, squeezing the trigger while pointing the rifle at the gunner. A red pulse of energy, similar, though
smaller, to what ripped apart his APC, struck the gunner full in the
chest. The cultist gunner was lifted off
his feet by the force, a large section of his chest hollowed out into a large,
cauterized crater.
“FUCK YAH!” Reichardt
exalted, turning the weapon on the other occupant of the small room. The other cultist was already raising his
weapon, but too slow. Reichardt’s shot
to his neck nearly decapitated him, a squirt of blood force through blackened
flesh heralding the final beat of his heart.
Dashing forward, the sole survivor of His Majesty’s latest
suicide squad dove under the next window.
Snatching his last two lasgun powerpacks, he mashed the leads together
violently. Hurling the deadly batteries
through the window with his offhand, he slid forward to the next window,
raising his rifle.
He rose to his feet as the room to his right exploded,
showering concrete dust and debris for yards.
The gunner, looking to the source of the explosion for only a fraction
of a second, was caught unawares by a blast of lethal energy to his head.
Vaulting the gun emplacement, Reichardt leapt into the
room. He hit the ground in a roll,
bringing him to his feet with his gun sight aligned with the gunner’s
wingman. “Fuck you.” He said, and pulled
the trigger.
Taking note of his resources, he had no more ammo clips, and
no more grenades. …Except for those new
grenades he picked up from the cultists.
He looked them over briefly.
Slide switch to arm, release a button to activate, maybe? Seemed about the same as pulling a pin and
releasing a handle. And what about
ammunition? He had no idea how much ammo
one of these clips held. Pulling away
from the wall he had instinctively pressed his back up against, and patted down
the cultists for spare clips.
He changed mags, noting the release mechanism, and discarding
the old clip. He had no clue how many
shots each of these things could fire, though with four fresh clips, he should
be fine. Especially should the rest of
the fuckers have more.
He tried the door handle leading farther into the base
interior. Unlocked. Bringing his rifle up, Reichardt swung the
door open, finger on the trigger. Two
full squads of men were coming into position before him. “FUCK.”
Grabbing one of the spherical grenades from his belt, he pressed the
button, slid the switch forward, and hurled it into the center of them.
For a fraction of a second, the expressions of the cultists
changed to one of knowing terror. After
that, though, the grenade landed with a metallic click against the concrete
floor. The grenade didn’t so much
explode so much as energize, erupting into a perfectly spherical orb of red
light, before contracting back down to nothing.
No trace remained of the cultists or their equipment, except
for a dismembered hand of one of the cultists that had almost dodged out of the
effect. The concrete had weathered far
better, but still displayed deep craters where the sphere had intersected it on
the walls, floor, and ceiling.
“Holy shit! The hell
are these things?” Reichardt asked, to no one in particular.
Getting a better survey of his surroundings, the bunker was
apparently designed as a single room or complex within a ring of locking rooms
that could defend from without with a complete range of fire from the defensive
windows. Defenders could prepare for any
breaches in the large hall between the two main layers.
Reichardt quickly circled the outer rooms, checking them for
remaining cultists. He gunned down two
would-be survivors before returning to the single door to the inner sanctum,
his peace of mind satisfied against a flank attack.
As he approached the sanctum door, it flew off its
hinges. “FUCK!” Reichardt yelled as he
leapt back from the fifty pound iron door slamming into the cement in front of
him. As he saw what kicked it out, he
swore again.
A massive creature was ducking through the door frame, its
scaled shoulders rubbing against the ceiling with a sound not unlike stone
against stone. Its razor sharp claws
held a snaking metal chain boasting even sharper looking hooks and blades. It’s many horns rustled eerily as it smiled,
a terrifying, sadistic grin spreading across its sharp-toothed maw, and all too
easily spreading up to its eyes, burning with hellfire.
“Shit!” He wrenched
one of the grenades from his belt. “Eat
this, Jackass!” He hurled the projectile
at the fiend, diving backward out of the grenade’s range. He could feel the rush of air filling the
vacuum left by the grenade as he rolled over.
…the beast still stood there, though bleeding , raw flesh
showed where scales used to be in several places. The fiend roared, an inhuman bellow that
caused concrete dust to fall from the ceiling.
He couldn’t help notice that it could stand a little straighter with
less concrete under foot. It began
twirling the spiked chain menacingly.
A man lunged from the shadows, his black trench-coat poised
dramatically behind him. The sword he
held in one hand flashed across the demon’s back, followed soon after by an
eruption of blood. Pulling back as
quickly as he attacked, the man strafed the great beast.
It turned, lashing out with the great chain. The man ducked, twisting out of the way,
while simultaneously using his sword to force the chain to maintain its current
path. The fiend roared with rage,
yanking the chain back, and swinging it back up to speed.
Wasting no time, Reichardt primed another grenade, and threw
it short to catch only the demon in its effect.
He scrambled out of the way of his own attack as it neatly trimmed the
concrete where he had just lain.
The monster made as if to go after him, but stopped as the
stranger’s sword, blue in the fluorescent lighting, cut a deep X in the
monsters chest.
It returned with a lightning-fast blow with the chain. Reichardt swore as it punched straight into
the stranger’s chest, before being ripped free with a sickening tearing sound.
Reichardt opened fire on it with his blaster. Its raw and bleeding back no longer the
obstacle to punishment than it had been while in possession of scales.
It wheeled on him, pain and bloodloss beginning to be
evident on its balance. It clumsily
began to raise its whirling chain. It
never finished the attack. The
stranger’s sword suddenly appeared through its chest, before being yanked down
to gut the thing like a fish. It swayed
slightly, clinging to its blasphemous life, before finally collapsing in a pool
of its own strangely ordinary blood.
The stranger idly cleaned the beast’s blood from his blade
with a multi-colored cloth, before it home in its scabbard. Hopping neatly over the slowly expanding
puddle of gore, the man extended a hand to help Reichardt to his feet.
Nervously, the younger man accepted, holding his rifle
firmly with his other hand. He couldn’t
help but notice the constant trickle of blood coming from the hole in the other
man’s chest. “Da fuck was that? And the hell is going on here?”
“The name’s Blackhawk,” the stranger replied, ignoring the
query. Glancing at the blaster, he
added, “So why did you pick up one of the enemy rifles? Isn’t that heretical?”
“Fuck you! And fuck
the stupid policies! I wanted to fucking
live, and I wasn’t about to use inferior equipment because of some bullshit
rule some jackass tech priest told me!”
Blackhawk smiled. “It
takes gall to stare down an angry cornugon and keep shooting. Especially with as little training as you’ve
been given. It’s a shame that you
wouldn’t be welcomed back to the Empire as a tech heretic…”
Reichardt raised his rifle.
“If you’re fucking threatening me, then come out and say it. I haven’t got all day, and I don’t give a
shit if some old fart a million miles from the front tells me to do something
stupid.”
Blackhawk gave a single chuckle. “My friend, I’m not threatening you. I’m offering you a job.”
Not quite the same from him, is it?